Tag: violence

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Features Live Action Movies

The Wizard of the Kremlin
(Le Mage du Kremlin)

Director – Olivier Assayas – 2025 – France – Cert. 15 – 137m

*****

Starting in 1990s Russia, an avant-garde theatre director morphs into first a TV producer then the mastermind behind the rise and rule of Vladimir Putin – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 17th

2019. Roland (Jeffrey Wright) writing a book on a prominent Russian novelist and on a research trip to Moscow when he receives a message from someone who has materials that will interest him. So he accepts the invitation and is driven to a private house on the woodlands outskirts of that city where he is shown first editions and documentation pertaining to the writer.

All this, however, is a pretext to the main event. His host, Vadim Baranov (Paul Dano), starts to tell Roland his life story from his student days onwards. Which sets the scene for what is to follow: a portrait of a close-up portrait of a shadowy figure who was to become Vladimir Putin’s arch-manipulator and right-hand man.

Dismissive of Gorbachov, he takes us back to the early 1990s when the Soviet Union was collapsing and Boris Yeltsin was in the presidential ascendant. A time of gunfire and violence, when men of increasing wealth and power could be killed at any time, a fact illustrated by an SUV exploding mid-convoy along a Muscovite spaghetti junction.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Kung Fu Hustle
(Kung Fu,
功夫)

Director – Stephen Chow Sing Chi – 2004 – China – Cert. 15 – 99m

*****

Set in the 1940s, this is at once a comedy, a romance, an effects fest, an action movie, a violent gangster thriller and a treatise on Buddhist values – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 24th, 2005

An hilarious treat from start to finish, Kung Fu Hustle foregrounds Hong Kong’s ability to bend genres. At once a comedy, a romance, an effects fest, an action movie, a violent gangster thriller and a treatise on Buddhist values, it also manages to throw in a hugely enjoyable, first reel dance sequence and a speeded up chase sequence reminiscent of Warner Bros. classic Roadrunner cartoon shorts (Chuck Jones, 1949-1962) and The Wizard Of Speed And Time (Mike Jittlov, 1988). Which summary doesn’t even begin to do it justice.

Columbia gave director/star Stephen Chow Sing Chi a mega-budget for Kung Fu Hustle but have commendably neither pruned nor dubbed as Miramax (Disney) did on his previous outing Shaolin Soccer (Stephen Chow, 2001). Chow’s extraordinary vision is thus allowed full rein in his native Cantonese tongue to side-splitting effect.

The 1940’s plot involves landlord, landlady and tenants of down and out Pig Sty Alley confronted by the fearsome Axe Gang after low life hustler and loose cannon Sing (Chow) turns up there and throws his weight around pretending to be a Gang member.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Live Action Movies

The Last Blossom
(Housenka,
ホウセンカ)

Director – Baku Kinoshita – 2025 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 90m

*****

A man lives with his wife and child… only they are not really his wife and child – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 27th

Here’s a movie that breaks all the moulds. I could (and will) tell you several things about it, any of which would (and will) immediately spark preconceptions about what it is. And those preconceptions would (and will) be wrong.

If we start off with it as a drama about family life, which it arguably is, that doesn’t quite give you the full idea. This is a pretty strange family: it’s effectively a single parent mum Nana (voice: Hikari Mitsushima) and her baby son Kensuke who have been taken in by the kindly Minoru Akutsu (voice: Junki Tozuka) who wants to help them. Akutsu is in love with Nana, but he’s the quiet type and can’t bring himself to verbally express his love for her. (Which, I guess, makes this into a romantic drama of sorts. Certainly a tale of unrequited love, albeit an odd one.) And over the years, as the boy grows, the man comes to think of the boy as his own son.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

They Will Kill You

Director – Kirill Sokolov – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 94m

****

A young woman, searching from her missing sister, takes a job as a cleaner in a mysterious, wealthy, New York apartment block – horror action movie is out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 27th

This has been sold as a horror / paranoia conspiracy thriller about a New York apartment building in the mould of Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968). Yet while its opening set up has echoes of that film, it turns out to be something altogether very different.

Asia Reaves (Zazie Beetz from The Bad Guys, Pierre Perifel, 2022; Joker, Todd Phillips, 2019; Deadpool 2, David Leitch, 2018), her younger sister Maria (Myha’la from Dead Man’s Wire, Gus van Sant, 2025; Bodies Bodies Bodies, Halina Reijn, 2022) in tow, flees their abusive father. He tracks them down in a grocery store, outside which she later shoots and hospitalises him before going on the run alone.

Ten years later, she applies for a housekeeper’s job at the Virgil, a nine-storey New York apartment building. The door is answered by Irish building superintendent Lily (Patricia Arquette from Boyhood, Richard Linklater, 2014; Lost Highway, David Lynch, 1997; True Romance, Tony Scott, 1993) who introduces her to a few of the tenants in the lobby including Sharon (Heather Graham from Austin Powers 2; The Spy Who Shagged Me, Jay Roach, 1999; Boogie Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997) and Kevin (Tom Felton – Draco Malfoy from the Harry Potter films, 2001-2011) before showing her to her room.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Killer
(Dip Huet
Seung Hung,
喋血雙雄)

Director – John Woo – 1989 – Hong Kong – Cert. 18 – 110m

*****

Having accidentally blinded a nightclub singer in a hit, a gunman takes on one last job to fund the operation to restore her eyesight – back out in a 4K restoration in UK cinemas on Friday, March 20th

Following the success of A Better Tomorrow (1986), this secured John Woo the international interest that would eventually bring Hollywood offers. Woo further distils A Better Tomorrow’s themes of brotherhood, loyalty and betrayal through the device of a cop first facing off against and subsequently bonding with the assassin he’s pursuing; many consider The Killer Woo’s finest achievement.

