Film and DVD

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…

The Sick House

18 Sep 2008

HORROR (18) 104min (Showbox DVD retail) Young archaeologist (Gina Philips) finds her research into London’s great plague of 1665 barred when public health officials reveal that the former orphanage she is excavating still contains plague.

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…

Big River Man - Martin Strel interview

5 Jan 2010

‘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…

The Last Thakur

4 Dec 2009

(15) 83min (Artificial Eye) This Bangladeshi Western directed by British filmmaker Sadik Ahmed is a clumsily realised tale of Oedipal tensions. The film focuses on Kala, a young man visiting a small town determined to find out who raped his mother.

Cult Fiction Movies shop opens in Edinburgh

6 Aug 2009

To a certain type of movie fan, Newington’s newly-opened Cult Fiction Movies is a magical store where a litany of grindhouse double features, BFI Classics and films from America’s Criterion Collection which remain currently unavailable on this side of…

Splinter - Toby Wilkins interview

18 Mar 2009

Toby Wilkins cut his teeth in graphic design and visual effects (his work can be seen in everything from Cats & Dogs and Scooby Doo 2 to Red Dragon and Rush Hour 2) moving on to directing shorts, such as the award winning Kidney Thieves as well as a…

Derren Brown: The Specials

13 Nov 2008

(4DVD) 196min Almost five years ago to the week that Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand were threatened with being burnt at the stake, another witch-hunt was conducted for another man merely seeking to thrill us. In October 2003, Derren Brown asked a…

F

British ‘hoody horror’ thriller in which a group of teachers defend themselves from schoolkids

12 Jan 2011

(18) 78min F is the latest in a line of peculiarly British ‘hoody horror’ films that also include Eden Lake and Heartless. English writer/director Johannes Roberts’ effort is the best yet thanks to his smart script, crisp direction and a fine…

I Know You Know

Robert Carlyle stars in working-class tale director of Human Traffic

12 Aug 2010

(15) 81min (Network) Despite garnering acclaim for his 1999 clubber comedy Human Traffic, writer/director Justin Kerrigan hasn’t made a movie since. Making the decade-long wait worthwhile, the Cardiff-based writer-director returns with a moving and…

Twin Peaks boxset released on DVD - Mark Frost interview

2 Mar 2010

Almost twenty years to the day since Twin Peaks first aired, the long-awaited conclusion to David Lynch and Mark Frost’s seminal series is finally released on DVD. Series co-creator and executive producer Frost tells Murray Robertson what took so…

The Avengers - Series 1 & 2

11 Sep 2009

(PG) 1520min (Optimum DVD retail) What joy! Every surviving episode from all six series of the marvelous cult British television show The Avengers, originally broadcast between 1961 and 1969, are to be released on DVD over the course of the next…

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg

23 Aug 2009

(15) 104min (Sony DVD retail) Very welcome reissue of Peter Medak’s 1972 film adaptation of Peter Nichols’ hit West End play is a reminder that bad taste and suburban schadenfreude did not begin with Family Guy. Alan Bates and Janet Suzman are Bri…

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…

Made In Jamaica

15 Apr 2010

(15) 107min (Network) Following the template of Buena Vista Social Club this music doc steadicams its way round the ghettos of Kingston, exploring the variety of music on offer: the venerable reggae scene, represented by Bunny Wailer and the like…

DVD Roundup

Our trawl though the best (and worst) of recent horror DVD releases

30 Sep 2009

Rogue, I Sell the Dead, Wasting Away, Chanbara Beauty, Messengers 2: The Scarecrow, Deadline, From Within, The Books of Blood, Death of a Ghost Hunter, Smash Cut, Staunton Hill, Cradle Will Fall, Dr Chopper, Mr Halloween, Sexy Killer and The Antony I…

The Red Shoes

30 Jul 2009

Martin Scorsese proclaimed Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s masterpiece ‘truly the most beautiful Technicolor film ever made.’ Marty should know, given he oversaw the restoration of the 1948 classic through his Film Foundation and then premiered…

