Tag: training

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Boy Kills World

Director – Moritz Mohr – 2023 – Germany, US, South Africa – Cert. 18 – 111m

***1/2

Relentless, non-stop action via a deaf-mute, orphaned kid, schooled in martial arts, returning to the city as a grown man to wreak vengeance on those who killed his family – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 26th

Elite family the Van Der Koys have taken control of the city and instigated an annual ceremony known as The Culling, a physical contest staged for television in a vast arena in which anyone who opposes the Van Der Koys and the way they run the place is killed. This was of little concern to Boy, who as a child (twins Nicholas and Cameron Crovetti from TV series Big Little Lies, 2017-19) grew up in a carefree existence eating Frosty Pops cereal every morning with his sister Mina (Quinn Copeland) and, the pair naively making insulting hand gestures at publicly displayed Van Der Koy statues during the day which gets their family onto the list of candidates for The Culling. And so his parents and sister are despatched in the ceremony, leaving Boy a traumatised deaf-mute.

All of the above comes out early on in a mixture of flashback and over-the-top interior monologue (hilariously voiced by H.… Read the rest

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Next Goal Wins
(2014)

Directors – Mike Brett, Steve Jamison – 2014 – UK – Cert. 15 – 97m

*****

DVD review for Third Way, 2014.

In 2001, American Samoa suffered the worst ever defeat for a soccer team in a World Cup qualifier when they lost to Australia by a staggering 31 goals to nil. Ten years later, FIFA still ranked the side at the bottom of its league table. Where most football teams dream of winning, American Samoa dreamed of not conceding a goal. Sensing herein the seed of a subject for a documentary film, Brit filmmakers Mike Brett & Steve Jamison headed for the tiny, English-speaking, Pacific island and spent months there hanging out with and filming the team in the training run up to the 2014 World Cup. What they captured on camera and edited into a feature film is both remarkable and compelling, whether or not you’re interested in football.

Rather than the expected group of losers, they find the team are steeped in the culture of American Samoa which is all about community, family and (Christian) religion, a very different cultural underpinning to Brett and Jamison’s. Western capitalism – and football within it – is all about competing, pushing yourself and your team as far as you / they can go and, ultimately, winning.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Chicken Run

Producer-Directors: Nick Park, Peter Lord – Producer – David Sproxton – 2000 – UK – Cert. PG – 84m

*****

Which came first – the chicken or the egg? Plasticene stop-frame animation house Aardman Animations’ debut feature film reconceives The Great Escape with chickens – review originally published in year 2000

Aardman Animations’ A Close Shave (1995), the third half-hour outing for Nick Park’s popular Wallace & Gromit duo, exhibited several danger signs – specifically its close resemblance to brilliant, immediate precursor The Wrong Trousers (1993). Clearly aware of such pitfalls, Park and founding Aards Sproxton and Lord shrewdly signed a five-picture deal with Dreamworks but refused to rush into a first feature. Their caution has paid dividends: this first full length Aardmovie proves an unexpectedly wondrous odyssey.

It’s The Great Escape reconceived with chickens: familiar WW2 prison camp is reconfigured as North of England chicken coop with impenetrable fencing, rows of huts and a motley assortment of portly hen inmates. Ginger (voice: Julia Sawalha) wants to escape, but several disastrous attempts lead to solitary confinement (where she bounces a ball off the wall Steve McQueen style). Other chickens can’t see a problem – Bunty (voice: Imelda Staunton) simply keeps on laying eggs, while Babs (Horrocks) busies herself with constant knitting.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Her Body
(Její Telo)

Director – Natálie Císarovská – 2023 – Czechia, Slovakia – Cert. 18 – 105m

****

Olympic diving champion Andrea Absolonová, forced by injury to abandon that career, reinvents herself as a porn actress – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Based on the real life story of Olympic diving champion Andrea Absolonová (Natália Germáni), this deploys a narrative that splits readily into three separate parts. In the first, she trains for the Olympics. Until one day, in the second, after executing a seemingly perfect dive, she wakes up in hospital fitted with a neck brace to the news that she’ll never dive again. And, finally, in the third, she reinvents herself as a porn actress.

