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Handsome Guys
(Haenseomgaijeu,
핸섬가이즈)

Director – Nam Dong-hyub – 2024 – South Korea – LKFF Cert. 15 – 102m

****

A comedy of errors in horror genre clothing, features a house in which accidents keep occurring, and a demonic goat – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2024 which runs in cinemas from Friday, November 1st to Wednesday, November 13th

Half-brothers Kang Jae-pil (Lee Sung-min from this year’s South Korean Oscar entry 12.12: The Day, Kim Sung-su, 2023; The Man Standing Next, Woo Min-ho, 2020), Park Sang-goo (Lee Hee-jun from The Man Standing Next; 1987: When That Day Comes, 2017) and their dog Bong-gu have come to a rural area with the intent of buying their dream home, unaware that a demon was banished to hell in its basement two generations ago by British priest Father Baker (Jamie Horan) and can only be banished back there, should it arise from the grave, by one of those present at the time of the banishment.

A group of students runs into the half-brothers in a supermarket, the former drawing all the wrong conclusions from the latter’s unkempt appearance and shopping trolley of heavy-duty carpentry kit, snap judgements somewhat thrown by the undeniable cuteness of Bong-gu the dog, sitting in the front of their trolley.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Small Things Like These

Director – Tim Mielants – 2024 – Ireland – Cert. 12a – 98m

*****

A coal delivery man is troubled by the recurring sight of a deeply traumatised young woman at one of his regular customers, a convent – out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 1st

Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy) runs a company delivering coal to customers in and around Wexford, Ireland. It’s tough, backbreaking work, as is evident from the sight of his assistants loading up his truck, one bag of coal loaded onto the back by two men. He’s happy with his men, who do a good job. Doing his rounds as driver and delivery man (locked-off camera looking out from the driver’s cab) he carries one sack at a time himself. Finishing up delivering to the local convent, where he’s required to leave the coal bags behind the door in the designated coal house, he witnesses a scene where a young woman clearly doesn’t want to be in the care of the head sister.

He comes home. As is his wont, he furiously scrubs the coal black off his hands, producing a pool of blackened water in the bathroom sink. He talks about it to his wife at home.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Twisters

Director – Lee Isaac Chung – 2024 – US – Cert. 12a – 117m

Film ***1/2

Special Effects (the twisters themselves) *****

A young woman attempts to compensate for failed “twister taming” which caused the tragic deaths of three of her friends, by further pursuing tornadoes – out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, July 17th

In the very first moments, Kate (Daisy Edgar Jones from Where the Crawdads Sing, Olivia Newman, 2022) stands in a field of tall grass. It’s an image that could almost have come out of director Chung’s previous film, the intensely personal Oscar-winner Minari (2020). Almost, but not quite: apart from one briefly seen-child, this is not a film populated with Korean-Americans. It doesn’t attempt any kind of ethnic statement, but then, why should it? People either come to this because they saw Twister (Jan de Bont, 1996) and want a rerun or, if they’re younger, because they want the same thing that pulled audiences into the first film: mayhem caused by the awe-inspiring, unstoppable force of nature that is a tornado, aka a twister.

The title implies there are more than one, and there are indeed, but then, there were in the first film too.… Read the rest