Film and DVD

Slacker

17 Jan 2008

COMEDY/DRAMA (15) 93min (Metrodome rental/retail) Originally released in 1991, Richard Linklater’s fine low-budget second feature may bring to mind one of contemporary cinema’s most over-used storytelling devices: the multiple character tale. But…

Invisible Waves

17 Jan 2008

DRAMA (18) 115min (Tartan DVD retail/rental) Half noir, half melancholic meditation on sins that won’t go away, Last Life in the Universe director Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s film is a mixture of the clumsy and the allusively accomplished. Sometimes it…

Eagle Vs Shark

17 Jan 2008

COMEDY (15) 84min (Optimum DVD rental/retail) With its sweet soul and crumbly heart, you’d think that Eagle vs Shark would only be fit for shooting out of the sky or being drowned at birth. But in the hands of writer/director Taika Waititi and…

Sherrybaby

17 Jan 2008

DRAMA (15) 92min (Metrodome DVD retail/rental) A useful companion piece to the much more lauded Half Nelson, this story about a woman trying to get her life together after a prison sentence and a drug habit, utilises a quirky visual style to…

DVD Round-Up

4 Jan 2008

As Carly Simon sang, ‘we’re coming around again’. As this column marks its one-year anniversary, there are some great standalone DVDs hitting the shelves. 2008 is going to be a great year to rediscover the brilliance of the McCarthy-blacklisted US…

Playlist

4 Jan 2008

2007 was one wild ride for car-mageddon lovers, with pedal-to-the-metal automobile action featuring extensively in films like The Bourne Ultimatum and Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, which matched a 1969 Dodge Charger against Barry Newman’s 1970 Dodge…

Beloved

4 Jan 2008

DRAMA (12A) 100min (Network DVD retail) After her wealthy slave-trading father’s death, Amada (Eslinda Núñez) wiles away her time on his estate, living with her blind mother and her unfaithful husband. Clearly she wants and deserves more from…

Someone Else

4 Jan 2008

DRAMA (15) 72min (Soda DVD rental/retail) Watching dramas about women hunting for boyfriends is about as interesting as hearing your mum talk about her dreams – despite what those lurid celebrity magazines may claim. But when a British filmmaker…

Che Guevara As You Have Never Seen Him Before

4 Jan 2008

DOCUMENTARY (E) 50min (Network retail) There’s a certain duplicity to the title of this Cuban effort from Manuel Perez Paredes. The story it tells of the life of the great Argentinean revolutionary, who was given Cuban nationality for his immense…

A Successful Man

4 Jan 2008

DRAMA (12A) 104min (Network DVD retail) Along with Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (Strawberry and Chocolate, The Twelve Chairs), Humberto Solás is one of the most prominent of the filmmakers to emerge from Castro’s Cuba, and this film from the 1980s is…

Chase A Crooked Shadow

4 Jan 2008

THRILLER (U) 84min (Optimum DVD retail) Directed by Michael Anderson, a man whose eclectic CV incorporates The Dam Busters and Logan’s Run, this low-key, high-concept thriller works through its original central premise with some solid character…

The Hottest State

4 Jan 2008

DRAMA (15) 113min (Revolver retail/rental) Actor, writer and now director Ethan Hawke’s respectable feature debut didn’t receive a cinema release in the UK, despite premiering at last August’s Edinburgh International Film Festival. Adapted by…

Fear Is The Key

4 Jan 2008

THRILLER 15 100min (Optimum DVD retail) A rarely-seen cult classic from 1972, this Alistair MacLean adaptation comes loaded with points of interest. Directed by Michael Tuchner (Villain, the big-screen version of The Likely Lads), soundtracked with…

Bride Of Re-Animator

4 Jan 2008

HORROR (18) 92min (Tartan rental/retail) Quite whether Brian Yuzna’s sequel to the black comic gorefest that was Re-Animator carries all the earlier film’s exuberant ickiness is a moot point, but there is, once again, a certain gusto which propels…

The Funhouse

4 Jan 2008

HORROR (15) 96min (Arrow DVD rental/retail) Originally released between his scary telly version of Salem’s Lot and the cursed Poltergeist, Tobe Hooper’s extras-free 1981 take on the teens-in-peril sub-genre takes so long to build up to very little…

The Twelve Chairs

4 Jan 2008

COMEDY DRAMA (12A) 93min (Network DVD rental/retail) When Hipolito (Enriqye Saniesteban) hears that his dying mother-in-law has left a fortune in jewels stashed away in one of her dozen imported chairs, he determines to find the missing fortune.