The Antichrist

19 Mar 2009

HORROR The Italians wasted no time ripping off the enormous success of The Exorcist, knocking out this dreadful demonic possession horror less than a year after Linda Blair blew green chunks all over Max von Sydow back in 1974. The Antichrist (aka…

Quiet Chaos

19 Mar 2009

FAMILY DRAMA When his wife collapses and dies on their lawn surrounded by chopped melon and a traumatised young daughter, Pietro (Nanni Moretti) is saving an ungrateful woman from drowning. It’s just one of several delicious ironies during a movie in…

DVD Round-Up

3 Jul 2008

The time has come to celebrate British cinema. Not the British cinema of Hitchcock, Powell and Pressburger, David Lean or Robin The Wicker Man Hardy, but the cinema of subsidies and struggle, the results of which have barely seen the inside of a cinema…

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…

Irezumi

(15) 85min (Yume Pictures/DVD retail)

23 Aug 2007

Based on the legendary decadent Japanese writer Junichirô Tanizaki’s short story, Yasuzo Masumura’s 1966 film is a tale of love’s labour lost to prostitution and murder after a woman, Otsuya (Ayako Wakao) from a superior background embarks on an affair…

Ultimate Avengers 2: Rise Of The Black Panther

11 Apr 2007

Taking its cues from Mark Millar’s The Ultimates, Marvel returns to the animated world with the second part of their Ultimate Avengers series. The alien menace has now reached Africa and is threatening the small but technically advanced nation of…

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…

DVD: The Flying Scotsman

1929 Romantic comedy thriller is silent film with dialogue added

17 Feb 2011

Classic 1929 action-romance set on the titular train, with amazing stunts and future Oscar-winner Ray Milland.

DVD: Pelican Blood

Suicide and competitive bird-watching meet in dark drama from Irish director

17 Feb 2011

(15) 94min (Icon) Irish indie director Karl Golden ’s second feature is more raw and vicious than his 2003 debut The Honeymooners. Harry Treadaway (Fish Tank, Control) plays Nikko, a suicidal young man whose low-key daily routine of bird watching…

K-20: The Legend of the Black Mask

Japanese take on vintage crime-fighter serials boasts evocative steampunk setting

2 Feb 2011

(12) 137min (Manga Entertainment) Forget about the duff Green Hornet, this Japanese take on vintage crime-fighter serials – The Shadow, The Rocketeer, The Phantom et al – is far more entertaining. The year is 1949, but it’s an alternate reality in…

Private Road

12 Jan 2011

(15) 89min (BFI) Barney Platts-Mills’ 1971 film is undoubtedly one of the great lost British masterpieces of the 1970s. Platts-Mills was a filmmaker whose previous cult film Bronco Bullfrog had taken a knife to the frothy London set cinema of the…

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…

Video Killed The Radio Star

Nostalgic documentary on pop promo world profiles Russell Mulcahy, David Mallet and Wayne Isha

2 Nov 2010

(IND3D) Did you know that, with the dawn of MTV in the 1980s, the pop promo became almost as important to an artist’s career as their actual songs? Everyone who has studied that period or, worse, lived through it, won’t need telling twice. Well…

The Story of F***

Low-budget irreverent British satire on music industry

2 Nov 2010

(15) 84min (Network) Hunter S Thompson’s ‘the music industry is a cruel and shallow money trench …’ quote is so trite it’s printed on the urinal in the men’s loos at King Tut’s. Hardly an inspired note on which to begin a satire of the pop…

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…

The Island

Well-told Russian fable of spirituality and guilt

23 Jul 2010

(PG) 150min (Artificial Eye) The spirit of Andrei Tarkovsky hovers over Russian cinema maybe more than any other director, perhaps quite aptly for one so given to the spiritual himself. The Island opens with a horrible moment of human weakness.

