Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

It may be a niche category, but Delicatessen is easily the best, most whimsical, charming post-apocalyptic, cannibal comedy ever made. And now – thanks to a superb 4K restoration by Studio Canal – it looks and sounds more stunning than ever.

Delicatessen was the feature debut of both Jean-Pierre Jeunet (who would go on to make City Of Lost Children, Amélie, A Very Long Engagement, and his one American movie, the divisive Alien Resurrection) and his co-director and frequent collaborator Marc Caro.

Set in a dystopian future in France where society has broken down and food is scarce (how we got here is never explained), the film takes place largely in a run-down apartment block above the titular delicatessen. Here, a butcher – Caplet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) – overcomes food supply problems by luring unsuspecting innocents to his apartment block with the promise of work and accommodation, only for them to end up on the menu for the building’s eccentric collection of tenants.

The latest potential victim is Louison (Jeunet’s frequent collaborator Dominique Pinon), a down-on-his-luck circus clown – his former partner, a chimpanzee having been eaten by an unappreciative audience – who, besides charming the residents, further complicates matters by romancing Caplet’s daughter, Julie (Marie-Laure Dougnac). Pinon – a well-known film and theatre actor in France and best-known over here as Alien Resurrection’s wheelchair-bound Vriess – gives an extraordinary physical performance, with his clowning reminiscent of the silent-era greats (check him out leaning off a ladder to paint a ceiling by attaching his braces to a wall; a scene worthy of Chaplin). But he’s surrounded by a great cast, from the charming Dougnac to the menacing Dreyfus to an entire building’s worth of eccentrics (including a woman continually trying and failing to kill herself, a man who overcomes food shortages by cultivating frogs and snails in his flooded apartment, and a homicidal postman).

The direction by Jeunet and Caro (who would later co-direct City Of Lost Children) is equally memorable and as offbeat as you’d expect. As oft noted, their style is somewhat reminiscent of Terry Gilliam but with a unique, Gallic twist. (Check out the subterranean-dwelling Troglodytes – a vegetarian rebel group loosely based on the WW2 French resistance.)  It marked the pair – and Jeunet, in particular – as an exciting original voice in French cinema. And while it may not be his masterpiece (that’d be Amélie), it’s a superb debut. And although there’s a streak of darkness running through it, it’s still bizarre to think his sensibilities were well-suited to an Alien movie. (It’s not his fault. If you don’t want an offbeat black comedy, don’t hire Jean-Pierre Jeunet in the first place.)

As befits the cult classic, the new release gets the deluxe treatment. A stunning restoration from the original negative means Delicatessen looks more stunning than ever. Considering it takes place in a dilapidated apartment block, it’s a beautiful-looking film. There’s a new commentary by Jeunet (Caro is apparently not a fan of audio commentaries) and a wealth of new and contemporary special features, the centrepiece of which is a new one-hour retrospective documentary.

While the subject matter is bleak (neither ‘post-apocalyptic’ nor ‘cannibalism’ screams whimsical comedy), Delicatessen is a charming, unique movie and a truly unique piece of cinema. Funny, eccentric, and with an oddball sense of whimsy that Wes Anderson can only dream of, it’s truly one of a kind. If you’re a fan, this is the edition you want. If you’re a newcomer, now’s the perfect time to tuck in.

DELICATESSEN is available on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD from October 16th. 

 

Prior to the arrival of Bruce Lee in Hong Kong in 1971, the most popular Asian action star was the mercurial Jimmy Wang Yu, who thrilled Eastern audiences with a series of rousing and violent pseudo-epics set for the most part in China’s brutal past with many of them pitting the hero against Japanese invaders. This is the case with 1973’s Beach of the War Gods, a thrilling and well-made drama that looks better on this Eureka Blu-ray release than it has ever done before to Western audiences.

The movie opens in 1556 when a small coastal village is under constant attack from a vicious army of Japanese pirates led by a particularly nasty individual who happens to be a feared master swordsman. It is at this point that we witness the arrival of a mysterious stranger walking towards the village along the bleak beach of the title; this is Hsia Feng,  played by Wang Yu, who also impressively directs this thunderous action opus.

Wang Yu swiftly assesses the situation the meek villagers find themselves in, and when some of them are threatened by seven of the pirates in the village square, he dispatches them all in the blink of an eye, revealing himself to be no slouch with bladed weapons himself. He decides to establish himself as the village’s protector and begins to enlist an impressive bunch of mercenary fighters to join him in his fight against the pirates and also trains the villagers into a formidable fighting force who stand up against their enemy in an impressive and lengthy battle that takes up the second half of the film.

