Tag: student

Deadline
(自殺通告)
(2025)

Deadline (自殺通告) (2025)

Director – Kiwi Chow – 2025 – Hong Kong, Taiwan, UK – Cert. 15 tbc – 118m

****

A secondary school focused on maximising exam results is upset by pending suicide and use of performance-enhancing drugs – plays as part of the UK’s Hong Kong Film Festival which runs from Friday, September 25th to Sunday, 4th October at various venues

The students of En-Shan Secondary School, clad in distinctive uniforms of purple shirt with militaristic shoulder boards and dark grey tie, perform aggressive workout moves as they chant their school litany extolling hard work leading to success. Principal Kung (Anthony Wong Chau Sang from Infernal Affairs, Andrew Lau, Alan Mak,2002; Hard Boiled, John Woo, 1992; My Name Ain’t Suzie, Angie Chen, 1985 – this latter showing in this year’s HKFF) encourages them in the idea that present suffering leads to later success.

The ubiquitous iSmart system contains a database of vocabulary the students must master to game the exam system; its latest 2.3 iteration uses eye-tracking software to record how much time the pupil is taking in direct eye contact with the teacher. It makes the surveillance technology of Happyend (Neo Sora, 2024) sound amateurish by comparison, even if, overall, Deadline is the more satisfying viewing experience.… Read the rest

Tags A4 flier, ADHD, Allison Lin, Anthony Wong Chau Sang, anti-depressants, bully, bullying, checking in, countdown, deadline, drug test, education, education system, exam, exam results, eye-tracking software, flier, game the system, garden, hard work, head boy, head teacher, high school, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Film Festival, Hong Kong Film Festival 2026, iSmart system, IT, Jimmy Lia, Kiwi Chow, lavatory cubicle, Meng Syun, Michael Chang, mystery, No Student Suicide Contract, performance-enhancing drug, present suffering, principal, pupil, rally, RD Huang, regimented, school, school building, school garden, school uniform, science lab, secondary school, security camera, self harm, Shao YI Mei, smart cards, smartphones, student, success, suicide, surveillance, surveillance technology, syringe, Tai Ting-wei, Tai Ya Zhi, Taiwan, teacher, textbook, threat, UK, uniform, upset, Wang Tzu Tiang, Zoom

Animation Features Movies

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

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date September 16 2026
No Comments on 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

Tags antique shop, Ashley Tisdale, bicycle, bookish, bookworm, cat statue, classmate, cloud formation, Concrete Roads, Country Roads Take Me Home, craft, craftsman, Cremona, date movie, David Gallagher, exams, garden walls, Germany, girl meets boy, handrails, Harold Gould, high school, high school student, hilltop, home district, house interior, Issey Takahashi, Italy, James Sikking, Japan, Jean Smart, John Denver, Keiju Kobayashi, library, Maiko Yoshiyama, marriage proposal, Olivia Newton-John, park bench, propose, roads, romance, school marks, Second World War, Shigeru Moroi, Shigeru Tsuyuguchi; Cary Elwes, singing group, song, song lyrics, spoof, steps, story, storytelling, stray, stray cat, streets, student, studying, sunrise, Takashi Tachibana, The Baron, Tokyo, train, train journey, translation, university, university student, violin making, Whisper of the Heart, World War II, writer, WW2, Yoko Honna; Brittany Snow, Yori Yamashita; Courtney Thorne-Smith, Yoshifumi Kondo

Features Live Action Movies

Bad Apples

Bad Apples

Director – Jonatan Etzler – 2025 – US, UK – Cert. 15 – 100m

***

A teacher deals with a disruptive student by kidnapping him and locking him in her basement – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 18th

A school trip to an apple processing factory goes badly wrong when a trainer shoe appears among the apples on the system of conveyor belts. While the other children tour the factory premises in a comparatively orderly manner under their teacher Miss Spencer (Saoirse Ronan), loner Danny (Eddie Waller) stands at the railing with one trainer missing.

