Tag: twentysomething

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Features Live Action Movies

Primate

Director – Johannes Roberts – 2025 – US – Cert. 18 – 89m

****1/2

A girl and her friends discover her family’s pet chimp has turned violent and trapped them in the house – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 30th

Coming in commendably under 90 minutes, this is a hugely effective thriller about people trapped in a confined space with a monster. Which makes it all the more curious that it missteps for its first couple of scenes, making you wonder if you’re going to regret seeing the film. First up is a scene in which a vet ventures into a house’s exterior enclosure and is attacked by Ben, the distressed chimpanzee, who lives there. The problem is not the scene itself, which is both genuinely scary and sets the scene for what is to follow – indeed, it establishes that there is a chimpanzee in the house about to turn bad – but the fact that it’s almost impossible to relate the scene to the remaining narrative, apart from the fact that it takes place 36 hours earlier. Who was the vet? At what point in the unfolding flashback does this attack take place? The ensuing mayhem won’t leave you any time to ponder such questions, so it arguably doesn’t matter, but for me, because I couldn’t make any sense of it in the scheme of the wider film, it proved annoying.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Take Care of My Cat
(Go-yang-i-leul
Boo-tak-hae,
고양이를 부탁해)

Director – Hong Eun-won – 2001 – South Korea – Cert. PG – 112m

****

A cat passes between a group of twentysomething girls as each one finds they can no longer look after it – 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

(2024 explanatory note: This was, I believe, the first South Korean film to get a UK theatrical release. It was certainly the first one I ever reviewed, for What’s On in London back in 2002. Soon after this, Metro-Tartan film distributors would release a good deal of horror / thriller / action movies in cinemas and on DVD under their Asia Extreme brand, but it would be a long time before the UK saw the theatrical release of another South Korean film outside of those genres. What follows below is the What’s On in London review from 2002.)

Two areas of the world currently make its most interesting films. One is Iran and surrounding area, which has been fairly well represented in terms of UK releases. The other is South Korea, largely and criminally neglected by UK distributors.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

One Fine Spring Day
(Bomnaleun Ganda,
봄날은 간다)

Director – Hur JIn-ho – 2001 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 113m

*****

The romance between a sound engineer and a radio DJ from winter through spring to its falling apart in summer – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2023 which runs in cinemas from Thursday, November 2nd to Thursday, November 16th

Winter. Twentysomething sound recordist Sang-woo (Yoo Ji-tae) lives at home with his family including his grandmother, to whom he’s completely devoted. He is hired by a radio station in a nearby town and finds himself working alongside DJ and talk radio host Eun-su (Lee Young-ae), travelling there in his van. They spend time in the local countryside recording sounds such as the wind across the tall grass and she invites him to her flat for the night. One thing almost leads to another, but woken by his trying to kiss her as she lies on a mattress on the floor after she let him use her bed, she tells him, let’s wait until we know each other better.

They quickly become inseparable, with much walking together, holding and hugging, although she won’t shout about it from the rooftops because, as she explains to him, if the radio station found out they were in a relationship, he’d get the sack.… Read the rest