Hostiles film review.

(Release Info UK schedule; January 17th, 2020, Glasgow Film Theatre, 12 Rose Street, Glasgow, G3 6RB, 13:30 19:30) https://film.list.co.uk/listing/1447804-a-hidden-life "A Hidden Life" Based on real events, "A Hidden Life" is the story of an unsung hero, Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl), who refused to fight for 'The Nazis' in 'World War II'. When the Austrian peasant farmer is faced with the threat of execution for treason, it's his unwavering faith and his love for his wife Franziska (Valerie Pachner) and children that keep his spirit alive. "A Hidden Life" is based on the true story of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian peasant farmer, who refused to take the oath of allegiance to Hitler during 'World War II', sacrificing everything, including his life, rather than to fight for 'The Nazis'. Born and raised in the village of 'St. Radegund', Jägerstätter is farming his land when war breaks out. Married to Franziska, the couple are very much in love and involved with the tight-knit community. They live a simple life in the fertile valleys and mountains of upper Austria, with the passing years marked by the arrival of the couple’s three girls Maria (Sarah Born), Rosalia (Karin Neuhäuser) and Aloisa (Franziska Lang). When Franz is called up to basic training, a requirement for all Austrian men, he's away from his beloved wife and children for months. Eventually, when France surrenders and it seems the war might end soon, he's sent back home. His mother and sister-in-law Resie (Maria Simon) come to live with them, and for a while things seem to go on as normal. Instead of retreating, the war escalates, and Franz and the other men in the village are called up to fight. The first requirement of a new soldier is to swear an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler and 'The German State'. Despite pleas from his neighbors, fellow soldiers and commanding officers, Franz refuses the oath; objecting to Hitler and 'The Nazi Regime'. With his quiet act of resistance he asks the question, if leaders are evil, what does one do? With a sense of personal responsibility and the inability to do what he believes is wrong. Meanwhile Franziska is left to deal with the aftermath of his decision. Not only is she now the caretaker of the family’s farm as well as her three young daughters, she's iostracized from her community. Fear of Hitler forces once kindly neighbors to turn their backs on 'The Jägerstätter Family'. Wrestling with the knowledge that his decision would mean arrest and likely death, Franz finds strength in Franziska's love and support. He's imprisoned, first in Enns, then in Berlin; and waits months for trial. During his time in prison, he and Franziska write letters to one another and give each other strength. After months of incarceration, the case goes to trial. Franz is found guilty and sentenced to death. While Franz’s faith drives him to resist taking the oath to Hitler, representatives from religious, civic, government and military institutions plead with him to disavow his beliefs and swear his allegiance, even if he's disingenuous, in order to save his life. Franz continues to stand up for his beliefs and is executed by 'The German State' in August 1943. His wife and three daughters survive. The relationship between Franz and his wife Franziska endures. The film portrays their bond as deeply as Franz’s devotion to his cause. At every turn Franziska is there for Franz; strong, unfaltering and supportive of his path while raising their daughters and running the farm alone, eventually with help from her mother-in-law and sister. Franz Jägerstätter is born on May 20th, 1907, in the Austrian village of 'St. Radegund'. His mother is an unmarried farm servant, Rosalia Huber (Jasmin Mairhofer). His father died in 'The First World War'. Franz’s formal education is slight and brief. From 1913 to 1921 he attends the one-room school in 'St. Radegund', where a single teacher taught seven grades. At a given time, there are about fifty to sixty children in all. But one sees from his writing that he's a quick learner with a well-organized and independent mind. Franz’s birthplace is as inauspicious as his education. The village of 'St. Radegund', on the 'River Salzach , is on the northwestern edge of Austria. The village, with a population of about five hundred, appears only on the most detailed maps of Austria. Mozart’s 'Salzburg" is to the south, 'Linz' to the east, 'Vienna' much further east. The closest major German city is 'Munich'. Hitler’s birthplace, the Austrian town of 'Braunau', isn’t far from 'St. Radegund'. Franz grows up mainly among farmers. 'The Jägerstätter' farm is one among many in the area. It's a region in which 'Catholicism' is deeply embedded. The idea of not being 'Catholic' is, for nearly everyone Franz knows, as unthinkable as moving to another planet, though he has a cousin who becomes a 'Jehovah’s Witness'. One reads in the accounts of saints lives how pious some of them are from the cradle to the grave. The stories local people tell of Franz as a young man go in the opposite direction. In his teens he isn't hesitant to get involved in fistfights. He enjoys all the pastimes that his friends enjoyed. Along with all his neighbors, he goes to church when everyone else did, but no one would have remarked on his being a saint in the making. In 1930, at age twenty-three, Franz works for a time in the Austrian mining town of 'Eisenerz'. Returning to 'St. Radegund', Franz surprises his family and neighbors by arriving on a motorcycle he has purchased with money he earned in the city. No one else in the area has a motorcycle. The most important single factor attributed to bring about a change in Franz is his marriage to Franziska Schwaninger. Nearly everyone who lives in the area saw this as the main border-crossing event of his adult