Tag: steps

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Animation Features Movies

Whisper of the Heart
(Mimi o Sumaseba,
耳をすませば,
lit. If You Listen Closely)

Whisper of the Heart

(Mimi o Sumaseba, 耳をすませば, lit. If You Listen Closely)

Director – Yoshifumi Kondo – 1995 – Japan – Cert. U – 111m

*****

A bookish high school student falls for a boy who makes violins – out in IMAX cinemas in 4K on Wednesday, September 16th and regular cinemas from Friday, September 18th in the UK and Ireland

The John Denver song Country Roads, Take Me Home, sung by Olivia Newton-John, might not seem at first glance to have anything much to do with Japanese culture. Yet it provides a foundational starting point for this extraordinary Studio, Ghibli movie which is essentially a girl meets boy story.

High school student Shizuku (voice/1995 Japanese dub: Yoko Honna; 2006 Disney dub: Brittany Snow) lives at home with her parents (voices/1995 Japanese dub: Shigeru Moroi, Takashi Tachibana; 2006 Disney dub: Jean Smart, James SIkking) and her elder sister Shiho (voice/1995 Japanese dub: Yori Yamashita; 2006 Disney dub: Courtney Thorne-Smith), a university student. Shizuku is in the habit of taking American song lyrics and translating them into Japanese for her girl classmates’ informal singing group.

Thus, she has written a translation of the song Country Roads, Take Me Home which she doesn’t think is very good.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Nowhere to Hide
(Injeong Sajeong
Bol Geot Eobtda,
인정사정 볼 것 없다)

Director – Lee Myung-se – 1999 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 100m, 113m

***1/2

A cop determinedly pursues a gangland killer in a city where, since he committed the murder for which he is bing hunted, it always appears to be heavily raining – plays in Echoes In Time | Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema which runs from Monday, October 28th until the end of 2024 at BFI Southbank

Effectively a four-hander – an impulsive detective, his partner on the force, a ruthless killer gangster and his long-suffering girlfriend. Like a slobbish, South Korean version of Chow Yun-fat without the charm, Park Joong-Hung is the Oriental action movie homage-named Inspector Woo, who before the titles have rolled has pursued a black-clad gang into an underground train for a machete fight, shot in stylish, bleached black and white for no apparent reason.

The ground is covered in Autumn leaves, recalling The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970). The downtown location of public stairway 40 Steps has a schoolgirl look up and see it begin to rain, the torrential downpour continuing for the two months and more of the remainder of the narrative. A man leaves his car to ascend the steps; halfway up, he approaches another man (Song Young-chang) and kills him, even as the victim stretches out his hand in a futile attempt to keep his murderer’s knife at bay.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

John Wick
Chapter 4

Director – Chad Stahelski – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 169m

** The first hour or so.

***** The last hour and a half or so.

The eponymous assassin is given a path to follow that will rid him and others of his obligations to shadowy organisation The High Table once and for all – available in Collector’s Editions, Steelbook, 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD from Monday, June 12th

The fourth episode in the John Wick franchise is not a film to come to without seeing the previous three first – and in the recent past, so they’re fresh in your memory. That was the mistake this reviewer made. Too much in the first hour or so refers back to what has gone before. Characters wander through vast urban or other sets (there’s an early sequence in the open North African desert) often spouting ponderous dialogue.

This works if you have an actor of the calibre of Ian McShane, who plays Winston, the deferential owner of the New York Continental Hotel, and, perhaps surprisingly, it also works with the franchise’s action star Keanu Reeves, who has got the delivery of grunts and one word dialogue lines (“yeah”) down to a fine art.… Read the rest