Tag: workplace

The Tenants
(Se-ip-ja,
세입자)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 13 November 2024
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(Se-ip-ja,
세입자)
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Director – Yoon Eun-Kyung – 2023 – South Korea – LKFF Cert. 12 – 90m

*****

In a black & white, futuristic Seoul, a tenant who sublets his rental apartment to prevent his eviction finds out that this approach has its drawbacks – from LKFF, the London Korean Film Festival 2024 which runsin cinemas from Friday, November 1st to Wednesday, November 13th

An alluring image turns out to be merely an image on a wall, an artifice rather than the paradise we at first assume it to be. This is an image many filmmakers have used to open their movies and, depending on what they’ve seen over the years, it will conjure different films for different viewers. For this viewer, it conjures what I consider one of the funniest films of recent decades, Quick Change (Howard Franklin, Bill Murray, 1990) where the image is revealed as a tawdry New York subway train ad above a clown who will shortly proceed to rob a bank.

The Tenants may not be a comedy, but it shares with that film a sense of urban malaise, a feeling of being trapped in a grim metropolis where everything about the place conspires to prevent the protagonists leaving.… Read the rest

Tags 3D likeness, advice, anti-capitalist, apartment, artifice, aspiration, avatar, back and white, bathroom, best mate, co-workers, commute, confidant, conscience, cramped, daily ablutions elsewhere, elevated railway, evict, first impression, future, Greek chorus, Heo Dong-won, holographic projection, human rights law, image on a wall, Kim Dea-geon, Korea, landlady, landlord, LKFF, LKFF 2024, London Korean Film Festival, London Korean Film Festival 2024, medical bills, mobile telephony, mother, move out, newlyweds, office building, paradise, parallel world, Park So-hyon, Park So-hyun, polluted, prevent leaving, public bench, queueing, rent, restrooms, ruthless, Seoul, South Korea, sublet, tenants, trapped, underclass, urban malaise, washrooms, well-off, workplace, Yoon Eun-Kyung

Features Live Action Movies

Sky Peals

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 8 August 2024
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Director – Moin Hussain – 2023 – UK – Cert. 12a – 91m

****

When his estranged father dies after leaving him an answering machine message, a motorway service station employee starts to question the identity of his father and, by extension, of himself – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 9th

Adam (Faraz Ayub) receives an answerphone message from his father Hassan (Jeff Mirza) who he’s not seen for years; his father hasn’t much time left, is currently near Adam’s home and wants to meet up and talk. Like the answerphone message left by her soon-to-be deceased husband for the heroine of After Love (Aleem Khan, 2020) – is a British subgenre emerging here with Muslims and bereavement? – the recording plays on Adam’s mind at his workplace, the Sky Peals motorway service station, where he does the night shift preparing burgers in the kitchen and keeps himself pretty much to himself. He complains to his superior that the system isn’t working and customers aren’t getting served their orders, but the old manager has left, and the new one doesn’t start ’til Monday. Meanwhile, people aren’t getting their orders.

The police find a dead body in a car in the service station car park.… Read the rest

Tags answering machine, answering machine message, bereavement, bridge, British, Britishness, burgers, car, car park, CCTV, Claire Rushbrook, co-worker, connect, cultural heritage, dead body, death, degraded image, disappear, dislocation, disorientation, employee, estate agent, estranged, ethnic, Faraz Ayub, father, fish-out-of-water, funeral, furniture, glitch, greeter, home, home life, house clearance, identity, indoor bridge, investigation, Islam, isolation, Jeff Mirza, kitchen, loss, manager, Moin Hussain, mosque, mothers and sons, motorway, motorway service station, move out, mundane, Muslim, Natalie Gavin, new manager, new partner, night shift, orders, Pakistani, pointless, post-industrialisation, prospective house buyers, queues, recoding, recording, relationship, relationship breakup, sell a house, selling off, Simon Nagra, single parent mum, Steve Oram, suit and tie, traditional Islamic garb, UK, uncle, vanish, white British, work social, workplace, Yorkshire