life. Franz is a different man afterward. Franziska is six years younger than Franz. She's very strong having been brought up in that area. She comes from a deeply religious family; her father and grandmother are both members of 'The Marian Congregation'. Her grandmother belonged to 'The Third Order Of St. Francis'. Before Franziska’s marriage, she has considered becoming a nun. After a short engagement, the two marries on April 9th, 1936. Franz is almost twenty-nine, Franziska twenty-three. It's a happy marriage. In one of his letters to Franziska during his period of army training in 1940, he mentions how fortunate and harmonious have been their years of marriage. Years after her father’s death, 'The Jägerstätter’s' eldest daughter, wondering aloud whether she would ever marry, recalls her mother warning her that married couples often fight. They've three children, all daughters; Rosalia in 1937, Maria in 1938, and Aloisia in 1940. There's not a marriage out of touch with the world beyond their farm. Franz and Franziska are attentive to what's going on just across the river from 'St. Radegund' in Germany. On March 12th, 1938, 'The Eighth Army' of 'The German State' crosses 'The German-Austrian' border. Assisted by 'The Local Nazi' movement and supported by the vast majority of the Austrian population, German troops quickly take control of Austria then organized a national plebiscite on April 10th to confirm the union with Germany. With few daring to vote against what have already been imposed by military methods, 'The Annexation' of Austria by Germany was even ratified by popular ballot. Austria, now an integral part of 'Nazi-Germany', ceased to exist as an independent state. Well before 'The Annexation', Franz has been an 'Anti-Nazi', but the event that brought his aversion to a much deeper level is a remarkable dream he has in January 1938. Perhaps it's triggered by a newspaper article he has read a few days earlier reporting that 150,000 more young people have been accepted into 'The Hitler Youth Movement'. In his dream he sees a wonderful train coming around a mountain. This train is going to hell. The train, he realizes, symbolized the glittering 'Nazi Regime' with all it's spectacles and it's associated organizations, 'Hitler Youth' being one of the most important and spiritual corrupting. In 'St. Radegund' it's widely known that Franz, ignoring the advice of his neighbors, has voted against 'The Annexation', but, in the reporting of the new regime in Vienna, Franz’s solitary vote was left unrecorded. It's seen as endangering the village to put on record that even one person has dared raise a discordant voice. After all, as Franz is painfully aware, even Austria’s 'Catholic' hierarchy had advocated a yes vote. Afterward 'Cardinal' Innitzer (Thomas Prenn), principal hierarch of 'The Catholic Church' in Austria, signed a declaration endorsing 'The Annexation'. Having become citizens of Germany, every able Austrian is subject to conscription. Franz is called up in June 1940, taking his military vow in 'Braunau', Hitler’s birthplace, but a few days later he returns to his farm, as farmers are needed no less than soldiers. Franz realizes that a return to the army is not possible for him. Even at the cost of his life, he would have to say no. Franz readily talked about his views with anyone who would listen. Most often he's told that his main responsibility is to his family and that it would be better to risk death in the army on their behalf than to take steps that would almost certainly guarantee his death. While he would certainly do what he could to preserve his life for the sake of his family, Franz notes that self-preservation did not make it permissible to go and murder other people’s families. He points out that to accept military service also means leaving his family without any assurance he would return alive. Franz even managed to meet with the bishop of Linz, Joseph Fliesser (Michael Nyqvist). Franziska is in the adjacent waiting room. When Franz comes out of the bishop’s consulting room, Franziska recalls that he's very sad. They don’t dare commit themselves or it will be their turn next. Having gone through his training, nearly two years went by without Franz’s receiving a summons to return to the army. Throughout that period, each time mail is delivered to 'The Jägerstätter' farm, both husband and wife are in dread. Finally on February 23rd, 1943, the fateful letter arrived. Franz is ordered to report to a military base in 'Enns', near 'Linz', two days later. At the station in 'Tittmoning', Franz and Franziska could not let go of each other until the train’s movement forced them out to separate. Franz is already two days late for his appointment at 'Enns'. The following day Franz is placed under arrest and transported to the military remand prison in nearby Linz. No one knows better than Franziska how carefully thought out is the position Franz is taking. Even so, it's impossible for her not to encourage him occasionally to search for some alternate path that might not violate his conscience but perhaps would save his life. In the army base at 'Enns' people traps him by means of trick questions and so as to make him once again into a soldier. It's not easy to keep his conviction. It may become even more difficult. Without warning, on May 4th, 1943, Franz is taken by train to the prison at 'Tegel', a suburb of 'Berlin'. Here Franz would spend the last three months of his life in solitary confinement. On July 6th, 1943, a brief trial occurred. Franz is convicted of 'undermining military morale' by inciting the refusal to perform the required service in 'The German Army'. Franz is sentenced to death. On July 9th, 1943, Franz and Franziska have a last meeting. On July 14th, 1943, Franz’s death sentence is confirmed by 'The German State War Court'. During his time in 'Berlin', Franz was permitted to write