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Features Live Action Movies

The Gorals
(산양들)

The Gorals (산양들)

Director – Yoo Jae-wook – 2025 – South Korea – Cert. – 107m

****

Four problem high school girls bunk off their special college application class to start a zoo in the woods with the school zoo’s animals – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2026 which runs in cinemas from Monday, November 2nd to Tuesday, November 16th

In danger of failing to secure themselves college places, four high school girl students are put in to a special class to help them get in somewhere. In-hye (indie director “Grace” Park Hye-jin) is busy delivering vaccinations to the ducks, rabbits and chickens in the school zoo. She likes the solitude of the job, but on this occasion, Seo-hee (Lee Seung-yeon) is watching from outside the enclosure, having been sent to find her along with two other girls, Lee Jung-ae (Park Hyo-eun) in class 2 and Kim Soo-min (Choi Soo-in from The House of Us, 2019; The World of Us, 2016, both Yoon Ge-eun) in class 1, by teacher Miss Kim Ah-tae (Kim See-eun from The Handmaiden, Park Chan-wook, 2016).

Teacher Kim wants the four of them to work on their interview skills so they can apply for a college – any college – and get in.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

A Better Tomorrow II
(Yingxiong Bense 2,
英雄本色2)

A Better Tomorrow II (Yingxiong Bense 2, 英雄本色2)

Director – John Woo – 1987 – Hong Kong – Cert. 18 – 105m – Workprint cut 140m

The first half **

The second half *****

Workprint cut *****

To continue the franchise, Chow Yun-fat returns playing the brother of his character in the first film, a New York restaurateur – 4K Restoration is out on 4K UHD and Blu-ray from Monday, 28th September

There’s something hugely endearing when Chow Yun-fat appears here, playing the brother of his character in the first film, insisting his name is not Mark but Ken. Nevertheless, he has on hand his late brother’s coat, with a few holes from bullets, to don in the closing scenes. Mark can’t possibly return having died at the end of the first film, and yet, to all intents and purposes, he’s back for this sequel!

The film as it appeared in release prints feels like little more than an excuse to have another big shoot out with Chow Yun-fat and others at the end, and you can feel Woo struggling as he tries to find a way of getting there without completely losing interest.

(Update: for struggling read; struggling with the editing required to get the film down to 105 minutes for cinema release.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

A Better Tomorrow
(Yingxiong Bense,
英雄本色)

A Better Tomorrow (Yingxiong Bense, 英雄本色)

Director – John Woo – 1986 – Hong Kong – Cert. 18 – 94m

*****

The seminal gangster movie that crystallised John Woo’s now-trademark style of brotherhood, bullets and blood and catapulted Chow Yun Fat to Oriental, big screen stardom – 4K Restoration is out on 4K UHD and Blu-ray from Monday, 28th September

After a decade directing comedies and kung fu movies (many for Golden Harvest), Woo’s last two films had been box office flops when producer Tsui Hark gave him the opportunity to make A Better Tomorrow, loosely based at least in plot and character terms on the gritty The Story of a Discharged Prisoner / Yingxiong Bense (Kong Lung, 1967).

Hong Kong’s cinema owners had no problems with two of the three proposed leading men – Ti Lung (from Drunken Master II, Liu Chia-Liang, 1994; Shaolin Temple, Chang Cheh, Wu Ma, 1976) had achieved great success in director Chang Cheh’s martial arts epics at Shaw Brothers (Woo had worked as assistant to Chang early in his career) and Leslie Cheung (from Happy Together, Wong Kar-wai, 1997; Once a Thief, John Woo, 1991; A Chinese Ghost Story, Tsui Hark, 1987) was a successful singer – but Tsui and Woo had to fight hard for third lead Chow Yun Fat, a big TV star lacking any box office clout.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies Music

The Obsessed
(Toritsukare Otoko,
トリツカレ男,
lit. Obsessed Man)

The Obsessed
(Toritsukare Otoko, トリツカレ男, lit. Obsessed Man)

