Tag: ritual

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Features Live Action Movies

Wild Foxes
(La Danse des Renards)

Director – Valéry Carnoy – 2026 – Belgium, France – Cert. 15 – 91m

***1/2

A promising young school boxer’s mindset changes following an accident which damages his arm – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 1st

This starts off with the camera darting nimbly around a boxing ring in a gym in which two teenage fighters (one in red, one in blue) spar while their compatriots and trainer spur them on from the sidelines. Camille (Samuel Kircher), in blue, is the winner. Afterwards, five of them lark around in the changing rooms, filmed on a smartphone. (The French title, with its reference to dancing, seems particularly apt here.)

A coach journey. Camille rehearses his fighting moves in a mirror and hangs up the medal round his neck. And on a football field with a team mate. And back in the gym. Which routine is interrupted when his trainer Bogdan (Jean-Baptiste Durand) summons him for a talk with the director. The dates have come through for the Brussels competition in June, but rather than train alongside his professional team mates, Cam wants to stay at the gym and practice with his friend Matteo (Faycal Anaflous) – who has been warned by the gym, one more screw up and you’re out.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Redoubt
(Värn)

Redoubt (Värn)

Director – John Skoog – 2025 – Sweden – Cert. – 85m

***1/2

Convinced the enemy will attack soon, a man turns his small house into a fortress that can provide shelter for a small number of people – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 27th

Before this film came along, ‘redoubt’ was not a word in my vocabulary; it means a small, possibly temporary, building turned into a fortress in preparation for war. John Skoog’s stark film, shot in equally stark black and white by cinematographer Ita Zbroniec-Zajt (Woman on the Roof, Anna Jadowska, 2022) is about a man living in an isolated rural community who, perhaps influenced by old government pamphlets about preparing for war, images from which pepper the film’s opening moments, decides to fortify his house as a refuge for his neighbours in the local community should the unthinkable happen.

It bears similarity to the Biblical story of Noah who is instructed by God to build an ark prior to the forthcoming global flood. In that account, everyone else thinks him completely nuts and just lets him get on with it, and the same thing happens here – people like him, and he’s tolerated as the local eccentric.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Kontinental ’25 (Kontinental ’25)

Director – Radu Jude – 2025 – Romania – Cert. 15 – 109m

****

Although operating within the bounds of the law, a bailiff is smitten with guilt and remorse for the effect of her job on a ‘client’– out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 31st

Carrying large bags, he scavenges at the bases of tree trunks in the woodlands, swearing profusely when his foot goes a foot in to the stream when he tries to fill his water bottle. In a bizarre nod to the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) – or more likely those briefly seen in The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011), he rests beside a dimetrodon sculpture then smokes a cigarette by a dilophosaurus. He rides a ski lift, passes a father and small son on their bikes on a footbridge, downs his packed lunch with vodka on a river bridge. He hangs around cafes asking for either work or five lei. He says “fuck you” after the woman offering him an early Sunday morning cleaning job has left. He gets hassled by a robot dog. He returns to his boiler room home.

While he sleeps, the bailiff Mrs Orsolya Ionescu (Eszter Tompa) knocks on his door, gendarmes in tow, to evict him, Ion (Gabriel Spahiu).… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Last Dance
(Po Dei Juk,
破·地獄)

Director – Anselm Chan – 2024 – Hong Kong – Cert. 12a – 130m (extended version – Cert. 15 – 140m)

**** (regular version) / unseen (extended version)

A failed, professional wedding planner joins a Taoist funeral director as a partner in his company as various crises come to a head in the latter’s family – engaging drama is back out in UK cinemas in an extended version on Friday, April 24th following the original version’s release on Friday, November 15th 2024

There have been movies about undertakers and funeral parlours before, but never one quite like this. Whether or not one is at a stage in life where one has had much experience of bereavement, at some point, each one of us is going to die – and, before that, in all likelihood, have to deal with our nearest and dearest dying and, by extension, undertakers and funeral directors in whatever culture we happen to live. Consequently, there is a universal fascination with such matters.

Hong Kong has a very specific cultural take on this phenomenon in its Taoist priests and rituals. While these have over the years supplied the basis for much beloved and fantastical Hong Kong action or horror fare such as Zu Warriors From the Magic Mountain (Tsui Hark, 1983) or the Mr.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Pharaoh
(Faraon)

Director – Jerzy Kawalerowicz – 1966 – Poland – Cert. 12 – 152m

*****

The reformist zeal of a youthful heir to the Ancient Egyptian throne confronts the immovable conservative tradition of the priesthood of the god Osiris – on Blu-ray from Monday, September 16th

There is nothing else in cinema quite like Pharaoh. That was my impression watching it, and although in such instances you always wonder if there are films of which you’re unaware that lie in a similar vein, this impression is confirmed by watching the Blu-ray’s excellent, 70 minute-odd afterword by critic, curator and scholar Michal Oleszczyk, which contextualises the film by detailing (1) the source novel by Boleslaw Prus, (2) its place in director Kawalerowicz’s wider body of work, which also includes Mother Joan of the Angels (1961) and (3) its significance in both 1960s international film culture and wider Polish history.

