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Animation Features Movies

Lesbian Space Princess

Directors – Leela Varghese, Emma Hough Hobbs – 2025 – Australia – Cert. 15 – 87m

*****

A lesbian princess must travel through space to claim her inheritance and rescue her true love (who just dumped her) from straight white maliens – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, June 19th

NSFW

Princess Saira of Clitopolis (voice: Shabana Azeez) has been voted the Most Boring Royal ever – but then, her heart’s desire came along in the form of Kiki the Destroyer (voice: Bernie van Tiel) and changed all that. And then Kiki dumped her. Fuck!

Cue title song: “She’s a lesbian. She’s in space. And she’s also a princess.”

I was already won over by the silliness of the writing at this point. The animated visuals too demonstrate a unique, equally winsome style. Co-directors Varghese and Hobbs possess a real gift for humour, and have between them scripted the perfect comedy, in this critic’s opinion the hardest genre to pull off successfully. The narrative is punctuated by further, likeable indie songs which contribute to its appropriately alternate feel.

While Saira fails to summon the an ancient lesbian symbol of the labrys on her 23rd birthday, Kiki’s four in a bed sex games are disrupted by the arrival of the straight, while maliens the leader, Josh and Larry (voices: Melbourne comedy group Aunty Donna aka Mark Samual Bonanno, Broden Kelly, Zachery Luane) who suspend her over a vat of toxic home brew in the man cave where they find themselves exiled.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Lonely Castle
in the Mirror
(Kagami no Kojo,
かがみの孤城)

Director – Keiichi Hara – 2022 – Japan – Cert. – 116m

*****

Seven children are sucked via mirrors in their homes into a mysterious castle perched high above a sea, presided over by a wolf queen, and prowled by a hungry wolf at night – plays UK cinemas in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2024 between Friday, 2nd February and Sunday, 31st March

Teenager Kokoro Anzai (voice: Ami Touma) can’t face going to school. Her understanding mother (voice: Kumiko Aso) takes her instead to the Classroom of the Heart at an alternative school for a session with friendly teacher Mrs. Kitajima (voice: Aoi Miyazaki). This is to be Kokoro’s new school, but in the end, she can’t face going to that one either, so her mum phones her in as sick.

Moping in her bedroom, she is attracted to lights glowing around the tall mirror there before touching its surface which, like the mirrors in Orphée (Jean Cocteau, 1950) dissolve to allow her to pass through them into another world. On the other side, she finds herself in a castle perched high on a rock above a sea along with six other kids – tall Aki (voice: Sakura Kiryu), soccer player Rion (voice: Takumi Kitamura), computer geek Subaru (voice: Rihito Itagaki), piano player Fuka (voice: Naho Yokomizo), enigmatic Masamune (voice: Minami Takayama), and dumpy Ureshiro (voice: Yuki Kaji).… Read the rest