Tag: US

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Features Live Action Movies

Total Recall

Director – Paul Verhoeven – 1990 – US – Cert. 18 – 113m

***

UK Release: July 27th 1990

Arnold Schwarznegger’s mind has been stolen – and he’s got to go to Mars to get it back! The seeming perpetrator of this heinous crime is Recall Incorporated, a travel company with a difference: they implant memories of the required holiday destination and period in the client’s brain, and it seems to him that he’s having that holiday then. Recall’s latest deal even allows the client to take a break from his/her personality for the period purchased. Arnie opts for two weeks on Mars as a secret agent.

While the requirements of megabudget Hollywood film making often water down the end result, the premise of this film – fashioned after SF author Philip K. Dick’s We Can Remember It For You Wholesale – is not only imaginatively preposterous but also so utterly cinematic that it has a phenomenal amount going for it right from frame one.

Add to this not only Schwarznegger but his contractually binding choice of director being none other than Dutchman Paul Verhoeven (The Fourth Man, 1983; Robocop, 1987) plus a final price tag which might well be as high as $70m, and you can see why expectations on this movie are so high.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Live Action Movies

The Lost World
(1925)

Director – Harry O. Hoyt – 1925 – US – Cert. U – 110m

*****

Review of PAL VHS release originally published in Starlog UK, mid-1990s.

£12.99, Original Aspect Ratio (Academy), Mono (Golden Age Films)

Before Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg purloined the name for their Jurassic Park sequel, The Lost World was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Professor Challenger novel. In the book, the bombastic scientist leads an expedition to a plateau deep in the Amazon cut off from the rest of the world which he claims to be populated by dinosaurs.

This 1925 silent Hollywood adaptation (here released in 1993’s restored, untinted, black and white print with piano accompaniment) features prominently in any serious shortlist of live action movies featuring dinosaurs along with King Kong, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Godzilla, One Million Years BC and Jurassic Park. Indeed, leaving aside 1954’s Japanese, man‑in-a-rubber-suit entry Godzilla, the remaining titles are The Lost World’s descendants via their use of optical trickery and stop‑motion animation.

The Lost World’s miniature model dinosaurs and their incorporation as fully articulated giant beasts into live action cinematography was primarily the work of stop-frame animator cum special effects genius Willis O’Brien, later to put the dinosaurs into 1933’s King Kong and win a belated special effects Oscar on the back of 1949’s Mighty Joe Young.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Spring

Directors – Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead – 2014 – US – Cert. 15 – 109m

*****

UK release date 22/05/2015

The New Girlfriend

The New Girlfriend (Une Nouvelle Amie)

Director – François Ozon – 2014 – France – Cert. 15 – 108m

*****

UK release date 22/05/2015

Both these films can easily be ruined by spoilers, so be wary of reading reviews or cinema blurb or even watching trailers before you see them. That said, the following is spoiler free. Now read on.

Spring

The single, male protagonist of US indie Spring suffers serious emotional trauma then becomes involved with a woman who is not all that she seems. The married, female protagonist of French maverick Ozon’s The New Girlfriend – based on a book by Ruth Rendell who passed away last month – suffers serious emotional trauma then becomes involved with a man who is not all that he seems. In both films, the question is: can their relationship survive?

Spring

Spring‘s Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) witnesses the death of his bedridden mother. Distraught, he heads to the local bar, gets into drunken fight which ends up with his leaving the US to evade the police. He heads to Italy where he meets a bunch of Brit backpackers and indulges in more binge drinking, but everything changes when he meets and falls for the mysterious Louise (Nadia Hilker)… (This reviewer confesses that by this point – about ten minutes into the film – he wasn’t feeling much sympathy for the character – or, indeed, liking the film very much at all – but Evan’s subsequent relationship with Louise had him hooked.)… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

A Hidden Life

Director – Terrence Malick – 2019 – US / Germany / Austria – Cert. 12a – 174m

Standing against evil. A married Austrian farmer conscripted as a soldier for the German army in WW2 is imprisoned for refusing to sign the standard oath of allegiance to Hitler – in cinemas from Friday, January 17th

Opening with and periodically punctuated by documentary footage of Hitler and the Third Reich, this is Malick’s retelling of the wartime life experience of a real life couple. Deeply in love, Franz and Fani Jägerstätter (August Diehl and Valerie Pachner) run their farm near a remote, mountainous Austrian country village. With the Third Reich on the ascendant, he gets called up for military service and is billeted in a nearby castle and trained while she, the kids (three girls) and her sister Resie (Maria Simon) struggle to manage the farm without him.

When France surrenders, many men are released from national service and Franz is allowed to go back to farm, wife and family. However it’s only a matter of time before he’s called up again. And this time, the only way out of signing the oath is to go to prison. [Read more]

A Hidden Life is out in the UK on Friday, January 17th.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Finding The Way Back

Director – Gavin O’Connor – 2020 – US – Cert. 15 – 108m

***

Available on VoD from Friday, July 10th

Jack Cunningham (Ben Affleck) has a drink problem. He separated from ex-wife Ange (Janina Gavankar) over a year ago. With his life going nowhere, Jack gets a phone call asking him to drop in on the Catholic school where he used to play baseball which turns out be be a job offer for team coach since the incumbent has just unexpectedly had a heart attack. Jack used to be the team’s star player back in the day, but he isn’t sure if he should take the job.

Anyway, he goes for it and finds himself building a bunch of no hope kids into a winning team. He has to fire one who turns up late for practice and build the confidence of the best player on the team who doesn’t believe he should be team captain. He has to stop swearing because it’s against school policy and he must deal with his drinking problem before it gets the better of him. He has bigger personal issues to confront as well– there are reasons why he drinks.

