Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

The Dæmons of Devil’s End is a collection of pieces, long overdue on DVD release. The first disc is The White Which of Devil’s End, a collection of tales for the character of Olive Hawthorne, as seen in the 1971 Doctor Who and the Dæmons. Damaris Hayman (now 88) returns to the role of the defender of Devil’s End in a collection of six short stories scattered across her lifetime, only occasionally intersecting the events of the TV story. Originally scheduled to have been released as a single disc, the stories are finally available. In form, the stories are presented by Olive reminiscing in her armchair, and odd scenes are shown with a small number of actors in various settings in the village of Aldbourne where the TV story was filmed. As a means of telling the stories, they may well have worked better as audio dramas, but that is missing the point of this set entirely. This is a celebration of the creation and setting of one of the most memorable classic Doctor Who stories of all time.

Disc 2 is the first DVD release of a classic documentary Return to Devil’s End, complete with Nicholas Courtney introduction. It was filmed in and around Aldbourne in 1992 and has Jon Pertwee, Nicholas Courtney (the Brigadier), Richard Franklin (Mike Yates), John Levene (Sgt Benton) and director Chrisopher Barry telling how the TV show was created. It is hosted by Nick Briggs and also includes sections from various villagers and archive photos.

Discs 1 and 2 have various bonus features, and disc 3 is a set of videos of various conventions held in Aldbourne over the years. It’s nostalgic and compelling viewing.

The Dæmons of Devil’s End may not appeal to all fans of the show, but for anyone who still holds the Jon Pertwee story in fond regard, it is an essential purchase.

THE DÆMONS OF DEVIL’S END / DIRECTOR: KEITH BARNFATHER, ANASTASIA STYLIANOU / SCREENPLAY: VARIOUS / STARRING: DAMARIS HAYMAN, RAVEN DANE, JON PERTWEE, NICHOLAS COURTNEY/ RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Spider-Man is arguably one of the most important superheroes in comic book history, serving as Marvel’s flagship title for most of the company’s history, and has always resonated with this reviewer as his personal favourite superhero of all time. As well as being the most well-known character in the Marvel Comics universe, he has naturally received the most media adaptations out of any Marvel character, but for the past two decades, the Spider-Man film franchise has had a somewhat complicated and turbulent history shall we say. The first Spider-Man movie directed by Sam Raimi opened in 2002, and at the time, was considered to be a groundbreaking phenomenon for the superhero movie genre, elevating to never-before-seen cinematic peaks and heights. An awesome movie in its own right that naturally ended up getting surpassed by its outstanding 2004 sequel, but then everything just went down the drain from there. 2007’s Spider-Man 3 wasn’t terrible per say, but it was a disappointment, and Sam Raimi ended up quitting the franchise shortly afterwards. Of course, Sony wouldn’t give up their biggest cash-grab so they decided to hit the reboot button and hire Marc Webb to helm The Amazing Spider-Man duology, which only lasted from 2012 to 2014 due to both movies being empty, lifeless, joyless movies that stunk of corporate mandate.

They were both critical and commercial disasters (hardly surprising), so Sony formed the infamous partnership with Marvel Studios, which resulted in the wall-crawler making his debut into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War. This introduction saw Tom Holland give an impressive, standout first impression, so it made sense that a solo movie would follow shortly afterwards, and despite enormous odds, Spider-Man: Homecoming delivers big time, revitalising the character for a new generation after a thirteen year decline and finally doing justice the beloved web-slinger, so if you loved Spidey’s introduction in Civil War, then this is the right movie for you. Tonally, the high-school aspect does feel highly reminiscent of a John Hughes movie, which given the direction they were clearly going for, works incredibly well. Director Jon Watts perfectly balances the comedy and drama exceptionally well, and at times, this movie feels very reminiscent of The Breakfast Club or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Hell, there are certain characters that look as though they had wandered off the set of those movies. This really does feel like a high-school movie that just so happens to have a superhero feature in it, which helps makes this movie feel both fresh and distinguishable enough to stand on its own from other superhero movies.

But what stands out the most is the characters, their development over the course of the movie, and the real genuine emotion that goes with that. The Peter Parker we see here is an actual high-school kid that’s just learning how to be a superhero after being chucked into the deep end with Civil War, and we do get to see the traditional “friendly-neighbourhood” aspect here with Spidey stopping bike thieves and giving people directions, yet he is wanting to be amongst the legends like Captain America and Iron Man. He isn’t annoying or mopey in the slightest, but instead is genuinely believable as he makes mistakes and has real teenage problems, yet that doesn’t drag the narrative down or make it convoluted like it did in the past three Spider-Man movies. During the film’s climax, there’s a particularly memorable scene where a genuinely scared Peter is placed in a terrifying situation (which is influenced by one of the most iconic moments from Spidey’s comic history) and you do get the sense that this is a kid that’s afraid for his life.