Beach of the War Gods is presented in its Chinese version with English subtitles and also in a dubbed English version – the dialogue is perfunctory at best and never intrudes upon the spectacular martial arts action, which is what the movie is all about when all said and done. There are some pretty strong anti-Japanese sensibilities voiced in this film in common with Chinese cinema of that era that can’t help but feel a little uncomfortable in the 21st century. The trailer for the film makes much of the fact that it has an all-male cast, and it’s true that there are no women seen from beginning to end.

The disc also includes an in-depth appreciation of the work of Jimmy Wang Yu by critic and movie historian Tony Rayns and also a rare and welcome interview with Wang Yu filmed in 2001 in France.

BEACH OF THE WAR GODS is released on Blu-ray by Eureka on October 23rd.

 

Cutthroat Island, released in 1995, was a catastrophic box office disaster that finally bankrupted the already-struggling independent studio Carolco, derailed the career of its star Geena Davis and sent its director Renny Harlin (Davis’ husband at the time) into a spiral of underachieving long-forgotten B-movies. The film’s brave attempt to resurrect the once-popular ‘pirate movie’ genre sank without trace and turned the genre into a no-go area until Disney scored a surprise hit with the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie eight years later. Pirates is, in many ways, everything Cutthroat Island wanted to be, but it’s clear that Cutthroat was doomed from the outset, scuppered by script rewrites, casting problems and continual disruptions on set caused by Harlin’s dissatisfaction with the sets and the general production design. The dust has long since settled, although the wounds surely run deep. But nearly three decades on, the film arrives on 4K, and if nothing else, it deserves to be reassessed now that there’s some distance between the film itself and the muddled circumstances of its production and release.

In the best traditions of pirate fiction, Cutthroat Island is the story of a quest for hidden treasure. Morgan Adams (Davis) is determined to collect the three pieces of a map leading to a huge stash of treasure on the remote Cutthroat Island. One piece is on her father’s scalp, her brother Mordechai has a second, and the third is in the hands of ruthless rival pirate Dawg Brown (Frank Langella). Teaming up with the roguish William Shaw (Matthew Modine), Morgan and her crew are thrown into conflict with Dawg in a struggle to secure the third piece of the map and claim the treasure. Much swashbuckling and derring-do ensues…

Cutthroat Island isn’t actually a bad film, but it wears its troubled production on its sleeve. The film’s tone is woefully uneven; the first half is characterised by sub-Carry On humour and innuendo, but the second half, more action-fixated, is far more satisfying, delivering genuine spectacle in a number of all-at-sea action set pieces that are stunningly, if hectically, realised. Here, the film manages to overcome its script and plot problems and becomes, in the third act at least, the sort of gung-ho nautical action/adventure film it was always intended to be.

On-screen, Geena Davis never looks particularly comfortable in the role of a sword-wielding action hero despite her desire to take her career in a different direction, but at least there’s some chemistry between her and Modine, drafted in to replace Michael Douglas, who jumped ship well before the film went into production, and Frank Langella is pleasingly ripe as the ruthless Dawg. The cinematography is impressively expansive, and the sparkling and crisp 4K transfer really plays to the film’s visual strengths. John Debney’s score is suitably bombastic, but it becomes a bit overbearing in places to the point it almost becomes a parody in itself, and with a runtime of just over two hours, the film’s eagerness to please and impress becomes a little tiring.

The new 4K release doesn’t gloss over the film’s legendary reputation, and a slew of new documentary features (especially The Adventure of a Lifetime) is refreshingly candid about the film’s endless travails and, ultimately, the fact that it was doomed to fail before even a frame of footage had been shot. The truth is that Cutthroat Island was the wrong film at the wrong time, a film made for all the right reasons but without the full support of its struggling studio and with too much resting on its success. Now, it presents not only as an interesting curio but also as a fitfully enjoyable, if frustratingly uneven and deeply flawed, attempt to create an unpretentious, thrills-and-spill adventure in the classic tradition.

CUTTHROAT ISLAND is available now on 4K SteelBook, 4K, and Blu-ray.

 

The 1973 possession horror The Exorcist became an international film phenomenon. As its reputation spread around the globe, William Friedkin’s and William Peter Blatty’s landmark terror became the unwitting catalyst for a wave of inferior knock-offs. By the time Italian film director and screenwriter Alberto De Martino turned his hand to The Antichrist, he had acquired a long list of such questionable cash-in credits. Studiocanal’s new Blu-ray release allows horror aficionados a chance to reappraise the status of De Martino’s work as both a cheeky pastiche of The Exorcist and as an exorcism horror in its own right.