The setting is Somerset. Not that you’d know. A whole potential Somerset metaphor about apples and bad apples and brewing sits in waiting, but that either never occurred to screenwriter Jess O’Kane when adapting the film from the Swedish source, the novel by De Oönskade / The Undesirables by Rasmus Lindgren (2020), or it got abandoned in an early draft. Or perhaps the director Etzler threw it out during shooting. A pity either way, because that idea has real potential.

Back at school, Miss Spencer is hauled over the coals by her superior Sylvia (Rakie Ayola).

At home, Maria Spencer plays video games – her refuge from her job.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

The Last One for the Road
(Le Città di Pianura)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date July 10 2026
No Comments on The Last One for the Road
(Le Città di Pianura)

The Last One for the Road (Le Città di Pianura)

Director – Francesco Sossai – 2025 – Italy – Cert. 15 – 100m

****

Two older men travel around Italy by car, constantly stopping for “a last one for the road”, joined by a young architecture student – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 10th

Night. Two men passed out in a car. A voiceover relates a local myth, shown to us in flashback as he describes it. On the day that Primo (Gianni Da Re) retires from the workforce, he is taken aside by officials and… presented with a gift from the company president (Roberto Citran from Conclave, Edward Berger, 2024; The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story, Peter Greenaway, 2003; Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, John Madden, 2001) who flies in by helicopter. As the latter leaves, he tells Primo the secret of life, but his words are lost in the noise of the ‘copter blades. At the back, a figure leaves.

In the car, moustache wakes up. It’s still dark. Dori (Pierpaulo Capovilla) is still out. They wake. The go for a last one for the road. Moustache, who is Carlobianchi (Sergio Romano), can’t remember what it was he was saying.… Read the rest

Animation Movies Shorts

A Couple Clucking Chickens Were Still Kickin’ in the Schoolyard
(Niwa ni wa
Niwa Niwatori ga ita,
庭には二羽ニ
ワトリがいた。)

A Couple Clucking Chickens Were Still Kickin’ in the Schoolyard
(Niwa ni wa Niwa Niwatori ga ita,
庭には二羽ニワトリがいた。)

Director – Seishiro Negaya – 2025 – Japan – Cert. tbc – 19m

*****

Aliens love eating humans, and two humans avoid being eaten by disguising themselves as chickens – plays in the Annecy International Animation Festival 2026 which runs from Sunday, 21st June to Saturday 27th June

It’s just another everyday schoolday for Yohei (voice: Kazuki Ura). He gets out of bed. His mum (voice: Emi Shinohara) makes breakfast and tells him not to keep the cute girl Moemi Kaneda (voice: Kimiko Saito) waiting who wants him to walk her to school. She is twice his height. He’s on animal duty, which means that he must ensure the chickens kept in the schoolyard get fed.

This might sound like nothing out of the ordinary, but Yohei’s strange blue skin and odd face tells a different story, as do Moemi’s mandibles. They are aliens who defeated the humans when they invaded Earth in 2019. And they ate most of the humans, who were particularly tasty to aliens. They would love tto eat more, only, apparently, they’ve eaten all the humans.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Miroirs No.3
(Miroirs No.3)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date April 17 2026
No Comments on Miroirs No.3
(Miroirs No.3)

Miroirs No.3 (Miroirs No.3)

Director – Christian Petzold – 2025 – Germany – Cert. 15 – 86m

**1/2

A traumatised woman who survives a car crash moves in with a woman living near the crash site, unaware that the second woman is not what she seems – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 17th

She stares out from a bridge, watches the water go by from underneath it. Returning home, she’s lost her bag. Her partner wants to know where she’s been. Anyway, Debbi (Victoire Laly) and Roger (Marcel Heupermann) are waiting. The four go off in the car. While her partner and Roger swap notes on the song playing on the car sound system, Laura (Paula Beer from Afire, Christian Petzold, 2023; Transit, Christian Petzold, 2019; Never Look Away, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2018, Frantz, François Ozon, 2016) is distracted, noticing a woman standing in her driveway as they pass. When they stop to check their itinerary, Laura just stands there. She wants to go home, telling partner Jakob (Philip Froissant) she isn’t feeling well.

