Film, DVD, Issue 646

The Queen of Spades - Michael Medwin interview

‘The Queen of Spades is a terrific film,’ Medwin says. ‘It’s a very gripping piece. At the time, it was one of the most expensive British films and, at the time, it was critically acclaimed. It’s nice that it’s being resuscitated.’ Born in London in…

Big River Man - Martin Strel interview

‘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…

Night of The Comet

(15) 91min (Optimum) Cult classic alert! This 1985 sci-fi horror parody benefits from just the right combination of genre knowing and lightness of comic touch. Its apocalyptic storyline has the Earth pass through the path of the titular celestial…

The Other Man

(15) 84 min (Metrodome) Whatever Richard Eyre’s importance as a theatre director, working on plays by Hare, Griffith and Brenton, his recent cinema work (Iris, Notes on a Scandal) has sometimes struggled for significance. This adaptation of Bernhard…

Treasure Island

(PG) 86min (HBF) Robert Louis Stevenson’s 19th century tale of peg-legged pirates, treasure maps and derring-do has been surprisingly ill served by cinema. Countless Disney adaptations aside, this 1971 Russian version and Chilean filmmaker Raoul…

Under The Mud

(12A) 86 min (Hurricane Films) Of Time and the City producer Sol Papadopoulos’ well-intentioned and warm-hearted modern Liverpool fable is a bit like a cross between Peter Mullan’s Orphans, and an episode of late lamented soap Brookside. Liverpool…

Best DVD releases of 2009

Kenneth Anger: Magick Lantern Cycle His satanic majesty’s maddest and most brilliant experimental filmworks in extras heavy set. Boom! Bizarre 1968 Tennessee Williams adaptation starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and directed by the…