Tag: swim

Godzilla Minus Zero
(Gojira – 0.0,
ゴジラ – 0.0)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date November 3 2026
No Comments on Godzilla Minus Zero
(Gojira – 0.0,
ゴジラ – 0.0)

Godzilla Minus Zero (Gojira – 0.0, ゴジラ – 0.0)

Director – Takashi Yamazaki – 2026 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 135m

IMAX version *****

Regular version *****

Japan, slowly recovering from World War Two, must again deal with the seemingly unstoppable menace of Godzilla when it rises again from the depths of the ocean – out in UK and Ireland IMAX cinemas on Tuesday, November 3rd then in regular cinemas on Friday, November 6th

*** Please note: Godzilla Minus One spoiler alert in opening paragraph. ***

“Is your war finally over?”, redeemed Kamikazi pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) is asked by Noriko Oishi (Minami Hanabe), the woman who he has taken in to his home along with a baby only for her to be subsequently blasted away when pushing him into a building recess to save him from Godzilla during its attack on Ginza, at the end of Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki, 2023). Miraculously, she survived that incident, which scarcely seems possible. Although perhaps writer-director Yamazaki shrewdly included the conundrum to enable him to kick around some ideas as to why she might have survived beyond mere luck.

One such idea makes it into this new film, and a fascinating idea it is too, one of a number of script elements for which Toho have asked journalists to keep the specifics under wraps so as not to spoil the film for audiences – which seems reasonable enough given that critics had the privilege of seeing the film before any reviews had given anything away.… Read the rest

Dance Movies Animation Features

Ana, en Passant
(Ana, en Passant)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date October 17 2026
No Comments on Ana, en Passant
(Ana, en Passant)

Ana, en Passant (Ana, en Passant)

Director – Fernanda Salgado – 2026 – Brazil, Portugal, France – Cert. tbc – 90m

*****

A woman from Paris travels to Belo Horizonte, Brazil where she hopes to unearth something of her family history – from the BFI London Film Festival 2026 which runs from Wednesday, October 7th to Sunday, October 18th in cinemas and on BFI Player

This opens with a profusion of images and a child’s voice asking: “mummy, what is a map?” The images are moving images treated in painterly ways, animated postcard-like holiday snaps putting themselves into order, flashes of memory as if printed on an unusual under-texture. Then an image of a baby scanned in the womb. More images – fish in the ocean, talk by the little girl of whether fish follow maps too – then we settle into the film proper.

Which is to say that, rather than the film’s form constantly shifting, it suddenly settles into a more formal, less abstract, fixed form of 2D animation as Ana (voice: Jéssica Pierina) – the little girl asking the questions earlier, perhaps? – leaves the Paris Metro with its familiar Hector Guimard art deco, wrought iron entrance, wanders satisfyingly along the bank of the Seine and finally enters her apartment, where she tidies broken pieces of china off the floor, binning them.… Read the rest

Tags across the Atlantic, Ana, angler fish, apartment, aquatic life, art deco, asleep, beach, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, camera, Carlos Francisco, carnival, city, confused, countdown towards death, dance, dancer, desire, Detour, died in childbirth, doorway, downpour, drag, drawing, Eiffel Tower, en Passant, entrance hall, family history, Fernanda Salgado, flat, float, flow, flower bed, France, French, ghost story, giant fish, gift, grandmother, granny, great-grandmother, Hector Guimard, holiday snap, hostile womb, identity, inspiration, instamatic camera, Jéssica Pierina, journeys, leaving, letter, LFF, LFF 2026, light switch, London Film Festival, London Film Festival 2026, lost the baby, lost without a map, LP, map, marine, market, market stall, memories, memory, mirror, note, occupant, ocean, old photo, Paris, Paris Metro, path, photo, Portugal, Portuguese, post, potted plant, pregnancy, pregnancy exercise, pregnant, rain; seawater, research, Robert Frank, rolling down her face, route, sea, seashell, sidetrack, solid ground, subtexture, sunrise, swim, tears, tenant, texture, train journey, transformation, travel, twin sister, underwater, vision, visual, water, womb, Zezé Motta