Driving Laura to the station in the other couple’s car, so she can go home while the other three carry on as planned, Jakob nearly collides with the woman on the drive.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies Music

The History of Sound

The History of Sound

Director – Oliver Hermanus – 2025 – UK, US – Cert. 15 – 128m

****

A Kentucky man falls for a music professor in Boston and accompanies him on a field trip recording folk songs – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 23rd

In 1917, having grown up on a farmstead in rural Kentucky and his remarkable singing voice being noticed by a local schoolteacher, Lionel Worthing (Paul Mescal from Hamnet, Chloé Zhao, 2025; Gladiator II, Ridley Scott, 2024; All of Us Strangers, Andrew Haigh, 2023) gets a student scholarship to Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music. One Saturday evening in a Boston pub with friends, he makes the acquaintance of David White (Josh O’Connor from La Chimera, Alice Rohrwacher, 2023; Mothering Sunday, Eva Husson, 2021; The Crown, TV series, 2019-20; God’s Own Country, Francis Lee, 2017) who is playing folk songs on the piano and, it turns out, is a tenured academic with an obsessive hobby: travelling around the country collecting, recording and cataloguing folk songs. David has what Lionel describes as the sound equivalent of a photographic memory: he can remember word for word and note for note, any song sung in his presence.… Read the rest

Tags 1910s, 1920s, 1980s, abusive relationship, academic holidays, army, assistant, bereavement, Boston, Briana Middleton, call up, catalog, catalogue, choir, Chris Cooper, church choir, collect, college, community, coughing, countryside, death of mother, Dion Graham, drafted, Emma Canning, England, ethnic, ethnomusicologist, eviction from the land, family farm, farm, field trip, fireman, folk songs, Frist World War, gay relationship, Hadley Robinson, hobby, indigenous, indigenous folk songs, Italy, Josh O’Connor, Kentucky, Lake District, letter, LGBTQ, LGBTQI, mail, Maine, Malaga Island, Michael Schantz, military draft, mixed black and white ethnic, Molly Price, mothers and sons, music, musicologist, negro spiritual, New England Conservatory of Music, obsession, Oliver Hermanus, Oxford University, paper candle, parents and children, Paul Mescal, performing, photographic memory: Silver Dagger, pianist, piano, police, policemen, poor people, porch, post-WW1, promote a book, pub, record, recording, relationships, Rome, rural, rural and urban, scholarship, sex, shell shock, socialite, song, song gathering, spiritual, stately mansion, student, suitcase, sweet-talking, tent, tenured academic, the happiest time of your life, The History of Sound, travelling, truncheon, tuberculosis, TV appearance, UK, US, war, wax cylinders, wax phonograph cylinders, widow, working the fields, World War 1, World War I, World War One, WW1

Features Live Action Movies

Kontinental ’25 (Kontinental ’25)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date October 31 2025
No Comments on Kontinental ’25 (Kontinental ’25)

Director – Radu Jude – 2025 – Romania – Cert. 15 – 109m

****

Although operating within the bounds of the law, a bailiff is smitten with guilt and remorse for the effect of her job on a ‘client’– out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 31st

Carrying large bags, he scavenges at the bases of tree trunks in the woodlands, swearing profusely when his foot goes a foot in to the stream when he tries to fill his water bottle. In a bizarre nod to the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) – or more likely those briefly seen in The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011), he rests beside a dimetrodon sculpture then smokes a cigarette by a dilophosaurus. He rides a ski lift, passes a father and small son on their bikes on a footbridge, downs his packed lunch with vodka on a river bridge. He hangs around cafes asking for either work or five lei. He says “fuck you” after the woman offering him an early Sunday morning cleaning job has left. He gets hassled by a robot dog. He returns to his boiler room home.

