Tag: US

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Features Live Action Movies

Heart of the Beast

Heart of the Beast

Director – David Ayer – 2026 – US – Cert. 12a – 100m

*****

A heart attack and his plane’s crash landing force a pilot and his dog to cross the Alaskan wilderness on foot – out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, September 23rd

In a framing device that opens and closes the narrative, a woman (Anna Lambe) is driving her car along a road in Alaska in the middle of nowhere. She is forced to stop by a dog standing facing towards her in the middle of the road. As if it were trying to tell her something…

Some days earlier, retired, special forces soldier James Belmont (Brad Pitt) and his former combat dog Odin are travelling around Alaska by Cessna seaplane. They land on an unspoiled lake. Odin has a prosthetic leg. They pitch tent on the beach, then go exploring in the nearby woods where they are surprised to run across another human being.

There shouldn’t be anyone else around these parts, and the suspicious James reverts to combat mode, deploying his gun in readiness. However, the stranger (J.K. Simmons) turns out to be friendly, simply another person enjoying the solitude of the place, who tells them he’s pitched his own tent next to theirs.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Remake

Remake

Director – Ross McElwee – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 114m

***

Having filmed his son Adrian since early childhood, the filmmaker uses that footage to come to terms with Adrian’s death – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 25th

Documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee used to film his son Adrian for a few minutes about once a month. On a visit to Paraguay, he shot footage of the family, which always included his future adopted daughter. He screened the film about Paraguay at the Venice Film Festival, then put off screenings for quite a while. For a time, he went through a ‘golden age’ of filming, but as Adrian entered his late teens, the family seemed to get fed up with his filmmaking.

Then, Hollywood producer Steve Carr contacted him about a narrative remake of his documentary Sherman’s March (1985), which was the film in which Ross started to film and incorporate elements of his own life. Ross goes to consult his professional advisers – his brother and sister. He goes to Los Angeles to talk with Steve Carr, who had directed a series of commercially successful comedies. He signs a deal which will also allow him to make a documentary about the remake.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Bad Apples

Bad Apples

Director – Jonatan Etzler – 2025 – US, UK – Cert. 15 – 100m

***

A teacher deals with a disruptive student by kidnapping him and locking him in her basement – out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 18th

A school trip to an apple processing factory goes badly wrong when a trainer shoe appears among the apples on the system of conveyor belts. While the other children tour the factory premises in a comparatively orderly manner under their teacher Miss Spencer (Saoirse Ronan), loner Danny (Eddie Waller) stands at the railing with one trainer missing.

The setting is Somerset. Not that you’d know. A whole potential Somerset metaphor about apples and bad apples and brewing sits in waiting, but that either never occurred to screenwriter Jess O’Kane when adapting the film from the Swedish source, the novel by De Oönskade / The Undesirables by Rasmus Lindgren (2020), or it got abandoned in an early draft. Or perhaps the director Etzler threw it out during shooting. A pity either way, because that idea has real potential.

Back at school, Miss Spencer is hauled over the coals by her superior Sylvia (Rakie Ayola).

At home, Maria Spencer plays video games – her refuge from her job.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Late Fame

Late Fame

Director – Kent Jones – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 96m

*****

A reclusive New York postal worker who published volumes of poetry years ago becomes involved with a contemporary circle of rich young writers and creatives – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, September 4th

New York postal worker Ed Saxberger (Willem Dafoe) lives a quiet life, with a regular, once a week night out playing pool with his mates. He regularly gets answerphone messages from his sister telling him his brother doesn’t have long left to live, and he really should come and visit before it’s too late.

Minding his own business, he’s walking through the park when he’s accosted by a young man. It emerges that Saxberger published volumes of poetry in the 1970s, and while never commercially successful, he is held in high regard by those who pay attention to such things. The young man takes a chance and invites Ed to a meeting of writers, poets and actors. Ed, flattered, says, why not?

So it is that Ed finds himself attending meetings of this artistic circle, run by Meyers (Edmund Donovan from Civil War, Alex Garland, 2024) which consists mainly of young rich kids whose parents are funding them.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Coup 53

Coup 53

Director – Taghi Amirani – 2019 – UK – Cert. 15 – 120m

*****

The officially unacknowledged British role in the 1953 coup overthrowing the Iranian government – more timely than ever…

2026 Update: Back out in cinemas until August and early September; to mark the 73rd anniversary of the MI6 / CIA coup in Iran on August 19th, there will be a special anniversary screening + discussion on Wednesday, August 19th at Curzon, Bloomsbury

More dates added daily at https://coup53.com/
Originally in UK cinemas from Friday, August 21st 2020

A documentary begun in 2009 interviewing many people who died before the film’s completion some ten years later, this covers the 1953 coup in Iran backed by President Eisenhower in the US and Prime Minister Churchill in the UK which replaced Iran’s democratically elected, left-wing Prime Minister Mossadegh with the Shah. The UK has never officially acknowledged its role in this coup.

