Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Man, Disney must really have it bad for Madeleine L’Engle, don’t they? There are two points in this film where a character would say that they are underwhelmed, and they couldn’t have offered a more accurate description of what sitting through A Wrinkle in Time feels like. The latest adaptation of L’Engle’s novel by acclaimed director Ava DuVernay, this movie tries to aim high but falls very short of greatness, and what we have is a disappointing trainwreck of poorly executed setpieces, some lacklustre acting, hokey dialogue and a laughably bad Oprah. There are certain scenes and scenarios where it feels as though its heart is in the right place and the emotional points land, but for the most part, this film is borderline gobbledegook and the visual palette is so bizarre and trippy, one wonders if someone took too many drops of LSD when designing it.

The first hour or so feels like one of those original TV movies you’d normally find on the Disney Channel, but given a much bigger budget and more A-list talent, yet has all the same corny, pretentious nonsense that you’d normally associated with those type of movies. The original source material dealt with a lot of dark yet relevant themes and topics whilst also having strong religious overtones to it, and all of that rich meaty material is stripped away to the bare bones of it, just like the similarly ill-fated 2007 film adaptation of The Golden Compass. This also has many of the same ambitions and trappings of the film adaptations of Bridge to Terabithia and The Lovely Bones in that those movies had good intentions with great performances and talented filmmakers behind them yet failed to capture why their respective novels were so important and resonated with their core audiences.

Also, it suffers from recycling the bog-standard cliches that have been done to death so many times, including main characters that are the destined chosen ones, the power of love vanquishing all, and the happily ever after. Plus, there are even generic bullies that are so shallow that it’s hard to believe that DuVarney allowed this considering that her last film, Selma, offered a very realistic portrait of how bullies work. Admittedly, there are some impressive visuals to be found and there is at least one impressively handled emotional moment between the main character and her father played by Chris Pine that will probably leave some feeling misty-eyed. In fact, any emotional moment involving the main character is pretty solid and that’s all down to rising star Storm Reid who gives a very grounded and nuanced performance. There’s no denying that Reid is the only one that emerges with her head held high, and if she manages to survive this film’s lukewarm reception, then she is guaranteed to be a major star to watch out for in the near future.

The others don’t fare as well as Reid does however; Chris Pine is fine enough for what he’s given while the incredibly talented Gugu Mbatha-Raw is given nothing to do except worry and give moral advice. Both Zach Galifianakis and Michael Peña are wasted in glorified cameos, Levi Miller comes off like a schmuck and it’s unclear Deric McCabe’s performance as Charles Wallace is so bad it’s hilarious or so bad it’s bad. As for the three “fairy godmothers” in this film, Mindy Kaling is perfectly fine and is the only one that closely resembles what the book was capturing, but Reese Witherspoon is insufferably annoying and actually quite scary with her wide-eyed expressions and manic tics she displays. However, both of them pale in comparison to the glorious disaster that is Oprah Winfrey, who is completely impossible to take seriously given her extreme fashion sense, which makes her look like the wacky relative of Tina Turner’s Aunty Entity from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.

Madeleine L’Engle once said that the key to great storytelling for children was that they could afford to “be childlike and not childish”, and with this adaptation of her book, it’s pretty clear that they went with the childish route. It fails to capture the importance and meaning of the original book while also feeling incredibly shallow and frankly lazy in its execution, which is shocking considering that Ava DuVernay in the past has been anything but lazy considering her extraordinary past filmography. Yes, there are perhaps one of two emotional moments that worked well, Storm Reid is phenomenal, and there can be wondrous sights to be seen, but A Wrinkle in Time reeks of a movie that had the meat and guts ripped out of it, leaving an empty carcass that will likely leave audiences feeling underwhelmed. Then again, this film did have a giant Oprah in an aluminium chicken suit with Goku hair and Jem glitter makeup, so that’s got to count for something, right?