As he demonstrated in Civil War, Tom Holland completely owns the part of Spider-Man, and throughout the movie, you do get the sense that Holland is really passionate about the character and wants do it justice, which he absolutely does here by perfectly portraying both the Peter Parker and Spider-Man aspects of the character and nailing all of the emotional beats that goes with that. Holland IS the definitive Spider-Man. Michael Keaton’s Vulture is one the best MCU villains to date, even if the MCU doesn’t have the best track record of having great villains in their roster, but it’s clear that Marvel has been listening to the criticisms and have been turning that around this year with Vulture, Ego in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Hela in Thor: Ragnarok. Keaton definitely brought a lot to the role, being both sympathetic and terrifying in equal measure, plus his scenes with Holland are truly suspenseful. There’s also terrific supporting performances as well, with Marisa Tomei’s superb grounded take on Aunt May, the funny Jacob Batalon who goes from Peter’s best friend to being “the guy in the chair”, Zendaya was a real surprise as the crude yet quirky Michelle, plus both Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Favreau were both well-utilised in their small but essential roles.

Despite a few minor flaws here and there, Spider-Man: Homecoming is the Spider-Man movie fans have been waiting for, and this movie’s ultimate achievement is remembering what a great Spider-Man movie should always be in the end: fun, heartfelt, and exciting without ever losing sight of what makes the character so beloved and iconic. It’s action-packed, well-paced, and completely improves on the last three outings, which all suffered from being too bogged down and consumed by overblown melodrama, muddled storytelling and too much emphasis on heavy themes. This movie has none of that, and not only is this one of the greatest superhero movies ever made, but it’s also quite possibly, the best Spider-Man movie to date.

SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING / CERT: 12 / DIRECTOR: JON WATTS / SCREENPLAY: JONATHAN GOLDSTEIN, JOHN FRANCIS DALEY, JON WATTS, CHRISTOPHER FORD, CHRIS MCKENNA, ERIK SOMMERS / STARRING: TOM HOLLAND, MICHAEL KEATON, ROBERT DOWNEY JR, MARISA TOMEI / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Jason and Benson are two cash-strapped young men who take on a simple job with a big payout working for some dangerous people, coming with three basic rules of what not to do. When something inevitably goes wrong, they are sucked into a spiralling criminal vortex that seems increasingly unlikely to let them leave alive.

After spending a few years writing and directing short films, former video game developer Paddy Murphy delivers his feature debut, and like the nocturnal drive that kicks off the plot, The Three Don’ts is a straightforward concept that gradually reveals myriad layers backing it.

It has the same surreal state of altered reality as a Coen Brothers comedy, but encrusted in a coat of corrupting darkness after being filtered through the lo-fi grindhouse sleaze of the Soska Sisters’ debut Dead Hooker in a Trunk. The assorted cast of ruthless drug dealers, maniac assassins, traveller thugs and criminal kingpins are each exaggerated to the point of hyper-intensity, yet manage to remain on just the right side of caricature that prevents the noir tale from deteriorating into a blood-drenched farce. As the two reprobates are pulled ever deeper into an underworld of callous iniquity, they stumble their way through deadly encounters they barely have the intellect to comprehend, let alone navigate, yet despite the odds always seem to make it out the other side, battered and bloody but still breathing. Nevertheless, there is maintained a pervasive tension stemming from knowing that a small screwup at just the wrong moment would be all it takes for their frantic knife-edge improvising to be brought to an unceremonious and gory end.

In a movie populated almost entirely by pitiless and thoroughly unpleasant individuals, Jason and Benson are virtual innocents. The two are the closest things it has to heroes, while the utter unlikeability of everyone else works to its advantage, since when you watch horrible people doing nasty things to each other, you can simply revel in the sheer brutality without concern over who will win out, feeling neither sympathy for the victims nor vindication for the inflictors.

As for the fighting itself, while low-budget films are often diminished by unconvincing action sequences, here the choreography is far more credible than you’d expect, and is doubly notable from being far more akin to genuine fights than movies often portray. Like brawls in real life, these are short, inelegant, unwieldy altercations where each victor barely comes out on top, thus maintaining the tone of gritty realism that grounds the film’s inherent absurdity.

Coarse, crude and unrelenting, The Three Don’ts is a brutal and compelling sucker punch of a debut, and one that promises great things to follow from its emerging talent.

THE THREE DON’TS / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: PADDY MURPHY, BRIAN CLANCY, ERIC CLANCY / STARRING: BRIAN CLANCY, NATHAN WONG, ADAM MOYLAN, CONOR HAYES, COURTNEY MCKEON, BEN YAU / RELEASE DATE: VOD OUT NOW

Historical action flicks of biblical proportions are a big export from China right now. Movies that use the country’s history as building blocks for a vast array of brutal blitzkriegs, illuminating China’s war-torn past, and the results can be decidedly mixed. By these movie’s own definition, they’re almost nothing but action – no coherent story and no engaging characters. It’s a pleasant surprise therefore to find that God of War carries with it a surprising amount of narrative heft against its raucous backdrop of warmongering.

