Film, DVD and Miles Fielder

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.

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

The Special Relationship

22 Sep 2010

(15) 88min (Optimum) The third part of writer Peter Morgan’s excellent ‘Blair trilogy’ focuses on the relationship between the former PM and US president Bill Clinton. While Blair will probably be primarily remembered for what many perceive to have…

Tears For Sale

22 Sep 2010

(18) 86min (Icon) Reportedly the most expensive Serbian film ever made, this darkly comic fantasy is reminiscent of Terry Gilliam’s and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s gloriously eccentric flights of fancy. It certainly boasts the requisite visual imagination…

Profile: Jean Van Hamme

24 Aug 2010

Name Jean Van Hamme Born Brussels, Belgium, January 6 1939 Background Van Hamme studied business at university before becoming and journalist and a marketer, but from 1968 he began his professional writing career working around his day…

Sus

24 Aug 2010

(15) 96min (4Digi) On the eve of Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 landslide election victory a black man (Clint Dyer) is picked up off the streets of Brixton under the notorious suspicion law and interrogated by two white police officers (Ralph Brown and…

The Gold Rush

Both versions of the Chaplin classic with lots of features

17 Aug 2010

Given that The Gold Rush was his most ambitious production, and that it was the film he wanted to be remembered for, it’s unsurprising that Chaplin should have returned to it 17 years after he made it in 1925 to re-edit, score and add narration.

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 Valdez Horses

Bronson stars in solid western from director of The Magnificent Seven

12 Aug 2010

(15) 93min (Optimum) Though not generally thought of as being a spaghetti western, this US/Italian/Spanish co-production from 1976 fits the bill. Directed by Hollywood veteran John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven, Gunfight at the OK Corral), produced…

The Shock Doctrine

Second adaptation of Naomi Klein’s capitalism analysis

23 Jul 2010

(E) 79min (Dogwoof) Not to be confused with Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón’s 2007 short, this second adaptation of Naomi Klein’s chilling book about the evils of modern capitalism is the full-length 2009 documentary co-directed by Michael…

Landfall

7 Jul 2010

(PG) 85min (Optimum) This watchable 1949 adaptation of a novel by Nevil Shute casts handsome Michael Denison (Angels One Five) as a cheeky chappy who takes his wartime commission as a coastal command pilot very much more seriously than he does his…

The Silent Invasion

7 Jul 2010

(U) 66min (Optimum) This British drama made in 1962 and set in an occupied French village during the early years of World War II feels like an episode of a television show – and well it might, given it was written by small screen legend Brian…

Sammy Going South

21 Jun 2010

(PG) 118min (Optimum) A welcome DVD premiere for this lesser known, handsomely mounted and now digitally restored Alexander Mackendrick film from 1963, his first directorial credit after Sweet Smell of Success. Based on a novel by WH Canaway (who…