Tag: threat

A Woman Judge
(Yeopansa,
여판사)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 20 October 2024
No Comments on A Woman Judge
(Yeopansa,
여판사)

Director – Hong Eun-won – 1962 – South Korea – 87m

***

A woman becomes a judge at a time when the idea of women in such professions is unheard of – 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 – from the London Korean Film Festival 2019

Heo Jin-suk (Moon Jeong-suk from Aimless Bullet, Yu Hyun-mok, 1961; The Devil’s Stairway, Lee Man-hee, 1964) wants to be a judge, traditionally a male profession. Her childhood sweetheart Wan Dong-hoon (Park Am from Promise of the Flesh, Kim Ki-young, 1975; The March of Fools, Ha Gil-jong, 1975) always assumed they were destined to be married. He too has entered the professions, in his case as a doctor. That’s okay for him, being a man, but for her, he thinks it will conflict with her duties as a wife and mother. So she dumps him.

This looks like being a mistake since, on some level, his motives are pure. Instead, she ends up married to Chae Gye-sik (Kim Seok-hun) – not so much because of the man but because his social climber father, CEO of Sangyeon Construction Chae Sung-jin (Kim Seung-ho) thinks marrying off his son to one of the first female judges would be a really good idea, not least since it might put him in a useful position to be able easily bribe a member of the judiciary. … Read the rest

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Cyborg
A Documentary

Director – Carey Born – 2023 – Germany, Spain, UK – Cert. 12a – 87m

***1/2

Cyborg artist Neil Harbisson, unable to see in colour, has had an antenna implanted in his head to hear colours instead – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 20th

This opens with a title sequence of weird, psychedelic images of what appears to be moving coloured liquids forming strange, never to be repeated natural patterns. If that implies a striking visual sensibility, that’s deceptive, since this documentary follows a fairly straightforward structure of following people around with cameras and talking to them as it introduces us to cyber artist Neil Harbisson and his artist partner Moon Ribas.

Neil stands out from other people because he has an antenna protruding from the back of his head to dangle in front of his forehead. He was born with the unusual condition of achromatism, which means that he sees not in colour but in monochrome. (Less severe, more common forms of colour blindness include the inability to differentiate between green and red.) This came to light in his childhood when the family got a new colour TV, and he and his sister would watch cartoons. At this point, the film throws in a clip of the children’s sci-fi cartoon series Robotrix (John Gibbs, Terry Lennon, 1985).… Read the rest

Tags achromatism, Adam Montandon, adjust, Adolf Hitler, antenna, antenna implant, anti-technology, artist, assassination, Barcelona, beach, Bible, Bill Nelson, brain, campaign, church, colour blindness, colour palette, colour TV, conservative-minded, creation myth, cyborg, dance, dominion over the earth, drilling into the head, earthquake, earthquake warning, eye-borg’, fear, firsts, Frankenstein, frequencies, Genesis, Germany, green and red, H.G. Wells, hardware, head, headaches, headphones, hear colours, hope, hospital, hospital authority, hospital operation, hue, human rights, humanity, ideas, inertia, infra-red, Jean Cocteau, Jesus, light, light waves, Martin Luther King, Mataró, medical ethics, MLK, monochrome, monster, Moon Ribas, musical notes, Neil Harbisson, new senses tradition, new TV, operation, opportunity, painting of speech, palette, perception, permanent sense, possibility, possible, resistance, robot, Sabbath, saturation, save trees, sci-fi, science fiction, see, seeing, sense, senses, sensory, SF, sight, smartphone apps, sound, Spain, sunbathe, technician, technology, the will of God, theatre group, threat, UK, ultraviolet, visible, volume

Features Live Action Movies

The Crazy Family
Gyakufunsha Kazoku,
逆噴射家族)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 20 April 2024
No Comments on The Crazy Family
Gyakufunsha Kazoku,
逆噴射家族)
Sticky post

Director – Sogo Ishii – 1984 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 105m

*****

After proudly moving into their first home as owner-occupiers, a family go berserk and destroy the building – out on Blu-ray on Monday, June 17th

This seemingly starts out as a conservative family drama. The family in question comprises father Katsukuni Kobayashi (Katsuya Kobayashi in his debut feature role), mother Saeko (Mitsuko Baisho who worked with directors Akira Kurosawa, Shohei Imamura and Kaneto Shindo), elder teenage son Masaki (Yoshiki Arizono from Ichi the Killer, The Happiness of the Katakuris, both Takashi Miike; Electric Dragon, 80,000 V, Sogo Ishii, all 2001) and younger teenage daughter Erika (Youki Kudoh from Typhoon Club, Shinji Somai, 1985; Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch, 1989; Heaven’s Burning, Craig Lahiff, 1997). The Kobayashis move in to their first home as owner-occupiers which, although it’s a little on the small side, promises an idyllic existence. Father is the breadwinner with a nondescript office job, mother waters the plants and does the cooking and housework, the daughter wants to be an idol singer and the son is spending all his time studying for school and university in his room upstairs.… Read the rest

