Africa | the m0vie blog

139. The Lion King (#45)

Posted on July 22, 2019 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Phil Bagnall and Graham Day, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT.

This time, Rob Minkoff and Roger Allers’ The Lion King.

The Pridelands have enjoyed a period of sustained peace under the stewardship of the proud king Mustafa. However, Mustafa’s young son Simba finds himself embarking upon a journey of self-discovery and adventure as he learns just how fragile happiness can be and just how heavy responsibilities can weigh upon a king.

At time of recording, it was ranked 45th on the Internet Movie Database‘s list of the best movies of all-time.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: Africa, animation, canon, childhood, death, disney, disney canon, graham day, lions, maturity, mortality, phil bagnall, scar, the lion king, violence | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: China Salesman

Posted on June 11, 2018 by Darren

China Salesman is fascinating disaster.

China Salesman is not a good film by any measure, but it is strangely compelling. There is something intoxicating about the film, in spite of its myriad flaws – the awful script, the atrocious dubbing, the clumsy editing, the terrible performances, the muddled storyline, the abundance of nonsensical technobabble. Part of this is down to the sheer abundance of energy that director Tan Bing brings to proceedings. China Salesman whips and whirls, cranks and zooms, pans and swirls with a kinetic energy that renders these flaws almost bedazzling, offering an effect that in some ways evokes a bad trip.

The gun show.

However, China Salesman is perhaps most interesting as a mirror and a prism. It is, like Wolf Warrior II, very much the Chinese equivalent to those old patriotic eighties American action movies like Delta Force or Iron Eagle, the kind of populist nationalist cinema that is currently channeled through franchises like Transformers. As such, there is something intriguing in seeing the image that China Salesman projects into the world, as an assertion of multinational intent to the rest of the world and as a statement of patriotic self-image to the country itself.

China Salesman is terrible. It is also terribly interesting.

The old man and the Seagal.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Africa, China, china salesman, colonialism, film, mike tyson, Movie, non-review review, propaganda, Steven Seagal | 1 Comment »

The X-Files – Teliko (Review)

Posted on February 4, 2015 by Darren

This February and March, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the fourth season of The X-Files and the first season of Millennium.

The very premise of Teliko is something that should probably have big flashing warning lights around it.

Teliko is an episode about an immigrant from Burkina Faso who celebrates his arrival by murdering within the African-American community. As such, it is the kind of story that the production team has to be very careful in handling. It could easily become a horrendously xenophobic anti-immigration story, a warning about the dangers of opening the borders to foreigners from cultures that are different to our own. And that is even before the episode decides to have the monstrous murderers turn his African-American victims white.

Top drawer…

Writer Howard Gordon has navigated this sort of minefield before. Fresh Bones was a voodoo story set within a Haitian refugee camp. As such, it came with many of the same sorts of latent issues. It would be very easy to put a foot wrong, to turn the story into a collection of unpleasant and reactionary stereotypes that painted the foreign as inherently and undeniably horrific. Gordon’s script for Fresh Bones cleverly side-stepped a lot of these problems, becoming one of the strongest scripts of the second season.

While Teliko makes a conscious effort to avoid these potential hurdles, it isn’t quite as quick on its feet.

It’s okay. Everybody gets a little airsick.

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Filed under: The X-Files | Tagged: Africa, anti-immigration, burkina faso, ebola, Howard Gordon, immigration, minorities, mulder, other, samuel aboah, squeeze, teliko, the x-files, Tooms, x-files, xenophobia | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Mandela – Long Walk to Freedom

Posted on November 26, 2013 by Darren

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom is very clearly a sentimental life-affirming true story, very clearly pitching itself as an upbeat and hopeful account of one of the most iconic statesmen of our time. A collection of all the “greatest hits” of Mandela’s struggle against oppression and hatred, Mandela is an efficiently calculated piece of cinema. It’s a grand sweeping historical epic that never really pulls back the layers of the character it examines, instead opting (mostly) to film the legend.

And it works. After all, what other world leader in the past half-century can lay claim to such an inspirational narrative? Nelson Mandela’s journey lends itself to this sort of optimistic and inspirational adaptation, and the subject is a comfortable fit for this sort of sweeping life-affirming whirl-wind exploration of Mandela’s personal history.

Courting public opinion…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Africa, African National Congress, Anti-Apartheid Movement, Biographical film, Clint Eastwood, film, Idris Elba, Justin Chadwick, King's Speech, Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela, Naomie Harris, nelson mandela, Robben Island, south africa | 4 Comments »

Superman: Birthright (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on June 26, 2013 by Darren

To celebrate the release of Man of Steel this month, we’re going Superman mad. Check back daily for Superman-related reviews.