only one letter to Franziska each month, plus a fourth that was written on the day of his execution. The four letters bear witness to his extraordinary calm, conviction, and even happiness. On August 9th, 1943, Franz is taken to Brandenburg where, at about 4:00 p.m., he's killed by guillotine. He dies with no expectation that his sacrifice would make any difference to anyone. He knows that, for his neighbors, the refusal of army service is incomprehensible, an act of folly, a sin against his family, his community, and even his church, which has called on no one to refuse military service. Franz knows that, beyond his family and community, his death would go entirely unnoticed and have no impact on 'The Nazi' movement or hasten the end of the war. He would soon be forgotten. Who would remember or care about 'The Anti-Nazi Gesture' of an uneducated farmer? He would be just one more filed-away name among many thousands who were tried and executed with bureaucratic indifference during 'The Nazi Era'. The film is set in 'St. Radegund' where the events depicted actually took place, including certain interiors of 'The Jägerstätter' house, which has over the years become a pilgrimage site, as well as by 'The Salzach' river near 'St. Radegund' and in the woods below the house. 'St. Radegund' is a small village of 500 people in 'Upper Austria', near Salzburg and 'The German Border', in the same province where Hitler was born and spent his early youth, not far from Berchtesgaden, his mountain retreat during his years as head of 'The German State'. The clock visible on the wall of 'The Jägerstätter' living room is the one that Franziska is listening to when, at four in the afternoon on August 9th, 1943, at the very hour of Franz’s execution, she remembered feeling her husband’s presence. The bedroom is theirs and looks as it did then. Her embroidery still hangs on the walls. Franz and Franziska’s three daughters, Maria, Rosalia and Aloisa live in, or near, 'St. Radegund'. The story plays in churches and cathedrals, farms with real livestock, orchards, up mountains, in fields and along rural pathways. Nature and the natural environment are part of the subtext and the locations provided us with a foundation to build up from. In addition to his work as a farmer, Franz Jägerstätter serves as a sexton at the local church. He cleanes, rang the bell, and prepared weddings and funerals; without compensation and in addition to his duties as a farmer. The family’s various pursuits required a wardrobe that reflects not just their interests but their economic status. There's always imagination with costumes. But in this case, the most important part is getting as close to the reality as possible. The historic background of the story requires modern buildings and signs of contemporary life. The film draws on actual letters exchanged between Franz and Franziska while Jägerstätter was in prison. The collection was edited by Erna Putz and published in English by 'Orbis Books'. Some lines have been added to the letters, and sometimes the letters are paraphrased. The story was little known outside of 'St. Radegund', and might never have been discovered, were it not for the research of Gordon Zahn, an American who visited the village in the 1970s. Franziska passed away in 2013, aged 100. Today, the fields around 'St. Radegund' are covered in corn, a crop that's not grown at the time, as well as with power lines and modern houses, some immediately adjacent to 'The Jägerstätter’s' own. "A Hidden Life" primarily uses natural light, turning to artificial illumination only on rare occasions. Changing lighting conditions requires a continuous attention for stop changes to ensure proper exposure. For all the other sets, including the prison cells, the film works with the sun, adjusting the schedule to the appropriate time of day. The film is shot digitally on 'The Red Epic Dragon' camera system. The camera is selected for it's ability to handle stark contrast within a scene, preserving details in both the highlights and shadows of the image, while still maintaining realistic color. The film focuses on the emotional journeys and crises of conscience of the characters, the music reflects their story. The solo violin throughout the film embodies the connection between the two main characters. It’s an extraordinary, enduring love story that investigates human reactions and motivations and just how far people will push for their beliefs and conscience. It asks hard questions; do you've the right to hurt people that you love in service of the greater good? Ultimately, it's a timeless story of devotion, love and forgiveness. People relied on each other, and at that time that also means that you could not break out and be different. You've to toe the line. For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in the unvisited tombs.

(Release Info London schedule; December 26th, 2019, Vue Cinéma, O2 Centre, 255 Finchley Rd, London NW3 6LU, United Kingdom, 2:00 pm) "Spies In Disguise" Super spy Lance Sterling (Will Smith) and scientist Walter Beckett (Tom Holland) are almost exact opposites. Lance is smooth, suave and debonair. Walter is not. But when events take an unexpected turn, this unlikely duo is forced to team up for the ultimate mission that will require an almost impossible disguise; transforming Lance into the brave, fierce, majestic pigeon. Walter and Lance suddenly have to work as a team, or the whole world is in peril. Brimming with confidence and swagger, Lance is the world’s greatest spy, the best of the best of international espionage agents, Lance is all sharp angles, tall, elegantly attired, exuding coolness. Everyone knows his name, and he's often greeted by his fans with applause. He’s also used to being armed with the most state-of-the-art, cool spy gadgetry, including his cutting-edge two-seater sports vehicle, 'The Audi RSQ E-tron'. In