Professional assassin Ah Jong (Chow Yun-fat) accidentally blinds nightclub singer Jennie (Sally Yeh) with a stray bullet in a hit to become the focus of his guilt. Detective Li Ying (Danny Lee) is trying to catch him.

The backdrop is already familiar Woo and Hong Kong gangster genre territory – triad hits and betrayals, working cops misunderstood by their superiors. The action set pieces rank among the director’s finest: the opening night club slaying, the Dragon Boat Festival hit followed by the fight on the beach, car chases and multi-storey car park shoot outs, all topped by the brilliantly choreographed and seemingly endless final shoot out wherein killer and cop join forces in a church surrounded by unfriendly gangsters.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Hard Boiled
(Lat Sau San Taam,
辣手神探)

Director – John Woo –1992 – Hong Kong – Cert. 18 – 128m

*****

One of the greatest action pictures ever made – back in a 4K Restoration in UK cinemas on Friday, March 6th

Woo’s directorial valediction to Hong Kong, at least for a time as he attempted to break Hollywood, rehashes his now familiar territory of brotherhood, loyalty and betrayal, etched in trademark bullets and blood with grander and greater operatic flourish than his earlier efforts. On-screen alter-ego Chow Yun-fat (The Killer, John Woo, 1989; An Autumn‘s Tale, Mabel Cheung, 1987) is cast for the first time in Woo not as gangster but cop, bonding with a ruthless triad hit man Alan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai from Bullet In The Head, John Woo, 1990, In The Mood For Love, Wong Kar-wai, 2000; Lust Caution, Ang Lee, 2007; Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings, Destin Daniel Cretton, 2021). For good measure, Woo throws in therising, young gangster killing the old leader to take over the mob from A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986) (here played by Anthony Wong and Kwan Hui-sang respectively).

Hard Boiled opens with a spectacular tea house shoot out where Insp.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

LUPIN THE IIIRD
The Movie
The Immortal Bloodline
(RUPAN SANSEI ZA MUBÎ
Fujimi no Ketsuzoku,
LUPIN THE IIIRD
THE MOVIE
不死身の血族)

Original comic books created by Monkey Punch © Monkey Punch All rights reserved. © TMS All rights reserved.

Director – Takeshi Koike – 2025 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 93m

***

Lupin and his friends are lured to a zombie-populated island run by an immortal being where a toxic gas kills people after 24 hours – out in UK cinemas on Saturday, February 21st

Lupin III (or LUPIN THE IIIRD as he’s called here) has been around in Japan a very long time, first in the manga created by artist Monkey Punch in 1967 and later in live action movies, animated TV series, animated features and various other media formats.

© MP / T

You be forgiven for thinking that makes the franchise inaccessible for the newcomer, but this latest instalment opens with a burst of fuzz guitar and black and white images of ink clouds in liquid and drawings of the five main characters, who are helpfully introduced one by one, invaluable to the newcomer but equally, given the stylish drawings and the rapid pace at which they are introduced, a pleasure also for the viewer already familiar. Thus, we meet master thief (and narrator) Arsène Lupin III (voice: Kenichi Kurita) (“the cops are always after me”), his gunslinging partner Daisuke Jigen (voice: Akio Otsuka), his friend Goemon the swordsman (voice: Daisuke Namikawa), his friendly rival the curvaceous Fujiko Mine (voice: Miyuki Sawashiro), briefly zipping up cleavage that appears have been considerably enlarged for this particular film, and his nemesis Inspector Zenigata (voice: Koichi Yamadira) who has failed to apprehend him for decades, here introduced as an ace even though elsewhere in the franchise he’s pretty hapless.… Read the rest

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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

The Running Man
(2025)

Director – Edgar Wright – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 133m

***1/2

In an America controlled by a TV network producing violent game shows, a poor man signs on for its biggest show The Running Man whose contestants never come back – Stephen King adaptation available to buy on digital Tuesday, January 13th & to rent on Tuesday, January 27th; on 4K UHD Steelbook, 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD Monday, March 2nd, 2026

His baby daughter is sick, and medical treatment is expensive. His wife is working as many shifts as she can at a hostess club (we never see it – it’s described in dialogue) in an attempt to bring in some money. But it’s not enough. Ben Richards (Glen Powell) needs to find more money to pay the bills and keep his family alive. While he is good at what he does, he has a tendency to speak up when things aren’t as they should be, and this gets him into trouble. As in, he has been blacklisted by previous employers of whom he’s fallen foul. So, he turns to the Free-Vee TV network that controls and runs everything, providing a subsidised TV to every home and non-stop, reality TV and game show programming.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Funny Games
(1997)

Director – Michael Haneke – 1997 – Austria – Cert.18 – 103m

*****

Two young men turn up at a family’s holiday home to humiliate and torture them via a series of controlling exchanges (or games) – plays in Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, in UK cinemas from Saturday, June 21st and on BFI Player from Thursday, September 11th 2025

Review originally published in Shivers around the time of the film’s 1997 London Film Festival premiere

With Hollywood currently rediscovering the profitability of slick, fun horror movies in the blockbusting wake of Scream (Wes Craven, 1996), Europe proves itself well capable of delivering work at the other end of the spectrum. Funny Games is the latest brainchild of Austrian-born Michael Haneke (Benny’s Video, 1992).

Like Scream, Funny Games never misses a trick on the technical level. Unlike Scream, its intention is not a non-stop, mass-consumption, vicarious thrill-laden roller coaster ride (which Funny Games certainly isn’t) but a rigorous and unrelenting, one way descent into madness, fear and despair depicting violence, mutilation, torture and – above all – amoral manipulation of one’s fellow human beings – as truly horrific.

To dismiss Funny Games as either moral lecture or morality play would do it great disservice.… Read the rest