Movies Features Live Action

Mission: Impossible
The Final Reckoning

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date May 21 2025
No Comments on Mission: Impossible
The Final Reckoning

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

Director – Christopher M^cQuarrie – 2025 – US – Cert. 12a – 163m

*****

Tom Cruise’s eighth and director Christopher M^cQuarrie’s fourth Mission: Impossible outing delivers up to par globe-trotting action set pieces and considerably more plot than last time – out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, May 21st

When Tom Cruise made his first Mission: Impossible movie (Brian DePalma, 1996), no-one foresaw that the property, already a successful and long-running TV series emblazoned into the cultural zeitgeist along with its immediately recognisable Lalo Schifrin theme tune, would turn into an equally successful movie franchise. With each passing movie, it has seemed a better and better fit for Tom Cruise – while he has a wide-ranging career, this franchise is today what his name immediately brings to mind. After several directors, the franchise and Cruise somehow found another director -actually a writer director – who seemed to fit the franchise as well as he did. Chrstopher M^cQuarrie did uncredited rewrites on the fourth entry Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (Brad Bird, 2011) and has directed and written or co-written every entry in the franchise since. Watching these films, you sense a shorthand developing between producer-star and writer-director, with each film feeling more assured than its predecessor.… Read the rest

Movies Animation Features

The Wild Robot

The Wild Robot

Director – Chris Sanders – 2024 – US – Cert. U – 102m

****1/2

A service robot shipwrecked on a desert island is imprinted as its mother on the mind of an orphaned gosling – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, October 18th following its screening in the London Film Festival

Waking up on an unknown beach with no idea as to how she got there, ROZZUM Unit 7134 (voice: Lupita Nyong’o) is a Universal Dynamics service robot designed to complete any task assigned to her. Without any such task, she feels completely lost. She wanders around the island, populated only by animals, in search of her owner. Unable to understand all the noises the animals make communicating with each other, she has her translation circuits decode their meaning so that, soon, she is hearing them communicate in English.

She accidentally almost destroys a family of geese but managing to rescue a goose egg. She must protect the egg from the fox (voice: Pedro Pascal) who attempts to steal it to satisfy his hunger. Her robotic rationale for this is to question whether the egg is the fox’s property, A thought process that might make sense in a human environment but makes none at all in this animal one.… Read the rest

Tags 3D animation, Academy Award, Academy Awards, Academy Awards 2024-25, Academy Awards 2025, animal, animation, background, beach, bear, Bill Nighy, Boone Storm, bots, bully, caring, Catherine O’Hara, cel, CG, CG animation, childrearing, Chris Brown, Chris Sanders, company, crab, desert island, detach, eat, egg, female robot, fly, fox, goose egg, gosling, hatch, herd, homing beacon, illustrator, imprinted, infographic, Kit Connor, LFF, LFF 2024, London Film Festival, London Film Festival 2024, Lupita Nyong’o, Mark Hamill, military, monster, mother, motherhood, name, nurturing, orphan, Oscar, Oscar nominations, Oscars, Oscars 2024-25, Oscars 2025, ostracism, Pedro Pascal, possum, prejudice, property, protect, purpose, question, robot, runt of the litter, service robot, shipwreck, steal, Stephanie Hsu, swim, task, teach, unprepared mother, US

Movies Features Live Action

Alien
Romulus

Alien: Romulus

Director – Fede Alvarez – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 119m

*****

A group of young people escape from a planet housing a repressive, corporate mining colony in search of something better … only to find something worse… – latest SF horror franchise entry is out on digital on Friday, October 18th following its release in UK cinemas on Friday, August 16th

The Alien franchise, after quite literally bursting onto cinema screens with Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979), then having lost its way somewhat on Alien³(David Fincher, 1992), picked up again somewhat on Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 1979), and now settled title-wise into the sensible enough format of Alien: Ship’s Name, delivers a new entry made by a writer-director, Fede Alvarez, who understands the franchise enough to both put in everything required of it and throw in some innovative ideas without compromising its essence.