Flickers

28 May 2010

(12) 300min (Network) Made for British television in 1980 and starring the then bankable pairing of Bob Hoskins (between Pennies from Heaven and The Long Good Friday) and Frances De La Tour (fresh from the set of hit comedy Rising Damp) this…

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 Night My Number Came Up

18 May 2010

(PG) 91min (Optimum) Forget Final Destination, this is the original fateful flight film. Produced by Ealing Studios in 1955, it’s based on a supposedly true story via an article by Victor Goddard as adapted by RC Sherriff (who also wrote that same…

Last Stop 174 (Ultima Parada 174)

29 Mar 2010

(18) 110min (Bright Spark) Following on and taking it’s lead from Jose Padilha 2002 documentary Bus 174 this Brazilian film fictionalizes the story of former street kid Sandro do Nascimento who hijacked a public bus in Rio De Janeiro in 2000. By…

Twin Peaks complete series released on DVD - Mark Frost interview - complete transcript

5 Mar 2010

To mark release of the Twin Peaks: Definitive Gold DVD Box Set, Murray Robertson interviews the seminal TV series’ co-creator and producer Mark Frost. This is the complete unedited transcript of the interview.

The Millionairess

13 Nov 2009

(U) 87min (Windows Media) In this still very enjoyable 1960 comedy it;s ironic that Peter Sellers plays a humble Indian doctor who spurns the advances of Sophia Loren's richest woman in the world, given the then married Sellers was head-over-heels…

IP Man

4 Nov 2009

(15) 106min (Showboat Blu-ray/DVD retail/rental) Wilson Yip’s historically revisionist action film takes martial arts back to basics with the story of the titular grand master of the ‘wing chun’ fighting style and mentor of screen legend Bruce Lee.

Interview: Greg Dillahunt

Speaking to The Last House on the Left's most vicious villain

16 Oct 2009

Are you a fan of Wes Craven? I have always been a huge fan of Wes Craven! He was on my mental checklist of people I wanted to work with. When did you meet him? I met him just before we started shooting because he had the last word with casting…

Sometimes a Great Notion

30 Apr 2009

DRAMA Briefly seen in the UK under the title Never Give an Inch, Sometimes a Great Notion was a long gestated but never accomplished project by Sam Peckinpah before becoming one of the most unfairly underrated gems in the directorial canon of the…

Profile - Ron Peck

16 Apr 2009

Born 15 May, 1948, South London Background Even in his bookish, middle-class youth the now-sexagenarian Peck was determined to become a filmmaker. ‘It was three strands that made cinema very vital and alive for me,’ he says, citing as major…

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…

Interview - Mark Hartley

5 Mar 2009

‘To me they were just like American exploitation films, but they had Australian locations and Australian actors. So I felt a connection to them. After seeing them I wanted to read about them, but I realised they hadn’t been written about at all. ‘In…

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…

Black Watch

5 Feb 2009

(18) 154min (John Williams Productions DVD retail) FILMED THEATRE There can be little doubt about the power of the National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch, an international hit for Scottish theatre unparalleled for a decade. Its story of a…

Soldier Blue

30 Oct 2008

Originally released in 1970 at the tail end of a period of huge social, political and psychological change and based on the massacre of Cheyenne Indians at Sand Creek in 1864, Soldier Blue is as relevant today as it ever was. Predominantly a love story…

Under the Bombs

21 Aug 2008

DRAMA/ROMANCE This piece from former documentary maker Philippe Aractingi speaks loudly of his own artistic origins in reportage. In it, a mother returns to Lebanon at the end of the Lebanese-Israeli war of 2006 in order to find her son, who has…

Best of the 15th Raindance Film Festival Shorts

7 Aug 2008

SHORTS (15) 100min (PIAS DVD retail) Cottoning on to the fact that in the future the best film festivals will probably take place online and from the comfort of our own homes, those good people at Raindance have put together a best of DVD. The…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

US TV boxsets: DVD round-up

Bored to Death, The Killing, Weeds and In Treatment reviewed

16 Sep 2011

If you thought that Ted Danson had delivered career-remoulding performances as ‘himself’ in Curb Your Enthusiasm, you should check out the dazzle he brings to the first series of Bored to Death (Warner Home Video ●●●●). Jonathan Ames’ Brooklyn-set…

