DVD

Fist of Fun

Stewart Lee and Richard Herring's debut TV appearance given a DVD outing

28 Feb 2012

‘It’s not as good as I remembered’. Thus sprach Stewart Lee about the first series of Fist of Fun, the BBC Two show which first introduced the bequiffed comic and Richard Herring, his cohort of many years, to a TV audience. While it might not be…

Tekken: Blood Vengeance

Fluid but uneven CGI movie based on the popular games franchise

1 Feb 2012

This is actually the third movie based on the immensely popular fighting games, but Tekken: Blood Vengeance (Manga Entertainment) is the first fully computer animated version and was originally available as part of the Tekken Hybrid package. It looks…

The best comedy DVDs to give as Christmas presents in 2011

Tim Vine, Tommy Tiernan and Richard Herring among highlights

7 Dec 2011

What does it say about America that ventriloquist Jeff Dunham is among that nation’s top earning comedians? In 2009, Forbes.com placed him third behind Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock, having banked an estimated $30m. In response, an astonished Dunham…

Frankie Boyle's Tramadol Nights

The comedian's TV show is a mix of decent stand-up material and woeful sketches

15 Nov 2011

Curious thing the moral barometer. After the faecal flood which surrounded the original Channel 4 showing of Tramadol Nights this time last year, some judicious cutting has been made to the DVD version. Gone is the Jordan/Harvey routine from episode two…

La Planete Sauvage, The Funhouse, Tenebrae and Pulp Fiction rereleased

Blu-ray releases round-up

21 Oct 2011

While inevitably the picture quality and audio track are vastly improved by the high definition offered by Blu-ray another bonus is the extra features you can cram on to the format. Trippy animated sci-fi allegory La Planete Sauvage (Eureka!) ●●●● is…

Barking - DVD review

Unessential DVD release of the short-lived C4 sketch show featuring David Walliams and Peter Kay

17 Oct 2011

(Acorn Media) Back in 1998, Peter Kay, Catherine Tate, David Walliams, Omid Djalili and Mackenzie Crook were all looking for a big break in their comedy careers. The Fast Show had ended on the BBC the previous year and it would be another 12 months…

US TV boxsets: DVD round-up

Bored to Death, The Killing, Weeds and In Treatment reviewed

16 Sep 2011

If you thought that Ted Danson had delivered career-remoulding performances as ‘himself’ in Curb Your Enthusiasm, you should check out the dazzle he brings to the first series of Bored to Death (Warner Home Video ●●●●). Jonathan Ames’ Brooklyn-set…

Doug Stanhope - Oslo: Burning the Bridge to Nowhere

Live DVD from the controversial stand-up

24 Aug 2011

(Roadrunner Comedy) In a short introduction to this wonderfully unhinged film, Doug Stanhope (glass of lager clamped in hand) prepares the viewer to expect the unprofessional. Anyone picking up a copy of Oslo: Burning the Bridge to Nowhere…

DVD reviews: The Kingdom, Giallo, The Pack, Bloodrayne 3, Evil Rising and Lake Mungo

Summer horror DVD round-up

18 Jul 2011

Forget Hollywood – this month we embark on a European horror odyssey. First up, Lars von Trier's superlative haunted hospital drama The Kingdom (Second Sight ●●●●). Collecting both of his four-part Danish TV series into one boxed set for the first time…

The Governor, Being Human and Traffik among DVD highlghts

The old school fares well against newbies in TV drama releases

29 Jun 2011

The Governor ●●●● features a curious performance from Janet McTeer, just four years before her 1999 Oscar nomination for Tumbleweeds. In the first season of Lynda La Plante’s excellent prison drama, she switches between giggling schoolgirl and feisty…

DVD review - Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle

Uncompromising, awkward and confrontational style and content cements reputation

28 Jun 2011

(2entertain) The second series of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle will do very little to alter the entrenched opinions on both sides of his critical fence. Those detractors will switch off in their droves at the uncompromising, awkward and…

DVD reviews: Amer, My Soul to Take, Season of the Witch, The Resident and more on DVD

