Onlookers review – snapshots of a south-east Asian country shaped by tourism

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Through static compositions and observational detail, the documentary explores how Laos’s visitors and residents inhabit the same spaces in very different ways Shot in Laos, Kimi Takesue’s idiosyncratic documentary gazes upon sights and vistas that would not be out of place on travel postcards. Minimal in its camera movements, the film looks at glimmering golden temples, waterfalls cascading down silver rocks, and processions of monks moving through lush landscapes. It also shows what is absent from glossy brochures, namely the intrusion of tourists. The disruption to the local rhythm of life is at once visual and aural: we see throngs of wandering visitors, their casual clothes of shorts and T-shirts a stark contrast to the ancient architecture. Their occasionally rowdy leisure activities are intercut with more mundane moments from the locals’ everyday lives, like schoolchildren heading to class or laywomen offering alms to monks by the roadside. There’s a sense of tension between t...
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The Last Breath review – Julian Sands’s last film is solid shark-meets-shipwreck thriller

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A group of friends are terrorised by a shark while exploring a shipwreck in an unremarkable film that marks Sands final outing onscreen

In most respects this suspense-thriller with aquatic antagonists is pretty unremarkable, apart from the sad fact that it was British actor Julian Sands’s last film before he died while hiking. It’s a shame that he didn’t have a more interesting role, but few get to choose their swan song. Sands has a strictly functional supporting role here as Levi, a grizzled boat captain originally from Blighty, looking for the wreck of a ship that went down in the Caribbean during the second world war. Unable to dive any more because of an injury, Levi stays onboard supposedly knitting (even though the red hat he wears looks more like a misbegotten crochet project) while his younger crewmate Noah (Jack Parr) searches the ocean floor.

Then not long after they finally find the wreck, a posse of Noah’s friends from New York show up hoping to enjoy a diving holiday. Levi’s chance to get out of debt by charging one of the richer visitors a ridiculously large fee to see the wreck is the act of greed which surely dooms most of the ensemble. That said, we’re clearly meant to root for Sam (Kim Spearman), Noah’s ex who is now a doctor and presumably the most sympathetic of passengers because she gives a local kid with an infected wound sound medical advice and $20 for a tatty bracelet. From the start it’s obvious that obnoxious and entitled finance bro-cum-influencer Brett (Alexander Arnold) is a dead man swimming. The outcomes for supporting characters Riley (Erin Mullen) and Logan (Arlo Carter) are less foretold by genre convention, but given they are all about to meet a huge shark, don’t hold your breath.

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