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…

The Governor, Being Human and Traffik among DVD highlghts

The old school fares well against newbies in TV drama releases

29 Jun 2011

The Governor ●●●● features a curious performance from Janet McTeer, just four years before her 1999 Oscar nomination for Tumbleweeds. In the first season of Lynda La Plante’s excellent prison drama, she switches between giggling schoolgirl and feisty…

DVD review - Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle

Uncompromising, awkward and confrontational style and content cements reputation

28 Jun 2011

(2entertain) The second series of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle will do very little to alter the entrenched opinions on both sides of his critical fence. Those detractors will switch off in their droves at the uncompromising, awkward and…

DVD reviews: Amer, My Soul to Take, Season of the Witch, The Resident and more on DVD

Horror DVD round-up

24 Jun 2011

Time for another dastardly delve into the horror DVD pile. We’ll start on a highnote. Amer (Anchor Bay) is actually French but is a studied homage to Italian 70s gialo filmmaking, more concerned with sound, colour, style and mood than coherent…

DVD Box sets of work by Terence Rattigan, Andrei Tarkovsky and Danny Boyle

Abbas Kiarostami and David Leland collections also released in June

21 Jun 2011

If you are still buying DVDs in these straightened, downloaded times then you are going to want a bit of bang for your buck. Box sets are the way forward and late June and July are surprisingly full of intriguing new releases. The Terence Rattigan…

Age of the Dragons

Flawed take on Moby Dick a sea of flat performances hampered concessions to original text

7 Apr 2011

(12A) 90min This loose retelling of Moby Dick boasts some sumptuous cinematography and the unlikely star pairing of Danny Glover and Vinnie Jones. But transplanting the action to a fantasy land (an effectively shot Utah) and swapping dragons for…

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…

DVD: Phenomena, The Beyond, Senseless, Blooded, Skyline, Primal, Island of Death

Recent horror DVD releases reviewed

24 Mar 2011

Italian horror from the 1970s and 80s is finally getting the recognition it deserves. Dario Argento is on familiar ground in Phenomena (Arrow Video) ●●●● as a killer stalks an isolated girls school, but with a twist, as a young Jennifer Connolly uses…

Buried, Puppet Master: Axis of Evil and Shock Labyrinth released on DVD

Horror DVD round-up

2 Mar 2011

Over the years some of the greatest horror films have found love and longevity amongst the classics of the genre despite their direct-to-video origins. Unfortunately that’s not always the case as The Open Door (Second Sight) ● proves. Taking the vague…

Stone and Who Loves the Sun among DVD release highlights

Featuring boxsets of Akira Kurosawa, Richard Woolley and Luis Buñuel

2 Mar 2011

Here’s what may be of interest on DVD and Blu-ray that’s coming out in March. An Unflinching Eye: The Films of Richard Woolley (BFI ●●●●) brings together the almost complete short and feature work of this overlooked British filmmaker whose films were as…

DVD: I Spit on Your Grave

2010 remake of notorious 'Video Nasty'

17 Feb 2011

Sarah Butler stars in Steven R Monroe's reboot of the 1978 rape-revenge Video Nasty.

DVD: Betrayal

War thriller suffers from two-dimensional characters and lack of action

17 Feb 2011

(15) 93min (Optimum) Nazi occupied Oslo in 1943 and the black market is rife. Life is sweet for corrupt businessmen who frequent the nightspot Club Havana, largely thanks to the compliance of the SS Major who turns a blind eye and takes his share.

DVD: In Their Sleep (Dans Ton Sommeil)

Quietly unsettling psychological thriller

17 Feb 2011

French psychological thriller directed by Caroline and Eric du Potet, and starring Anne Parillaud (Nikita).