this way, Lance and all the other agents are dependent on the technical wizards behind-the-scenes who design these gadgets for 'The Agency'. One of these tekkies is awkward yet lovable Walter Beckett. Walter is the opposite of Lance, short and appealingly geeky, dressed more for comfort and practicality than style; a genius, not an athlete. Where most of these gadgets designed by 'The Agency' are intentionally destructive and deadly, Walter, who graduated 'MIT' at age 15, has a different point of view, and designs gadgets that are completely effective, but cause no harm. For example, when tasked to create a grenade, he invents a device that explodes with glitter and creates a visual of an adorable kitten. Walter understands that seeing a kitten releases serotonin, causing the viewer to feel happy, reduce aggression and become distracted from the situation. Much safer than a grenade that blows things up. While Lance believes in fighting fire with fire, Walter believes that type of thinking just gets everyone burned. If Walter could save the world with a hug, he would. Friendless save for his faithful pet pigeon 'Lovey' (Karen Gillan), Walter’s co-workers at 'The Agency' refer to him as a weirdo, but he was raised by his late police officer mother to believe in himself and his unconventional ideas. Together, Walter and his Mom Wendy (Rachel Brosnahan), proudly called themselves 'Team Weird'. Lance and Walter both work at 'The Agency', headed by Joy Jenkins (Reba McEntire) who Lance affectionately calls 'Joyless'. She’s a pretty tough nut. Harsh and demanding, she doesn’t have many soft spots, but one of them is for Lance. Her devotion is tested when 'Internal Affairs' agent Marcy Kappel (Rashida Jones) reveals evidence that shows Lance has stolen a cataclysmically deadly drone from 'The Agency’s' covert weapons lab. The truth is that the weapon, 'The M-9 Assassin', is really in the hands of supervillain Keller 'Robohand' Killian (Ben Mendelsohn), disguised as Lance. A criminal whose real identity is unknown to global authorities, Killian’s missing right hand has been replaced by a robotic claw, hence his nickname. Joy can’t believe that Lance would turn, but Marcy, aided by her video surveillance and analysis agent Eyes (Karen Gillan) and audio analysis expert Ears (DJ Khaled), is determined to have him arrested. Lance, knowing there's a bad guy out there, needs to go rogue to stop him. Eluding capture by 'Internal Affairs', Lance is able to escape from 'The Agency' headquarters and, remembering Walter saying that he could make someone disappear, heads to Walter’s house seeking this new technology. Walter has been working on an invention called bio-dynamic concealment, an elixir that will make whoever ingests it turn into something that most people ignore, allowing them to disappear in plain sight. When Lance unintentionally drinks the formula, he's transformed into a pigeon. Lance, who always viewed pigeons as rats with wings, is horrified and demands that Walter unbird him immediately. But Walter hasn’t yet cracked a formula to reverse his concealment invention. Trapped in the body of a pigeon, our super suave spy struggles to adjust to his new body. What’s more, this guy who’s always flied solo finds himself suddenly part of a flock, surrounded by a trio of other pigeons. And Walter, who may not be built for action in the field, ends up out there, while he desperately tries to find the antidote to the elixir. As they learn to work together in order to stop 'Robohand' from turning the Assassin on mankind, Lance slowly begins to open himself up to a whole new, weird approach to saving the world from Walter.   In addition to being a spy movie, “Spies In Disguise" is a buddy comedy that derives much of it's humor from the differences between it's two main characters. Lance and Walter are a classic odd couple. Lance is a pretty straightforward character. He’s self-confident, he likes being in the spotlight, he likes being the hero, and he likes the accolades. But he’s pretty full of himself, so there’s definitely a balance to be struck there. It’s a special kind of charisma that can carry that off, and you look up chqarisma in the dictionary. Lance is built for the world of espionage: He’s 6 ft. 5 in., 230 lbs. of pure muscle, with broad shoulders, a narrow core and extremely long legs. He’s sleek, sophisticated, strong and athletic and he looks like he could take on anything. That means straight lines, broad shapes, clean. He's better than the best, he’s cool, he’s suave, he’s got swagger, he’s got all the great one-liners, and he’s the good guy. And then you’ve got the guy with the robot hand who’s leering and stands in the shadows and says horrible things and is violent. So you know he’s bad. Then as the movie goes on, the balance walks a delicate line, is to blur those edges, so that the hero’s flawed, he lacks empathy and employs violence. Walter is a hard character to discover because the film wants to make sure the character is sincere. So it's really important that he's affirmational, so kids will go to see the film initially wanting to be like a Lance Sterling, but realizing that the hero is really inside them, like Walter Beckett. Walter’s a really smart dude so you never want him to feel goofy. But he's definitely out of his element in being out in the real world. He’s an academic, but he’s also very committed to those ideas and forceful but not aggressive the way Lance is. Walter is a really happy go lucky kid. He’s really positive, he’s really excited about using his brain for good and to make a difference in his workplace. And then he’s really excited by the idea of a challenge and a mission and going into the field.  