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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

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Features Live Action Movies

Wife Of A Spy
(Supai No Tsuma,
スパイの妻)

Director – Kiyoshi Kurosawa – 2020 – Japan – 115m

****1/2

A Japanese businessman’s wife decides to help her husband after discovering he is passing inflammatory state secrets to the Americans – out on MUBI in the UK and Ireland on Wednesday, September 8th

1940, Kobe, Japan. British silk trader John Fitzgerald Drummond is arrested by the Kenpetai then released thanks in part to his friend and business associate Yusaku Fukuhara (Issey Takahashi from Shin Godzilla, Hideaki Anno, 2014; Kill Bill Vols 1 & 2, Quentin Tarantino, 2003 & 4; Whisper Of The Heart, Yoshifumi Kondo, 1995), who defends him against Officer Taiji Tsumori (Masahiro Higashide from Foreboding, 2017; Before We Vanish, 2017; Creepy, 2016 – all Kiyoshi Kurosawa), a childhood friend of Yusaku’s wife Satoko (Yu Aoi from Killing, Shinya Tsukamoto, 2018; Journey To The Shore, Kurosawa, 2015 and much else). (Europeans are systematically being arrested, with the exception of Axis power nationals Germans and Italians.)

As Fukuhara and his nephew Fumio Takeshita (Ryota Bando) travel abroad to Manchuria, Satako invites Taiji to her house for a whisky, but once there he berates her for the drink being Western- not Japanese-made and suggests she should wear traditional Japanese clothes rather than Western dresses.… Read the rest