What's Up, Tiger Lily?

4 Jan 2008

COMEDY (PG) 76min (Optimum retail) Despite insisting in the intro to his 1966 directorial debut (of sorts) that Gone With the Wind used the same strategy, this was the first film to remove the dialogue of one movie and dub a completely new stream of…

Trent's Last Case - DVD review

(U) 90min

13 Dec 2007

Following the 1920 original and Howard Hawks’ 1929 remake, this third version of the archetypal English country house murder mystery, based on EC Bentley’s novel and made in 1952, is a workmanlike whodunnit directed by Irish journeyman Herbert Wilcox.

Society - DVD review

(18) 99min

13 Dec 2007

Fifteen years after its release (which wasn’t until some years after its making) Brian Yuzna’s unheralded genre film still shows the capacity to both appall and challenge, standing beside John Carpenter’s They Live as one of the most explicit attacks on…

Elizabeth - Special Edition DVD review

(15) 118min

13 Dec 2007

Given the recent, and rather belated, cinematic release of a sequel to Elizabeth: The Golden Age, a renewed interest in 1998’s original historical drama based on the life of Queen Elizabeth I was inevitable. It may not have started the public’s liking…

Breaking News - DVD review

(15) 90min

13 Dec 2007

Despite its rather extensive, one-note commentary on the media, this 2004 Hong Kong-set thriller from director Johnnie Fulltime Killer To doesn’t forget its main purpose – to thrill. When resourceful, ruthless heist planner Yuen (Richie Jen) and his…

A Silent Duel - DVD review

(12) 94min

13 Dec 2007

Akira Kurosawa was, more than most, a director who worked both in miniature and epic form. Where Ikiru, Dodesukaden and Madadayo cover the intimate, there are also the many epics, from Seven Samurai to Yojimbo, Kagemusha to Ran offering something more…

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…

Kisses

15 Nov 2007

TEEN DRAMA (15) 74min (Yume Pictures DVD retail) In some ways resembling a Japanese Rebel Without a Cause, Yasuzo Blind Beast Masumura’s sweet romantic debut feature film from 1957 offers hyperbolised family problems to bring out the best in the…

EXODUS

15 Nov 2007

One of Britain’s best-known maverick filmmakers, Penny Woolcock (Mischief Night, The Principles of Lust), teams up with Artangel (an organisation that commissions and produces projects by contemporary artists), Antony Gormley and the city of Margate to…

Brain Damage

15 Nov 2007

Brain Damage is surely the masterpiece in Frank Henenlotter’s limited but bloody career (though he does have a film called Bad Biology currently in post-production). Henenlotter made his name with the lurid Basket Case, before moving on to Frankenhooker…

When the Trumpets Fade

15 Nov 2007

WAR DRAMA (15) 85min (Arrow DVD Retail) Brit John Irvin directed this HBO-produced WWII-set film which concentrates on the bloody, drawn out, all but forgotten battle at Hürtgen Forest on the border between Belgium and Germany in the winter of…

Hitler – A Career

15 Nov 2007

Hardly justifying a DVD release, this 1970s-made steady trot through Hitler’s rise and fall has the sanctimonious tone of an admonition. Joachim C Fest’s film is less a warning from history and more a sustained attack of Hitler’s one-dimensional…

Les Bronzes

1 Nov 2007

This surprisingly engaging little 1978 comedy by Patrice Leconte (My Best Friend, The Hairdresser’s Husband) was a huge hit in France when it was released. Managing to be both cynical and warm as it takes a jaundiced look at the holidaying French…

Madadayo

1 Nov 2007

There is a very good reason why Akira Kurosawa’s final film from 1993 remains little known: it is about as bad a film as one is likely to get from a great filmmaker. Stuck with a dull central character, Hyakken Uchida (Tetsuo Matsumura), who spends most…

Magicians

1 Nov 2007

A film written by Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb: it’s Peep Show The Movie, right? Well, not quite, though the script never asks the pair to shy too far away from their small screen personae of uptight posh one and…

Steal This Movie

1 Nov 2007

Woefully under-distributed on its initial release in 2000 Robert Greenwald’s fascinating biopic of Yippie founder and US political activist Abbie Hoffman will hopefully find an audience on DVD. Constructed as a series of flashbacks, Hoffman (played with…

DVD Round-Up

18 Oct 2007

Hallowe’en is almost upon us so let’s delve into the DVD dungeon. We have to start with Halloween: 25 Years of Terror (Starz) •••••. Much imitated but rarely bettered, John Carpenter set the groundwork for every slasher film that followed and this…

DVD Roundup

4 Oct 2007

Quentin Tarantino’s exploitation movie homage Death Proof proved to be a damp squib, and Robert Rodriguez’s forthcoming companion flick Planet Terror isn’t much better. In America, the films were released – and flopped – as the double bill Grindhouse…

It's a Free World . . .