But what’s most endearing about him is that he’s trying to change 'The Agency’s' way of thinking and instead of blowing people up and killing people he’s trying to make everyone be happy and positive and safe. So it’s quite nice. Walter has a smaller build, 5 ft. 4 in. and is very wiry. He works hard and feels unappreciated and underestimated, so his posture is somewhat slumped. But he’s full of naïve optimism. He's a dreamer that thinks if you can just come up with the right sort of ways, we can do things differently. A man turns into a pigeon, which is insane. What's genius about the conceit of the script, is that pigeons are actually amazing creatures, and they're the perfect disguise! They’re in every city around the world. No one pays attention to them. Nobody even knows that they’re there. So they’re hiding in plain sight. Because they've eyes on the side of their head, they can see in 360 degrees, which means that at any given time, they can see your face and their butt. And you can’t sneak up on them. They’re one of the fastest birds in the world. But because they’re so fast, they see at a faster rate of speed than we do, so everything to them feels slow motion. We would always refer to that as 'Pigeon Bullet Time'. They see 'UV' light, bands of light that we can’t see with the human eye. On the surface, it seems like a joke, but really this is the best cover for a spy.  No one knows you’re there. You’ve got all these built-in gadgets. It’s actually genius, as are all of Walter’s other gadgets. For example, Walter develops a personal protection device called the 'Inflatable Hug'. It envelopes whoever is holding it in a cushy bubble to avoid harm. Another is the multi-pen. While it looks like a traditional multi-colored pen, it actually has functions such as the ability to shoot serious string like 'Silly String' but only serious to tie up bad guys. It can spray a serum, complete with a hint of lavender that will make even the biggest baddy reveal the truth. It can even shoot a non-lethal electrical pulse that causes whoever is on the receiving end to lose all muscle control and collapse into a rubbery mess.  One of the cool differences about the two characters is that Lance is obviously so into action and beating people up and fighting and being a super spy. Whereas Walter is very much more the guy who wants to help people and, yes, get the job done, but do it in a way with no casualties and he has this one device called 'The Kitty Glitter' which basically explodes glitter everywhere and calms people down to the point where they don’t want to do bad stuff anymore. Whereas Lance just wants a grenade. One of the major differences between Lance and Walter is their approach to the job. Lance flies alone, but the main reason for his desire to stay solo is his concern that anyone else around him might get hurt. Walter, on the other hand, is a firm believer in teamwork, something Lance is forced to accept when he finds himself transformed into a pigeon and is surrounded by three other pigeons known as 'The Flock'. Lovey, Walter’s faithful pet and the smartest of the three, is instantly taken by Lance’s pigeon magnetism, and can’t resist the urge to constantly try to get closer to him. Fanboy’s awkward movements set him apart from the other birds, but nothing will stop him from trying to imitate the suave stylings of his hero, Lance. Walter believes that if we’re the good guys, we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard and do things a good way. In Lance’s world, at first, that seems weird. But then Lance starts to realize that maybe his uncompromising version of good and bad in the world isn’t the only version. As in all classic spy films, there needed to be a formidable villain, an antagonist to set the plot in motion and challenge, but it's important that there be real world motivations for his actions. 'Robohand' is a mysterious and terrifying villain, and it's important to hold back a lot of who he's and why he's. There’s definitely a history with our hero, Lance Sterling. There’s a revenge plot that he’s taking on. The film wants it to feel scary and menacing, so that when we reveal who he's, it’s not just revealing his plan, but a reason for what he does. In order for there to be a Lance Sterling you’ve got to have a Killian. And Killian is the other end of the spectrum of good guys/bad guys. Killian is a super villain. He’s a guy that can and will take down enormous body counts and damage. These are the old paradigms of what good guys and bad guys look like, and they’re very pervasive and they have a great influence in the way that we think about ourselves, and crucially in the way we think about others. That’s all sort of 'Cold War' and 'Pre-Cold War' ideas and notions, and they worked for a long time. Underworld hacker Katsu Kimura (Masi Oka) is the shady character responsible for stealing 'The Assassin' and selling it to Killian. Katsu and Lance have a history together. So he’s not surprised when Lance invades his hideout when he’s doing his deal with Killian, he's probably him. Even though Lance always wins, Katsu has always been able to get away and keep on doing what he does. Physically, Katsu’s a massive giant, very imposing. But he doesn’t use force. He doesn’t have to, he has his Yakuza minions that do it for him. He uses his clever intelligence and his wits and technological skills to do his dirty work. Another obstacle for Lance and Walter is Marcy, "The Internal Affairs' agent on their trail. Marcy’s strong, she’s capable and throughout most of the movie, she’s very definite about what she thinks is right or wrong, but then that strict viewpoint starts to soften a little bit. She realizes she has to open herself up to all the shades of gray in between right and wrong. Marcy’s a very by-the-book, no-nonsense woman. She’s like Tommy Lee Jones in "The Fugitive": on a mission, straightforward, persevering, with only one thing important to her, which is to get Lance Sterling and solve this case. Whereas Lance is all about sports cars and tuxedos and flashy, she’s all about getting the job done and doing it efficiently. She’s not into him from the beginning. At the same time, Marcy’s a very skilled negotiator. And when she needs to be, she can be empathetic and calm and communicate in a way that’s actually going to help the situation. She isn’t hot-headed. Joy Jenkins (Reba McEntire) is Lance and Walter’s boss at 'The Agency'. She’s tough. And to have a name like Joy, you would think she’d be bubbly and animated and not, not at all.  