Tag: secret identity

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Detective Conan
The Million-Dollar Pentagram
(Meitantei Konan
Hyakuman Doru
no Michishirube,
名探偵コナン
100万ドルの五稜星)

Director – Chika Nagaoka – 2024 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 111m

****

Spin-off from a hugely populardetective mystery manga and anime franchise – and Japan’s biggest box office success of 2024 – impresses on the level of eye-candy provided you don’t attempt to follow the overly convoluted plot – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 27th

Japanese property Detective Conan is huge, running as a serialised manga in Weekly Shonen Sunday for 30 years, and turned into an anime series two years after that. By 2024, the manga has been collected into over a hundred volumes, while the franchise has spawn both animated and live action features among other things. The current film is the 27th animated feature, and at the time of writing is the biggest film at this year’s Japanese box office.

It may not be a good place to start with the franchise. Unlike Spy x Family Code: White (Kazuhiro Fusuhashu, Takashi Karagiri, 2023), which does a surprisingly effective job at getting the newcomer up to speed on a well-established anime franchise, Detective Conan: The Million-Dollar Pentagram doesn’t bother to explain its characters and their complex network of relationships, so you may find yourself completely lost before it starts throwing its increasingly convoluted plot developments at the viewer (as it does almost immediately with disorienting speed).… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Black Mask
(Hak Hap,
黑俠)

Director – Daniel Lee – 1996 – Hong Kong – Cert. 18 – 99m

*****

An experimentally created supersoldier without feelings revolts against his creators, even as they attempt to take control of Hong Kong’s drugs trade – on Blu-ray from Monday, April 22nd in the UK and Tuesday, April 23rd in the US and Canada

Removing the ability of human beings to feel produce an elite force of warriors known as the 701 Squad has gone horribly wrong, and the members of 701 are to be shut down. Their leader, adopting the name Tsui Chik (Jet Li), escapes to live undercover working in a library where he learns all he can by reading books. His unlucky in love co-worker Tracy (Karen Mok) is convinced by other staff members to date him.

However, Tsui is more interested in hanging out with his best friend, the policeman Inspector Shek (Lau Ching Wan) who is tracking the elimination of all the major Hong Kong drugs dealers. The reason, unbeknown to him, is that the other surviving members of the 701 Squad, under the leadership of the Commander (Patrick Lung), are trying to wipe out the gangs including the last surviving gang leader King Kau (Anthony Wong) and take control of the drugs trade themselves to gain financial security.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Spy x Family
Code: White
(SPY x FAMILY
CODE: White)

All images © 2023 SPY x FAMILY The Movie Project © Tatsuya Endo/Shueisha

Directors – Kazuhiro Fusuhashu, Takashi Karagiri – 2023 – Japan – Cert. 12A – 111m

*****

A spy and an assassin are married to each other, each unaware of the other’s secret career, while neither of them are aware their adopted daughter is a telepath who therefore knows everything they don’t – bonkers anime deploying cookery to prevent Armageddon (!) is out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 26th

An opulent art deco ball. Couples dance. A man connives to be alone with a drunken woman so he can…photograph a file in an office desk. A woman driving a car rips off her face (in the manner of the characters in Mission: Impossible II, John Woo, 2000) to reveal… a man, the spy Loid (voice: Takuya Eguchi). Another woman, Yor (voice: Saori Hayama), is revealed as an assassin when she kills a man who sold industrial secrets. The spy and the assassin are married to one another in a pretend marriage which is a cover for their undercover operations, although neither knows the other is in the spy / assassination game. Their daughter Anya (voice: Atsumi Tanezaki) – adopted to make the bogus marriage look real – is a telepathic orphan who can read minds, so knows about the two secret identities of her ‘parents’.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Spider-Man:
No Way Home

Director – Jon Watts – 2021 – US – Cert. 12a – 150m

***1/2

With Spider-man’s identity revealed as Peter Parker, he enlists Dr. Strange’s magic to restore the world to its state before that revelation – out in cinemas on Wednesday, December 15th

Hard to remember now but there was a time before the millennium when a big screen Spider-Man adaptation was something no-one thought would ever get made. Following the hugely successful Spider-Man (Sam Raimi, 2002) there have effectively been three series of movies, with reboots The Amazing Spider-Man (Marc Webb, 2012) and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)-compliant Spider-Man: Homecoming (Jon Watts, 2107) plus three further appearances of the character in the MCU since 2016 (Captain America: Civil War, 2016; Avengers: Infinity War, 2018; Avengers: Endgame, 2019; all Joe and Anthony Russo). In the 2002-initiated cycle, the character was played by Tobey Maguire, in the 2012, Andrew Garfield and in the MCU / 2017, Tom Holland. The latter in Jon Watts’ films is particularly good at portraying Peter / Spider-Man as a gawky, insecure teenager.

There’s even a (hugely inventive) animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman, 2018) which sadly isn’t referenced in the current film.… Read the rest