Deep Red (Profondo Rosso)

Stands alongside Suspiria as one of Dario Argento’s mid-career peak films

2 Feb 2011

(18) 121/100min (Arrow) Deep Red stands beside such work as The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Suspiria as the most interesting of Dario Argento’s mid-career peak films. Its captivating visuals, all clean lines, whites and chromes contrasting…

Ving Rhames gives compelling performance as Sonny Liston in Phantom Punch

Poor supporting performances dog gangster movie by numbers

2 Feb 2011

(15) 100min (Metrodome) Perhaps the most duplicitous aspect of Robert Townsend’s account of the life of heavyweight champ Sonny Liston is the title itself. Liston’s rematch with Mohammed Ali ended early with a punch that simply didn’t look like a…

1964 version of The Thin Red Line is a workmanlike war movie

Original film bludgeons home madness of war message of James Jones' novel

2 Feb 2011

(12) 95min (Optimum) The central message of James Jones’ source novel – war is insane and it turns soldiers into mad men – was somewhat lost amid the seemingly endless scenes of marines wading through long grass in Terrence Malick’s quasi-mystical…

Series 1 of Gary Tank Commander released on DVD

Greg McHugh' slightly dim, highly camp Edinburgher

2 Feb 2011

(15) 180min (2entertain) The idea of a slightly dim, highly camp Edinburgher in the armed services sounds like it has the potential to be either massively offensive or a spot-on critique of military politics. The ultimately affectionate Gary Tank…

Wetherby

Intriguing and engrossing 1984 mystery drama with to-die-for cast

12 Jan 2011

(15) 99min (Park Circus) National treasure David Hare remains best known for his award-feted plays (Plenty, The Blue Room) and his screenwriting (The Hours, The Reader), but he’s also an assured director, as is evidenced by this intriguing and…

Freakonomics

‘Blockbuster documentary’ adapting bestselling book on human nature not quite substantial enough

12 Jan 2011

(12) 90min (Optimum) This ‘blockbuster documentary’, which pools the talents of six well-established doc directors to adapt the bestselling book by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner that examined various aspects of human nature, doesn’t quite add…

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…

The Avengers: The Complete Series 6

The flamboyant spy series that echoed the pop-cultural moods of the 1960s

14 Dec 2010

(12) 480min (Optimum) Throughout the 1960s The Avengers bestrode the televisual world like a colossus. Twisted, kinky and confident, the flamboyant spy series echoed precisely the pop-cultural moods of that tumultuous decade. The latest volume in…

Tropic of Cancer

14 Dec 2010

(18) 87min (Olive Films) Available on DVD for the first time, this is the 1970 adaptation of Henry Miller’s novel set at the end of the 1960s rather than the 1930s when the book was originally published. It nevertheless captures the irreverence of…

Kicks

Lindy Heymann’s dark drama dramatises crisis of Britain’s celebrity culture

14 Dec 2010

(15) 82min (Drakes Avenue) The third and final film to be made under Liverpool and Northwest’s excellent micro-budget scheme, Digital Departures, director Lindy Heymann’s dark drama is very different from its predecessors, Terence Davies…

A Bay of Blood

Mario Bava’s 1971 film one of the most influential and imitated horror films ever made

30 Nov 2010

(18) 80min (Arrow Video) Out of all Arrow’s lush new DVD and Blu-ray issues of films from the American and Italian masters of horror, this is the one I have been looking forward to most. I was first introduced to Mario Bava’s 1971 film by friend…

Shogun Assassin

30 Nov 2010

(18) 85min (Eureka/Masters of Cinema) Heavily cut by the British Board of Film Censorship for its original cinema release and subsequently banned as a video nasty, this bloodthirsty 1980 martial arts flick has since become a chanabara (samurai…

Sweet Karma

30 Nov 2010

(18) 85min (Anchor Bay) There are echoes of female vigilante benchmarks Ms 45 (aka Angel of Vengeance) and the Kill Bills in this femme fatale revenge thriller in as much as it features a gorgeous girl (model-turned-actress Shera Bechard) brutally…

I am a Camera

Largely forgotten adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin omits social decay

30 Nov 2010

(12) 100min (Park Circus) Made in 1955 this, the first major film adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin, is largely forgotten, eclipsed by the multi award-winning stage and film musical Cabaret, also adapted from Isherwood’s tales…

Chaplin at Keystone

30 Nov 2010

(U) 561min (BFI) Before he became an international star and acclaimed filmmaker, Charlie Chaplin learned to make movies at Mack Sennett’s Keystone Film Company. Spotted in Fred Karno’s touring vaudeville troupe, Chaplin was snapped up by the silent…