The first section – her Olympic career – takes the viewer inside the sports training regimen, all the minutiae that are required to achieve greatness and rise to the very top of the competition in the athlete’s chosen field. As the film’s title suggests, it’s all about keeping the body in perfect condition to achieve the dream.

Andrea shares a flat with her younger sister Lucie (Denisa Barešová) who is under no such pressure, and on one occasion Andrea comes home to find her sister having a party, with lots of drinks Andrea mustn’t touch if she is to maintain her Olympic diet regime.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Lessons of Tolerance
(Uroky Tolerantnosti)

Director – Arkadii Nepytaliuk – 2023 – Ukraine – Cert. none – 95m

*****

To help pay off her family’s debt with the accompanying grant, an exasperated teacher enlists her sceptical family in a state LGBT+ awareness training course – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition in the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

NSFW. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

A typical older family with debt problems in Ukraine. The mother Nadia (Olena Uzlyuk) is the one member of the family keeping everything together, holding down a job as a teacher. From what we see of her at home, we would imagine she’s very good at it, too. Alas, the same can’t be said for the rest of the family. Husband Zenyk (Oleksandr Yarema) has always wanted his own garage, but has no head for running a business. He spends his evenings sitting around drinking beer and being waited on hand and foot by his wife and daughter, because that’s what women are supposed to do. Then he complains in bed because his wife is not interested in sex these days.

They have two grown-up kids. Daughter Diana (Karolina Mruha) is an aspiring actress who is applying for drama school despite warnings that she may lack the necessary talent.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Small, Slow But Steady
(Keiko,
Me Wo Sumasete,
ケイコ目を澄ませて)

Director – Sho Miyake – 2022 – Japan, France – Cert. 12 – 99m

The first half hour ****

The rest ***1/2

A completely deaf, young woman trains in the boxing ring at the local gym and turns professional, but when the gym’s closure is announced, she loses the focus needed to carry on – out in UK cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema from Friday, June 30th

Young woman Keiko (Yukino Kishii from Foreboding, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2017) has suffered since birth (a title tells us at the start) from sensorineural hearing loss. She and her younger brother (Himi Sato) rent a flat in Tokyo’s Arakawa neighbourhood, where she has taken up boxing at the local gym. While her brother plays music on an electric guitar for his girlfriend Hana, in the next room, Keiko scribbles obsessively writing down her progress at the gym in her notebook.

She beats an opponent by the narrowest of margins. As the old chairman of the boxing club (Tomokazu Miura from Detective Chinatown 3, Chen Sicheng, 2021; The Outrage, Takeshi Kitano, 2010; Arietty, Hiromasa Yonebayashi, 2010; The Taste Of Tea, Katsuhiro Ishii, 2004) explains to a journalist interviewing him later at the gym, Keiko can’t hear either the bell or anything the ref says.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Guillermo del Toro’s
Pinocchio

Directors – Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson – 2022 – US – Cert. PG – 114m

*****

Created as a puppet by a bereaved, religious woodcarver father, a little wooden boy must make his way in a world of ruthless show business, Fascism and war – stop-frame puppet movie is out on Netflix on Friday, December 9th

Co-helmed by Will Vinton alumnus Gustafson, del Toro’s Carlo Collodi adaptation sees him return to the theme of the Catholic Church collaborating with Fascism that he previously explored in Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). The story roughly follows the familiar template of Disney’s Pinocchio (1940), even down to punctuating the action with songs, but with the loosely defined place and time of a fairytale shifted to a very specific Italy before (briefly) and during World War II, with Pleasure Island replaced by a boys’ military training camp. The emphasis has shifted, too, from the notion of the narrator cricket character as conscience to coming to terms with mortality, although the idea that just because things appear to be fun they may not necessarily be good is knocking around in there too.

