Tag: UFO

Categories
Animation Features Movies

Blind Willow,
Sleeping Woman
(Saules Aveugles,
Femme Endormie)

Director – Pierre Földes – 2022 – France, Canada, Luxembourg, The Netherlands – Cert. 15 – 100m

*****

Three characters experience the aftermath of the 2011 Tokyo earthquake in a story based on six Haruki Murakami short stories – animated feature is out to rent on BFI Player and Curzon Home Cinema from Friday, May 5th

This is an animated feature based on six Haruki Murakami short stories which comes not, as you might expect, from Japan, but rather from one of the few other countries that can reasonably be said to have an animation industry: France. Writer-director Pierre Földes, whose father Peter is an award-winning animator, further confounds expectations by making a film of six Murakami short stories… [Read the full review at All The Anime…]

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is out to rent on BFI Player and Curzon Home Cinema from Friday, May 5th.

It was out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, March 31st.

Trailer:

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Nope

Director – Jordan Peele – 2022 – US – Cert. 15 – 130m

Overall **

The alien in the sky finale when the film finally dumps the other stuff *****

A black Muybridge model’s ranch-owning descendants and the survivor of a TV sitcom which turned into a bloodbath encounter a dangerous alien presence that attacks from the sky – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 12th

There appear to be three separate films here.

In the first, a descendant of the black rider photographed in Eadweard Muybridge’s studies of a horse in motion, here historically repurposed as the first piece of moving film (which is debatable), is an old man OJ Haywood Sr. (Keith David) who dies in a bizarre accident on his ranch, where he runs a horse rental service for the motion picture business, leaving behind his children OJ (Dan Kaluuya from Judas And The Black Messiah, Shaka King, 2021; Black Panther, Ryan Coogler, 2018; Get Out, Jordan Peele, 2017) and Emerald (Keke Palmer from Lightyear, Angus MacLane, 2021; Hustlers, Lorene Scafaria, 2019). The bizarre accident may be related to the third plot. Or may not be.

In the second, a wholesome, family TV sitcom is shut down after its star chimpanzee goes on a rampage during the shooting of an episode, killing all members of the cast except the young boy Ricky Park (Jacob Kim) hiding under the table, who witnesses the animal being shot.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Battle
In Outer Space
(Uchu Daisenso,
宇宙大戦争,
lit. The Great Space War)

*****

Director – Ishiro Honda – 1959 – Japan – Cert. U – 90m

Battle In Outer Space is one of those films that paints on a bigger canvas and sacrifices character development in favour of big-screen visual spectacle, brought to life with state-of-the-art special effects. According to Kalat, the film owes much to the bigger Hollywood 1950s SF feature film films made in colour. These include not only films by former Puppetoon animation creator George Pal such as The War Of The Worlds (1953) and Conquest Of Space (1955) but also This Island Earth (1955) and Forbidden Planet (1956).

Honda’s film wades straight in to alien war scenarios… [read more]

Over at All The Anime, I review Eureka!’s Ishiro Honda Blu-ray double bill of The H Man and Battle In Outer Space.

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Ishiro Honda
Double Feature
The H Man
(Bijo
To Ekitai-ningen,
美女と液体人間)
and
Battle
In Outer Space
(Uchu Daisenso,
宇宙大戦争)

The H Man

*****

Director – Ishiro Honda – 1958 – Japan – Cert. X – 86m

Battle in Outer Space

*****

Director – Ishiro Honda – 1959 – Japan – Cert. U – 90m

Alongside the standalone release of Mothra (1961) comes a double bill of two more Toho science fiction movies directed by Ishiro Honda with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya: , The H Man (1958) and Battle In Outer Space (1959). The Toho studio is associated more with monster movies than any other genre, notably Godzilla (1954) and Mothra. The superior entries in this cycle tend to be the ones they directed, including the initial 1954 film which ticked all the right boxes to prove a massive success.

When no-one at Toho was quite sure what had made Godzilla work, the pair collaborated on a number of different SF films before everything came together on Mothra. The H Man is a monster film dressed up in gangster trappings while Battle in Outer Space is an epic with space stations, flying saucers, rocket ships, an alien moon base and alien mind control… [read more]

Over at All The Anime, I review Eureka!’s Ishiro Honda double bill Blu-ray.