Horror DVD round-up

24 Jun 2011

Time for another dastardly delve into the horror DVD pile. We’ll start on a highnote. Amer (Anchor Bay) is actually French but is a studied homage to Italian 70s gialo filmmaking, more concerned with sound, colour, style and mood than coherent…

DVD Box sets of work by Terence Rattigan, Andrei Tarkovsky and Danny Boyle

Abbas Kiarostami and David Leland collections also released in June

21 Jun 2011

If you are still buying DVDs in these straightened, downloaded times then you are going to want a bit of bang for your buck. Box sets are the way forward and late June and July are surprisingly full of intriguing new releases. The Terence Rattigan…

Bare Behind Bars, Sea Purple, Here Come the Girls 3 and Dare

LGBT DVD Roundup

27 May 2011

If it’s a quiet night on the sofa you’re after, beware Bare Behind Bars (Arrow Video ●●●●). Described as a ‘chicks in chains grindhouse explosion’, we’re given sadistic lesbian guards, a permanently aroused screwball nurse and convicts with cabin fever…

AC/DC hope to release new album soon

Music Gossip

7 May 2011

AC/DC are hoping to release a new album "within the next couple of years". Angus Young - lead guitarist in the band - revealed the plans at the group's 'AC/DC Live At River Plate' DVD premiere at the Hammersmith Apollo in London last night (06.05.11…

DVD round-up: The Governor, Skins Series Five, Being Human, Jack Rosenthal at the BBC and Traffik

18 Apr 2011

The Governor ●●●● features a curious performance from Janet McTeer, just four years before her 1999 Oscar nomination for Tumbleweeds. In the first season of Lynda La Plante’s excellent prison drama, she switches between giggling schoolgirl and feisty…

Age of the Dragons

Flawed take on Moby Dick a sea of flat performances hampered concessions to original text

7 Apr 2011

(12A) 90min This loose retelling of Moby Dick boasts some sumptuous cinematography and the unlikely star pairing of Danny Glover and Vinnie Jones. But transplanting the action to a fantasy land (an effectively shot Utah) and swapping dragons for…

Profile: Simon Hynd, director of horror thriller Senseless

Jason Behr plays US businessman who is kidnapped

24 Mar 2011

Born 20 January, 1974, Edinburgh Background Hynd studied Film & Television at Napier, making a few shorts that got him noticed by the Scottish film industry, going on to win a Scottish BAFTA for his short Tumshie Mcfadgen’s Bid for Ultimate…

DVD: Phenomena, The Beyond, Senseless, Blooded, Skyline, Primal, Island of Death

Recent horror DVD releases reviewed

24 Mar 2011

Italian horror from the 1970s and 80s is finally getting the recognition it deserves. Dario Argento is on familiar ground in Phenomena (Arrow Video) ●●●● as a killer stalks an isolated girls school, but with a twist, as a young Jennifer Connolly uses…

The Larry Sanders Show - complete series on DVD

Garry Shandling's sitcom, starring Jeffrey Tambor and Jeremy Piven, gets new lease of life

24 Mar 2011

(Mediumrare) In the summer of 1998, the final episode of a beloved, long-running American sitcom was aired but with a conclusion hated by so many that continuous talk of a reunion seemed fuelled purely by a desire to right some terrible wrongs. That…

Buried, Puppet Master: Axis of Evil and Shock Labyrinth released on DVD

Horror DVD round-up

2 Mar 2011

Over the years some of the greatest horror films have found love and longevity amongst the classics of the genre despite their direct-to-video origins. Unfortunately that’s not always the case as The Open Door (Second Sight) ● proves. Taking the vague…

Stone and Who Loves the Sun among DVD release highlights

Featuring boxsets of Akira Kurosawa, Richard Woolley and Luis Buñuel

2 Mar 2011

Here’s what may be of interest on DVD and Blu-ray that’s coming out in March. An Unflinching Eye: The Films of Richard Woolley (BFI ●●●●) brings together the almost complete short and feature work of this overlooked British filmmaker whose films were as…

DVD: The Flying Scotsman

1929 Romantic comedy thriller is silent film with dialogue added

17 Feb 2011

Classic 1929 action-romance set on the titular train, with amazing stunts and future Oscar-winner Ray Milland.

