Tag: storm

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Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Super Nature

Super Nature

Director – Ed Sayers – 2025 – UK – Cert. PG – 82m

*****

The process of shooting the natural world on the Super 8 amateur home movie format of the 1970s brings a participating community of people closer to nature – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 4th

This starts and ends with the image zooming in to and zooming out from Super 8 footage. The Kodak Super 8 system was the premier format for home movies in the late1960s through the 1970s before it was replaced for the most part by videotape in the 1980s.

For some years, Ed Sayers was involved in a Super 8 film competition wherein punters would enter their films, and most of the material was much the same – family memories or holiday footage. Some of it extremely wild. As he puts it, the medium “painted our memories on film.”

One year, a very different submission turned up from a Frenchman named Roger. Roger had shot footage of flamingoes. 

The nature of Super 8 was that the film came on little cartridges of reversal film inserted into the camera. In terms of footage, the cartridges didn’t run that long. You’d shoot by squeezing the trigger, which would stop filming when released. … Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Stop! That! Train!

Stop! That! Train!

Director – Adam Shankman – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 90m

***

A luxury bullet train hurtles towards a stormaganza in what is essentially Airplane! rehashed with drag queens – disaster movie and alleged comedy is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 21st

Commerical break. The Glamazonian Express. The bullet train ride across America where your every whim will be catered for by glamourous hostesses clad in a fetching, bright red. Pampering is the order of the day. Nothing is too much to ask. All the passengers and staff are chic and beautiful people.

Tess (Ginger Minj) and DeeDee (Jujubee) are train hostesses with low budget competitor Stank Rail. In marked contrast to Glamazonian staff, their uniforms are excrement brown and urine yellow-green. Their colleague Barbra (Latrice Royale) has recently been laid off, and further redundancies appear likely. Back at rail training college, the pair pledged to “See America”, but their career trajectory since then has been down the lavatory.

Then they overhear Glamazonian hostesses talking about a departure to Florida delayed because some hostesses have failed to show up. A quick visit to the ladies to improvise makeshift red uniforms, and they themselves show up at Glamazonian’s check-in desk, are given uniforms by Barbra (who does several jobs and will later reappear in other roles), and suddenly are Glamazonian hostesses.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies Music

The Czech Year
(Špalíček)

The Czech Year (Špalíček)

Director – Jiří Trnka – 1947 – Czechoslovakia – Cert. PG – 80m

*****

A celebration of Czech peasant life, with a striking Christian element – on the Blu-ray Jiří Trnka: Puppet Master, released in the UK on Monday, August 10th

Originally made as a series of short films which were subsequently edited into a feature, a similar strategy later adopted by fellow countryman Jan Švankmajer making Alice (1988), this opens (after a static title sequence) with a song about musicians wondering how they can afford a dulcimer. There’s a feeling of community among a villagers’ marching band comprising double bass, clarinet, serpent and horn, who are joined for processions and dances by assorted villagers. As the song ends, they are scattered but not dispersed by a death-like scarecrow figure on a cart.

A bear who has joined in their revelry is revealed as an actor whose bear mask has come off and been lost when he has fallen in a freezing stream (it has ice on top), and the season of winter is introduced by a pan along a model backdrop which appears to be painted on layers of glass. There are precedents for this technique, whether you look at Disney’s 2D animation experiments with the many glass levels of the multiplane camera used to achieve the illusion of depth on, for example, Fantasia (1940) or those of special effects animator Willis O’Brien who for such works as The Lost World (Harry O.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

PAW Patrol
The Dino Movie

PAW Patrol The Dino Movie

Director – Cal Brunker – 2026 – Canada – Cert. PG – 88m

**1/2

The PAW Patrol, a rescue organisation made up of cute puppies, is stranded on a dinosaur-infested desert island – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 7th

The family are on vacation on the yacht, with dad explaining that fishing takes a lot of time and patience, to the exasperation of his bored daughter. Mum has already caught a couple of fish at the shops, and puts them on the barbecue on deck, only for the family cat to try and seize them, in the process setting the yacht on fire.