The plot of The Antichrist is convoluted. It focuses on the life story of Ippolita Oderisi, the daughter of a wealthy aristocrat, paralyzed at the age of 12 in a car accident that killed her mother. It transpires that one of her direct ancestors entered into a covenant with the Devil before being burnt at the stake. When hypnosis reconnects Ippolita to her previous life, she is repossessed. There are many more strands to the film’s operatic storyline, including jealousy, incest, telekinetic and dissociative violence, and lots of intense religious and satanic symbolism. It would be hard to criticise De Martino for holding back.

Studiocanal’s new 4|K restoration presents the original 112-minute cut, reinstating all of the nudity, sex scenes and (simulated) animal abuse that alarmed the censors back in the seventies. The special effects are predictably dated, and the score by Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai is unexceptional, but the family home where most of the action takes place has a suitably oppressive and claustrophobic atmosphere. In the role of Ippolita, there’s no questioning Carla Gravina’s commitment, but her unrestrained performance only adds to the sense that everything in the film has been over-cranked and maxed out. A decent selection of special features round out a strong Blu-ray package, but De Martino’s insistence that ‘more is more’ results in a movie that’s both a pale imitation of the film that ‘inspired’ it and an overwrought standalone horror.

THE ANTICHRIST is available now on Blu-ray from Studiocanal.

 

Peter Bogdanovich’s debut feature gets its long-overdue Blu-ray release from the BFI, and it’s packed to the rafters with bonus features and is an essential purchase.

A controversial event at the time of release, the story follows two strands: the first is an ageing horror actor, Byron Orlock, who has become disillusioned with the world (played wonderfully by Boris Karloff in one of his final major roles) and wants to retire and return to England. The second follows an unstable youth, Bobby (Tim O’Kelly), who has a seemingly perfect life but is obsessed with guns. The threads meet at a personal appearance by Orlock at a drive-in where Bobby is taking aim at the patrons.

Bogdanovich made a massive impact with this movie, but it would be rarely seen for quite a while due to the controversial nature of the story. However, no matter how powerful the sniper element of the movie is, it’s more a testament to how great an actor Karloff was. Essentially playing himself (with scenes from Roger Corman’s The Terror and Howard Hawk’s The Criminal Code added for historical accuracy), Boris is an amiable old actor who feels he can’t compete with the thrill-seeking of the modern-day audiences but whose humanity won’t allow him to let his fans down. O’Kelly’s Bobby, on the other hand, appears to have everything: doting parents, a pretty girlfriend, and a good job. The gun culture that he’s brought up in takes an obsessive turn. He calmly and calculatedly shoots both his girl and his mum before taking potshots at passing cars on the freeway. His depression and psychosis aren’t really delved into, making him all the more terrifying as he goes about his day as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

The BFI Blu-ray is certainly worth the long wait. As well as a pair of commentaries, one from the late director and a newly recorded one from author and critic Peter Tonguette, there is a wealth of informative featurettes. They’re not slight, either. A lengthy and interesting piece gives Karloff’s daughter Sara a chance to give the family side of the great actor’s career, and there’s a pair of audio recordings of vintage Guardian interviews held at the National Theatre in the seventies, one with Bogdanovich and the other Corman.

As an observation of old Hollywood and American society, Targets is even more on-point today than it was in 1968. This masterpiece should be in the collection of any fan of cinema.

Targets is available on Blu-ray from September 25th

 

The Warner Bros Discovery and Universal Pictures series of special box sets continues with Ron Howard’s spectacular vision of the ill-fated space mission. We know how great the film is, so let’s focus on what’s in the impressive-looking set.

If you’ve seen some of the other releases, you’ll have an idea of what to expect when you slip the magnetic side-clasp rigid box out of the clear acetate slipcase. Inside the box, there’s a wonderful array of ephemera as well as the 2-disc 4K UHD/Blu-ray case. That itself is a thing of beauty; CD size, it folds out with images from the film. Aside from the discs, one of the first things that strikes you is the etched crystal display plaque. It’s a classy-looking thing that’s a nice bonus and would look great as a paperweight (if you’re not one of those collectors who likes to keep everything in the box!).

Inside the replica flight plan folder, there are even more goodies. Four glossy, lobby card-type art cards with movie facts on the back are a nice touch. Five postcard-sized character cards contain quotes on the reverse. A mini double-sided reproduction of the theatrical posters is cool but would be better if it was printed on glossy paper. An in-world artefact is included in each set, and for Apollo 13, we get an invitation to the launch of the rocket.

The Film Vault series is a brilliant deluxe package for fans of iconic films and worth picking up if these pictures are favourites of yours or, indeed, a great gift for movie lovers.

The latest wave of Film Vault releases, Jaws and The Shawshank Redemption, are out now. Apollo 13 and 2001: A Space Odyssey are out on October 2nd. You can pre-order at Amazon and other retailers.