She’s very deadpan. Not much melody in her voice. So her nickname 'Joyless' fits her really well. She's such an effervescent personality that even in a character who’s supposed to be dour at times, you still really feel this fun connection to her. She really brought that sort of undercurrent of charisma to a character who could be pretty flat otherwise. Wendy Beckett, Walter's mom, is a police officer who’s out there facing the hard realities of the world that we live in on a daily basis. At the same time, she needs to appreciate how special Walter is and how important it's that he stay optimistic and true to his beliefs, no matter what other people say. Wendy obviously loves Walter very, very much. And Walter’s kind of a weird kid. He’s into stuff that other kids his age aren’t, and sometimes that’s hard for him. And while Wendy is sometimes annoyed by his inventions and how they interfere with their everyday life, she supports him wholeheartedly, and encourages him to be himself all the time, in all of his weirdness. Even if that means that other kids make fun of him, she tells him that the things that make him weird right now are going to be his superpower as he grows. That's one of the most important lessons that she teaches him that carries through the film. Everyone’s weirdness is their superpower. Everyone’s weird in their own way. There’s no such thing as normal. And it can be so hard when you’re growing up and, and everyone’s striving for this idea of normalcy that just doesn’t exist, to let your freak flag fly, to be yourself in the face of everything else. She only gets screen-time at the beginning, but we feel the effect of her character throughout the whole movie. "Spies In Disguise" is a film that has it's own unique style, design and color palette. In paying homage to classic spy movies, the film creates all exotic globe-spanning locations from 'Washington, D.C.' to Japan to 'The Mayan Riviera' to 'The North Sea' while evoking a world that's very contemporary. The film’s cool spy base, in keeping with the whole idea of espionage where things are hidden before your eyes, is concealed under the reflection pool of 'The Washington Monument'. So it’s in sight, but never seen. The film developes a color language where warmer oranges and yellows represent teamwork and community. A warm shade of turquoise represents 'The Agency', whereas a cool shade of blue is isolating, which is why Lance’s tux is that color, he’s a man who flies solo. Red is an indicator for danger, so the first time we meet Kimura, he’s wearing a big silk red shirt and he’s in a red environment. Killian’s got an eye that goes red; 'The Assassin’s' drone has a red eye. Lance, who prefers to work alone, wants to be isolated, so he’s seen in single shots, carved out by light, or in focus with everything else in the frame out of focus. This way, the audience can see and feel the isolation he’s chosen. Whereas Walter is kept more engaged in the broader focus range and warmer, brighter light. It's an animated spy comedy adventure set in the slick, high-octane, globe-trotting world of international espionage. The film has all the familiar elements of the genre; exotic international locales, dazzling cinematography, big action set pieces, futuristic gadgetry and a great score with a memorable theme. So if the film wants you to feel sad, you might not even notice that the clouds are overhead and it’s a little gray and the characters are a little glum and distant from each other. But when they’re happy, they’re together and they’re in the same frame and it’s a little sunnier out. "Spies In Disguise" teaches a good message to kids that violence isn’t the answer and friendship is more important than anything really.

(Release Info London schedule; FRI 6 - THU 12 DEC, Ciné Lumière, 17 Queensberry Pl, South Kensington, London SW7 2DT, United Kingdom) https://www.institut-francais.org.uk/cine-lumiere/whats-on/new-releases/the-cave/ "The Cave" "The Cave" delivers an unflinching story of 'The Syrian War'. For besieged civilians, hope and safety lie underground inside the subterranean hospital known as 'The Cave', where paediatrician and managing physician Dr. Amani Ballour (Marythavee Burapasing) and her colleagues Samaher (Tan Xiaolong) and Dr. Alaa (Ting Sue) have claimed their right to work as equals alongside their male counterparts, doing their jobs in a way that would be unthinkable in the oppressively patriarchal culture that exists above. Following the women as they contend with daily bombardments, chronic supply shortages and the ever-present threat of chemical attacks, "The Cave" paints a stirring portrait of courage, resilience and female solidarity. Over the past eight years, the war in Syria has spread death, destruction and horror across the country, costing hundreds of thousands of lives and displacing millions. In besieged 'Eastern Al Ghouta', incessant bombardment has turned the landscape into an eerie wasteland dotted with bombed-out buildings and piles of rubble. Going outside is a life-threatening proposition, but residential neighbourhoods are targeted as indiscriminately as markets, schools and other places. Hospitals, medical centres and ambulances are also fair game for the Assad government and it 'Russian' allies. Safety and hope lie underground, where a brave group of doctors and nurses have established a subterranean hospital called 'The Cave'. Under the leadership of a