Fortunately, the PAW Patrol are in the area on their massive rescue ship, and set out to rescue the hapless family on vehicles (including one with a launch sequence that runs the length of the ship’s hold) inspired by 1960s Gerry & Sylvia Anderson TV series such as Thunderbirds (1965-66) and Stingray (1964-5). The holidaying family seem, unconvincingly, not in the least concerned that their yacht has gone up in smoke. Oops, they forgot the cat, so it’s up to pup Marshall (voice: Carter Young) to enter the burning lower decks and save the kitty. … Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Moana
(2026)

Moana (2026)

Director – Thomas Kail – 2026 – US – Cert. PG – 115m

***1/2

Disney’s live action remake of its Polynesian heroine mythological romp – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 10th

It’s a curious experience watching Disney’s live action remake of Moana (John Musker, Ron Clements, 2016), one of the Studio’s better animated movies of recent years. Of course, some audience members (particularly small children) may never have seen the orginal, or, equally, because Disney are very, very good at marketing their films to a mass audience, they may already be familiar with it. Either way, the film is likely to be enjoyed by both those who know the original and those who don’t.

The original had its roots in Maori mythology, and this live action retread follows much the same path. It’s set on the island of Te Fiti, a resting goddess whose heart (a small, round, green stone) has been stolen from her in order to give humans the power of creation by the demigod Maui, and then lost along with his giant fishhook which bestows shapeshifting powers upon him.

As a small child, the chief of the island Te Fiti’s daughter Moana can’t stop thinking about venturing beyond the reef, a trangression forbidden by her father Chief Tui (John Tui) and his ancestors.… Read the rest

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

The Balloonists

Director – John Dower – 2025 – UK, Austria, US – Cert. PG – 86m

****

The Balloonists

The story of balloonist Bertrand Piccard’s three attempts to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 22nd

Bertrand Piccard’s house, as his astonished interviewer notes, is a museum, a personal collection of memorabilia from the history of aviation. It grew in a mere 66 years from the Wright Brothers’ pioneering efforts to the Apollo 11 moon landing. His family was in Florida at the time of the Apollo 7-12 launches which he witnessed. Five days before the moon landing, he vowed to become an explorer himself, but then when Armstrong walked on the moon Piccard felt everything had been done. He got depressed.

And then he saw a balloon and discovered that no-one had ever flown round the world in one.

In 1997, His first attempt, the Breitling Orbiter, ditched in the Mediterranean after six hours. Many others tried, including Richard Branson, who knew how to do publicity: in Morocco, Branson’s balloon blew away before it could be launched.

Enter British engineer Andy Elson. But the film switches back to Piccard, whose grandfather was a pioneering balloonist and whose father designed submarines and made a record-breaking dive to the Mariana Trench.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Rose of Nevada

Director – Mark Jenkin – 2025 – UK – Cert. 12a – 114m

****1/2

A fisherman joins the crew of a mysteriously reappeared fishing vessel and finds himself inexplicably trapped 30 years in the past when it originally disappeared – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 24th

30 years ago, the Rose of Nevada, a small fishing vessel, set sail from a small, Cornish coastal village and never returned. Now, suddenly, it reappears in the harbour with its captain looking for crew. Nick (George Mackay) and Liam (Callum Turner), but on their return after their first fishing trip, they arrive back not in the present but 30 years ago.

Apart from this peculiar slippage of time, everyone behaves as if nothing unusual is going on. Nick misses his partner and child. Liam finds himself with a new partner and child, and plays along, taking advantage of what circumstances have offered to him, which doesn’t seem so bad. 

Nick, however, feels increasingly isolated and uneasy in this situation.

Jenkin’s film plays out as a strange, enigmatic mystery.

