Blood and tears: what movie premieres await us in September
In September, two films by young aspiring Russian directors will be released on cinema screens at once — "Three Weddings and One Escape" by Kirill Loginov and "Family Happiness" by Stasi Tolstoy, offering a modern interpretation of the novel of the same name by Leo Tolstoy, to which the director is related. But among the foreign paintings there is a new work of a living classic: Luc Besson presents his film version of "Dracula". Izvestia reports on the most notable film premieres in September.
"Piglet. Blood and acorns"
September 4
Kate and her friends are going camping in the countryside to have fun celebrating her 21st birthday. But the fun ends when one of the guests is found brutally murdered. The killer turns out to be Piglet, a creepy creature, a hybrid of a human and a pig with chains around his neck and a cleaver in his paws. To escape and save her surviving friends, Kate will have to deal with the terrible secrets of her family's past and face her own secret fears.
In 2023, the copyright for Alan Milne's books about Winnie the Pooh and his friends expired. The cute teddy bear has become a public domain... and immediately he went to defame fans of bloody dramas, zombie horror and other, already punishable, perversions. The first swallow was the British master of low-budget thrash Rhys Frake-Waterfield, who released the slasher "Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey" in January 2024, where the feral Winnie and Piglet hunted tourists with chainsaws. Now another fan of horror films and small budgets has followed in his footsteps — the London Italian Andrea Catinella, known for the Mickey Mouse monster slasher "Massacre on the Mouse Boat", which parodies the first cartoon about a smart mouse "Steamboat Willie" in crimson tones. The new "Patch" also has an abundance of blood flows, as well as other cliches of the genre, including the incessant screeching of girls clumsily running in stilettos through the night forest, car chases between trees and cleavers of various shapes, which the Fifty—dollar boar skillfully uses for its intended purpose. Fans of the genre will be interested.
"Dracula"
September 11th
XV century. Prince Vlad II, Count Dracula, loves his wife, Princess Elizabeth, and God more than anything in the world. In the name of God, he goes to war, but when he returns, he learns that Elizabeth died during his absence. Heartbroken, Dracula renounces the Church and, upon learning that his beloved can be reborn, agrees to become immortal. Four hundred years later, in 19th-century Paris, he meets a girl named Mina and realizes that he has met his beloved again. Now he would never agree to part with her.
The plot of the novel "Dracula" by the Irishman Bram Stoker has remained irresistibly attractive to classic directors for decades - from Todd Browning, who shot the classic "Dracula" in 1931 with Bela Lugosi in the title role to Francis Ford Coppola, who delighted fans of Gothic horror with the beautiful "Dracula of Bram Stoker" in 1992. Luc Besson, obviously, is carefully trying to rebuild from the latter in his "Dracula", first of all plot-wise, omitting the story of the unfortunate realtor Jonathan Harker and the legendary fighter against evil spirits Abraham Van Helsing. But from a visual point of view, Besson is undoubtedly in a more advantageous position: over three decades, the possibilities of cinema have changed a lot, and the bloody battles, gloomy castles and charming Paris, skillfully hiding its dark secrets, are impeccable in the new "Dracula". Whether Besson will be able to repeat the success of Coppola, who won three Oscars, we will find out over time, but one way or another, they will make us beautiful. And creepy, too.
"Three weddings and one escape"
September 11th
The restless mischievous Amra lives in the small village of Khuap in Abkhazia. She will graduate from high school soon and has already chosen where she will go to study after graduation — of course, to become an actress! But her mother, an energetic, domineering Nut, does not want to hear about such an unworthy occupation for her youngest daughter. Amra fraudulently submits the documents, telling Nutsa that she is going to medical school, but the deception is revealed, and an angry Nutsa tells her daughter that he will take care of her fate after he marries off her older sisters. Now, in order to set off on the road to her dream, Amra needs to help her sisters create families as soon as possible or run away from home. But each of the sisters has already made her choice, and this does not make Amra's task any easier.
"Three Weddings and One Escape" is the second feature film by the young director and music video maker Kirill Loginov: the first was the 19—minute short film "9 centimeters". The film debut turned out to be impressive: the director's unquestionable professionalism is combined with a fresh perception, sincere and warm attitude towards his characters. As a result, the picture on the screen is breathing, and the characters are alive, real, and recognizable — from the rebellious Amra, who somewhat resembles the direct Parisian Amelie, to the energetic, loud-voiced Nutsy, a typical character in Russian communal life. The Abkhaz flavor does not stick out, freely existing on the periphery of the painting and adding life and authenticity to it. Sly smiles and noisy quarrels, strong women and good—natured drunken peasants, and above them all - the blue-blue sky. The romance of being as it is.