This deceptively ordinary drama accomplishes everything it sets out to do and will hold your attention throughout.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Zero Impunity

Directors – Nicolas Blies, Stéphane Hueber-Blies – 2019 – France, Luxembourg – 95m

*****

From the Annecy 2020 Online Animation Festival

Framed by live action sequences of serial expert, journalist and activist talking heads projected on the sides of urban buildings or rural landmarks, this skilfully uses minimal 2D animation to tell the stories of victims of sexual violence in contemporary war zones. It’s intended as part of a wider, ongoing media project designed to bring accountability to the perpetrators of such acts who at the present time face zero impunity.

Stories include, from Syria, the 11 year old daughter of an alleged terrorist who was imprisoned for 45 days towards the end of which she was unexpectedly injected with hormones before being raped by (at least) one man before passing out.

A Ukranian woman is held captive in a house and coerced into sleeping with her captor. In bed, she feels something cold and metal in her crotch. It’s a bullet. Much is made of her captor’s pistol. He puts it on a table in front of her, knowing she won’t take it because, if she were to shot him, where would she go?

The US doesn’t come off well. Dick Cheney and the Bush administration know the difference between right and wrong but facilitated sexual humiliation techniques on male prisoners held in prisons such as Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay at home.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Black And Blue

Director – Director – Deon Taylor – 2019 – US – Cert. 15 – 108m

*****

Now available to view online : scroll down for details.

Right at the start of this, Naomie Harris is walking along a New Orleans street when she’s stopped and harassed by two cops. For no reason. Well, there is a reason: she’s black and the cops are white. Except that, as she points out, she herself is a cop too. She’s blue. So reluctantly they have to let her go.

Rookie cop Alicia West (Harris) joined the police at the same time as officers are being required to wear body cams and thinks these a good idea. However she underestimates the levels of violence between police and members of the public. Covering a night shift for her cop partner, she is shocked to see grizzled veteran Deacon Brown (James Moses Black) use what she thinks is excessive force on a man outside a nightclub. It turns out, however, that the man had a gun and wouldn’t have hesitated to use it on her.

I review Black And Blue for DMovies.org.

Watch on Amazon, Amazon 4K UHD, Netflix or Starz.

Categories
Animation Movies Shorts

Popeye The Sailor
Meets
Sindbad The Sailor

Director – Dave Fleischer – 1936 – US – 16m – colour – Oscar nominated

*****

Currently streaming on MUBI.

A rare, two reeler, colour outing for the Fleischer brothers’ Popeye, this removes him from his usual urban environment to an island populated with fabulous monsters – the opening features snakes, lions, a dragon and a vulture before we meet self-proclaimed “The Most Remarkable Fellow”, credited in the cast as Sindbad The Sailor although anyone familiar with other Flesicher Popeye cartoons will recognise him as regular villain Bluto. Sindbad sings a song asking the rhetorical question who this extraordinary fellow is, culminating in Popeye’s voice unexpectedly singing “Popeye The Sailor Man”, from which springs the film’s subsequent dramatic conflict. Talking about a shackled two headed giant Sindbad also references King Kong, released three years earlier and an obvious influence on the remote island with caves and incredible beasts seen here.

(MUBI’s source print print is missing a little bit of the opening credits, so you might want to hit pause on the single credits page detailing the cast before it vanishes after a few seconds. Otherwise, the print is in pretty decent condition.)

When Sindbad sends a giant bird to scuttle Popeye’s ship and kidnap the woman (Olive Oyl), the bird’s take off is animated less like a bird and more like a nineteen thirties aircraft that struggles to leave the ground.… Read the rest

Categories
Art Features Live Action Movies

Snowpiercer
(Seolgungnyeolcha,
설국열차)

Director – Bong Joon Ho – 2013 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 126m

South Korean director Bong Joon Ho’s Snowpiercer (2013), which never had a theatrical release in the UK during its original, international run, finally appears in the UK on home video. Described as “High Rise on a train” by Mark Kermode, it’s an uncompromising dystopian vision, and we can safely attribute its appearance on Blu-ray to a double whammy – Bong’s Oscar-winning box-office hit Parasite, and the broadcast this month of the long-delayed Snowpiercer TV series.

An ecological catastrophe has turned the Earth into a frozen wasteland. The only people still alive are those on a train annually circling the globe. Some are there because they’re rich, others because they were lucky enough to get on board. The rich live in luxury at the front while the poor are kept in squalor at the back. Two members of the lower orders lead a revolt, travelling the length of the train to eventually confront the train’s wealthy industrialist creator. Like the more complex Parasite, it pits ordinary people against wealthy elites.

I review Snowpiercer for All The Anime.

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Cam

Director – Daniel Goldhaber – 2018 – US – Cert. 15 – 94m

***1/2

An erotic webcam performer discovers to her horror that her online presence has been hacked by an unknown rival, in a film conceived by a real-life cam artist– from the 62nd BFI London Film Festival and on Netflix from Friday, November 16th 2018

Alice (Madeline Brewer) is in charge of her destiny, or so it seems. From a secret and self-contained, fluffy pink studio set up in her apartment, she promotes herself as her online persona Lola who hosts her own live online erotic shows where enthusiastic fans can encourage her to do specific things by sending her virtual currency. Her goal is to become number one on the site which hosts her and many thousands of other hopefuls, but she seems to have got stuck somewhere around the rank of 60th. What’s a camgirl to do in order to boost her ratings?

Clearly, spicing the sex up with a little violence is a winner, so when one of her admirers encourages her to use a knife, while others egg her on and other still try to talk her out of it, Lola cuts her throat online.… Read the rest