Features Live Action Movies

Next Sohee
(Da-eum So-hee,
다음 소희)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 14 June 2024
1 Comment on Next Sohee
(Da-eum So-hee,
다음 소희)
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Director – July Jung – 2022 – South Korea – Cert. 18 – 134m

*****

A schoolgirl on an internship is appallingly exploited by her employers, and a police detective is called in to investigate – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 14th

Here’s a film which presents a real problem for reviewers. Something monumental happens in the middle of the film which entirely changes it. It’s a little bit like the shift from the traumatic drama to the police manhunt in High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963) and a bit like the infamous shower scene in the middle of Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). And yet, the film is like neither of those classics in any other way (except, perhaps, the fact that it’s a remarkable film that will leave you with an indelible impression afterwards). Still, how much can a reviewer give away without ruining the film for audiences?

It’s very much a film of two halves. The first half centres around Sohee (Kim Se-eun), a star pupil at an average secondary school. She is obsessed with dancing, specifically the kind of dance moves associated with K-pop girl- and boy-bands. Among her friends are another former intern from her school who dropped out of her intern position and now spends her evenings getting paralytically drunk.… Read the rest

Tags alcohol abuse, alcohol poisoning, apologise, bonus, boy band, bullying, call centre, capitalism, car park, class tutor, company profits, competition, contracts, customer queries, customer scripts, customers, dance studio too, dancing, dead, depression, detective, difficult customer, Doona Bae, drinking, drunk, education inspection board, employee, employer, ethics, exploitation, factory, friends, girl-band, government agencies, harassment, heavy drinking, high school, hospitalisation, illegal, internet, internship, investigate, investigation, job, July Jung, justice, K-pop, Kim Se-eun, Korea, Korean Telecom, manager, manipulation, meet targets, mind control, neoliberalism, not quit, open and shut case, overwork, parents, parents and children, police, police procedural, pressure, real life case, reservoir, right-wing society, routine assignment, school, schoolgirl, secondary school, sign, Sim Hee-seop, South Korea, speakerphone, subcontractor, suicide, targets, terminate contract, visit from head office, vulnerable workers, walk, work pressures, workers' rights, workforce, workplace

Features Live Action Movies

Paris Memories
(Revoir Paris)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 3 August 2023
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(Revoir Paris)
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Director – Alice Winocour – 2022 – France – Cert. 15 – 105m

****

A woman tries to recall her memories of a Paris terrorist attack – out in UK cinemas on Friday, Aug 4th

Were it not for a singularly unconvincing sex scene (as in, why are these two characters having sex?) about ten minutes before the end, this might have been one of my films of the year. That knocks it down from ***** to ****. That gaffe aside – and it’s a monumentally huge one – this is, otherwise, most impressive.

It starts off with Mia (Virginie Efira) in her Paris flat, feeding the cat, dropping and clearing up a glass, and talking with her partner Vincent (Grégoire Colin), a surgeon who heads up a hospital department. She rides her motorbike to her radio station workplace, where she has a gig as a Russian-French translator. Afterwards, in the evening, she meets Vincent in a restaurant for a meal, but he gets a call from the hospital and has to go back in. After a bit, she heads for home, but it’s raining heavily, so she stops off at another restaurant to have a drink and wait out the rain.… Read the rest

Tags Alice Winocour, Amadou Mbow, ambulance, Anne-Lise Heimburger, apron, Benoît Magimel, bereavement, bloodstained, bursts of gunfire, cook, corridor, crutches, details, evening, everyday life, France, French, Grégoire Colin, gunman, haunting, holding hands, hospital, immigration services, injury, lavatory, lock yourself in, Mali, Maya Sansa, meal, memories, memory, migrant workers, motorbike, Nastya Golubeva), normality, parents, parents and children, Paris, Paris Metro, play dead, police, radio station, rain, recuperate, rescue, restaurant, Russian, Senegal, shooting, Sofia Lesaffre, Sri Lanka, surgeon, survivors, take for granted, terrorist, terrorist attack, time off from work, translator, underclass, undocumented, Virginie Efira, waking life, weekly meeting, workplace