Down Home Music

30 Nov 2010

(E) (Arhoolie) In 1963 German filmmaker Dietrich Wawzyn set out to shoot a series of films for German television that took him through the southern states in search of American jazz and roots music. He asked Arhoolie Records founder Chris…

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…

Limmy's Show

The series which brought credibility to BBC Scotland comedy roster

22 Nov 2010

(15) 180min (2entertain) A stoned loner notices peculiar inconsistencies on TV adverts at 4am. A bushy-eyebrowed executive plots his excuses before the local constabulary show up at his office. A paranoid ex-junkie takes offence at the most…

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…

Lovely Rita

Jessica Hausner’s 2001 account of small town family life

22 Nov 2010

(15) 80min (Artificial Eye) Obviously less polished than her later work (Hotel, Lourdes), Jessica Hausner’s 2001 account of a teenager’s stultifying small town family life in Austria is easily reflected in the flat images, in the overly even and…

Army of the Dead

Character clichés wheeled out in this torpid affair

22 Nov 2010

(18) 89min (Kaleidoscope) Of all the legions of scary monsters and super creeps, walking skeletons have to be the most rubbish. Ray Harryhausen managed to make them pretty threatening in Jason and the Argonauts and the bony ghouls from Pirates of…

Metropolis

16 Nov 2010

(PG) 150min (Eureka/Masters of Cinema) The reconstruction, restoration and re-release of classic films is now becoming a regular occurrence (happily enough), but the reissue of Fritz Lang’s visionary 1927 science fiction film is something altogether…

BFI reissues 1960s Tintin films in advance of Spielberg’s The Secret of the Unicorn

Remarkably accurate live action homage to Hergé's characters

2 Nov 2010

Tintin And The Mystery Of The Golden Fleece (U) 98min (U) 96min (BFI) These two releases from the British Film Institute should sate any self respecting Hergé fan. It’s undeniably an informatively shrewd move to showcase these two films from…

Hotel

Austrian drama brings out cold emptiness of a spiritless world

2 Nov 2010

(15) 74 min (Artificial Eye) Jessica Hausner shows the same eerie sense of place as she would show in her recent Lourdes, a gaze that makes simple details stand out in all their bland terror. As Irene (Franziska Weisz) takes a job as a desk clerk in…

The Ballroom

Brazilian comic drama enlists former dance kings and ageing beauties

2 Nov 2010

(15) 95min (Matchbox) Brazilian director Lais Bodanzky’s charming but cheeky comic drama takes place over one night in an old school ballroom (or ‘gafieira’) in Sao Paulo, where the ageing locals teach a handful of young newcomers a thing or three…

31 North 62 East

Ham-fisted and unwise affair

2 Nov 2010

(15) 99min (Kaleidoscope) Would you trust a Prime Minister who is a cross between John Prescott and Boris Yeltsin? This and several other lumpen creations are offered up in a ham-fisted attempt to point the finger at government agencies who…

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…

Andrzej Zulawski's cult horror hybrid Possession released on DVD

22 Oct 2010

It certainly ranks as one of the most surreal moments in my life. I’m sitting in a Polish restaurant, having dinner (before a scheduled Q&A at the Filmhouse) with one of my all time favourite film directors, who is standing behind me, giving me a…

Dead Cert

22 Oct 2010

(18) 93min (Momentum) Two of modern cinema’s most over used clichés collide when vampires meet cock-er-ney gangsters in this tired Brit flick as Romanian bloodsuckers try to muscle in on an East End strip club owned by Craig Fairbrass. What could…

Night of the Demons

22 Oct 2010

(18) 96 mins (Kaleidoscope) Hollywood’s unquenchable appetite for remakes means even near-forgotten schlock horror cheapies are getting the remake treatment. Night of the Demons was a lurid, gory, late-night favourite from 1988 and this updated…

Psych 9

22 Oct 2010

(18) 93 mins (indi VISION) Unfortunately, Psych 9 takes itself way too seriously. Roslyn (Sarah Foster) finds temporary employment on the nightshift helping to clear out an abandoned hospital, while a serial killer (dubbed the Night Hawk by local…