Film and DVD

DVD - Fighting Elegy

Fighting Elegy

26 Mar 2007

ACTION Seijun Tokyo Drifter Suzuki has a deservedly cult reputation as a diverse genre filmmaker. Whether he is directing gangster films, youth movies, or erotica, he constantly works to counter any obviousness in the plotting with the pure bravura…

DVD - See No Evil

See No Evil

26 Mar 2007

HORROR This rank imitation of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th and the orgy of weaker variations made since, pulls few punches with its gore content but is as predictable as a film can be that’s called See No Evil and features a…

DVD Round-up

28 Feb 2007

Highlights this fortnight include, of course, the very quick turnaround release of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (Fox, 4 stars). As you may have noticed we try not to focus on the really big releases…

DVD Round-up

12 Feb 2007

Back in the early part of the 20th century when cinema first spluttered to life, all films were short films. Film stock was expensive and temperamental and the idea that anyone would want to spend longer than 15 minutes in a Nickelodeon was an anathema.

Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael, The - DVD review

(18) 97min (Tartan DVD rental/retail)

12 Feb 2007

POLEMIC/DRAMA Thomas Clay’s visceral, disturbing but interesting 2005 film did not get a theatrical release in Scotland so now is your chance, if you have the stomach for it, to catch it on DVD. Set in an English seaside town at the beginning of…

Tokyo Drifter - DVD review

Tokyo Drifter

12 Feb 2007

CRIME/DRAMA One of three excellent reissues of the films of the great Japanese filmmaker Seijun Suzuki (the other two on release are his erotic and darkly humorous 1967 gangster film Branded to Kill and his most directly autobiographical film…

Star, The - DVD review

The Star

12 Feb 2007

WAR This is a disappointing Russian WWII film about a team of ‘scouts’ sent on a very risky mission behind German lines to check out the enemy’s equipment and tactics. Selling itself as a film in the tradition of Elem Klimov’s great war film Come and…

Eros - DVD review

Eros

12 Feb 2007

ANTHOLOGY How could such an intriguing idea go so horribly, flaccidly wrong? If the demonstration of some pent-up sexual emotion was needed, who better to call than Messrs Antonioni, Soderbergh and Kar-wai to unleash a cinematic torrent? Except this…

DVD Round-up

29 Jan 2007

Shy, prone to stage sickness, deep depression and melancholia the British comedian Frankie Howerd was still the funniest man ever tp have been born in the city of York, England. A brilliant, stammering pontificate of a stand-up comedian, Howerd’s talent…

DVD Round-up

15 Jan 2007

‘January, sick and tired, you’ve been hanging on me.’ Yes, it’s that cruelest of months where our bank accounts are empty and the sofa becomes our best friend. Good thing really because it turns out there are actually some superb DVD releases and…

Southern Comfort - DVD

Southern Comfort

15 Jan 2007

THRILLER These days the great American filmmaker Walter Hill mostly concerns himself with exemplary television shows like Deadwood and the soon to be screened mini series Broken Trail. We should not forget, however, that this is the man who brought…

Ballad of a Soldier - DVD review

Ballad of a Soldier

15 Jan 2007

WAR/DRAMA/ROMANCE This long overdue DVD release of Grigori Chukhrai’s 1959 anti-war film arrives thankfully clear of the hideous dubbing that so marred previous incarnations of the film. It is not difficult to see why Chukhrai’s film picked up the…

Cranes Are Flying, The - DVD

The Cranes Are Flying

15 Jan 2007

DRAMA Mikheil Kalatozishvili’s multi award winning masterwork was one of the first post-war Soviet films to receive exposure outside the USSR, and was at least partly responsible for reintroducing Soviet cinema into the more ambitious cinemas of the…

DVD round-up

3 Jan 2007

Welcome one, welcome all and Happy New Year. To mark the end of the old we would like to bring in something new. Until, of course, you get totally bored of it and we will try something else.