A WRINKLE IN TIME / DIRECTOR: AVA DUVERNAY / SCREENPLAY: JENNIFER LEE, JEFF STOCKWELL / STARRING: STORM REID, OPRAH WINFREY, REESE WITHERSPOON, MINDY KALING, LEVI MILLER, DERIC MCCABE, CHRIS PINE, GUGU MBATHA-RAW, ZACH GALIFIANAKIS, MICHAEL PENA / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

If we’re being honest, Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim was a movie that promised so, so much, yet to many it ended up being a bit of a disappointment. Some saw that 2013 film as a loving homage to monster movies of yesteryear, whilst others saw it as a soulless, formulaic picture that was a case of style over substance. Fast forward five years, and here we have the long-gestating follow-up to that opinion-splitting film – but the question is, is Pacific Rim: Uprising actually any good?

Going back to del Toro’s original Pacific Rim, there we saw Idris Elba’s Stacker Pentecost as the hero of the hour as mankind piloted Jaegers in a battle against some big ol’ Kaiju beasties from the depths of the ocean. Here, John Boyega plays Stacker’s son, Jake; a black-market tech scavenger who is hesitant to follow in his old man’s footsteps. Of course, before you can say “reluctant hero”, Jake is back in the Jaeger game and training up new recruits led by Cailee Spaeny’s rebellious orphan, Amara Namani, and he finds himself working alongside his former Jaeger co-pilot, Nate Lambert (Scott Eastwood). And what good timing it is, considering that Jing Tian’s Shao Liwen is driving forward with a new rival drone project, whilst a rogue Jaeger turns up in Australia as the proverbial shit hits the proverbial fan. Can Jake truly pick up where his pops left off? Does he really want to pick up where his pops left off? And just how many times is it acceptable to see huge hulking drones causing chaos and carnage in one movie?

Pacific Rim: Uprising will likely ultimately be looked back upon in a similar way to its predecessor; with it again one that will split opinion. To be frank, though, it’s quite simply a bit of fist-pumping, no-nonsense, popcorn-munching fun. It’s a popcorn picture in every imaginable way, and it’s something that you can easily turn on without having to really engage your brain all that much. And sometimes, that’s what movies are about. Uprising is abrasive, indulgent, and has all systems amped up to 11, and when it comes down to it, it again is a film about giant robots battling giant monsters.

John Boyega is the clear star of the show here, putting in a leading man performance that manages to capture the charm, energy, and magnetic presence of classic Harrison Ford or even, as a more modern-day reference point, Dwayne Johnson. While Boyega’s role in the Star Wars franchise has seen him largely positioned as comic relief by this point, here he shows that he can be more than just that guy you rely on to lighten the mood or quip wise. That’s not to say that he doesn’t indeed lighten the mood or quip wise here, of course, but there’s just a whole lot more to his turn as Jake. Unfortunately for Boyega, though, he’s let down by a tale that is, much like del Toro’s 2013 feature, so often all about the crash ‘n’ wallop, lazily relying far too much on its elaborate, skyline-decimating, overly-drawn-out action sequences. But then, that’s kind of par for the course for a movie like Pacific Rim: Uprising, right? And to be fair, when your action sequences are so impressive, we can almost excuse Uprising for overindulging on this front.

Will Pacific Rim: Uprising revolutionize the sci-fi action game? Not a chance. What it will do, however, is provide a fine way to pass a few hours on a Saturday night as you work your way through a big bag of Butterkist. Likewise, this is a film that isn’t going to win over those who weren’t all that keen on the first Pacific Rim. In fact, if anything, it takes the key elements of that first movie and doubles down on them. A decent, if not uninspiring actioner that will likely tick plenty of boxes for genre fans with a penchant for over-the-top bash ‘em, smash’ em carnage. Nothing more, nothing less.