DVD: I Spit on Your Grave

2010 remake of notorious 'Video Nasty'

17 Feb 2011

Sarah Butler stars in Steven R Monroe's reboot of the 1978 rape-revenge Video Nasty.

DVD: Betrayal

War thriller suffers from two-dimensional characters and lack of action

17 Feb 2011

(15) 93min (Optimum) Nazi occupied Oslo in 1943 and the black market is rife. Life is sweet for corrupt businessmen who frequent the nightspot Club Havana, largely thanks to the compliance of the SS Major who turns a blind eye and takes his share.

DVD: Pelican Blood

Suicide and competitive bird-watching meet in dark drama from Irish director

17 Feb 2011

(15) 94min (Icon) Irish indie director Karl Golden ’s second feature is more raw and vicious than his 2003 debut The Honeymooners. Harry Treadaway (Fish Tank, Control) plays Nikko, a suicidal young man whose low-key daily routine of bird watching…

DVD: In Their Sleep (Dans Ton Sommeil)

Quietly unsettling psychological thriller

17 Feb 2011

French psychological thriller directed by Caroline and Eric du Potet, and starring Anne Parillaud (Nikita).

Deep Red (Profondo Rosso)

Stands alongside Suspiria as one of Dario Argento’s mid-career peak films

2 Feb 2011

(18) 121/100min (Arrow) Deep Red stands beside such work as The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Suspiria as the most interesting of Dario Argento’s mid-career peak films. Its captivating visuals, all clean lines, whites and chromes contrasting…

Ving Rhames gives compelling performance as Sonny Liston in Phantom Punch

Poor supporting performances dog gangster movie by numbers

2 Feb 2011

(15) 100min (Metrodome) Perhaps the most duplicitous aspect of Robert Townsend’s account of the life of heavyweight champ Sonny Liston is the title itself. Liston’s rematch with Mohammed Ali ended early with a punch that simply didn’t look like a…

1964 version of The Thin Red Line is a workmanlike war movie

Original film bludgeons home madness of war message of James Jones' novel

2 Feb 2011

(12) 95min (Optimum) The central message of James Jones’ source novel – war is insane and it turns soldiers into mad men – was somewhat lost amid the seemingly endless scenes of marines wading through long grass in Terrence Malick’s quasi-mystical…

Series 1 of Gary Tank Commander released on DVD

Greg McHugh' slightly dim, highly camp Edinburgher

2 Feb 2011

(15) 180min (2entertain) The idea of a slightly dim, highly camp Edinburgher in the armed services sounds like it has the potential to be either massively offensive or a spot-on critique of military politics. The ultimately affectionate Gary Tank…

K-20: The Legend of the Black Mask

Japanese take on vintage crime-fighter serials boasts evocative steampunk setting

2 Feb 2011

(12) 137min (Manga Entertainment) Forget about the duff Green Hornet, this Japanese take on vintage crime-fighter serials – The Shadow, The Rocketeer, The Phantom et al – is far more entertaining. The year is 1949, but it’s an alternate reality in…

Private Road

12 Jan 2011

(15) 89min (BFI) Barney Platts-Mills’ 1971 film is undoubtedly one of the great lost British masterpieces of the 1970s. Platts-Mills was a filmmaker whose previous cult film Bronco Bullfrog had taken a knife to the frothy London set cinema of the…

Wetherby

Intriguing and engrossing 1984 mystery drama with to-die-for cast

12 Jan 2011

(15) 99min (Park Circus) National treasure David Hare remains best known for his award-feted plays (Plenty, The Blue Room) and his screenwriting (The Hours, The Reader), but he’s also an assured director, as is evidenced by this intriguing and…

F

British ‘hoody horror’ thriller in which a group of teachers defend themselves from schoolkids

12 Jan 2011

(18) 78min F is the latest in a line of peculiarly British ‘hoody horror’ films that also include Eden Lake and Heartless. English writer/director Johannes Roberts’ effort is the best yet thanks to his smart script, crisp direction and a fine…

