Film Festival - Whats The Show

The Choral

12/11/2025 Steve Willems🥉

The Choral Rating

★★★★★

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Art is about being creative and defiant, while music brings people together. Ralph Fiennes leads a strong ensemble cast in The Choral, a moving film about the devastation of war and the uniting power of music. Set in a fictional Yorkshire town during the first world war, the local choral society is struggling to maintain it’s male singers as the men head off to fight. All they have left are the young boys and old men. Trying to maintain a sense of normality despite grief and loss, the community hopes to find a uniting joy by putting on their annual choral performance.

When the choirmaster volunteers to fight in France, the only replacement they can find is Dr Guthrie (Fiennes), who causes immediate scandal because he lived in Germany for many years and admires their art and culture. With most of the great composers being German or Austrian, the Choral society chooses Elgar and his forgotten production The Dream of Gerontius.

But it’s not really about that.

The choral performance acts as the framework to hold a variety of rich stories about love, hope, loss, grief, and fear played by a strong ensemble cast including Alun Armstrong, Mark Addy, Ron Cook, Emily Fairn, and Lyndsey Marshal. The next generation of youth explore love and sex as they face conscription as soon as they turn 18, knowing they may not return. A wounded soldier returns from the war to find his old life is over, and looks for solace and comfort in the choral. There is the pianist, a pacifist and gay man who faces jail and shame for refusing to fight. Dr Guthrie himself struggles with the relevance of Elgar’s story about the death of an old man, when so many of the young are dying. Without permission, he adapts Elgar’s production to better reflect the pain and struggles of the community.

The film is calmly directed by Nicholas Hynter, never overplaying the sentimentality or message. There is plenty of well-placed humour to keep the mood from getting too grim. Hynter handles his characters with a great deal of care, never demonising anyone despite their flaws. Even the powerful and wealthy mill owner who funds the Choral is handled with empathy. Because of his position he expects to play the lead, but only because he loves to sing. It brings him much needed joy as he grieves a fallen son, but soon he realises that he must step aside.

The Choral is playing as part of the British Film Festival at Palace Cinemas Moore Park until December 7, with a program full of the best of British Cinema.

To book tickets to The Choral, please visit https://britishfilmfestival.com.au/films/bff25-the-choral.

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I Swear

26/10/2025 Steve Willems🥉

I Swear (British Film Festival Media Preview) Rating

★★★★★

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Many people still think that Tourette Syndrome is all about swearing, not understanding the deeper complexity and impact of the condition. With education comes acceptance. That is the message at the heart of I Swear, a biopic about John Davidson, the Scottish activist who helped raise awareness of the syndrome after developing symptoms as a teenager. Written and directed by Kirk Jones, the film is a compassionate, beautifully told story that is both heart-warming and heart-wrenching, often at the same time.

While the plot was safe and highly predictable, it was the stunning performances that grabbed my attention and didn’t let go. Robert Aramayo, from Rings of Power, plays an adult John so beautifully that all the physical ticks and outbursts feel natural and authentic. There’s such a warm humanity to John, and his rejections and setbacks are truly heart-breaking. The swearing, while tragic in their origin, are also timed and delivered so well you can’t help but laugh, despite the dramatic consequences. Some lines are absolute classics, with John yelling at the police he has drugs on him, or the judge that he’s a ‘see you en tea’. Aramayo is supported by fantastic cast including Peter Mullan, Maxine Peake, and Shirley Henderson. There isn’t a weak link in the chain.

The story begins when John first notices uncontrollable ticks when he’s only 13. Scott Ellis Watson is brilliant as the young John, convincingly playing a confused and scared young boy as the condition destroys what looks like a promising football career and leads to the break-up of his parent’s marriage. With the condition unrecognised and unaccepted, John is considered a trouble-maker, bullied and outcast not only by other school children but the broader community. It’s devastating.

When John grows up, he lives with his mother who struggles to cope with his behaviour and insists that medication is the solution. When John meets Dottie, the mother of an old school friend, his life begins to change. By showing compassion and understanding, Dottie makes John feel accepted and safe. She tells him never to apologise for something that can’t be helped. This acceptance empowers John to build a normal life for himself, eventually helping others with the condition and educating the community about Tourette Syndrome. There were a few moments where the drama became a little too forced, but I gave the authenticity the benefit of the doubt. It might actually have happened that way.

I Swear is not only moving and inspirational, but educational, turning misunderstanding into revelation. The entire theatre came out raving to each other about the power of the story. I can’t recommend it enough.

I Swear is showing as part of the British Film Festival at Palace Cinemas Moore Park from November 5 to December 7, with a program full of the best of British Cinema.

To book tickets to I Swear (British Film Festival Media Preview), please visit https://britishfilmfestival.com.au/films/bff25-i-swear.

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Serpent’s Path: Japanese Cult Movie to Taut French Thriller

19/10/2025 Mark Hobgood🆕

Serpent’s Path Rating

★★★★★

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Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa takes a second shot at ‘Hebi no michi,’ his 1998 Japanese V-Cinema movie. Here, Kurosawa steps away from Japan’s criminal underbelly, remaking his film in Paris, as a predominately French-language thriller.

Back in 1998, Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to the legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa) made V-Cinema movies as quickly as Roger Corman used to make horror films. Most were straight-to-video, some had a limited theatrical release. V-Cinema usually meant low-budget action: bullets, explosions, crime stories and thrill rides.