Tags a place to live, accommodation, armour, baseball bat, basement, bicycle, biker gang, bravado, breadwinner, build, building work, catalyst, Chinese, coffee, defensive, derelict, digging, drama, drill, failure, family, family unit, father, floor, flyover, grandfather, hand-held, head of the family, Hitoshi Ueki, home, horror, house implosion, housewife, housing, husbands and wives, idol singer, intimacy, intimate, Japan, Japanese cinema, JG Ballard, Katsuya Kobayashi, killing, kitchen implements, living room, living room floor, Mitsuko Baisho, mother, naive, nuclear family, office job, one-piece swimsuit, outer space, owner-occupiers, parents and children, pixelation, poison, power tool, primal types, public housing, rape, rape as weapon of war, room, run, salaryman, school, Second Sino-Japanese War, SF, sibling, sick, social breakdown, societal norms, Sogo Ishii, soldier, streets, studying, suburbia, sword, teenage, threat, train, turmoil, uniform, university, upstairs, warrior, weapon of war, white ant, World War Two, Yoshiki Arizono, Youki Kudoh

Features Live Action Movies

Les Misérables

Director – Ladj Ly – 2019 – France – Cert. 15 – 104m

****

Exclusively in cinemas from Friday, September 4th

Although this takes its title from Victor Hugo’s eponymous novel, it’s not really an adaptation except in the loosest possible sense. It ends on a quote from the book:

“There are no bad plants, nor bad people – only bad cultivators.”

What it DOES have is a poor underclass and a bunch of cops whose job it is to keep them in order and keep the peace. An optimistic prologue shows the whole of France watching a world cup match and celebrating as France wins – a joyous, transcendent occasion and an example of how things could or ought to be.

Then it quickly shifts gear: three cops in their car patrol a poor housing estate. Chris (Alexis Manenti) is white with an in your face, tough guy approach that commands the residents ‘respect’. The equally tough and no-nonsense Gwada (Djebril Zonga) is black, generally more conciliatory and better at negotiating with local people on the ground. Newcomer Ruiz (Damien Bonnard), in his first day on the job, hails from the countryside and finds himself at odds with the approach of the other two, particularly Chris.… Read the rest

Tags celebration, cops, drone, estate, falling, France, gangs, housing estate, immigrant, Islam, Molotov Cocktail, Paris, patrol, police, poverty, riot, social deprivation, teens, threat, underclass, violence, youth

Features Live Action Movies

Papicha

Director – Mounia Meddour – 2019 – France, Algeria, Belgium, Qatar – Cert. 15 – 108m

****

In selected cinemas (Curzons Bloomsbury and Mayfair). Also on Barbican cinema on demand, BFI Player, Curzon Home Cinema and Peccadillo Pictures On Demand from Friday, August 7th.

Algerian university fashion student Nedjma (Lyna Khoudri) is often called ‘Papicha’, a typically Algerian word that refers to a funny, attractive, liberated young woman. Nedjma and her roommates love life and think nothing of going out to nightclubs to put on fashion parades.

However, this being the late 1990s an upsurge of Islamic conservatism manifests itself throughout the narrative. First, fly posters advocating the hijab for women appear on walls (Nedjma immediately tears down these posters on seeing them). Later, she confronts a young man putting these posters up, but after challenging him notices a handgun tucked in his waistband so quickly backs off.

Groups of hijab-clad women take the law into their own hands vigilante style. They surround and take away a lecturer addressing Nadjma’s class. They turn up in the middle of the night at her shared room and threaten the occupants. And worse is to come.

One of the difficulties about writing about this film is that some of its narrative incidents would be much more shocking if you don’t know exactly what’s coming.… Read the rest

Tags Algeria, Belgium, conservatism, fashion, feminism, fly posters, France, halls of residence, hijab, human rights, Islam, lecturer, Muslim, nightclubs, Qatar, students, threat, university, vigilante, women

Features Live Action Movies

Detour

Director – Christopher Smith – 2016 – UK – Cert. 15 – 97m

****1/2

Should I stay or should I go? Smart thriller wherein a man’s life is literally split in two as he chooses between an ill-advised road trip to Vegas or staying at home with his hated stepfather – now on DVD and VoD

Opening with a lengthy, single locked off camera shot title sequence of a woman pole dancing, this then switches to law student Harper (Tye Sheridan – Ready Player One, Steven Spielberg, 2018) visiting his comatose mother in hospital. He’s convinced his stepfather is cheating on her using out of town business trips as a cover. Hitting a bar to drown his sorrows, he overhears a conversation in which Johnny Ray (Emory Cohen – Brooklyn, John Crowley, 2015) explains how his girlfriend Cherry shot a man who cut her face. Johnny Ray berates Harper for eavesdropping and drags him to the pole dancing joint where Cherry works and whisky gets Harper talking.

Brief echoes of Strangers On A Train (Alfred Hitchcock, 1951) are played up in the film’s trailer (at the bottom of this review) as Johnny Ray offers to take care of his stepdad at a price.… Read the rest