Amirani’s researches lead him to a basement of documents held by Mossadech’s grandson in Paris comprising archive material from the Granada TV 1985 End Of Empire documentary series, for which he gets access to the rushes from the BFI. Iran was included because it had been controlled by British interests for so long (because of its oil reserves).… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Face/Off

Face/Off

Director – John Woo – 1997 – US – Cert. 18 – 138m

*****

John Woo’s third and strongest US film to date has FBI agent John Travolta switching faces with villain Nic Cage – plays as part of Bullets and Brotherhood: the Films of John Woo at BFI Southbank from Friday, 3rd July to Friday, 31st July 2026

When screenwriters Mike Werb and Michael Colleary collaborated on original screenplay Face/Off, they had in mind such classic films as post-war gangster tale White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949) and identity change outing Seconds (John Frankenheimer, 1966). Only after completing an initial draft did Colleary see a John Woo movie – The Killer (1989) – at which point he immediately knew the pair had found the perfect director for their material.

This was clearly reciprocal – if Woo had already astounded Hong Kong audiences with A Better Tomorrow (1986) and crossed over internationally with The Killer and Hard Boiled (1992), he had yet to win comparable critical acclaim in America, even though his modest budget American debut Hard Target (1993) had had its admirers and his first blockbusting actioner Broken Arrow (1996) had impressed Hollywood with its box office.

These films both felt like the work of a director for hire not an auteur, and while Woo, like numerous Hollywood immigrants before him, could probably have continued in similar vein, the Face/Off script contained exactly the elements the director needed to take up in Hollywood where he’d left off in Hong Kong.… Read the rest

Categories
Art Features Live Action Movies

The Christophers

The Christophers

Director – Steven Soderbergh – 2025 – US, UK – Cert. 15 – 100m

**

Two siblings hire a young art restorer to forge some of their famous artist father’s unfinished paintings before he dies so they can collect on their posthumous sale – out exclusively on digital platforms from Monday, 20th July

Professional art restorer Lori Butler (Michaela Coel) runs a London fast food stall between painting restoration gigs. Then she gets a phone call and meets in a pub with Barnaby (James Corden) and Sallie (Jessica Guning), the son and daughter of ageing artist Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen) who, worried that their father is about to die imminently from a medical condition, want to ensure he (for which read Lori) ‘completes’ (for which read ‘forges’) the third, unfinished series of paintings known as the Christophers after the model Julian used.

Against her better judgement, she accepts the gig, and finds herself playing the ruse of working as Julian’s assistant, basically an excuse for getting into his studio and forging the completed works on canvas as a nest egg for his children who, it later transpires, have already sold the as yet unpainted works to a buyer for a tidy sum.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Give It a Shot

Give It a Shot

Director – Vaishali Sinha – 2025 – Canada, India, US – uncertificated – 92m

***

An Indian scientist has created a reversible male contraceptive technique, yet a combination of human greed and bureaucracy has so far prevented it reaching the masses – International Premiere at 6.30 pm at the ICA on Tuesday, July 14th in the London Indian Film Festival which runs from Thursday July 9th to Sunday, July 19th in London, Birmingham and Manchester

A man visits a trade show in Las Vegas of healthcare products and technology. He’s touting a male contraceptive, a field in which nothing much has happened since the introduction of the condom in the 17th Century. His product is an injection into the vas deferens of the male reproductive system which can last for ten years, yet is totally reversible within that time. He has date on its use and safety going back to the 1970s. He is not the original developer, but has been refining the formula since then. The product has been used extensively in India.

The film moves to India. “This for the vagina, that for the vagina,” says a woman cheerfully. “And meanwhile, the penis is just sitting in the corner.”… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Moana
(2026)

Moana (2026)

Director – Thomas Kail – 2026 – US – Cert. PG – 115m

***1/2

Disney’s live action remake of its Polynesian heroine mythological romp – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 10th

It’s a curious experience watching Disney’s live action remake of Moana (John Musker, Ron Clements, 2016), one of the Studio’s better animated movies of recent years. Of course, some audience members (particularly small children) may never have seen the orginal, or, equally, because Disney are very, very good at marketing their films to a mass audience, they may already be familiar with it. Either way, the film is likely to be enjoyed by both those who know the original and those who don’t.

The original had its roots in Maori mythology, and this live action retread follows much the same path. It’s set on the island of Te Fiti, a resting goddess whose heart (a small, round, green stone) has been stolen from her in order to give humans the power of creation by the demigod Maui, and then lost along with his giant fishhook which bestows shapeshifting powers upon him.

As a small child, the chief of the island Te Fiti’s daughter Moana can’t stop thinking about venturing beyond the reef, a trangression forbidden by her father Chief Tui (John Tui) and his ancestors.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Hard Target

Hard Target

Director – John Woo – 1993 – US – Cert. 18 – 100m (UK version), 86m (US version)

****

John Woo’s US debut is a New Orleans remake of The Most Dangerous Game with action star Jean-Claude Van Damme – plays as part of Bullets and Brotherhood: the Films of John Woo at BFI Southbank from Friday, 3rd July to Friday, 31st July

Essentially the first of two remakes of The Most Dangerous Game / The Hounds Of Zaroff (Ernest B. Schoedsack, Irving Pichel, 1932, shot using the same cast, crew and jungle sets as King Kong, (Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933) – the second being Surviving The Game (Ernest R. Dickinson, 1994) – this updates the original’s remote island to the urban jungle of and countryside surrounding New Orleans, making its mad game hunter (Lance Henriksen taking on the role originally played by Leslie Banks) prey not on lost seafarers but unemployed down and outs on dry land.

In true New Right nineties spirit, the hunter of humans has now graduated from being merely a gratifying personal sport for deranged psychopaths to a lucrative business attracting high rolling, thrill-seeking clients who get to pull the trigger themselves.… Read the rest