young female paediatrician, Dr. Amani Ballour, 'The Cave' offers hope and healing to the sick and injured children and civilians of 'Eastern Al Ghouta'. In a conservative patriarchal society that devalues women, Dr. Amani is frequently subject to hostility from men who refuse to see her as a capable physician. But Dr. Amani doesn’t back down, and inside 'The Cave', women have reclaimed their right to work as equals alongside their male counterparts. They risk their lives to save their patients and find ways to persevere in a world of cruelty, injustice and suffering. For Dr. Amani and her colleagues Samaher and Dr. Alaa, their battle is not only to survive but to maintain their dreams and hopes for their country and for women. This is a story about a female character battling stereotypes and taking active measures to change her environment. Dr. Amani inspires the women on her team to come and work with her at 'The Cave'. Throughout 'The Cave', we see Dr. Amani act on her convictions. In one scene, she gently draws a bashful little girl into conversation, planting a seed in her mind about what she could be when she grows up. Dr. Amani speaks with all the children who come to her clinic but allows that she paid special attention to little girls, for whom the future was still a far-off topic. In 'Syrian' society, women are expected to get married when they're teenagers. Most men and fathers tell girls; you’ll get married. You’ll go to your husband’s home. But at this stage of their lives, girls haven’t heard men talking about marriage yet. This is the time to tell them about their strength. It’s so important to encourage them. Within 'The Cave', Dr. Amani has the stalwart support of two doctors, Dr. Samaher and Dr. Alaa. They recognise her talents and encouraged her to stand for election to the position of hospital manage. No woman has ever held that position. Dr. Amani recognises the significant step her election would mean. She also knows it would be an enormously difficult, demanding and stressful job, and that she would encounter hostility from the men of her conservative community. It’s very, very hard to run a hospital in a besieged area where people are starving. Also figuring prominently in the film is Dr. Amani’s colleague, Samaher, an energetic nurse who delights in cooking for the staff and devises clever solutions to deal with the shortage of kitchen staples and ingredients. Although a previous bomb attack on 'The Cave' has left her memory- impaired, traumatised and fearful, she's reliably cheerful and very funny. Barfod notes that Samaher, like Dr. Amani, contributed something essential to the hospital and to the film. Amani is the leader and of course is extremely focused on the patients coming in. Whereas Samaher is like the mother of the crew, feeding all the workers. She has a great sense of humour. She's very emotional and very warm, and strong. She brings a lot of light to everything that's going on. Samaher is so fun and charismatic. She gives so much to everyone, but also she has opinions. She's suffering from trauma and you can feel how sensitive and alert she's to any sound, to any movement that happens around her. How does this woman continue to do this work?’ But this is her power, her strength, her courage. She fights her trauma to continue to do what she does until the last minute, without giving up. She can teach us so much about how you can deal with inhuman and dangerous conditions around you. That you should keep smiling, you should enjoy your life, you should cook. Some of the film’s most moving passages to be the periods of time that Dr. Amani and Dr. Alaa spent together. Both are about 30 years old and both have given up their studies to help the people of 'Eastern Al Ghouta'. Their friendship brings something important to the film. Amani and Alaa need each other and there’s a deep emotional connection between them. They've fears about how much the war and passage of time has affected them, and affected their beauty and their capacity for joy. When Amani and Alaa talk about things like putting on mascara, that’s how they remember that they're still women, and they will have lives after the war. It’s so simple yet so powerful. It's primarily through the eyes of his colleagues that we come to know Dr. Alaa, an even- tempered, quietly humorous woman who interacts easily with everybody in the hospital. She has championed Dr. Amani as leader and firmly yet diplomatically challenges men who see her as less than equal. Like Samaher, with whom she works closely, Dr. Alaa has a survival strategy that relies on a personal passion; classical music. Alaa is an amazing woman, very liberal and open-minded. Music is her way of creating happiness and it’s also heecway of resistance. All the stories come together in this woman, Dr. Amani, who's not just doing her duty as a doctor; shes challenging the stereotypes and prejudices that 'Syrian' society has about women. With Dr. Amani, Samaher and Alaa the audience feels the silence and how any sound can be scary. Sometimes you don’t hear the bomb but you hear the shaking, like you might hear in your house when a train is passing. "The Cave" ends with a sequence filmed in that same stretch of 'The Eastern Mediterranean', home to the sunken wreckage of previous wars, including 'World War II". Coming after crossing the sea will carry Amani to a safe place, but this route also holds painful memories of wars and natural disasters. The camera descends and then it rises towards the surface, towards air and light. Despite everything, there's space for hope and a better future, but it can be achieved only through justice. In 1990, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who used chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds, had threatened a chemical strike against Israel. Everyone in Syria knew that if he did that, the chemicals would disperse