"Family happiness"
September 11th
Orphaned at the age of 17, Masha falls in love with her 37-year-old guardian, a friend of her late father Sergei Mikhailovich. As it turned out, he also has feelings for Masha. They get married and move to Sergei Mikhailovich's estate, where Masha very soon begins to get bored: her husband periodically leaves, leaving her in the care of her mother-in-law with a difficult character. Masha feels lonely, a rift begins in the family — and as a result, the couple decides to live in St. Petersburg, where Masha will have more opportunities for entertainment. Once among the secular society, Masha realizes that she knows nothing about her husband. And the attention of numerous fans at social events endangers the future of their family. Masha and her husband face a serious struggle for a relationship...
The novel of the same name by Leo Tolstoy was filmed by the wife of Tolstoy's great-great-grandson Anastasia Venkova, who took her husband's last name in marriage. Ivan Tolstoy, also a director, claims that he is not yet ready to work with his ancestor's legacy, but his wife turned out to be braver. Tolstoy gave a new meaning to the story, which analyzes the problems of the relationship between an adult man and a young bouncer: the problem of the age difference did not seem relevant to the director with a modern view of the world. The innovative approach completely shifted the emphasis: tired stay-at-home Sergey Mikhailovich, performed by professional screen womanizer Evgeny Tsyganov, turned out to be a kind of mannered Humbert, and the story composed by Leo Tolstoy was subtly enriched by the style of Zalman King with all its meaningful looks, vicious curves of bodies and the crunch of a French sheet. It seems that the classics would be calmer if Anastasia Venkova married a descendant of Nabokov.
"Sparta-2. Hoplites"
September 11th
Six years have passed since the victory of fighter Nikolai Kudryashov at the Sparta tournament. Now he has a chance to lead his own team and bring it to the arena of the prestigious and brutal international TTC championship. To reach a new level, he needs the strongest fighters — and money. To fulfill his dream, Nikolai agrees to step over himself — and invites his old enemies, Andrei Filatov and Viktor Smolyar, to join the team, whom he once ruined his career. Now the former enemies will have to work together, but will the desire for a common victory be enough to forget the former enmity?
An action movie is a fail—safe way to convince the head of the family that going to the cinema may not be a family duty, but a truly entertaining event. The fights, of which more than half the picture consists, are cheerfully staged, and it's easy to identify your own in them: the opponents of our dream team are either black athletes or, according to the tradition started by Dolph Lundgren in Rocky 4, true Aryans, blond beasts.
Nikolai Kudryashov is the founder of the St. Petersburg Federation of Fighting without Rules, Nikolai Kudryashov, so the naturalness of the fights is guaranteed. The phrase of one of the heroes: "I would not like to let the team down — we represent the country!" — will undoubtedly fill the hall with a sense of restrained pride and a desire to extend the subscription to the sports club next year. A useful movie, you need to take it.
"Alter"
September 18
After the nuclear war in 1962, humanity was divided into a superior race and marginals: now genetically modified people rule the world, and the rest of humanity huddles in dirty, impoverished neighborhoods of megacities, where danger awaits at every turn. Leon— a brilliant inventor confined to a wheelchair, along with his girlfriend Chloe, is trying to resist corruption and oppression of humanity by the ruling classes. Leon's invented exoskeleton, which turns a crippled scientist into a fighting machine, will help them in this.
The budget of the cyberpunk—style dystopia is not particularly impressive - $15 million dollars against the $26 million spent on filming the classic Johnny Mnemonic, which was already considered a low-budget film in 1995. But it seems that the creators have squeezed everything possible out of the available funds: the battle scenes look cheerful, the atmosphere is gloomy enough, the plot is well—developed and filled with numerous references to classics of both genres - from "Johnny Mnemonic" and "Equilibrium" to "The Matrix". Perhaps the passion of the creators will pay off in every sense. No doubt, to save money, a significant part of the film was shot in Astana, so at least in Kazakhstan, the film has excellent fees.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