‘Hebi no michi’ was dark and contemplative. Two men, Miyashita and Nijima, were hellbent on revenge. Carving a bloody swathe through everyone Miyashita held responsible for the brutal murder of his daughter.

The original 1998 Japanese movie, starring Teruyuki Kagawa as Miyashita and V-Cinema legend Show Aikawa as Nijima, rapidly gained cult status.

French cinemagoers have developed a taste for director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s movies. He has twice won the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard prize, for ‘Tokyo Sonata’ in 2008, and for ‘Journey to the Shore’ in 2015.

His international reputation was cemented in 2020 when his film, ‘Wife of a Spy,’ won the Silver Lion for Best Director at the Venice International Film Festival.

Given the opportunity to remake one of his earlier movies in France, Kurosawa jumped at the chance, immediately choosing ‘Hebi no michi,’ ‘Serpent’s Path.’

‘Serpent’s Path,’ ‘La Voie du serpent,’ 2024, updates and makes a number of subtle but effective changes.

Kô Shibasaki (Battle Royale; 47 Ronin; The Boy and the Heron) and Damien Bonnard (Les Misérables; Poor Things; The French Dispatch) star in this taut and brilliant thriller.

Damien Bonnard takes the role of Albert Bacheret. The original’s Miyashita was ex-Yakuza. Part of Japan’s criminal underworld. Here, Bacheret is a bumbling, grieving father. He shambles, broken and hurting but unstoppable.

Kô Shibasaki as Sayoko Mijima holds every frame she appears in. Mijima’s stillness is in marked contrast to the stumbling Bacheret. Mijima is a psychiatrist rather than the original’s schoolteacher. As the movie’s mysteries are revealed one by one, Mijima keeps her secrets.

Shibasaki and Bonnard are ably supported by a cast of French character actors including Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly; The Grand Budapest Hotel; Quantum of Solace) and Grégoire Colin (The Dreamlife of Angels; The Vourdalak).

Kurosawa shifts the story from Japan’s criminal underworld to the dark side of European charitable organisations. Anonymous foundations, with secretive inner circles. Wider conspiracies that hide unspeakable crimes.

‘Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves’ was originally a Japanese proverb.

In Serpent’s Path, you need to dig half a graveyard to bury the dead. The first act of abduction, dehumanisation and revenge rapidly spirals as deeper secrets are uncovered and the body count rises.

Is anyone telling the truth? Are they lying and pointing fingers to shift blame and save their own skin?

Serpent’s Path winds left and right, zigzagging as you follow the clues, the confessions and the trail of the dead.

Avoid spoilers, buy tickets and immerse yourself in this razor-sharp thriller.

To book tickets to Serpent’s Path, please visit https://japanesefilmfestival.net/film/serpents-path/.

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Cloud

18/10/2025 Anastassia Gerakas🥈

Cloud Rating

★★★★★

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Premiering out of competition at the 2024 Venice International Film Festival, Cloud is a slow-burning psychological thriller that peels back the digital veneer of modern ambition and exposes the hollow desperation that simmers underneath. Directed with icy precision and a haunting visual stillness, this unsettling Japanese film follows Yoshii, an online reseller whose brush with success begins a descent into paranoia, deception, and vengeance.

Yoshii, scraping by reselling goods on the internet, stumbles upon a too-good-to-be-true deal—a medical machine bought for next to nothing and resold at a massive profit. High on this first big taste of victory, he quits his job, distances himself from his one close friend (also in the reseller game, but far less lucky), and relocates to a quiet lakefront house in the countryside with his girlfriend, setting up shop in near isolation. He hires a seemingly naive local villager as his assistant—but from the outset, nothing in Cloud is what it seems.

With its brooding and sparse score and long, languid shots, the film establishes a pervasive sense of unease. Yoshii is visibly on edge, hiding behind a pseudonym online, self proclaiming to be unsure if what he’s selling is even legitimate. The rural calm quickly gives way to dread: an object hurled through his window in the dead of night, a police investigation into counterfeit sales, and whispers of betrayal ripple through the tension-soaked air.

As the walls close in, Cloud deftly shifts between psychological suspense and social commentary. The internet, a tool for connection and entrepreneurship, becomes instead a breeding ground for fraud, resentment, and faceless revenge. Reviewers accuse Yoshii of being a crook, and dark forces gather—literally. An online mob forms, headed by none other than his estranged old friend, each member with a personal vendetta.

The film’s third act spirals into violent chaos. Yoshii, blind to the consequences of his opportunism, is eventually kidnapped and nearly executed in a live-streamed act of vengeance—only to be saved by his assistant, revealed to have a shadowy past in organized crime. The girlfriend, the assistant, the friend—each character has been complicit in a shared unraveling, a reckoning born not just of greed, but of modern alienation and rage.

Director, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, doesn’t offer clean moral judgments, nor easy redemption. Instead, Cloud paints a murky portrait of a world where ambition overrides empathy, and where digital anonymity can turn ordinary people into victims—or monsters. What starts as a tale of a hustle ends as a chilling parable about the cost of chasing success in an economy built on illusion.

To book tickets to Cloud, please visit https://japanesefilmfestival.net/film/cloud/.

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