The first 20 or so minutes, arguably the best thing here, could equally easily have opened a science fiction epic unrelated to the franchise. A young woman Rain (the terrific Cailee Spaeny from Civil War, Alex Garland, 2024) is trapped on a planet where the sun is permanently hidden owing to pollution caused by the corporation’s mining operation.… Read the rest

Tags abandoned, Academy Award, Academy Awards, Academy Awards 2024-25, Academy Awards 2025, access, acid, acid blood, action, adopt, adopted, adoption, Aileen Wu, airlocks, alien, Alien franchise, android, antigravity, Archie Renaux, birth, bottom floor, burst, care, carer, cat and mouse, clone, colony, company android, corny jokes, corporation, corridor, counter admin staff, creature, creature feature, credits, cryogenic, Daniel Betts priority, David Jonsso, decaying orbit, deep space travel, directive, doors, drug, emotionally damaged, escape plan, expectations, face-huggers, fantasy, Fede Alvarez, floor, franchise, freedom, frozen, fuel, get away, global warming, horror, Ian Holm, identification, insert finger, intruders, Isabella Merced, life support, lift shaft, maw, metaphysics, mining, mining colony, monster, motherhood, nurturing carer, Oscar, Oscar nominations, Oscars, Oscars 2024-25, Oscars 2025, outer space, peers, persona, planet, planet’s rings, pollution, pregnant, preservation, programme disc, programmed, purge, raise the temperature, reboots, Remus, repair, research and development, Romulus, Rosie Ede, salvage, Saturn, scanned actor, sci-fi, science fiction, security clearance, SF, SF horror, shallow water, sibling, Sigourney Weaver, slavery, space station, spaceship, Spike Fearn, storage facility, sun, survival, swim, time is running out, trash, trauma, unethical employment practices, US, vaginal, vulnerable, xenomorph, young generation, younger brother

Movies Animation Features

Song of the Sea

Song of the Sea

Director – Tomm Moore – 2014 – Ireland – Cert. PG – 93m

*****

A family is torn apart after the mother returns to the sea as a selkie – reviewed for Third Way, July 2015

Tomm Moore picked up an Oscar nomination for his medieval Irish animated fantasy The Secret Of Kells (2009). Like that earlier work, his equally impressive Song Of The Sea eschews Hollywood’s headlong rush towards 3D in favour of traditional 2D animation with an emphasis on drawing and visual design – and it’s a real pleasure to watch. A family movie in the best sense – there’s nothing here parents wouldn’t want children to see – it explores difficult issues about parents and children, being set in a family where, effectively, the mother has walked out leaving dad to look after the two kids. The plot employs Celtic folklorish figures of selkies – creatures who periodically change from female seals to human girls or women and back again.

Thus, the reason for the departure of Bronach (voice: Lisa Hannigan) a few minutes into the proceedings is that the sea is calling her to become a seal once again. She leaves behind her lighthouse keeper husband Conor (voice: Brendan Gleeson) and kids Ben (voice: David Rawle) & Saoirse (voice: Lucy O’Connell) to fend for themselves and their beloved dog Cu.… Read the rest

Movies Features Live Action

Underground
(Souterrain)

Director – Sophie Dupuis – 2020 – Canada – Cert. 15 – 97m

A tale of friendship, loss and regret plays out against the working lives of miners – out in cinemas and on Virtual Cinemas and VoD from Friday, August 20th

A vast, modern, industrial mine in the French-speaking part of Canada. An explosion is heard, so a rescue team is put together to go and extract the trapped workers. Max, full name Maxime (Joakim Robillard) is one of the youngest team members and has a disagreement with the leader Catherine (Catherine Trudeau). They have two men on stretchers and need to get them out to safety. Protocol insists they should not go and rescue anyone else as it would endanger not only the two they are ready to take to safety but also the rescue crew members.

However, the headstrong Max wants to go down and save the remaining trapped miners. He seems incapable of following either protocol or orders.

We flash back two months and get to know Max’s life. He and his partner Andrée-Anne (Lauren Hartley) have for some time been trying to start a family using in vitro fertilisation, but when she miscarries, she decides she can’t go on with the process any more.… Read the rest