Features Live Action Movies

Blue Jean

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 6 February 2023
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Director – Georgia Oakley – 2022 – UK – Cert. 15 – 97m

*****

A woman attempts to keep her LGBTQ lifestyle and her day job as a PE teacher separate, but has reckoned without the widespread anti-gay prejudice of late 1980s Thatcherite Britain – previews in UK cinemas from Monday, February 6thprior to release on Friday, February 10th

“Everything is political”, says her out and proud girlfriend Viv (Kerrie Hayes) to Jean (Rosy McEwen), an LGBTQ woman who has to date managed to compartmentalise her existence so that work and private life are kept separate. She’d like to keep it that way too, because in her job as a teacher there’s an underlying assumption that heterosexuality is the norm. Which is fine if you happen to fit that model, less so if you don’t. Which Jean doesn’t. And a couple of factors are about to break down those carefully constructed compartments of her life.

It’s the late 1980s in Britain, and Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government is trying to push through Parliament what will eventually become the Local Government Act (1988). Section 28 (or Clause 28) of that Act prohibits councils in England, Wales and Scotland from promoting homosexuality, seen as a deviant behaviour which can be cured.… Read the rest

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Samjin Company
English Class
(Samjin Group
Yeong-aw TOEIC-ban,
삼진 그룹영어토익반)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 14 July 2021
No Comments on Samjin Company
English Class
(Samjin Group
Yeong-aw TOEIC-ban,
삼진 그룹영어토익반)

Director – Lee Jong-pil – 2020 – South Korea – Cert. 12 – 110m

*****

Three undervalued corporate women employees investigate an environmental cover up at their company – a teaser screening from the London Korean Film Festival

1995, Korea. Three twentysomething women working in the Samjin Company are consistently undervalued. They meet up after work and swap stories about their respective departments.

Lee Ja-young (Go Ah-sung from Snowpiercer, 2013; The Host, 2006, both Bong Joon Ho) is a Girl Friday smarter than most of the male employees in her office, including her immediate superior and corporate conformist Choi Dong-soo (Cho Hyun-chul), which would probably cease to function without her. Jeong Yu-nah (Esom from Microhabitat, Jeon Go-woon, 2017) is a marketing minion constantly held back by an immediate superior who does everything they can to take credit for her ideas. Sim Bo-ram (Park Hye-su) is a maths prodigy working in the accounts department where her forward-thinking, male boss Bong Hyeon-cheol (Kim Jong-soo), against the prevailing sexist norm, is possessed of the ability to recognise talent in employees regardless of gender and treat them decently as co-workers.

Sent to clear out the old offices of the boss’ son Oh Tae-young (Baek Hyeon-jin), Lee is told by a male colleague to flush a pet goldfish down the toilet “to set it free”.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Muscle

Director – Gerard Johnson – 2019 – UK – Cert. 18 – 110m

****

Pump it up! A man dissatisfied with his life comes under the influence of a manipulative bodybuilding trainer – on Sky and NOW from Tuesday, June 1st

Newcastle, UK. Simon (Cavan Clerkin) is at a dead end working days in a dodgy telesales job he hates and coming home at night to his partner Sarah (Polly Maberly) who no longer loves him. Whatever attracted her to him has gone. Looking for a way to move forward, Simon sees a man walk confidently out of a doorway and on realising it’s a local gym, decides to join. It’s not long before he’s under the influence of fellow member Terry (Craig Fairbrass), an ex-forces type who takes him under his wing as a personal trainer to help him transform his body. Under Terry’s influence, Simon changes his diet, reduces his drinking with colleagues to virtually nil and is suddenly achieving top sales at work. None of that is enough to stop Sarah leaving him.

Terry is however not what he initially seems. He suggests first he then his friend Crystal (Lorraine Burroughs) move into Simon’s house to help pay the bills then instigates increasingly orgiastic parties with his friends as if the place was his own.… Read the rest