You gotta love a good Superman origin. It seems like there are just so many of them floating around, especially in recent years. Grant Morrison’s Action Comics run, Geoff Johns’ Secret Origin and Mark Waid’s Birthright were all published within the last decade. You could throw in Kurt Busiek’s Secret Identity if you aren’t too bothered about the weight of shared universe continuity.

All of these stories are interesting on their own merits, worthy additions to the character’s back catalogue, but none of them really completely define Superman as a character. None of them really encapsulate everything essential about the character in the way that a strong origin story really should.

Birthright is a fascinating take on Superman’s origin with several clever twists and wonderful ideas, but it feels somehow inessential. It’s an alternative take, a version which feels – by its nature – somewhat secondary. It doesn’t encapsulate everything essential about Superman, but instead allows as a glimpse at the hero from a different angle.

This looks like a job for…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Africa, birthright, Christopher Nolan, Clark, clark kent, general zod, grant morrison, man of steel, mark waid, Steel, superman, superman: birthright, United States | 7 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Superman vs. The Elite

Posted on June 13, 2013 by Darren

To celebrate the release of Man of Steel this month, we’re going Superman mad. Check back daily for Superman-related reviews.

Superman has struggled with his pop culture credibility for quite some time now. The character is seen as too old-fashioned or outdated to really resonate in the modern world, standing for an overly simplistic and unquestioning moral philosophy which doesn’t take into account the nuances of current realities. Superman vs. The Elite, adapted from Joe Kelly’s What’s so Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way?, represents an attempt to counter this opinion of Superman as a character. Unfortunately, it never really does so be convincing us that the character is still relevant. Instead, it creates a bunch of convenient straw men to oppose our hero, and never allows him to win on his own terms.

Beware the Superman…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Action Comics, Africa, art, Authority, crime, Elite, england, Joe Kelly, jor-el, Lois, Lois Griffin, man of steel, Manchester Black, mark millar, Spell checker, Steel, superman, warren ellis, What's So Funny About Truth Justice & the American Way? | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Good Man

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2013.

Films about social justice can occasionally seem a bit clunky. Part of this is down to the way that most seem to have been conceived as simplistic morals rather than engaging stories, but there’s also a tendency to earnestly moralise in a manner that condescends to the audience. The Good Man manages to avoid the worst of these problems with a smartly-constructed third act that dovetails its two central narratives into one another, and because it accepts that the problem with our attitudes towards disadvantage and poverty in the rest of the world isn’t down to a simply lack of awareness. It is, the film suggests, easy to know about a problem, and easy to try to help. Understanding, on the other hand, is a far more challenging proposition.

We’re all connected…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: 2010 FIFA World Cup, Africa, Aidan Gillen, Belfast, dublin, Embassies and Consulates, film, Government, Jacob Zuma, jameson dublin international film festival, Michael, Movie, non-review review, Northern Ireland, Phil Harrison, review, south africa | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Day of the Jackal

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Darren

The Day of the Jackal is a fascinating entry in the assassination subgenre, most impressive for the careful and meticulous way that it examines the unfolding events – it’s more of a procedural than a cat-and-mouse thriller. Indeed, it’s almost an hour into the film before the two detectives chasing the eponymous hit man appear on screen. Fred Zinnemann’s movie has a two-and-a-half hour runtime, but doesn’t rely on a shifting or twisting narrative to fill it. Instead, it simply allots the characters and the world that they inhabit a bit more room to breathe, to the point where The Day of the Jackal seems a great deal more human and personal than most assassination thrillers, as we get a sense of the people tied up in a plot to assassinate Charles de Gaulle.

Tie a grey rope ’round the old… I’m not sure what type of tree that is…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Africa, assassination, Business and Economy, Claude Lebel, Day of the Jackal, Edward Fox, Fox, france, Fred Zinnemann, Jackal, Jaejoong, japan, murder, Nigeria, Parallax View, Smoking Gun, Song Ji-hyo | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Help

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Darren

The Help is a well made film with a solid script, decent direction, and some very good performances from a superb ensemble. It’s hard not to get swept up in the drama as it unfolds, as the movie takes a harsh look at some of the prejudice festering in Mississippi during the sixties, where the phrase “hippie!”was an accusation that could destroy anyone’s social standing, it was not appropriate to fraternise with the help, and even raising the suggestion of racial equality was to open one’s self to prosecution for breaking the law. It’s powerful stuff. I was moved by it, particularly by the wonderful work put in by the cast. And, yet, I couldn’t help but feel that there was something very cynical unfolding before my eyes. The Help is a movie that seems built to fill a particular void, carefully measured and constructed to keep its audience well within their comfort zones, and a movie that feels like it might be sacrificing some of its depth for fear of actually challenging its audience.