Freakonomics

‘Blockbuster documentary’ adapting bestselling book on human nature not quite substantial enough

12 Jan 2011

(12) 90min (Optimum) This ‘blockbuster documentary’, which pools the talents of six well-established doc directors to adapt the bestselling book by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner that examined various aspects of human nature, doesn’t quite add…

Flesh Of The Orchid (La Chair De L’Orchidee)

12 Jan 2011

(18) 120min (Bluebell) Charlotte Rampling rarely takes an easy role and this 1975 adaptation of a James Hadley Chase novel is no exception. She is Claire, a runaway heiress and it’s the asylum she is running away from. Taking up with big and bulky…

Beverley Callard's New Year bashes

TV Gossip

30 Dec 2010

Coronation Street's Beverley Callard has been invited to 10 New Year's Eve (31.12.10) parties. The 53-year-old actress explained she and husband Jon McEwan have been inundated with various offers to ring the new year in, but aren't sure which of the…

Comedy DVDs round up - The best and worst

The verdict on DVDs from Richard Herring, Greg Giraldo, Tommy Tiernan and Kevin Bridges

23 Dec 2010

The former Popworld and Never Mind the Buzzcocks host proves that behind the barbed sarcasm, he’s a vulnerable little soul. Over the course of 80 minutes, he chats about his inability to find a good man and his oddball family. A tortured Jewish lad…

The Avengers: The Complete Series 6

The flamboyant spy series that echoed the pop-cultural moods of the 1960s

14 Dec 2010

(12) 480min (Optimum) Throughout the 1960s The Avengers bestrode the televisual world like a colossus. Twisted, kinky and confident, the flamboyant spy series echoed precisely the pop-cultural moods of that tumultuous decade. The latest volume in…

Tropic of Cancer

14 Dec 2010

(18) 87min (Olive Films) Available on DVD for the first time, this is the 1970 adaptation of Henry Miller’s novel set at the end of the 1960s rather than the 1930s when the book was originally published. It nevertheless captures the irreverence of…

Down Terrace

Alternately nasty and hilarious UK kitchen sink gangster film

14 Dec 2010

(15) 89min (Metrodome) Not another facking Brit gangster flick?! Well, yes, but this alternately nasty and hilarious little gem is a world away from the mockney posturing of Guy Ritchie and co. Set in the suburban backstreets of Southern England’s…

Kicks

Lindy Heymann’s dark drama dramatises crisis of Britain’s celebrity culture

14 Dec 2010

(15) 82min (Drakes Avenue) The third and final film to be made under Liverpool and Northwest’s excellent micro-budget scheme, Digital Departures, director Lindy Heymann’s dark drama is very different from its predecessors, Terence Davies…

A Bay of Blood

Mario Bava’s 1971 film one of the most influential and imitated horror films ever made

30 Nov 2010

(18) 80min (Arrow Video) Out of all Arrow’s lush new DVD and Blu-ray issues of films from the American and Italian masters of horror, this is the one I have been looking forward to most. I was first introduced to Mario Bava’s 1971 film by friend…

Shogun Assassin

30 Nov 2010

(18) 85min (Eureka/Masters of Cinema) Heavily cut by the British Board of Film Censorship for its original cinema release and subsequently banned as a video nasty, this bloodthirsty 1980 martial arts flick has since become a chanabara (samurai…

Sweet Karma

30 Nov 2010

(18) 85min (Anchor Bay) There are echoes of female vigilante benchmarks Ms 45 (aka Angel of Vengeance) and the Kill Bills in this femme fatale revenge thriller in as much as it features a gorgeous girl (model-turned-actress Shera Bechard) brutally…

I am a Camera

Largely forgotten adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin omits social decay

30 Nov 2010

(12) 100min (Park Circus) Made in 1955 this, the first major film adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin, is largely forgotten, eclipsed by the multi award-winning stage and film musical Cabaret, also adapted from Isherwood’s tales…

Chaplin at Keystone

30 Nov 2010

(U) 561min (BFI) Before he became an international star and acclaimed filmmaker, Charlie Chaplin learned to make movies at Mack Sennett’s Keystone Film Company. Spotted in Fred Karno’s touring vaudeville troupe, Chaplin was snapped up by the silent…

Down Home Music

30 Nov 2010

(E) (Arhoolie) In 1963 German filmmaker Dietrich Wawzyn set out to shoot a series of films for German television that took him through the southern states in search of American jazz and roots music. He asked Arhoolie Records founder Chris…

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

22 Nov 2010

(U) 89min (Eureka/Masters of Cinema) Frank Tashlin’s wacky 1957 advertising world romp has got to be a contender for the fastest comedy ever made. Tashlin, the Hollywood animator-turned-filmmaker, even gets in a gag before the film’s opening…

Limmy's Show

The series which brought credibility to BBC Scotland comedy roster

22 Nov 2010

(15) 180min (2entertain) A stoned loner notices peculiar inconsistencies on TV adverts at 4am. A bushy-eyebrowed executive plots his excuses before the local constabulary show up at his office. A paranoid ex-junkie takes offence at the most…

Room In Rome (Habitacion En Roma)

Julio Medem continues exploration of sexuality, but delivers emptiest film yet

22 Nov 2010

(18) 103min (Optimum) Two women, one gay, Alba (Elena Anaya), the other the heterosexual Natasha (Natasha Yarovenko) have an overnight fling in a Rome hotel room, talk about their pasts and prepare for their future. Director Julio Medem continues…

Lovely Rita

Jessica Hausner’s 2001 account of small town family life

22 Nov 2010

(15) 80min (Artificial Eye) Obviously less polished than her later work (Hotel, Lourdes), Jessica Hausner’s 2001 account of a teenager’s stultifying small town family life in Austria is easily reflected in the flat images, in the overly even and…

Army of the Dead

Character clichés wheeled out in this torpid affair

22 Nov 2010

(18) 89min (Kaleidoscope) Of all the legions of scary monsters and super creeps, walking skeletons have to be the most rubbish. Ray Harryhausen managed to make them pretty threatening in Jason and the Argonauts and the bony ghouls from Pirates of…

Metropolis

16 Nov 2010

(PG) 150min (Eureka/Masters of Cinema) The reconstruction, restoration and re-release of classic films is now becoming a regular occurrence (happily enough), but the reissue of Fritz Lang’s visionary 1927 science fiction film is something altogether…

Video Killed The Radio Star

Nostalgic documentary on pop promo world profiles Russell Mulcahy, David Mallet and Wayne Isha

2 Nov 2010

(IND3D) Did you know that, with the dawn of MTV in the 1980s, the pop promo became almost as important to an artist’s career as their actual songs? Everyone who has studied that period or, worse, lived through it, won’t need telling twice. Well…

BFI reissues 1960s Tintin films in advance of Spielberg’s The Secret of the Unicorn

Remarkably accurate live action homage to Hergé's characters

2 Nov 2010

Tintin And The Mystery Of The Golden Fleece (U) 98min (U) 96min (BFI) These two releases from the British Film Institute should sate any self respecting Hergé fan. It’s undeniably an informatively shrewd move to showcase these two films from…

Hotel

Austrian drama brings out cold emptiness of a spiritless world

2 Nov 2010

(15) 74 min (Artificial Eye) Jessica Hausner shows the same eerie sense of place as she would show in her recent Lourdes, a gaze that makes simple details stand out in all their bland terror. As Irene (Franziska Weisz) takes a job as a desk clerk in…

The Story of F***

Low-budget irreverent British satire on music industry

2 Nov 2010

(15) 84min (Network) Hunter S Thompson’s ‘the music industry is a cruel and shallow money trench …’ quote is so trite it’s printed on the urinal in the men’s loos at King Tut’s. Hardly an inspired note on which to begin a satire of the pop…

The Ballroom

Brazilian comic drama enlists former dance kings and ageing beauties

2 Nov 2010

(15) 95min (Matchbox) Brazilian director Lais Bodanzky’s charming but cheeky comic drama takes place over one night in an old school ballroom (or ‘gafieira’) in Sao Paulo, where the ageing locals teach a handful of young newcomers a thing or three…

31 North 62 East

Ham-fisted and unwise affair

2 Nov 2010

(15) 99min (Kaleidoscope) Would you trust a Prime Minister who is a cross between John Prescott and Boris Yeltsin? This and several other lumpen creations are offered up in a ham-fisted attempt to point the finger at government agencies who…

Flower of Flesh and Blood, Guinea Pig and August Underground on DVD

The List’s guide to banned horror films, we watched them so you don’t have to

22 Oct 2010

For this Hallowe’en special we step into the outer reaches of horror and examine some of the films that have been refused a certificate by the British Board of Film Classification. Of course it’s impossible to have a discussion on banned movies in the…

Andrzej Zulawski's cult horror hybrid Possession released on DVD

22 Oct 2010

It certainly ranks as one of the most surreal moments in my life. I’m sitting in a Polish restaurant, having dinner (before a scheduled Q&A at the Filmhouse) with one of my all time favourite film directors, who is standing behind me, giving me a…

Dead Cert

22 Oct 2010

(18) 93min (Momentum) Two of modern cinema’s most over used clichés collide when vampires meet cock-er-ney gangsters in this tired Brit flick as Romanian bloodsuckers try to muscle in on an East End strip club owned by Craig Fairbrass. What could…

Night of the Demons

22 Oct 2010

(18) 96 mins (Kaleidoscope) Hollywood’s unquenchable appetite for remakes means even near-forgotten schlock horror cheapies are getting the remake treatment. Night of the Demons was a lurid, gory, late-night favourite from 1988 and this updated…

Psych 9

22 Oct 2010

(18) 93 mins (indi VISION) Unfortunately, Psych 9 takes itself way too seriously. Roslyn (Sarah Foster) finds temporary employment on the nightshift helping to clear out an abandoned hospital, while a serial killer (dubbed the Night Hawk by local…

Big Tit Zombies 3D

22 Oct 2010

(15) 73min (Terracotta) Where a film like The Horde takes its zombies seriously, this isn't is something you could ever accuse Takao Nakano’s Big Tit Zombies of doing. BTZ goes for simple pleasures as a troupe of strippers fight off a plague of the…

The Horde

22 Oct 2010

(18) 93min (Momentum) Surprsingly France is at the forefront of new extreme horror cinema, and while The Horde isn’t as subversive as Frontier(s), Martyrs or Inside it’s a wildly entertaining mix of La Haine and Dawn of the Dead (unfortunately we…

Jaguar Lives!

22 Sep 2010

(12) 87min (Arrow) Some movies are deemed so bad as to be actually good. Others are simply plain old bad bad. Jaguar Lives! bends the rules, rewrites the book and creates its very own category of god-awful. The Jaguar (Joe Lewis) is a globetrotting…

The Special Relationship

22 Sep 2010

(15) 88min (Optimum) The third part of writer Peter Morgan’s excellent ‘Blair trilogy’ focuses on the relationship between the former PM and US president Bill Clinton. While Blair will probably be primarily remembered for what many perceive to have…

37 Uses For A Dead Sheep

22 Sep 2010

(E) 84min (Cornerstone) For the last three decades the Pamir Kirghiz have lived in exile in Turkey. In 2005, British filmmaker Ben Hopkins (Simon Magus, The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz) and a film crew arrived in their village and asked the diaspora…

Tears For Sale

22 Sep 2010

(18) 86min (Icon) Reportedly the most expensive Serbian film ever made, this darkly comic fantasy is reminiscent of Terry Gilliam’s and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s gloriously eccentric flights of fancy. It certainly boasts the requisite visual imagination…

While The City Sleeps

22 Sep 2010

(PG) 100min (Exposure Cinema) Legendary Austrian filmmaker Fritz Lang’s 1956 newspaper world set thriller was his penultimate American film. Lang, whose mighty filmography (both sides of the Atlantic) included stellar masterworks Metropolis…

Bent and Brother to Brother get DVD release

LGTB DVD Round-Up

1 Sep 2010

Director Rodney Evans’ intelligent, engaging Brother to Brother ●●●● (Peccadillo Pictures), a sleeper hit at the Sundance festival in 2004, explores the gay and lesbian subcultures of the Harlem Renaissance through the friendship between a young gay…

Bonded By Blood

Solid and unsurprising Brit crime flick

25 Aug 2010

(15) 100min Second attempt (see 2000’s Essex Boys) to dramatise the events that led up to the murders of drug dealers Tony Tucker, Patrick Tate and Craig Rolfe in 1995 in Rettendon in Essex. Decent, solid and unsurprising Brit crime flick.