Director – Wataru Takahashi – 2025 – Japan – Cert. PG tbc – 90m

*****

An obsessive becomes fixated on a woman he sees in a park – sweet, romantic drama plays in the Annecy International Animation Festival 2026 which runs from Sunday, 21st June to Saturday 27th June

Giuseppe (voice: Masaya Sano) becomes obsessed with things. It’s just the way he is. His current obsession is singing. So obsessed that he messes up at work. His restaurant boss is basically a good guy who has tried over the years to look out for his employee as he has become obsessed with, in turn, insects, or ice hockey, or sunglasses. Sometimes his patience is stretched to the limit.

One day, he meets a mouse,(voice: Hayato Kakizawa), befriends him, names him Cielo, and invites the little guy into his home. One past obsession was learning languages – Giuseppe chalked up about 15 and picks up mouse language fairly easily. The mouse worries about Giuseppe, whose flights of fancy mean he’s not a particularly grounded individual.

Another day, walking in the park, Giuseppe sees a pretty girl selling balloons, and she becomes his new object of obsession.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Being Towards Death
(10 Jian Gan Si Dui,
10间敢死队,
lit. 10 Fearless Squad)

Being Towards Death
(10 Jian Gan Si Dui, 10间敢死队, lit. 10 Fearless Squad)

Director – Sicheng Chen – 2026 – China – Cert. 12a – 120m

**

The terminally ill patients thrown together in hospital Ward 10 decide to adopt a positive attitude towards both life and death – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 5th

This has one of those weird Oriental movie titles that doesn’t translate that easily into Western languages, the number 10 referring to the ward for terminally ill patients in a particular hospital and the rest meaning a sort of optimistic equivalent of a suicide squad, but less a military type do or die operation than a determination to live in the inevitable face of inescapable, imminent death. The translators have settled on a term borrowed from philosopher Martin Heidegger which probably works better in German than in English, in which language it feels incredibly clunky. It refers to the act of living authentically in the face of death, which is very much what this movie is about. Somewhere in the middle of the narrative, Ward 10’s occupants, who feel increasingly like a close-knit family, name themselves (in the English subtitled version) the Ward 10 Fearless Squad, which would perhaps have been a better title.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Eagles of the Republic
(نسور الجمهورية)

Eagles of the Republic (نسور الجمهورية)

Director – Tarik Saleh – 2025 – Sweden, France, Denmark, Finland – Cert. 15 – 129m

****

A top Egyptian movie star finds himself working on a big budget, high concept, state-sponsored propaganda movie – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, May 22nd

The opening three scenes… The credits run over a montage of Egyptian movie posters. A group of men outdoors in the Egyptian sun listen attentively to radio commentary of a horse race. One of the men lights his lady passenger’s cigarette from his own as their car speeds towards the horizon of what could well be Monument Valley.. “cut” …but is a movie set with back projection. His assistant tells him has son has called three times – it’s the boy’s birthday, so the actor has his assistant buy his son an expensive watch. Not the greatest of fathers. The kissing couple on the side of the outside studio wall proclaims him to be Pharoah of the Screen George Fahmy (Fares Fares from Cairo Conspiracy, Tarik Saleh, 2022; Westworld, TV series, 2018; The Nile Hilton Incident, Tarik Saleh, 2017; Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Gareth Edwards, 2016; Department Q: The Keeper of Lost Causes, Mikkel Nørgaard, 2013; Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow, 2012) and her Rula Haddad (Cherien Dabis, director of Only Murders in the Building, 6 episodes, 2021-23).… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Kim Novak’s Vertigo

Kim Novak’s Vertigo

Director – Alexandre O. Philippe – 2025 – UK – Cert. uncertificated – 76m

*****

An essential addition to the canon of work surrounding and helping audiences to understand the power of one of the cinema’s greatest works– out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 3rd

The opening black and white scene features actress Kim Novak, probably shot in the 1950s, as if through a peephole. This recalls Norman and his peephole in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). Novak here seems to know she is being watched, looks directly at the camera, then rolls her head so her eyes go into the darkness of shadow. Then, colour footage of present day, images that could be out of Spellbound (Hitchcock, 1945): a gate opening, a passage along a country roadway, a wooden memorial to someone. All this accompanied by the voice of Kim Novak, now in her twilight years, talking about her life on the soundtrack – her present difficulty in getting breath, how awful it must be to gasp for breath prior to dying.