Special Features: Audio commentary with Steven S. DeKnight / Ten featurettes / Deleted scenes

PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING / CERT: 12 / DIRECTOR: STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT / SCREENPLAY: VARIOUS / STARRING: JOHN BOYEGA, SCOTT EASTWOOD, CAILEE SPAENY, TIAN JING, BURN GORMAN, CHARLIE DAY, RINKO KIKUCHI / RELEASE DATE: JULY 30TH

What would happen if, instead of Bowman and Poole aboard the Discovery One, NASA had instead sent Jack Torrance to Jupiter, all by himself? That’s the question Richard Mundy essentially poses in his debut feature, which arrived two years ago at UK film festivals and is now being rolled out across home media – as It Lives in the UK and the more ostentatiously Orwellian Twenty Twenty-Four on the other side of the Atlantic.

There’s no mention of Stanley Kubrick in any of the promotion, although the comparisons are not just unavoidable but absolutely glaring.

Less than a decade into the future, the threat of nuclear apocalypse is now so imminent that twelve massive bunkers have been built to house those most likely to be capable of rebuilding the world after the inevitable has happened, and so we join Roy as caretaker of the Plethura, readying the complex for the arrival of its expected inhabitants, and helped by his only companion, the computer ‘Arthur’. Do you really need us to tell you what happens next…?

If you hadn’t guessed, the world above suddenly goes silent, leading Roy and Arthur to guess that the anticipated residents of Plethura aren’t going to turn up. What does turn up is an unexpected door, and an even more unexpected possible presence, and suddenly Roy’s giving it his best Jack Nicholson while the silent Arthur (who speaks only in on-screen messages) does his best as a kind of mute Douglas Rain.

This is psychological thriller in the guise of cheap horror, and if there isn’t an idea, a visual, or a music cue that you haven’t seen or heard before in either 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Shining, then at least you’ll have some fun spotting which film Mundy is referencing at any given point. And to be fair, he does throw in some Blair Witch towards the end, just to keep us on our toes.

What we do have is feature novice Andrew Kinsler as Roy, faced with the task of keeping the entire film standing and not doing the worst job he might have. In fact, he totally looks the part as the kind of loner scientist who wouldn’t have minded months of isolation in an underground bunker; he’s the approximate midway point between Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, and his Nicholson face isn’t too bad either. Unfortunately he’s a bit less of a natural during the repeated sequences where he’s called upon to converse with a silent computer monitor, but to be fair most inexperienced actors would have struggled with that.

Despite a meagre budget, the self-taught Mundy manages to invoke both the look and sound (and some of the feel) of Kubrick’s best work, and simply because he’s aiming for the stars, that he falls short doesn’t make It Lives any less worthy of investigation. If Mundy can overcome his reverence for the master, he’ll have a much more interesting future ahead of him than he depicts here.

REVIEW: IT LIVES (aka TWENTY TWENTY-FOUR) / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: RICHARD MUNDY / SCREENPLAY: RICHARD MUNDY / STARRING: ANDREW KINSLER / RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 6TH

This set brings together the five films in the Sartana series. The mysterious gunslinger was a character that became famous in the period following Eastwood’s Man with No Name films as Italian producers flooded the international market with a huge number of similarly-themed westerns. Sartana, seemingly styled like Eastwood by way of Dracula, like Django and a few others, became so popular that unofficial entries abounded.

The films here represent the official big-screen adventures for the character beginning with the marvellously titled If You Meet Sartana… Pray for Your Death. In all but one he is played by Gianni Garko (George Hilton fills in as lead in one of the best, Sartana’s Here… Trade Your Pistol for a Coffin) and the plots are always a mix of double-crosses and backstabbing with Sartana at the centre and frequently gold as the prize. There’s no benefit to sticking to an order with the films as there’s no story carrying over, with many of the same actors popping up in each film as someone entirely different. They range from convoluted and occasionally plodding to, in Hilton’s turn and the final film Light the Fuse… Sartana is Coming, still convoluted but nevertheless entertaining, well-directed and atmospheric films that combine action, humour and invention throughout.

A collector’s set is going to be of most interest to those who already know the films so let’s cover the important things for those putting down their money for this set. First off, and considering these films were not high-budget epics, the 2K scans done for this release are remarkably good. The first film suffers from some print damage here and there, but nothing too distracting. As for the remainder, the fine cinematography, set design, costuming and myriad actions scenes are agreeably sharp, colourful and clear.