This disc extra isn’t meant to be watched until after the film has been viewed, not least because it contains a number of spoilers, so I’ll say no more about it in this review except to say that it’s an excellent and worthwhile extra that will add much to the viewer’s appreciation of the film.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Kidnapped
(Rapito)

Director – Marco Bellocchio – 2023 – Italy, France, Germany – Cert. 12a – 135m

*****

A boy is forcibly taken from his Jewish family by the Pope to be raised as a Catholic priest because he has been baptised into the Catholic faith – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 26th

Italy, the mid-nineteenth century. The Papal States will have disappeared by 1870 as Italy moves towards unification. In the meantime, they are still under the administrative control of the incumbent pope, Pius IX.

Bologna, 1852. A maid sees off a soldier in the night following a romantic tryst. The soldier is neither here nor there; the maid, Anna Morisi (Aurore Camatti) will play a significant part in what follows. The life of a nine-child Jewish family is about to be disrupted forever.

The home of the very ordinary Mortalo family, who are Jewish: father Momolo (Fausto Russo Alesi), mother Marianna (Barbara Ronchi) and their nine children. The parents are deeply religious and raise their offspring accordingly, teaching them, among other things, to recite the Shema prayer every night before they go to sleep. One night in 1858, they are visited by the authorities under Feletti (Fabrizio Gifuni) who have come to take away one of their children under Papist law.… Read the rest

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Kidnapped

One God, two families

Kidnapped
Directed by Marco Bellocchio
Certificate 12a, 135 minutes
Released 26 April

This Italian drama, based on true events, is set when the papacy was both the head of the Roman Catholic Church and the state authority in parts of Italy, a situation that would change with Italian unification in the 1870s and the instigation of a secular, country-wide system of government. There would be implications for the separation of church and state.

In 1858, six-year-old Jewish boy Edgardo Mortalo (Enea Sala) was removed from his family by the papist authorities following his Catholic baptism (how he was baptised emerges later) and taken to a school run directly by Pope Pius IX (Paolo Pierobon) to educate such ‘Christians’ in the faith and turn them into priests.

The Church’s theological rationale behind this appalling action… [read the rest at Reform]

[Read my longer review on this site]

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The Wicker Man:
The Final Cut

Director – Robin Hardy – 1973 – UK – Cert. 15 – 94m

*****

A Christian police sergeant investigating a missing child on a remote Scottish island meets a terrible fate – out as a Collector’s Edition UHD / Blu-ray /DVD from Monday, September 25th following its release in UK cinemas in a 4K restoration from Wednesday, June 21st, 2023

(Originally reviewed for cinema release in a 2K restoration on Friday, September 27th, 2013)

Originally released forty years ago in the UK in a cut down version its director disliked, The Wicker Man now reaches our cinema screens in a longer, restored version which he says fulfils his original vision. Its plot is deceptively simple. A Christian police sergeant flies to a remote Scottish island in response to a letter about a missing child. But when he arrives on Summerisle, no-one seems to have heard of that child. It gradually emerges that the policeman has stumbled into an intricate web of lies and deceit wherein a terrible fate awaits him….

Using material from a recently discovered, longer US release print – rechristened The Final Cut by Hardy who assembled this cut in 1979 – it’s a provocative work on a number of levels.… Read the rest

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Doctor Who Am I

Director – Matthew Jacobs, Vanessa Yuille – 2022 – UK – Cert. 12a – 80m

****

Screenwriter Jacobs’ entry into US Dr. Who fan subculture follows his scripting of the 1996 Dr. Who TV movie that was supposed to launch the franchise Stateside but flopped – out in UK cinemas on Thursday, October 27th and Blu-ray, DVD & Digital Download Monday, November 28th

What the hilarious narrative feature Galaxy Quest (Dean Parisot, 1999) did for Star Trek, this heartfelt yet hugely entertaining documentary does for Dr. Who. Matthew Jacobs, whose work includes the screenplay for Paperhouse (Bernard Rose, 1988) and the original story for offbeat Disney cartoon The Emperor’s New Groove (Mark Dindal, 2000), also wrote the script for the US network TV movie Doctor Who (1996) which was supposed to relaunch the BBC franchise in the US, a goal it spectacularly missed when no series proved forthcoming.

In retrospect, Jacobs considers that his script made two major errors in terms of the Doctor Who legacy. One, it recast the hitherto entirely alien Time Lord as half-human, and, two, it allowed him to kiss a member of the opposite sex, something no previous version of the doctor had ever been seen to do.… Read the rest

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Doctor Who Am I

Directed by Matthew Jacobs & Vanessa Yuille
Certificate 12a, 80 minutes
Released in cinemas 27 October and
DVD & Digital 28 November

What is a church, and why do people attend it? This is a documentary about Doctor Who fandom and conventions. At no point does it suggest, at least not in so many words, that such gatherings might be churches. Hold that word, ‘gathering’. It’s one that those of us who are religious often employ to describe ‘church’.

Screenwriter Matthew Jacobs has, for many years, avoided attending such gatherings… [Read the full review in Reform Magazine.]

Doctor Who Am I is out in cinemas in the UK on Thursday, October 27th and DVD & Digital Download Monday, 28th November.

Read a longer review elsewhere on this site.

Trailer: