DVD

Macbeth

6 Sep 2007

There’s nothing particularly new about updating Shakespeare’s medieval Scottish tragedy to a modern criminal underworld setting - see the 1956 American mob movie Joe Macbeth - but Australian filmmaker Geoffrey Wright nevertheless makes a decent stab at…

The Sick House

18 Sep 2008

HORROR (18) 104min (Showbox DVD retail) Young archaeologist (Gina Philips) finds her research into London’s great plague of 1665 barred when public health officials reveal that the former orphanage she is excavating still contains plague.

The Battle of the Somme

11 Dec 2008

(E) 74min Originally released in 1916, right in the middle of World War I, this important documentary might not be known to viewers in its entirety, but individual moments will probably be familiar: its images are regularly ransacked for various…

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…

Big River Man - Martin Strel interview

5 Jan 2010

‘The director John Maringouin first contacted me and my son Borut in 2002 after John’s wife Molly had seen a report on CNN about me swimming the Mississippi. When they found out that I was planning to swim the Amazon in 2007 to raise environmental…

The Last Thakur

4 Dec 2009

(15) 83min (Artificial Eye) This Bangladeshi Western directed by British filmmaker Sadik Ahmed is a clumsily realised tale of Oedipal tensions. The film focuses on Kala, a young man visiting a small town determined to find out who raped his mother.

Cult Fiction Movies shop opens in Edinburgh

6 Aug 2009

To a certain type of movie fan, Newington’s newly-opened Cult Fiction Movies is a magical store where a litany of grindhouse double features, BFI Classics and films from America’s Criterion Collection which remain currently unavailable on this side of…

Splinter - Toby Wilkins interview

18 Mar 2009

Toby Wilkins cut his teeth in graphic design and visual effects (his work can be seen in everything from Cats & Dogs and Scooby Doo 2 to Red Dragon and Rush Hour 2) moving on to directing shorts, such as the award winning Kidney Thieves as well as a…

Derren Brown: The Specials

13 Nov 2008

(4DVD) 196min Almost five years ago to the week that Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand were threatened with being burnt at the stake, another witch-hunt was conducted for another man merely seeking to thrill us. In October 2003, Derren Brown asked a…

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…

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…

Twin Peaks boxset released on DVD - Mark Frost interview

2 Mar 2010

Almost twenty years to the day since Twin Peaks first aired, the long-awaited conclusion to David Lynch and Mark Frost’s seminal series is finally released on DVD. Series co-creator and executive producer Frost tells Murray Robertson what took so…

The Avengers - Series 1 & 2

11 Sep 2009

(PG) 1520min (Optimum DVD retail) What joy! Every surviving episode from all six series of the marvelous cult British television show The Avengers, originally broadcast between 1961 and 1969, are to be released on DVD over the course of the next…

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg

23 Aug 2009

(15) 104min (Sony DVD retail) Very welcome reissue of Peter Medak’s 1972 film adaptation of Peter Nichols’ hit West End play is a reminder that bad taste and suburban schadenfreude did not begin with Family Guy. Alan Bates and Janet Suzman are Bri…

Christmas Comedy DVDs

11 Dec 2008

With one recent internet poll naming Peter Kay as the funniest British comedian who has ever lived while Michael McIntyre steamrolls up the DVD charts, it seems that comedy is not unlike the other genres when it comes to ‘popular’ ‘opinion’. There was a…

Salo

18 Sep 2008

DVD (18) 112min (BFI DVD retail) Pier Paolo Pasolini’s loose 1975 adaptation of the Marquis De Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom gets an excellent two disc DVD (and Blu-ray) makeover with a ton of fantastic extras. Pasolini transposed De Sade’s tale…

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…

Made In Jamaica

15 Apr 2010

(15) 107min (Network) Following the template of Buena Vista Social Club this music doc steadicams its way round the ghettos of Kingston, exploring the variety of music on offer: the venerable reggae scene, represented by Bunny Wailer and the like…

DVD Roundup

Our trawl though the best (and worst) of recent horror DVD releases

30 Sep 2009

Rogue, I Sell the Dead, Wasting Away, Chanbara Beauty, Messengers 2: The Scarecrow, Deadline, From Within, The Books of Blood, Death of a Ghost Hunter, Smash Cut, Staunton Hill, Cradle Will Fall, Dr Chopper, Mr Halloween, Sexy Killer and The Antony I…

First Word: Supergran

12 Aug 2009

First record you ever bought I have never bought a record. Last time you were chatted up The chance would be a fine thing! First film that really moved you I have not a clue. Last lie you told I’m too goody-goody. First movie you…

The Red Shoes

30 Jul 2009

Martin Scorsese proclaimed Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s masterpiece ‘truly the most beautiful Technicolor film ever made.’ Marty should know, given he oversaw the restoration of the 1948 classic through his Film Foundation and then premiered…

The Antichrist

19 Mar 2009

HORROR The Italians wasted no time ripping off the enormous success of The Exorcist, knocking out this dreadful demonic possession horror less than a year after Linda Blair blew green chunks all over Max von Sydow back in 1974. The Antichrist (aka…

Quiet Chaos

19 Mar 2009

FAMILY DRAMA When his wife collapses and dies on their lawn surrounded by chopped melon and a traumatised young daughter, Pietro (Nanni Moretti) is saving an ungrateful woman from drowning. It’s just one of several delicious ironies during a movie in…

DVD Round-Up

3 Jul 2008

The time has come to celebrate British cinema. Not the British cinema of Hitchcock, Powell and Pressburger, David Lean or Robin The Wicker Man Hardy, but the cinema of subsidies and struggle, the results of which have barely seen the inside of a cinema…

Rise of the Footsoldier

6 Sep 2007

If you’ve already picked up any of the Nick Love titles displayed alongside the vegetable-rack in your local supermarket (The Football Factory, The Business, Outlaw), then you’re in the target audience for Julian 'Rollin’ With the Nines' Gibley’s feral…