11:14 - DVD review

11:14

3 Jan 2007

DRAMA This clever cubist thriller examines a single moment in time from the varying perspectives of a dozen people for whom 11:14 pm proves to be a pivotal moment in their lives. Writer-director Greg Marcks’ inspired and assured feature debut begins…

Art School Confidential - DVD review

Art School Confidential

3 Jan 2007

COMEDY/DRAMA The surprisingly swift DVD release of Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes’ adaptation of Clowes’ graphic novel is saddening but hardly surprising. By far and away the weakest film that Zwigoff has made (following on from the off kilter joys…

Day the Country Died, The - DVD review

The Day the Country Died

3 Jan 2007

DOCUMENTARY Subtitled ‘A History of Anarcho Punk’ this is actually a visual retelling of Ian Glasper’s excellent book of the same name. Exploring in minute detail the obscure, esoteric, UK anarcho-punk scene of the early 80s, this absolutely…

Heirloom, The - DVD review

The Heirloom

3 Jan 2007

HORROR In this polished haunted house movie, an architect returns from the UK to take up his inheritance: a huge but dilapidated mansion on the outskirts of Taipei. At first his girlfriend and friends can’t get enough of the house, with its high…

Black Sun: The Nankin Massacre - DVD review

Black Sun: The Nankin Massacre

11 Dec 2006

HISTORY/HORROR This is a very weird amalgam of sub-standard video nasty style gore and sanctimonious documentary footage of the Nanking massacre of 1937. The film might have been a genuine exploitation classic, or a horrifically reflective…

Jerkbeast - DVD review

Jerkbeast

11 Dec 2006

MUSIC COMEDY The people at Videosyncratic are so painfully desperate to prove their really cool independent credentials that they remind us of them in this DVD’s accompanying brochure and at the beginning of this ‘film’. But the definition of…

Tales of Beatrix Potter - DVD review

Tales of Beatrix Potter

11 Dec 2006

DANCE Dance on screen rarely captures even half the magic of seeing it live on stage. Which is why this adaptation by the Royal Ballet is so successful - it doesn’t even try. Instead the action takes place in a variety of locations, from the green…

In A Man's World - DVD review

In a Man's World

18 Sep 2006

CRIME/DRAMA OK, first things first: In a Man’s World is not a very good film, but it is interesting one for a number of reasons. Aberdonian writer/director Lee Hutcheson’s debut feature is a stilted, ultra low budget cross of Goodfellas, Sleepers and…

PS - DVD review

PS

18 Sep 2006

ROMANCE Films set in or around art schools are still something of a rarity (although Terry Zwigoff’s Art School Confidential should be touching down sometime in 2007) so it’s something of a shame that Dylan Rodger Dodger Kidd’s second feature never…

Once in a Lifetime - DVD review

Once in a Lifetime

18 Sep 2006

SPORT HISTORY When you think of the US and football, you might conjure up images of Diana Ross inadvertently destroying goalposts during the 1994 World Cup opening ceremony or the US being horsed by Iran four years later, but whatever you think of…

Night Porter, The - DVD review

The Night Porter

18 Sep 2006

DRAMA This notorious 1974 film about a Holocaust survivor who, years later, becomes infatuated with one of the Nazis who terrorised her in the camps was just one of a number that attempted to deal with the after-effects of fascism at the time.

Thief of Baghdad, The

Thief of Baghdad,

4 Sep 2006

ADVENTURE Two decades before Ray Harryhausen’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad indelibly imprinted the Arabian Nights fantasies upon the minds of film lovers, the sword and sorcery adventures were being realised on the silver screen under the all seeing eye…

Three ... Extremes

(18) 121min (Tartan DVD retail)

4 Sep 2006

HORROR This 2004 anthology of Asian horror allows three directors from across the continent to showcase their capacity for creating extreme content. The wonderfully named Fruit Chan weighs in with the queasy Dumplings, which has since been expanded…

David Hamilton Boxset

(18) 242min (Jeff DVD retail)

4 Sep 2006

SOFT CORE COLLECTION In the late 70s and early 80s, London society photographer David Hamilton turned his hand to filmmaking and directed a couple of soft focus impressionistic sex dramas. His three best-known films, which are featured in this…

I Am Curious Yellow/I Am Curious Blue

(18) 220min (2nd DVD retail)

4 Sep 2006

SEX DRAMA A very welcome re-release of director Vilgot Sjöman’s seminal sexploitation movie. In 1966 Sjöman went to his producer and asked for 100,000 metres of black and white film and total freedom to make a film without a script. The result was…