4 Oct 2007

(15) 96min (Channel 4) SOCIAL REALIST DRAMA Grandfather of British social realist cinema Ken Loach and Glasgow-born screenwriter Paul Laverty’s follow up to their Cannes Palme d’Or-winning rise of the IRA thriller The Wind that Shakes the Barley is…

The Ex

4 Oct 2007

(15) 90min (Icon/Rental) COMEDY Meet the Parents meets There’s Something About Mary with a bit of Garden State thrown in for good measure just about sums up the hardly original but often amusing latest Zach Braff vehicle. Playing a husband who’s…

Of Mice and Men

4 Oct 2007

(PG) 106min (Arrow/ DVD Retail) DRAMA Made only a couple of years after the John Steinbeck novel was published, this respectful 1939 adaptation by Lewis Milestone tells the now famous story of the wily and slight George (Burgess Meredith) and his…

Labyrinth of Passion

4 Oct 2007

(18) 94min (Tartan/DVD Retail) SCREWBALL MELODRAMA It was with this, Pedro Almodovar’s second film, made in 1982, that the brand of melodrama which has become known as ‘Almodorama’ – essentially a combination of melodrama and screwball comedy…

Manji

4 Oct 2007

(Yume Pictures) 90min DRAMA As strange as it is sensual, Yasuzo Masumura’s 1964 melodramatic sizzler Manji succeeds in being various things to different people. At its best, it casts a visceral eye upon the codes of a sexual culture which would…

The Bow

(15) 89mins (Tartan/DVD retail)

20 Sep 2007

Best known in Western audiences for Bad Guy, 3-Iron and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, enfant terrible Korean director Kim Ki-duk has some serious twisted form in Asian cinema. This one, like most of the others, comes recommended. The…

DVD Round-Up

20 Sep 2007

On hearing of Marilyn Monroe’s death, the filmmaker and actor John Huston said: ‘It’s a terrible pity that so much beauty has been lost to us.’ Forty-five years on, the first of two definitive DVD collections dedicated to her are coming out. Marilyn…

The Red Shoes

20 Sep 2007

HORROR (15) 103mins (Tartan Asia Extreme) Based loosely on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, and the Powell and Pressburger film of the same name, this Korean psychological horror flick’s biggest inspiration is perhaps the likes of The…

Man In The Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story

20 Sep 2007

BIOPIC (PG) 87min (Scanbox DVD retail/rental) On the subject of once highly-regarded artists fallen on hard times, this made-for-TV biopic isn’t the finest hour in director Allan Moyle’s career. His first film was the New York-set cult punk classic…

One Last Dance

20 Sep 2007

COMEDY/CRIME/ROMANCE (18) 110min (Tartan DVD retail/rental) Straight-to-DVD premieres no longer herald generally third-rate titles, as this off-beat Asian crime film proves. Written and directed by Brazilian filmmaker Max Makowski, and financed and…

They Fought For Their Motherland

20 Sep 2007

WAR DRAMA (15) 137min (Nouveaux Pictures/DVD retail) Like Sergei Bondarchuk’s earlier Destiny of a Man, this is taken from a book by Mikhail Sholokhov, a writer best known for And Quiet Flows the Don. Unlike that film, this is a multi-character…

DVD Round-up

6 Sep 2007

The stand-alone DVD rental and retail markets have been buzzing over what turned out to be a perfect summer for home entertainment. As we move into September, the box-set heavyweights move in to fill the hole in those darkening nights. You really can’t…

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…

New Films New Talents: Best of Scottish Shorts

6 Sep 2007

Scottish Screen presents a selection of films it funded in 2006, and there are some excellent shorts here, including Zam Salim’s award winning Laid Off, a jaundiced and funny take on death as the equivalent of unemployment, where nobody recognizes your…

Destiny of a Man

6 Sep 2007

Probably best known for his six hour adaptation of War and Peace (also recently released on DVD), Sergei Bondarchuk’s 1959 debut feature is no meagre effort. As he tells the story of a Soviet citizen, Andrei Sokolov (played by the director himself…

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…