Profile: Jean Van Hamme

24 Aug 2010

Name Jean Van Hamme Born Brussels, Belgium, January 6 1939 Background Van Hamme studied business at university before becoming and journalist and a marketer, but from 1968 he began his professional writing career working around his day…

The 7th Dimension

24 Aug 2010

(15) 90min (Kaleidoscope) ‘The whole universe in one room,’ a character pronounces in Brad Watson’s low budget sci-fi. Clearly envisaged as the kind of cerebral sci-fi thriller that makes up for its lack of economic clout with ingenuity of thought…

The Perfect Sleep

24 Aug 2010

(15) 101min (Icon) Had the makers of this movie concentrated more on the main product and less on an amusing viral campaign, The Perfect Sleep might not have wound up such a yawnsome affair. Gary Oldman and Bono were both filmed advising people, in…

Sus

24 Aug 2010

(15) 96min (4Digi) On the eve of Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 landslide election victory a black man (Clint Dyer) is picked up off the streets of Brixton under the notorious suspicion law and interrogated by two white police officers (Ralph Brown and…

The Mother of Invention

24 Aug 2010

(12) 98min (Kaleidoscope) Despite an amusing cameo by Mark Boone Jr as protagonist Vincent’s dishevelled dad and a couple of wryly amusing moments from Kevin Corrigan playing Vincent’s relatively wise, melancholic buddy, this is a mockumentary…

Cash And Curry

Eastenders with a little bit of a gangster feel. Sometimes.

18 Aug 2010

Triads, Yardies & Onion Bhajees director Sarijit Bains’ attempt to make a multi-cultural Brit mobster flick feels more like when Eastenders occasionally dabbles with the gangster genre. Only less gripping. Unsurprisingly, leads Ameet Chana, Ronny…

The Gold Rush

Both versions of the Chaplin classic with lots of features

17 Aug 2010

Given that The Gold Rush was his most ambitious production, and that it was the film he wanted to be remembered for, it’s unsurprising that Chaplin should have returned to it 17 years after he made it in 1925 to re-edit, score and add narration.

Pornography: A Thriller

One porn actor investigates the disappearance of another

17 Aug 2010

What happened to famous gay porn star Mark Anton? Did he end up in a snuff film? Another porn actor intent on turning movie director investigates. David Kittredge’s film may sell itself as Cronenberg meets Lynch, but the comparisons do him no…

The Passion Within

Period detail and good-looking actors in an unremarkable film

17 Aug 2010

‘You f**k like a boy’, reads the message that an actress leaves smeared in red lipstick across the bedroom mirror of a famous bullfighter in this 1940s Spain-set biopic that focuses on the tempestuous romance between Lupe Sino (Penelope Cruz) and…

The Meat Grinder

New DVD release about Sweeney Todd-esque noodle shack murderer

17 Aug 2010

From Thailand, this aptly named slice of torture porn follows disturbed Buss as she runs her noodle shack while carving up body parts to use as ingredients in her food. There’s the requisite hacked limbs, skewered heads, cannibalism and enough…

The Dinner Party

Australian psychological drama by Scott Murden

12 Aug 2010

(15) 88min (Kaleidoscope) Opening with the claim that it was inspired by real events, this Australian psychological drama by Scott Murden manages to drain the plausibility out of its subject by flatly delivered, moralising dialogue, clumsy character…

The Valdez Horses

Bronson stars in solid western from director of The Magnificent Seven

12 Aug 2010

(15) 93min (Optimum) Though not generally thought of as being a spaghetti western, this US/Italian/Spanish co-production from 1976 fits the bill. Directed by Hollywood veteran John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven, Gunfight at the OK Corral), produced…

