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Mother’s Kingdom
(Uhm-mah-ui
Wahng-gook,
엄마의 왕국)

Director – Lee Sang-hak – 2024 – South Korea – LKFF Cert. 15 – 97m

*****

A Christian mother, her ‘Christian book’ author son, and her local pastor brother-in-law are haunted by traumas from their collective past – suspense thriller from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2024 which runs in cinemas from Friday, November 1st to Wednesday, November 13th

I don’t often preface a film review with a piece of verbal, religious text, but in this exceptional case, the following Old Testament quote may be pertinent, particularly the phrase in bold:

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

– Exodus 34:6–7

Ji-wook (Han Ki-jang) lives with his mother Kyung-hee (Nam Kee-ae), and although he’s earning a respectable living working from home as a writer of self-help motivational books, in many ways he seems deeply unqualified to be peddling such advice to a wider public.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

The Old Man
and the Land

Director – Nicholas Parish – 2023 – UK – Cert. 15 – 100m

*****

As he works on the land, an aging farmer hears his two adult children argue about the future of the family farm plays UK cinemas from Friday, September 20th 2024, with previews from Monday, September 16th following its premiere in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, where it was the best film out of a superb lot

Movies. You think everything’s been done, then along comes something you’ve never seen before. Or, in this case, seen or heard before.

The Old Man in question is an English farmer (Roger Marten) whose family have worked the land for generations. He’s getting on in years, so won’t be around forever. His wife died a while ago, so he’s now running the farm on his own. He has two children who have long since grown up and left home: a son (voice: Rory Kinnear) and a daughter (voice: Emily Beecham), and the big question is, when he dies, will they take over – or will they get rid of the farm?

In recent years, the UK has produced a number of rural movies that stand in stark contrast to the urban- (Often London-) based films produced.… Read the rest