Film and DVD

Room In Rome (Habitacion En Roma)

Julio Medem continues exploration of sexuality, but delivers emptiest film yet

22 Nov 2010

(18) 103min (Optimum) Two women, one gay, Alba (Elena Anaya), the other the heterosexual Natasha (Natasha Yarovenko) have an overnight fling in a Rome hotel room, talk about their pasts and prepare for their future. Director Julio Medem continues…

La Planete Sauvage, The Funhouse, Tenebrae and Pulp Fiction rereleased

Blu-ray releases round-up

21 Oct 2011

While inevitably the picture quality and audio track are vastly improved by the high definition offered by Blu-ray another bonus is the extra features you can cram on to the format. Trippy animated sci-fi allegory La Planete Sauvage (Eureka!) ●●●● is…

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…

Never Back Down

7 Aug 2008

ACTION (15) 108min (Momentum DVD retail/rental) Never Back Down isn’t meant for high analysis, it’s basically a film of hot young teens punching each other. The plot to string these acts of violence together is so basic it hardly warrants a mention…

Bare Behind Bars, Sea Purple, Here Come the Girls 3 and Dare

LGBT DVD Roundup

27 May 2011

If it’s a quiet night on the sofa you’re after, beware Bare Behind Bars (Arrow Video ●●●●). Described as a ‘chicks in chains grindhouse explosion’, we’re given sadistic lesbian guards, a permanently aroused screwball nurse and convicts with cabin fever…

Flower of Flesh and Blood, Guinea Pig and August Underground on DVD

The List’s guide to banned horror films, we watched them so you don’t have to

22 Oct 2010

For this Hallowe’en special we step into the outer reaches of horror and examine some of the films that have been refused a certificate by the British Board of Film Classification. Of course it’s impossible to have a discussion on banned movies in the…

Life on Mars

18 May 2010

(12) 710min (Fox) Transplanting a classic British show into a US setting has more often than not borne rotten fruit. The Office and Queer as Folk are two that never quite lived up to the UK original. Remaking Life on Mars proved so tough that the…

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…

Female Prisoner Scorpion Trilogy

2 Apr 2009

CRIME/ADVENTURE/BOXSET No one makes films like the Japanese filmmaker Shunya Ito, and his early 1970s exploitation film trilogy about the travails of a sexy young female prisoner Matsu (Meiko Kaji) are very likely to be his abiding legacy, in the…

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…

The City of Violence

(18) 90min (Premier Asia DVD retail/rental)

23 Aug 2007

Deeply indebted to a host of Western classics, this dazzling flick by Korean director Ryoo Seung-wan smoothly blends all of its influences into a fast-paced, gorgeous-looking whole. With shades of Get Carter, the hard-bitten (and just plain hard…

DVD reviews: The Kingdom, Giallo, The Pack, Bloodrayne 3, Evil Rising and Lake Mungo

Summer horror DVD round-up

18 Jul 2011

Forget Hollywood – this month we embark on a European horror odyssey. First up, Lars von Trier's superlative haunted hospital drama The Kingdom (Second Sight ●●●●). Collecting both of his four-part Danish TV series into one boxed set for the first time…

Flesh Of The Orchid (La Chair De L’Orchidee)

12 Jan 2011

(18) 120min (Bluebell) Charlotte Rampling rarely takes an easy role and this 1975 adaptation of a James Hadley Chase novel is no exception. She is Claire, a runaway heiress and it’s the asylum she is running away from. Taking up with big and bulky…

Big Tit Zombies 3D

22 Oct 2010

(15) 73min (Terracotta) Where a film like The Horde takes its zombies seriously, this isn't is something you could ever accuse Takao Nakano’s Big Tit Zombies of doing. BTZ goes for simple pleasures as a troupe of strippers fight off a plague of the…

The Passion Within

Period detail and good-looking actors in an unremarkable film

17 Aug 2010

‘You f**k like a boy’, reads the message that an actress leaves smeared in red lipstick across the bedroom mirror of a famous bullfighter in this 1940s Spain-set biopic that focuses on the tempestuous romance between Lupe Sino (Penelope Cruz) and…

Takeshi Kitano interview

16 Apr 2010

Takeshi Kitano has shown signs of eccentricity, but what happened to his filmmaking in the 2000s was weird even by his standards. Slipping tap dancing into a samurai film in 2003’s Zatoichi was the early-warning beacon, but that was nothing compared to…

Universal Soldier - Regeneration

16 Apr 2010

(18) 97 mins (Optimum Home Entertainment) The third official installment (wisely ignoring the two made for TV movies) in the Universal Soldier series is far better than it has any right to be. Jean-Claude Van Damme once again steps into the shoes of…

Under The Mud

5 Jan 2010

(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…

The Girl in the Park

5 Mar 2009

DRAMA It’s easy to see why this quiet little film about a missing child was overlooked for glitzy Angelina Jolie weepy The Changeling on its first release. As Julia Sandburg, whose toddler was snatched from a park 16 years earlier, Sigourney Weaver…

Edith Piaf: Le Concert Ideal/The Documentary

19 Feb 2009

(E) 110min (Acorn DVD retail) MUSIC/BOXSET The life of legendary chanteuse Edith Piaf was the stuff of melodrama, which, along with her incredible talents, accounts for her enduring appeal and status as a kind of deity in her native France. The…

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…

Tekken: Blood Vengeance

Fluid but uneven CGI movie based on the popular games franchise

1 Feb 2012

This is actually the third movie based on the immensely popular fighting games, but Tekken: Blood Vengeance (Manga Entertainment) is the first fully computer animated version and was originally available as part of the Tekken Hybrid package. It looks…

Profile: Simon Hynd, director of horror thriller Senseless

Jason Behr plays US businessman who is kidnapped

24 Mar 2011

Born 20 January, 1974, Edinburgh Background Hynd studied Film & Television at Napier, making a few shorts that got him noticed by the Scottish film industry, going on to win a Scottish BAFTA for his short Tumshie Mcfadgen’s Bid for Ultimate…

Down Terrace

Alternately nasty and hilarious UK kitchen sink gangster film

14 Dec 2010

(15) 89min (Metrodome) Not another facking Brit gangster flick?! Well, yes, but this alternately nasty and hilarious little gem is a world away from the mockney posturing of Guy Ritchie and co. Set in the suburban backstreets of Southern England’s…

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

22 Nov 2010

(U) 89min (Eureka/Masters of Cinema) Frank Tashlin’s wacky 1957 advertising world romp has got to be a contender for the fastest comedy ever made. Tashlin, the Hollywood animator-turned-filmmaker, even gets in a gag before the film’s opening…