Tag: sibling rivalry

DÌDI (弟弟,
translates as
‘little brother’)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 30 July 2024
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translates as
‘little brother’)
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Director – Sean Wang – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 94m

*****

A young, Taiwanese-American teenager must deal with issues of ethnicity, family and love in 2008, when social media has become a significant element of growing up – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 2nd

2008. California. Summer. 13-year-old Taiwanese-American Chris (Izaac Wang), who prefers to go by the nickname Wang Wang, is rebelling. Mandarin is spoken at home by Nai Nai (‘grandma’; Chang Li Hua) and mum (Joan Chen), but that doesn’t stop mega-sweary English language shouting contests at the supper table between Wang Wang and elder sister Vivian (Shirley Chen) who is due to attend UCSD later in the year. When she’s out, Wang Wang hangs out in her room and posts as her on her Facebook (about which, amazingly, she never comes back to him). In the bathroom, he pees into her moisturising cream (leading to her threatening to period him in the mouth if he ever does it again).

Outside the house, he hangs out with his peers Farhad Mahmood (Raul DIal) and Jimmy Kim aka SOUP (Aaron Chang). Egged on by them in the manner of pubescents everywhere, he attempts to hang out with Madi (Mahaela Park), the girl he fancies.… Read the rest

Tags 13-year-old Izaac Wang, 2008, Aaron Chan, alcohol, amateur painter, autobiographical, bathroom, bedroom, brothers and sisters, California, Chang Li Hua, childhood, Chinese, Chiron Cillia Denk, coming of age, culture, Cynthia Lee, Dìdi, drink, drunk, ethnicity, Facebook, family, filmer, gaffe, grandma, grandmother, grandmothers and grandsons, high school, home movie, Joan Chen, little brother, love, Mahaela Park, Mandarin, moisturising cream, Montay Boseman, mothers and sons, Nai Nai, painter, party, peer group, peers, period, pubescent, puke, Raul Dial, rebel, room, Sean Wang, Shirley Chen, sibling rivalry, siblings, skateboarders, skateboarding, skill set, social media, summer, Sunil Maurillo, supper table, Taiwan, Taiwanese-American, teen, teenage rebel, teenager, throw up, UCSD, US, video

Animation Features Live Action Movies

àma GLORIA

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 13 June 2024
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Director – Marie Amachoukeli – Co-Director (Animation) – Pierre Emmanuel-Lyet – 2023 – France – Cert. 12a – 84m

Live Action **** / Animation *****

After her beloved nanny returns to Cape Verde, six-year-old Cléo visits her for the Summer – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 14th and on BFI Player from Monday, July 22nd

Six-year-old Cléo (six-year-old Louise Mauroy-Panzani) lives with her dad (Arnaud Rebotini) in France, but is mostly cared for by her nanny Gloria (Ilça Moreno Zego). One day, Gloria gets a phone call informing her that her mum has died, so she has to return to her home island in Cape Verde. Cléo is distraught, and makes Gloria promise that they will see each other again.

Gloria makes arrangements for the little girl to spend the Summer with her on her island. She meets the family from whom Gloria was separated by being in France – the pregnant Fernanda (Abnara Gomes Varela), the alienated ten-year-old César (Fredy Gomes Tavares) and, in due course, Fernanda’s baby Santiago. Gloria spends some considerable amount of time mothering the newly-born Santiago, causing Cléo to experience extreme sibling rivalry for Gloria’s attentions. Eventually, these emotions come to a head in the little girl…

This is one of those sadly all too rare films which in the process of telling a story from a child’s point of view completely gets inside their head.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Ran
(乱)

Director – Akira Kurosawa – 1985 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 162m

*****

This spectacular samurai period epic is currently streaming on BFI Player as part of the Japan programme alongside 21 other Kurosawa films together with a much wider selection of Japanese movies.

The following review originally appeared in Funimation UK. It was published to coincide with the film’s 2016 restoration. Stray Dog, Rashomon, Yojimbo, I Live In Fear, The Hidden Fortress, Throne Of Blood, The Lower Depths and High And Low, all of which are in the current season’s 22, also get a mention. As does Kagemusha which, curiously, isn’t.

—

Jeremy Clarke on Akira Kurosawa’s live action epic.

Ran is Akira Kurosawa’s remarkable 1985 free adaptation of King Lear, rereleased in cinemas worldwide in 2016 on the back of the 400^th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death.

More than any other Japanese film director, Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) is responsible for bringing that country’s movies to the attention of international audiences. His first big exposure abroad came with the jidaigeki or period drama Rashomon (1950) which dramatised the story of a rape victim from different, successive character viewpoints.… Read the rest

Tags 16th century, action, Akira Kurosawa, battle, BFI Japan, BFI Japan 2020, BFI Japan 2021, castles, colour-coding, historical, horses, Japan, Japan 2020, Japan 2021, king, madness, samurai, sibling rivalry, war

Features Live Action Movies

Moving On
(Nam-mae-wui
Yeo-reum-bam,
남매의 여름밤)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 2 November 2020
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(Nam-mae-wui
Yeo-reum-bam,
남매의 여름밤)
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Director – Yoon Dan-bi – 2019 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 105m

***1/2

A father takes his teenage daughter and her younger brother to stay with their ageing grandfather for the Summer – plays on MUBI as part of their New South Korean Cinema season

It’s the Summer, so dad (Yang Heung-joo) takes his two kids, teenage daughter Okju (Choi Jun-un) and smaller son Dongju (Park Seung-jun) off to stay with Grandpa (Kim Sang-dong). Moving location is no problem work-wise since he makes a living selling tennis shoes out of his small van on the street. It’s a precarious existence – at one point, he asks a man who runs a fabric shop whether he makes good money in that trade. And when Okju tries to sell some herself, she comes up against a buyer who has realised that the shoes are knock-offs.

There’s quite a bit of sibling rivalry – immediately on moving in, Okju refguses to let Dongju sleep in the room she has nabbed for herself after setting up her mosquito net. But as their aunt Mijung (Park Hyun-young) is later heard to remark, although the pair argue they actually get on with each other quite well.… Read the rest

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Daughter
Of Shanghai

Directors – Michelle Chen Miao, Hilla Medalia – 2019 – China – Cert. N/C 15+ – 90m

****1/2

A chronicle of the life and on-off career of Chinese-born, RADA-trained actress and screen legend Tsai Chin – available to rent online until Wednesday, May 12th in the UK & Ireland in the Chinese Cinema Season 2021 as part of the Approaching Reality documentary strand

“I was born in a trunk when my parents were on tour in Tianjin.” The daughter of legendary Peking Opera star Zhou Xinfang, Tsai Chin came to London towards the end of her seventeenth year when she was the first Chinese person to be accepted at RADA where she found herself alongside the likes of high-born, Welsh socialite Elizabeth Rees-Williams who in footage alongside her now husband Jonathan Aitken is one of the main interview subjects here. As well as a recent interview with Tsai Chin herself, the other main interviewee is the late lawyer Carlo Colombotti, a personal friend and a wealthy lawyer who moved in the same London circles in the sixties.

Her story, although it contains specific international and cross-cultural reference points, is, basically, an actor’s life: early success on stage and screen through the fifties and sixties, followed by a period in the seventies and eighties in relative obscurity and a later period when her rediscovery by Hollywood in the nineties restarted her career.… Read the rest