over this county. In March 2011, the government of 'President' Bashar Al-Assad began a vicious crackdown on the country’s nascent pro-democracy movement. The subterranean floors of 'The Cave' were part of a six-story hospital construction that had been left unfinished and had stood empty since the start of 'The Syrian Rebellion'. When 'The Assad Government' began stepping up it's attacks on 'Al Ghouta' in 2012, surgeon Dr. Amami had the idea to open the underground portion of the building as a safe place to treat patients. Dr. Amani began working at 'The Cave' soon after it opened and was instrumental in building out the hospital’s underground levels. The area was divided into rooms, including a paediatric clinic, women’s clinic, operating room and recovery room, as well as a large central emergency receiving area. The regime detained not only protestors but anyone perceived to be even loosely aligned with their cause. One of the things that you heard all the time is the torture of women and children. And women would be tortured mostly because they're women. The regime is using women as tools of war, to intimidate and attack it's opponents. Then, in August 2013, 'The Assad Government' staged a chemical attack on the opposition stronghold of 'Al Ghouta', on the outskirts of Damascus. Warheads were dropped at 2:30 am, choking people as they slept. After the government laid siege to 'Al Ghouta' in 2013, 'The Cave' became one of the region’s last bastions of life-saving hope. By the beginning of 2018, the situation in 'Eastern Al Ghouta' had grown very dire. Assad and his Russian allies escalated their offensive to reclaim the territory in February 2018, with a campaign of relentless aerial and ground bombardment that included the use of chemical agents. "The Cave" captures the harrowing final days of the hospital, which was shut down by 'The Syrian Government' when it regained control of the region. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story 'The Artist Of The Beautiful', the watchmaker Owen creates a beautiful mechanical butterfly as a gift for his childhood friend, Annie, now a wife and mother. She's astonished as the creature flutters forth from a carved box, exclaiming, beautiful. When the creature alights on her finger, she turns to Owen and says, 'is it alive? Tell me if it be alive, or whether you created it'. Owen replies, 'wherefore ask who created it, so it be beautiful'? Later on, an imprudent boy cruelly destroys the insect. Hospitals are demolished. Medics as well as patients are killed. The systematic targeting of hospitals is used as revenge, intimidation and a method to create chaos and force citizens to flee. No international countermeasures are introduced to stop these barbaric and vengeful attacks. It becomes impossible for the health sector to exist on the surface, so hospitals are built underground. It's astonishing to witness the human ingenuity at work. These hospitals become the only hope for people to survive and receive treatment. And they provided a place where men and women could work together. In fact, these limited underground spaces might be the only places where women can work. "The Cave" witnesses how these female doctors and nurses are fighting to reclaim their rights in these subterranean hospitals. They stand up for themselves, which is something they couldn’t do aboveground in the patriarchal culture surrounding them. These women are truly an inspiration and with this film they will inspire the world as well, contributing to breaking the silence of the outside world. If the silence toward the brutality isn’t broken and if no measures are taken against war crimes, then there's a problem in man’s universal claim to possess the rights of freedom, law and justice. The current time in history is frightening because people are keener to glorify power. Like Hawthorne’s 'The Artist Of The Beautiful' this film helps us to look into the darkest corners of our souls and to inspire us to search for the light. An evocative, bird’s-eye view of women’s lives in a hellish warzone, "The Cave" is rooted in memory, moral convictions and life experience, stretching back to his childhood and into the humanitarian catastrophe of 'The Syrian War'. It's like something out of a Hollywood movie, where you see heroes running between the bodies and trying to save lives. "The Cave" brings the world’s attention to the cruelty of misogyny. The film captures the feelings of the characters through facial expressions and sound. The characters rarely venture aboveground, lest they risk being killed in one of the frequent airstrikes by Russian warplanes. Instead, they spend most of their lives in artificially lit rooms with their mobile phones as their primary connection to the outside world. By showing the range of daily experience, from the harrowing to the mundane, the audience can connect with the characters as individual beings in all their complexity. Of course, the bombings and terrible events that happen are powerful and important to capture. But the film also wants to shine a light on the small, quiet details of each day; things that at first glance may seem unimportant but that, when looked at with more care, are actually the things that make us human. That enable us to survive. The epic to evoke all the obstacles the characters face, the environment that surrounds them, the fear, what they face in daily life. And the simple to speak to the emotional elements of the film. The subterranean hospital is gone, but 'The Cave' exists as a record of the extraordinary haven that a brave group of doctors, women and men, built beneath the earth’s surface. In mythology and literature, the underground is where people suffer and kill. Don’t care about the society, about what people will say about you. You've to do what you love. Just believe in yourself. One day, things will change. Society will change.