All this has a Hitchcock connection. Novak is familiar to us from her twin roles in Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958), the favourite film of director Philippe (and also, as it happens, of this critic) who specialises in documentaries about movies and made the definitive documentary about Psycho’s shower scene 78/52 (2017).… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Street Wanderers
(Los Caminantes
de la Calle)

Street Wanderers (Los Caminantes de la Calle)

Director – Juan Martin Hsu – 2025 – Argentina, Peru – 90m

*****

Argentinian cops and robbers procedural is set largely in the world of Mendoza’s immigrant Chinese community – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

2010. Mendoza, Argentina. The family-run, Chinese restaurant of Dageng (Kon Yam Pin) receives telephone threats for protection money. When they don’t pay up within 24 hours, a motorbike with two riders pulls up on at their door which opens onto the main street and fires four shots. So Dageng’s son (Willy Kon Chin Yi) delivers a rucksack containing $50 000 to the gang. But later, the riders complain there was only $30 000 and demand another $20 000.

Lots of similarly threatening phone calls overlap on the soundtrack as we see numerous yellow cables plugged into a telecoms hub, recalling similar motifs in movies as diverse as Three Colours Red (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1994) and Dial M for Murder (Alfred Hitchcock, 1953).

The prosecutor’s office is monitoring phone calls, but faces challenges. One such is that the calls are in Cantonese so require an interpreter to turn them into intelligible Spanish.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Silent Virgin
(La Virgen Silenciosa)

The Silent Virgin (La Virgen Silenciosa)
Director – Xavi Sala – 2025 – Mexico – 127m

*****

A legal secretary frustrated in her job embarks on a relationship with another woman, but her possessive mother does not approve – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

This certainly knows how to grab your attention at the start. An icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM) hangs on the wall. On the bed, a grown woman pleasures herself until… The earth moves! Everything is shaking, and she quickly recovers her composure as her middle-aged mother runs in to get her out of the house as the earthquake alarm goes off.

After, they eat at the meal table, and her mother (Mercedes Hernández from New Order, Michel Franco, 2020) asks Vale (“Va-lay”; Zamira Franco also from New Order), who she’ll later address as Valeria, to pick up prescriptions while she’s out and makes sure she doesn’t forget her packed lunch. Then it’s train, bus and the walk past colourful stalls to work. Vale’s office with about half a dozen or so people seems to be piled high with paperwork. They are dealing with the cases of people being arrested.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

In the Morning
of La Petite Mort

In the Morning of La Petite Mort

Director – Wang Yu-Lin – 2021 – Taiwan – 100m

***1/2

The urban lives of a beautiful young prostitute, a homeless food delivery boy, a Filipino cleaning lady and a building superintendent meet and transform each other – Taiwanese drama premieres in the 26th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

This opens with a shot of a painting depicting a pig, a fire, an orgasmically ecstatic, scantily clad woman and more, elements which play a part in what follows.

In a smart, up-market apartment, a beautiful young prostitute (Wang Yun-zhi) meditates. Then she services her clients (shown to a soft-core degree of explicit detail). She gets the job done, but the men she services don’t seem to understand that sex is about two people, not just one person (them), so she endures it as a not especially enjoyable job rather than takes pleasure in it. She has a little grille in her door so she can see who’s there before she opens it.

Meanwhile, a young man (Yusuke Fukichi) rides a scooter through the streets, arrives at the building in the pouring rain, walks along the corridor. He’s delivering food to her apartment. His job done, he returns to his home.… Read the rest