1976 (2022)
Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide and streaming on BFI Player
Those two great themes of modern Latin American cinema – the class divide and the trauma of past dictatorships – both come into play in this supremely confident and handsomely paranoid debut feature from Chilean director Manuela Martelli. Set at the height of Pinochet’s military junta, 1976 centres a well-heeled woman (Aline Küppenheim, who we saw in Sebastián Lelio’s 2017 trans drama A Fantastic Woman) who is drawn out of her life of comfort and complacency after she agrees to a favour for a local priest: to take in and nurse an injured dissident. The nerve-rattling, abstract score – one of the best in recent years – is by Brazilian jazz composer María Portugal.
The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future (2022)
Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide
The week’s second Chilean release is as uncategorisable as its title suggests. The opening scene sees scores of fish dying from industrial pollution in a river before a woman emerges out of the water. We find out she’s back from the dead, having drowned herself some years before. This dreamy, visually intoxicating eco-fable from writer-director Francisca Alegria follows her as she seeks to reconnect with her family, including her now grownup daughter and her children. Turning over Alegria’s singular parable for possible meanings is part of the fun, though it’s also possible to simply hold your breath and swim with it.
The Devil Rides Out (1968)
Where’s it on? Talking Pictures TV, Friday, 9.05pm
The best horror Hammer ever made, The Devil Rides Out sees Christopher Lee on the side of good for a change, but up against the full force of evil. He’s Nicolas, Duc de Richleau, the suave aristocrat who discovers an old friend’s son is dabbling with the occult and a band of Satan worshippers centred around Charles Gray. Terence Fisher’s film is based on a 1934 novel by Dennis Wheatley and is set in period at the end of the 1920s. Free from most of the hammier elements of Hammer horror, it conjures real terror as Lee and his allies fend off a night of black magic attacks, culminating with an appearance by the Angel of Death itself.
Burning (2018)
Where’s it on? BBC Two, Sunday, 2.25am
A dead-of-night broadcast for this seductively enigmatic drama from South Korean director Lee Chang-dong, extrapolated from a short story by Haruki Murakami. Burning begins with a chance encounter between our young, aimless hero Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) and an old classmate. He doesn’t recognise her, but they strike a connection and soon he’s agreeing to feed her cat while she’s away on a trip to Africa. The film introduces its third wheel in Steven Yuen’s Ben, the Porsche-driving stranger who comes between the pair, rankling Lee with his entitled air and glad-handing charm. As acute on the social divide as Parasite (2019), Burning unspools with an air of limpid mystery.
Ugetsu Monogatari (1953)
Where’s it on? BFI Player
Seventy years old on Sunday (and expiring on BFI Player at the end of the month), Kenji Mizoguchi’s great classic is ground zero for talking about Japanese ghost stories on film. Long before the spectral long-haired terror of Ringu (1998), there was Machiko Kyo’s hauntingly ethereal turn as Lady Wakasa, the spellbinding antagonist of this tale of a woebegotten potter in war-torn 16th-century Japan. A film about fate, folly and craven instincts, it’s a tragedy mapped out in Mizoguchi’s characteristically graceful tracking shots. It was one of the landmark films with which western audiences first fell in love with Japanese cinema in the 1950s, and made the top 100 (yet again) in the 2022 Sight and Sound poll.