While he sleeps, the bailiff Mrs Orsolya Ionescu (Eszter Tompa) knocks on his door, gendarmes in tow, to evict him, Ion (Gabriel Spahiu).… Read the rest

Tags Adonis Tanta, athlete, bailiff, beggar, begging, blocks of flats, boiler room, car park, castle, cemetery, channel hopping, Christian faith, Christian ritual, cigarette, cleaning job, delivery boy, dilophosaurus, dimetrodon, dinosaurs, drink, Eszter Tompa, evict, faith, family holiday, footbridge, Gabriel Spahiu, gated estates, gendarmes, getting by, good causes, Greece, guilt, home, housing, Hungarian, Hungary, husbands and wives, immigrant, job, Kontinental ‘25, looking for work, Lord’s Prayer, mothers and daughters, nightcap, packed lunch, packing, Post-Christian, priest, professor, Radu Jude, religious ritual, remorse, ritual, robot dog, Romania, salve her conscience, scavenge, sculpture, Serban Pavlu, sex, ski lift, spiritual, student, suicide, swearing, tree trunks, Victor Orban, vodka, woodlands

Features Live Action Movies

Steve

Director – Tim Mielants – 2025 – UK – Cert. 15 – 93m

****1/2

In 1996, the head, his staff and their students struggle to get through a particularly difficult day at a school for troubled teenage boys – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 19th, and worldwide on Netflix on Friday, October 3rd

Steve (a burned out, visually unrecognisable Cillian Murphy, also the producer) is asked if he’s ready to do an interview to camera. He isn’t, but now is as good a time as any. He drives into work across a vast estate and spots teenager Shy (Jay Lycurgo) dancing to drum and bass music on his Walkman cassette player and smoking a spliff. Steve disciplines his pupil in a friendly manner, then returns to his car after being reminded that today is the day a TV film crew is coming to the school to film a segment for the local TV news magazine programme. Shy attempts, playfully, to ride on the bonnet of Steve’s car. Steve, talks him out of it.

Most of what follows, which covers the next 24 hours, takes place within the school buildings themselves, although the action occasionally wanders (or flies drone-shot style) out into and around the wider grounds of the school estate.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

The Piano Teacher
(La Pianiste)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date June 6 2025
No Comments on The Piano Teacher
(La Pianiste)

Director – Michael Haneke – 2001 – Austria, France – Cert. 18 – 131m

*****

A masochistic piano teacher with an abusive mother embarks on an affair with a young male student – the opening film of Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, in UK cinemas from Friday, June 6th and on BFI Player from Thursday, September 11th 2025

Warning: NSFW.

This is at once representative of Haneke’s wider body of work and very different from it.

Representative because he is one of those directors whose personal use of cinematic vocabulary has been so honed over his years of making movies that he is able to clearly and precisely articulate problematic, controversial and taboo ideas and subject matter that few directors would be able to handle without descending into exploitation or commercialism. He is a director steeped in cinema, fascinated by how the process of making a movie constructs the narrative or other viewing and listening experience, and how that is perceived and understood by audiences.

Different because although Haneke generally writes as well and directs his own films, they are mostly original pieces whereas this one is an adaptation of a book, The Piano Teacher / Die Klavierspielerin by Elfriede Jelinek.… Read the rest

Tags absent father, abusive mother, abusive relationship, adaptation, affair, Alfred Hitchcock, Anna Sigalevitch, Annie Giradot, apartment, applications procedure, arousal, auditorium, Austria, bath, bathroom, bedroom door, Benoît Magimel, blood, booth, broken glass, character study, cloakroom, Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, cruelty, cubicle, domestic arrangements, domineering mother, Elfriede Jelinek, extreme, father’s death, flat, France, frustrated, gifted, glass tumbler, handbag, harrowing, home late, human connection, Isabelle Huppert, lacerate, lavatory cubicle, letter, love, masochist, Michael Haneke, mother, mothers and children, mothers and daughters, mummy issues, music, music academy, musical studies, NSFW, overbearing, parents and daughters, perverse, physical encounter, pianist, piano keyboard, possessive, pupil's legs, razor blade, rebellion, recital, rehearsal, relationship, Schubert, Schumann, search handbag, secure the bedroom door, self harm, sex shop, sexual dysfunction, sexuality, split screen, student, Susanne Lothar, taboo, talent, teacher and pupil, teacher and student, The Piano Teacher, unfulfilled, used tissues, Vienna, wardrobe