sanity Archives - Jeremy C. Processing

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

Nobody Leaves Alive
(Ninguém Sai Vivo Daqui)

Director – André Ristum – 2023 – Brazil – Cert. none – 86m

****

After a woman is incarcerated in Brazil’s notorious Colonia psychiatric hospital simply because she is pregnant outside of marriage, her hold on reality starts to disintegrate – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Lovingly shot in a stylish black and white that both makes the whole thing feel like a dream and detracts from any sense of reality, this opens with a young woman being bundled by two men into what looks like a cattle truck. Inside the truck are other people, and the group is clearly being sent somewhere specific.

Once off the train they are frogmarched down a country track, through some wrought metal gates of late 19th / early 20th Century design and into a hallway where they are separated into men and women and the women (since it is one woman’s story we are following here) are taken to a large, tiled room and hosed down by two women, the younger of whom is Laura.

Then the woman we are following is taken for interview with a man who denies he’s a doctor. Her name is Elisa, and she explains there’s been some sort of mix-up.… Read the rest