Three films come with informative audio commentaries, and every disc comes with interviews (most newly filmed) with the participants from writer and director Gianfranco Parolini on the first film to an archival (but still recent) interview with Garko on the last disc. It’s clear from those taking part that there’s plenty of enthusiasm for the films, the period they were shot in and the central character. Jonathan Bygraves’ visual essay Light the Fuse… Sartana is Coming covers the reoccurring stable of actors throughout. There’s also a collector’s booklet with writing on the film by Roberto Curti and a timeline of the Spaghetti Western by Howard Hughes.

The films themselves are solid western entertainment, and for those who decide to pick this set up, the extras are strong. Fans of the Sartana series are unlikely to be disappointed by the presentation here. An easy recommendation from us.

REVIEW: THE COMPLETE SARTANA / DIRECTOR: VARIOUS / SCREENPLAY: VARIOUS / STARRING: GIANNI GARKO, GEORGE HILTON / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Having kick-started the Italian cannibal genre with 1972’s The Man from Deep River and continued it with his Rev. Jim Jones suicide cult parody Eaten Alive (1980), gino-of-all-trade Umberto Lenzi’s third bite of the savage cherry threw away the artifice and put flesh-eating centre stage. Released in 1981, Cannibal Ferox (‘ferox’, we are told early on, being the Latin word for ‘savage’) proudly sold itself as “the most violent film ever made – banned in 31 countries!” and pretty much lived up to its own hype, all told.

In grand exploitation style, Lenzi’s mission was to, er, cannibalise the previous year’s Cannibal Holocaust from his fellow countryman Ruggero Deodato. But while Holocaust was a disarmingly intelligent rottweiler of a movie that asked fundamental questions about the nature of human atrocity and our savage heart, Ferox is an unashamed rip-off that hits all the same notes with fatter fingers and a cheeky wink. It’s all a bit deja vu if you know the territory; we start off in New York before diving into the jungle; there is real-life animal killing aplenty (a dubious trait of the genre that forever besmirches it); there’s a hedonistic American moron front and centre; there’s a brutal castration scene and a damsel is creatively impaled in a jaw-droppingly tasteless manner. Indeed, the pre-CGI gore effects are frequently astonishing and ingeniously lensed, no more so than the pièce de résistance scene where a bloke gets the top of his head sliced off like a soft-boiled egg and his brains scooped out by hungry indigenous locals. Lenzi was justly proud of it.

Given this is a Blu-ray debut for the UK, the extras on this Shameless release feel a bit undernourished compared to the US Grindhouse Releasing edition. A brief Lenzi interview recorded shortly before his death in 2017 is the highlight. The old rogue (not noted for his on-set diplomacy) shouts down his detractors and comes out fighting on the animal cruelty issue (“in Europe people used to eat turtle soup!”). There’s also an acerbic little chat with star and Italian exploitation icon Giovanni Lombardo Radice (credited in the movie as John Morghen) who cites Ferox as the only film from his colourful CV that he regrets making. When you hear from Radice how borderline Lenzi’s methods were, particularly his attitude towards the Amazonian tribespeople involved, you may share his discomfort.

A restoration featurette and gallery top things off but, given Radice’s view of the production, a commentary or retrospective documentary to put the film in proper context would have been very welcome. Ah well, at least the restored 16mm film looks splendidly grainy in a new 2K transfer and fans of Roberto Donati’s seminal disco-funk soundtrack will be cranking it right up because – at the risk of upsetting fans of Riz Ortolani’s Cannibal Holocaust score – it’s the best of the cannibal bunch.

Cannibal Ferox might not fit most people’s idea of entertainment but you, dear readers, are not most people. Well worth a look if you have the stomach for it.

REVIEW: CANNIBAL FEROX / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: UMBERTO LENZI / SCREENPLAY: UMBERTO LENZI / STARRING: LORRAINE DE SELLE, GIOVANNI LOMBARDO RADICE / RELEASE DATE: JULY 30TH