Tag: violence

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Light Falls

Director – Phedon Papamichael – 2023 – Georgia, Greece, Albania, Germany – Cert. none – 90m
*****

A Greek island, a lesbian couple from L.A., migrant Albanian workers, a racist cop, and an abandoned brutalist hotel… What could possibly go wrong? – terrific thriller premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Photographer Ella (Nini Nebieridze) and her girlfriend Clara (Elensio aka Elene Makharashvili), Georgians resident in L.A., are holidaying on a Greek island. On the same island, three Albanian youths – two brothers, the older Altin (Jurgen Marku) and the younger Eddy (Juxhin Plovishti), and their cocksure friend Veton (Silvio Goskova) – hang around in the hope of running into rich Western tourists they can fleece. Certainly, when a rich English couple drive up in a nice car and ask the where the nearest pharmacy is (the three don’t speak English), it looks like the three are going to do something awful to them. But then, the man sensibly drives off. The audience is left with a sense of dread.

The three Albanian men have just been turned away from a restaurant when the two L.A. girls enter, hang out, and learn from friendly locals where they can rent a 50cc Vesper (no licence needed).… Read the rest

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Your Mother’s Son
(Anak Ka Ng Ina Mo)

Director – Jun Robles Lana – 2023 – Philippines – Cert. none – 100m

****

An intense cocktail of two uneasy, polyamorous relationships erupts into jealousy, betrayal and violence – sexually explicit political allegory of nepotism in Filipino politics plays in the spirit of the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

A candidate’s electoral vans belts out loud-hailer exhortations to secure votes in an upcoming election, but no-one in the poor rural locality through which they pass pays any attention. Everyone is struggling to make ends meet. Middle-aged Sarah (Sue Prado) puts all her efforts into both running a laundry business, providing ad hoc employment for much younger Amy (Elora Españo) who lives nearby, and teaching students online. Sarah’s son Emman (Kokoy De Santos) has just lost his job at a restaurant because it closed down. He doesn’t seem to share her work ethic, and would rather lounge around in bed all day than actually have to do anything of an employed nature.

Or, at least, that’s how things appear outwardly.

When his mother finally prises Emman from his bed so that he can go out looking for work – which might include a contact she has who may, possibly, be able to help him – he instead hangs out at the house of Amy who, like his mother, has a strong work ethic, to have sex with her at every opportunity, and do drugs.… Read the rest

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Great Sertão
(Grande Sertão)

Director – Guel Arraes – 2023 – Brazil – Cert. none – 114m

*****

The constantly shifting relationship between a man and his friend constantly shifts against the backdrop of a war between a street gang protecting their turf and an army trying to impose law and order – premieres in the Critics’ Picks Competition at the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

Riobaldo (Caio Blat) tells his story. As a young boy in the urban jungle of Brazil’s Sertao, he bonds with fearless kid his own age Diadorim, who shows him how to scale brutalist towers and scare off predatory adults with an effective flick of the knife.

By the time Riobaldo has grown up to become a teacher, this concrete sprawl has become the battleground for a struggle between a gang led by local, criminal warlord Joca Ramiro (Rodrigo Lombardi) and forces under the command of Colonel Zé Bebelo (Luis Miranda) determined to restore law and order to the country. They may trade in violence, but both leaders are honourable men.

Not so one of Joca’s lieutenants Hermógenes (played with great relish by the ingratiating Eduardo Sterblitch), a seemingly unstoppable force of nature who has sold his soul to the devil to advance his own ends.… Read the rest

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Gurkha Warrior

Director – Milan Chams – 2022 – Nepal – Cert. 15 – 115m

**

A small Gurkha unit is dropped into the Malayan jungle by helicopter on a search and rescue mission to save a number of the comrades who have been captured – previews in UK cinemas on Saturday, November 4th, out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 10th

There’s a very sweet frame story bookending Gurkha Warrior in which an old man takes his young and curious grandson to a hilltop in Nepal with mountains in the background for his annual ritual of laying a commemorative wreath at its foot and saluting in memory of fallen war comrades. When he explains this to his grandson as they walk away along the ridge, the latter picks a flower off a nearby bush and runs back to leave the flower beside the old man’s wreath. His grandfather is deeply moved by this.

That very much sums up this film, the director and star of which both served as Gurkhas. The narrative takes place against the backdrop of the Malaya Emergency (1948-1960), but since that’s never explained and given that audiences are likely to be unfamiliar with the historical background, the film floats in an unfortunate war film netherworld lacking any sort of context.… Read the rest

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Moebius
(Moebiuseu,
뫼비우스)

Director – Kim Ki-duk – 2013 – South Korea – Cert. 18 – 99m

*****

An extreme film even by Korean enfant terrible Kim Ki-duk’s own standards, Moebius is an oedipal cocktail of sex and violence shot without dialogue. Traversing (among other things) castration and gang rape, it’s a character study involving a family: an adulterous father, a jealous mother and (from early in the first reel) a castrated son with the father and son becoming involved with the former’s otherwise unattached lover. An essay employing psychological archetype to great effect, it holds the viewer in its vice-like grip from start to finish. A key work from a master, highly recommended, although definitely not for the faint-hearted.

Capsule review for Film Review Annual.