I Know You Know

Robert Carlyle stars in working-class tale director of Human Traffic

12 Aug 2010

(15) 81min (Network) Despite garnering acclaim for his 1999 clubber comedy Human Traffic, writer/director Justin Kerrigan hasn’t made a movie since. Making the decade-long wait worthwhile, the Cardiff-based writer-director returns with a moving and…

Phobia and His Name Was Jason release on DVD

Horror DVD round-up

23 Jul 2010

For this issue’s delve into the world of summer horror we’re taking a trip around the globe. Starting in the US with one for real horror aficionados, His Name Was Jason (Stax) ●●●● is an exhaustive look at the history of everyone’s favourite…

No One Knows About Persian Cats

23 Jul 2010

(12) 106min (Network) Gifted and celebrated Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi (A Time for Drunken Horses, Turtles Can Fly) threw caution to the wind and hung his reputation on the line in the making of this freewheeling semi-documentary about…

In The Pit

Documentary explores lives of Mexico City labourers

23 Jul 2010

(E) 84min (Network) Exploring the thoughts, feelings and labour activity of workers in Mexico City who are employed in building a new second-deck motorway around the capital, Juan Carlos Rulfo’s film manages to give individuality to a handful of…

The Shock Doctrine

Second adaptation of Naomi Klein’s capitalism analysis

23 Jul 2010

(E) 79min (Dogwoof) Not to be confused with Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón’s 2007 short, this second adaptation of Naomi Klein’s chilling book about the evils of modern capitalism is the full-length 2009 documentary co-directed by Michael…

Newsmakers

Siege thriller keeps action and outrage flowing

23 Jul 2010

(18) 105min (Showbox) Based on Johnnie To’s 2004 Hong Kong action thriller, this Russian remake (from Swedish director Anders Banke) is an admirable effort. As a bunch of ruthless gangsters go on the rampage across the country, Russian law…

The Island

Well-told Russian fable of spirituality and guilt

23 Jul 2010

(PG) 150min (Artificial Eye) The spirit of Andrei Tarkovsky hovers over Russian cinema maybe more than any other director, perhaps quite aptly for one so given to the spiritual himself. The Island opens with a horrible moment of human weakness.

Fantastic Planet (La Planete Sauvage)

7 Jul 2010

(PG) 72min (Eureka/Masters of Cinema) Previously unavailable on DVD, René Laloux’s 1973 animated sci-fi feature is a startling rediscovery. Based on Stefan Wul’s 1957 novel Oms by the Dozen, Laloux’s extraordinary film is a kind of Swiftian…

Otto; Or, Up With Dead People

7 Jul 2010

(18) 94min (Peccadillo) A new film from Bruce La Bruce – queer cinema’s very own Andreas Baader – is always something to celebrate and Otto, his first foray proper into the horror genre, doesn’t disappoint. Amnesiac zombie Otto (Jey Crisfar) hitches…

Landfall

7 Jul 2010

(PG) 85min (Optimum) This watchable 1949 adaptation of a novel by Nevil Shute casts handsome Michael Denison (Angels One Five) as a cheeky chappy who takes his wartime commission as a coastal command pilot very much more seriously than he does his…

The Silent Invasion

7 Jul 2010

(U) 66min (Optimum) This British drama made in 1962 and set in an occupied French village during the early years of World War II feels like an episode of a television show – and well it might, given it was written by small screen legend Brian…

The Unpolished

7 Jul 2010

(15) 95min (Second Run) Overdue DVD release of Pia Marais’ hot 2007 festival film, which never found a home, until now, on UK screens, large or small. A sensitive and thought-provoking re-evaluation of the counter cultural dream, Pia Marais…

One Continuous Take/The Kay Mader Story

24 Jun 2010

(E) 253min (Panamint) This fascinating two disc set revisits and attempts to revive interest in pioneering and innovative documentarian Kay Mander. The first disc is taken up with Dr Adele Carroll’s 2001 film One Continuous Take featuring Kay…