Working as is his wont as director, cameraman and editor, not to mention sound designer and musician, Jenkin takes real pleasure in building up his story from a series of tiny details, necessitated to some extent by his use of a clockwork Bolex camera which can’t shoot a take longer than 27 seconds.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Arco
(Arco)

Director – Ugo Bienvenu – 2025 – France – Cert. PG – 82m

French with subtitles (not in UK cinemas) *****

English dubbed version (in UK cinemas) ****1/2

A boy from the far future attempts time travel too young and gets stranded in an earlier time – animated SF feature is out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 20th

Somewhere in the distant future, above the clouds where the birds fly, in semi-spherical houses constructed on supports rising through the clouds, live the likes of Arco (English voice: Juliano Krue Valdi; French voice: Oscar Tresanini) with his mother (voices: America Ferreira; Sophie Mas) and father (Roeg Sutherland; Oxmo Puccino), and his elder sister (unknown; Joséphine Mancini). His daily routine includes feeding the hens and the pigs, but not flying because he’s not yet 12 and, as his dad constantly reminds him, that’s the law.

The house is powered at least in part by small water wheels. It would appear to be self-sustaining. The family grow a lot of plants as part of their self-sufficient diet, and the daily flights of Arco’s father, mother and sister take them to other times to gather samples of new plant species to grow as nutrients.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Giants of La Mancha
(Argentina: Gigantes;
Germany: Das Geheimnis
von La Mancha;
Spain: Los Exploradores;
US: Storm Crashers)

Director – Gonzalo Gutiérrez – 2024 – Argentina, Germany, Spain – Cert. U – 88m

***1/2

The young, present day descendants of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza must save La Mancha from a villainous property developer – animated children’s adventure is out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 7th

(UK cinemas are showing the English language version: further voice credits are given for Spanish and German language versions, where available.)

Alfonso (voice: English: Micke Alejandro Morena Lamprea; Spanish: Patricio Lago; German: Julian Jansson) the great, great, great, great, great-grandson of Don Quixote, lives with his parents in the small Spanish village of La Mancha which is under threat of terrible storms that the occupants attribute to climate change. Like his ancestor, Alfonso misreads things, such as an impending storm which he believes to be a storm monster.

He and his dad Dan Quixote (voice: English: Bradley Krupsaw), who alone among all the characters here speaks in rhyming couplets, and his mum (voice: English: Jennifer Moule; Spanish: Carla Petersen) are both idealists, to the extent that Dan is the one person in the village who has refused to sign his home over to besuited property developer Mr. Carrasco (voice: English: Thomas Harris), whose snake oil salesman charms seem to have convinced all the other villagers to sell up and move out to his development “with children in mind” of Carascoland, towards which they are currently heading in their cars en masse, despite Alfonso’s hurtling around on his bicycle warning everybody of the storm monster heading in their direction.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Moana 2

Directors – David G. Derrick Jr., Jason Hand, Dana Ledoux Miller – 2024 – US – Cert. PG – 100m

*** 1/2

The desire to connect with the people who must surely live beyond the known horizons of her world drives Moana on a new seafaring adventure – out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 29th

Set three years after Moana (John Musker, Ron Clements, 2016), this features the eponymous Polynesian heroine (voiced once again by Auli’i Cravalho) not as a 16-year-old but as a 19-year-old. She has now become a wayfinder and the leader of her island people. Weirdly, perhaps, for a leader, she likes nothing better than going off into the middle of the island, accompanied by her two Disney-obligatory small animal friends Pua the pig and HeiHei the dim-witted cockerel (voice, or at least cockerel noises: Alan Tudyk), climbing to its highest point and blowing a shell in the hope that someone out in the world beyond the one she knows might respond. She wants to reach out and connect with other islander populations. Alas, she gets little more than Heihei blowing a shell a few yards away.

Following a vision in which she is visited by Tautai Vasa (voice: Gerald Faitala Ramsey), a wayfinder from a distant generation who sent out to sea and never came back, Moana and her small crew set sail for the lost island of Motufetu.… Read the rest