Trailer:

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Killers
Of The Flower Moon

Director – Martin Scorsese – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 206m

*****

A returning WW1 veteran marries into Oklahoma’s Osage Indian tribe at the time of the Osage Indian Murders – plays the 2023 London Film Festival which runs from Wednesday, October 4th until Sunday, October 15th, and will be out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 20th

At slightly over 80 years of age, Martin Scorsese has now been making movies for over 60 years. Like his last, fictional, narrative feature The Irishman (2019), this one is pushing three and a half hours. I always have issues with films that long: the vast majority are that way due to director’s ego and / or inability to tell a story concisely. Some of them might have been better suited to a TV mini-series ( a medium in which, incidentally, Scorsese also works). Yet if you try and imagine Killers Of The Flower Moon cut down in length, it’s difficult. Maybe you could take out the frame story – the performance of a crime drama on the radio on the subject of the Osage Indian Murders – but that sets the scene nicely at the start and takes you back out of the movie equally nicely at the end, so it would be a shame to do so.… Read the rest

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The Creator

Director – Gareth Edwards – 2023 – US – Cert. 12a – 133m

****

A widower finds himself protecting an AI in the form of a child as anti-AI North American forces wage a war on the Asian-Pacific countries where people have integrated with AI robots – out in UK cinemas on Thursday, September 28th

Over a decade ago, I was blown away by Gareth Edwards’ little indie British film marvel Monsters (2010) which broke all the accepted wisdom of film production. Based around a deceptively simple script concept, it was shot by a four-man crew and a two-man cast (plus anyone else who was around at the time) with lots of post-production VFX work added by the director himself.

That got him an agent and two big budget Hollywood franchise FX movies – the Godzilla reboot (2014) and the Star Wars movie Rogue One (2016). The former isn’t bad for a Hollywood movie, although I personally far prefer the Japanese-made Shin Godzilla (Hideaki Anno, 2016), while the latter is one of the better Star Wars films. However, neither quite possessed the quality that had got me so excited about Monsters.

I suspect Edwards feels the same way, because whilst he clearly relishes the chance to work with the palette of a huge Hollywood FX budget, on this his fourth film, as with Monsters, he has once again broken the rules – this time within a huge Hollywood FX budget film.… Read the rest

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Tokyo Fist
(東京フィスト)

Director – Shinya Tsukamoto – 1995 – Japan – Cert. 18 – 87m

*****

Shinya Tsukamoto ventures outside his Tetsuo trappings to deliver further explorations of the ‘New Flesh’ in boxing movie garb.

On Arrow Channel from Friday, September 22nd.

This review is an amalgam of my reviews for What’s On In London and Manga Mania.

Right from its opening angled camera of gym sparring partners, everything about apparent boxing movie Tokyo Fist is relentless. Apparent because this is the latest highly idiosyncratic offering from Japanese filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto, the crazed genius behind the brilliant if unhinged Tetsuo films. Don’t be fooled by the boxing gloves – this is another round in the director’s ongoing engagement with the ‘New Flesh’, minus the science-fictional surface trappings.

Underpinned by another memorable Chu Ishikawa score, it opens in typically bravura fashion with slanted tracking camera shots of sparring partners in a gym, morphing moments later into a visual wipe in the manner of a knockout punch as a fist hurtles towards the viewer and the images disintegrates via a stop-motion iris constructed of offal.

The plot has an insurance salesman whose career is foundering run into an old school friend who is now a professional boxer.… Read the rest

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A Moment
Of Romance
(Tin Joek
Yau Ching,
天若有情)

Director – Benny Chan – 1990 – Hong Kong – Cert.18 – 92m

***1/2

When a biker and gang member on the lam from a jewel heist takes a well-to-do girl hostage then falls for her, their romance is doomed – out on Radiance Blu-ray from Monday, August 21st 2023 following its screening in the London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF) 2021

Gang member Wah (Andy Lau) is the archetypal bad boy who, in the opening sequence, speeds through a narrow gap between two lorries and wilfully breaks a wing mirror on a stationary police vehicle as he rides past. Director Chan keeps up the mayhem with a sequence of two competing lorries on a makeshift racing circuit, each with a pretty girl standing on top – until one of them crashes into a stationery car sending the falling girl through its windscreen and scattering the onlookers as the police approach.

Ascendant gang member Trumpet seems to have it in for Wah and puts him on getaway car duty for a jewel heist. Wah must improvise when cops happen by chance to turn up outside the building while the crime is in progress and during the ensuing pursuit by car, in which he gets the robbers successfully away from the scene, and on foot, his only way of escaping the cops is to take an innocent bystander hostage.… Read the rest

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Master Gardener

Director – Paul Schrader – 2022 – US – Cert. 15 – 107m

****

Order and chaos. A man works bringing horticultural order to his employer’s garden estate, but the disorder of his past threatens to catch up with him and wreak havoc upon it

Or. A man engaged in sexual relations with his female employer becomes involved with her grandniece, to whom his employer may one day leave her inheritance

Or. A man orders his employer’s garden estate until she ejects him for sleeping with her grandniece, leaving the pair to survive in the tough world beyond – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 26th

This appears to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it concerns a man (the central character, the eponymous master gardener) imposing order, but he is a man coming from chaos and at some point that chaos may undo what he has achieved there. On the other, it concerns two women – one his monied, controlling, matriarchal employer, the other her grandniece, from the wrong side of the tracks, who the employer wants to learn the business. The man is initially the lover of the first and, later, becomes the lover of the second, for which the first fires him.… Read the rest