Film, Action and Paul Dale

Takeshi Miike's 13 Assassins strikes a balance between measured character development and violent brutality

25 Apr 2011

(15) 126min Prolific to the point of insanity, unpredictable and blatantly controversial, Takeshi Miike is not your average Japanese filmmaker. His notorious body of work which includes loads of straight to video fare, the Dead or Alive trilogy, Ichi…

The Spy Next Door

31 Mar 2010

(PG) 94min Chan fans will enjoy the first five minutes of uber-hack Brian Levant’s patronising comedy-thriller, which opens with a montage of stunts from Chan’s earlier films. Thereafter, Chan struggles with a glib scenario in which, as secret…

How to Train Your Dragon

22 Mar 2010

(PG) 97min Commendable new DreamWorks animation set in the mythical world of Vikings and dragons, and based on the book by Cressida Cowell. Hiccup, a Viking teenager befriends a dragon. Voice work by Gerard Butler, America Ferrara and Craig…

Mesrine: Public Enemy Number One

Second part of biopic on France's most notorious bank robber

21 Aug 2009

Part two of Jean François Richet’s epic account of the contrary life and times of France’s most famous bank robber and criminal mastermind Jacques Mesrine – we are now in the realm of myth and self-deception. Written, like it’s predecessor, by Abdel…

Scarface re-released

The greatest of all modern gangster films returns, but why now?

14 Aug 2009

It’s been twenty six long years since Tony Montana (Al Pacino) invited us to ‘say hello to my little friend’ in director Brian De Palma and then screenwriter Oliver Stone’s Reagan era update of Howard Hawks and Ben Hecht’s gangster polemic of the same…

Also Released - Film

25 Jun 2009

Blood: The Last Vampire (18) 91min Vampire hunter Saya (Gianna Jun) is unrivalled, but that’s because she is half bloodsucker herself – on her mother’s side. Will she go to the dark side or will she carry on fighting for the mortals? Popular anime gets…

DVD Box Set Round-up

28 May 2009

Film historian, writer, avant-garde underground filmmaker and occultist Kenneth Anger is one of the more interesting individuals to have emerged from California’s Santa Monica hills in the second half of the 20th century. Anger and his work were…

Stone

16 Apr 2009

(18) 103min Sandy Harbutt’s much loved 1974 Australian exploitation flick is released in the UK for the first time on DVD in this two disc special edition. Recently eulogised in Mark Hartley’s excellent documentary Not Quite Hollywood, Harbutt’s…

Che: Part Two

19 Feb 2009

WAR/BIOPIC (15) 127min Che Guevara’s final fatal campaign in Bolivia gets bold and bleak treatment in the second part of Steven Soderbergh’s extraordinary bio-historical epic about the ultimate revolutionary. It’s 1967 and Guevara (Benecio…

The International

19 Feb 2009

German filmmaker Tom Run Lola Run Tykwer’s globetrotting intelligence thriller sets in motion a new kind of cinematic corporation tax. When Interpol agent Louis Salinger (Clive Owen) witnesses the killing of one of his colleagues, who was…

The Good The Bad The Weird

5 Feb 2009

WESTERN/ACTION Gifted South Korean filmmaker Kim Ji-woon takes on Sergio Leone’s greatest western and (unbelievably) emerges victorious. It’s the 1930s in the desert wilderness of Japanese colonised Chinese Manchuria and three treasure hunters are in…

The Baader-Meinhof Complex

13 Nov 2008

(18) 149min Based on the non-fiction book by Der Spiegel editor and journalist Stefan Aust, The Baader-Meinhof Complex is a compelling and engrossing attempt to explain the trajectory and political position of arguably the most incoherent post-war…

Body of Lies

13 Nov 2008

(15) 128min As with 2001’s Black Hawk Down, South Shields’ most famous filmmaker Ridley Scott again attempts to pull a callous zeitgeist from international news headlines, with unconvincing results. CIA operative Roger Ferris (Leonardo Di Caprio…

Rescue Dawn

15 Nov 2007

Born in 1938 in the Black Forest region of Germany, Dieter Dengler never wanted to go to war, he just wanted to fly. After emigrating to America at the age of 18 and completing flight training, in 1966 Dengler found himself on board an aircraft carrier…

DVD Roundup

15 Nov 2007

‘No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees/No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds!’ That’s how English poet and humourist Thomas Hood chose to describe the month of November. There is some of Hood’s cheeky sense of observation in John Waters: This…

DVD - Round-up

2 Jul 2007

No mucking about this issue; the home entertainment selection is just too good. After slim pickings last time the box set market is booming. The Coen Brothers Box Set (Fox, 4 Stars) contains three of their best films - Raising Arizona (1987), Miller’s…

Apocalypto

(18) 138min

3 Jan 2007

Welcome to the jungle. A place where pierced savages josh and jest as they rip the flesh of a freshly speared boar. Life is simple, life is good, but trouble is hiding in the undergrowth and young family man Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) is about to go…