Monthly Archives October 2017
Tears and Laughter: Women in Japanese Melodrama runs until Wednesday 29th November at the BFI Southbank. For more information and to book tickets, click here.
To read an interview with season curator and Sight and Sound features editor James Bell, click here.
OSAKA ELEGY
Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Writer: Yoshikata Yoda (screenplay), Tadashi Fujiwara (dialogue)
Cast: Isuzu Yamada, Yôko Umemura, Benkei Shiganoya
Cert: PG
Running time: 71mins
Year: 1936
What’s the story: To pay off her father’s debts and her brother’s university fees, young switchboard operator Ayako (Yamada) becomes her boss’ mistress. But, when he rejects her she is forced into prostitution.
What’s the verdict: A pre-war film from director Kenji Mizoguchi, the 1936 Osaka Elegy anticipates Japan’s rejection ...
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Director: Herk Harvey
Writer: John Clifford
Cast: Candace Hilligoss, Sidney Berger, Frances Feist, Art Ellison
Cert: 12
Running time: 78mins
Year: 1962
Film:
Extras: 
What’s the story: Young organist Mary is the only survivor when her friend’s car crashes off a bridge into a river. As she attempts to start a new life in a different town, a frightening stranger begins to stalk her.
What’s the verdict: British film fans skirting around the age of 40 are likely to have first encountered Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls courtesy of Alex Cox. Cox screened it in the summer of 1991 as part of his essential Moviedrome series (and his intro can be seen here).
Those of us who saw it that Sunday night were still reeling from the recently released The Silence of the Lambs...
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Director: Jimmy Henderson
Writer: Jimmy Henderson, Michael Hodgson
Cast: Jean-Paul Ly, Dara Our, Tharoth Sam, Celine Tran, Dara Phang, Savin Phillip, Sisowath Siriwudd, Laurent Plancel, Eh Phoutong
Cert: 15 (TBC)
Running time: 92mins
Year: 2017
What’s the story: A Special Forces unit escorting a high value informant to prison must fight for their lives when the inmates break out of their cells.
What’s the verdict: If Assault on Precinct 13 were a martial arts movie, it would be Jailbreak. Picking up the gauntlet thrown down by Ong-Bak and The Raid, Cambodia based Italian director Jimmy Henderson delivers an amped-up explosion of kinetic kick-ass.
Assisted by lead actors Jean-Paul Ly and Dara Our on fight choreography duties, and MMA champion Tharoth Sam as a no-nonsense female cop.
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Director: Martin McDonagh
Writer: Martin McDonagh
Cast: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Lucas Hedges, Caleb Landry Jones, John Hawkes, Peter Dinklage, Samara Weaving, Amanda Warren
Cert: 15 (TBC)
Running time: 115mins
Year: 2017
What’s the story: A year after her daughter’s brutal murder, Ebbing resident Mildred Hayes places signs on the roadside goading the town’s sheriff for not catching the killer.
What’s the verdict: There wasn’t much love for Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths. We liked it, mind, but three rather than seven is writer/director Martin McDonagh’s lucky number.
This astonishing crime drama is set to receive a lot of love. Caustic, profane, hilarious and heartbreaking, it could be the equal of Calvary, the five-star movie McDonagh’s bro...
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Director: Lynne Ramsay
Writer: Lynne Ramsay (screenplay), Jonathan Ames (novel)
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Ekaterina Samsonov, Alessandro Nivola, Alex Manette, John Doman, Judith Roberts
Cert: 15
Running time: 95mins
Year: 2017
What’s the story: Troubled private investigator and enforcer Joe is charged with finding Nina, the daughter of a US senator trapped in an underage sex ring.
What’s the verdict: The sun must have boiled a few brains on La Croisette at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. That is the only explanation for the praise heaped on Lynne Ramsay’s achingly arthouse redressing of 80s action thrillers.
Winner of Best Actor for Joaquin Phoenix, (shared) Best Screenplay for Ramsay and Palme D’Or nominated, we’re crying a case of Emperor’s New Clothes with You Were Never Real...
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Director: S. Craig Zahler
Writer: S. Craig Zahler
Cast: Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Carpenter, Marc Blucas, Udo Kier, Don Johnson
Cert: 18
Running time: 132mins
Year: 2017
What’s the story: Drug runner Bradley Thomas is incarcerated following a bungled drug pick-up. Inside the big house, Bradley is told he needs to perform a specific job or bad things will happen to him and those he loves.
What’s the verdict: Gothic horror Western Bone Tomahawk is possibly the best underseen film of recent years. Hopefully, Brawl in Cell Block 99 will reach a wider audience because writer/director S. Craig Zahler’s prison movie is a hell of a one-two punch… followed by a knee to the nose… and heel to the throat.
We’re trying to say it makes an impression.
The plot is as B-movie simple as the t...
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From Monday 16th October to Wednesday 29th November, the BFI Southbank will be showcasing the Sight and Sound Deep Focus season, Tears and Laughter: Women in Japanese Melodrama.
Exploring Japanese cinema’s Golden Age with a distinctly female focus, across thirteen films it features the great Japanese actresses from the 1940s to the early ‘60s and the emerging New Wave.
Audiences will be familiar with some of the directors included in the season, such as Yasujiro Ozu, Mikio Naruse and Kenji Mizoguchi. But, Tears and Laughter highlights the work of such legendary actresses as Setsuko Hara, Machiko Kyô, Hideko Takamine and the extraordinary Kinuyo Tanaka, the only woman who also directed films during the Golden Age.
As with other Sight and Sound Deep Focus seasons, this is an opportunit...
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Director: Guillermo del Toro
Writer: Guillermo del Toro, Vanessa Taylor
Cast: Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Octavia Spencer, Richard Jenkins, Michael Stuhlbarg
Cert: 15
Running time: 119mins
Year: 2017
What’s the story: In 1960s Baltimore, as the Cold War heats up, mute Elisa Esposito is a lowly cleaner at a government research laboratory. She falls for an amphibian creature in one of the labs. When discovering what government agent Strickland plans for her new love, Elisa plans a daring break-out, calling on her friends for help.
What’s the verdict: The Shape of Water begins in an aquatically themed dream. Fitting, for water is the stuff of which dreams are made in Guillermo del Toro’s latest adult fairy tale.
Del Toro fans will also be in a dream world when immersed in the ...
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Director: Takashi Miike
Writer: Tetsuya Oishi (screenplay), Hiroaki Samura (manga)
Cast: Takuya Kimura, Hana Sugisaki, Sota Fukushi, Yoko Yamamoto, Chiaki Kuriyama
Cert: 18
Running time: 141mins
Year: 2017
What’s the story: Unkillable samurai Manji is hired by plucky young girl Rin to avenge her parents’ murders at the hands of a lethal fighting school.
What’s the verdict: One of Japan’s most remarkable directors, Takashi Miike has quietly produced one hundred movies in just over a quarter of a decade. In a nice twist of coincidence, Takuya Kimura’s unkillable killer Manji is known as “Hundred Killer”.
It is unlikely we shall see Miike return to his astonishing heyday, when he produced such five-star movies as Audition, Ichi the Killer, The Happiness of the Katakuris, V...
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Tears and Laughter: Movie Reviews