A narrator who will later identify himself as Sebastian J. Cricket (voice: Ewan McGregor) introduces us to churchgoing woodcarver Gepetto (voice: David Bradley), who is working on a statue of Jesus Christ crucified for the local church, raising dutiful son Carlo (voice: Gregory Mann), an equally religious child with a true sense of wonder at the world around him, including planes in the sky.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Onoda:
10, 000 Nights
In The Jungle
(Onoda,
10 000 Nuits
Dans La Jungle)

Director – Arthur Harari – 2021 – France, Japan – Cert. 15 – 166m

*****

A Japanese soldier who believes his country has not yet surrendered stays on a Filipino island to fight on alone until 1973 – out on Blu-ray in the UK on Monday 16th May.

16th September 1973. A backpacking Japanese student (Ryu Morioka) on Lubang Island in the Philippines sets up his tent on the beach beside the jungle and switches on the cassette player playing a song from the 1940s. The sound drifts through the trees and can be faintly heard where an old soldier, his uniform patched by years of repair, is leaving a flower as an act of remembrance. He hears the music and moves towards it…

This frame story opens this tale and sets the stage for what is to follow. Back in Wakayama, Japan in December 1944, it’s all over for drunken youth Hiroo Onoda (Yuya Endo) whose hopes of becoming a pilot have been dashed by his fear of heights. To his aid comes Major Yoshimi Taniguchi (Issei Ogata), who explains the youth can serve his country in other ways and enrols him in the Nakano School Annex in Futumata, where the major teaches guerilla warfare.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

The Witches
Of The Orient
(Les Sorcières
De L’Orient)

Director – Julien Faraut – 2021 – France, Japan – Cert. U – 100m

*****

A look through a prism of anime and archive footage at the Japanese women’s volleyball team that won the 1964 Olympics – out in cinemas and online in the UK and Ireland on Friday, July 16th

You don’t really expect a documentary about a women’s volleyball team to open with a scene from the anime short Danemon’s Monster Hunt At Shojiji (Yoshitaro Kataoka, 1935) in which the hero, trying to save the damsel in distress from the web of the evil spider witch, learns too late that the damsel is the evil spider witch and has lured him to his fate. Even if the team in question has become known as ‘the Witches of the Orient’. “To refer to people as witches is not very kind,” says Katsumi Matsumura, a surviving member of the team. “But then, witches have supernatural powers. So that suited us fine.”

The nickname originated in the Russian newspaper Pravda when the Japanese women’s team faced the Russians in the 1962 volleyball championships… [Read the rest]

Full review at All The Anime.

The Witches Of The Orient is out in cinemas and virtual cinemas in the UK and Ireland from Friday, July 16th 2021.… Read the rest

Categories
Documentary Features Movies

Bazaar Jumpers
(Pao Ku Shao Nian,
跑酷少年)

Director – Zhiqiang Hao – 2012 – China – Cert. N/C PG – 61m

***

Two Uyghur boys and their parkour team in Northern China hone their skills for an upcoming “China proper” tournament in Beijing – now available to rent online in the new Chinese Cinema Season 2021 in the UK & Ireland as part of the Approaching Reality documentary strand until Wednesday, May 12th

NB.

(1) Please read this review before watching because the recommended N/C PG certificate, while completely legal, perhaps ought to be higher because of one particular sequence (detailed in the final Spoiler Alert paragraph).

(2) The title seems to vary between Bazaar Jumper (singular) and Bazaar Jumpers (plural) on the film’s promotional literature. I’ve gone with the plural as that’s what’s on the film print. The singular is on the trailer below.

Urumqi, Xinjiang, one of the parts of Northern China with a large Uyghur section of the population. That’s not really writ large here, and as I was watching I was wondering what the spoken language was until I worked out it was Uyghur. The film is ostensibly about a group of late teenage, Muslim boys obsessed with parkour (free running), a physical craze in which obstacles such as buildings, walls and street furniture are climbed or traversed rather than gone around.… Read the rest