In all honesty, God of War really shouldn’t have this amount of narrative dexterity. The year is 1557, and China has become ravaged by an armada of Japanese pirates. They command China’s costal settlements, and the morally uneven mixture of otherwise noble samurai and anarchistic Ronin are keen to not let their grasp slip. Enter then General Qi Jiguang, whose legendary status as a military leader drives the film’s action home as he leads a hand-picked army into the heart of Japan’s command.

The canvas is there for all-out war to engross us as much as possible. By the film’s end, there’s a definite resolution to Japan’s conquest of China’s coast, and yet even though we being our story in the aftermath of Japan’s coastal capturing, we’re plunged into the very heart of battle from the get-go. This is a film that thrills in the idea that war is can be an ever-evolving constant, with neither a clear beginning nor end. It’s not interested in showing you how or why Japan took hold of China – why bother with that when we can be fulling precious screen time with the gratuitous violence that the stubbornness of those who engage in conflict brings with it. The stubbornness of China’s resilient fighters who resist Japan’s iron fist and the stubbornness of Japan’s ever-ready armies.

We, as an audience, are propelled along at a brisk pace, that stubbornness almost acting as our carrier across God of War. Both sides are so caught up in their own ideology of their situation, one desperate to take their land back from Japan, the other focused on keeping China in their power, that it’s comfortably easy to get swept up in the ensuing drama of it all. That is, if you’re in the mood for camp, high-octane adventure that’s sprinkled with soap opera levels of drama from its characters.

This is where God of War becomes less engrossing. It’s not so much the simplistic clashes between characters about how war should be won that’s the trouble, that kind of shlocky drama is part-and-parcel with these action-driven exports. Rather, it’s the uninspired execution of that drama. Generals, loved ones, samurai and Ronin have miniature arcs throughout God of War in which they deal with squabbles and inner demons that are mostly resolved by the film’s end, by there’s little charisma in the cast to carry that drama along. There’s some pleasingly competent acting on display here. Vincent Wenzhuo Zhao’s General Qi and Yasuaki Kurata’s Commander Kumasawa a whispered charm to their roles as respective hero and villain of the saga, but for a film of this scale, it demands conviction from its cast. Zhao and Kurata’s own winning presences negate them from this demand, but the remainder of the cast falls rather flat. They fail to boast of any particular inidividuality or charm. A film like God of War requires a cast that’s as dangerous as its premise, but that sensuality just isn’t there.

God of War is a film that looks, sounds and feels like it’s purposefully designed to not change your life. Even if it’s a more rewarding watch than other films of its ilk thanks to its galloping yet well-timed story-telling, it doesn’t have enough idiosyncrasies to prevent it from blending in with a lot of China’s other action flicks. But when the results still charge along as entertainingly as this, it’s still forgivable.

GOD OF WAR / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: GORDON CHAN / SCREENPLAY: FRANKIE TAM, MARIA WONG, MENGZHANG WU / STARRING: WENZHUO ZHAO, SAMMO KAM-BO HUNG, YASUAKI KURATA / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

It can be rough out there when you’re a mouse in the company of men, and unfortunately for the Belgian producers of The Son of Bigfoot, this attempt at outdoing the big American boys at their own game returned only a rather limited success. The film came and went on these shores without rustling up a great deal of interest, and it isn’t hard to see why; the trailer promises nothing more than you might expect from an animated kids’ movie, and there’s nothing to suggest you should anticipate anything better than adequate.

And that’s fair. This is exactly the thing to keep the kids quiet for ninety minutes, without inspiring them to ask for second helpings. You’ll be back to the usual suspects before you know it. The Son of Bigfoot is, however, very far from disastrous; it’s actually a rather sweet film with an odd, European sensibility that at least gives it an identity distinct from the films it oh so wants to be.

Adam (Faulkner) is a regular sort of adolescent whose hair grows too fast and whose shoes can’t contain his feet, and who gets bullied by the bigger boys who know he doesn’t have it in him to retaliate. Until that is, his feet really do outgrow his shoes and his unwanted buzz cut is back to being an unruly mop overnight, and when he finds a box full of mementoes – including recently written letters – from what he’d always been told was his late father, he runs away from home in search of his absent parent.

It’s done with enough attention to character to engage well enough, with likeable leads and plausible relationships between the boy and his mother and father. The action is efficiently handled and the subplot concerning the reason for the father’s disappearance results in a second half that makes some solid points about corporate irresponsibility, delivered with humour and dexterity. But it’s mostly ground that’s been gone over so often, you’ll be begging to see something new being done with it.

Instead, you get Disney-esque talking animals, a villain straight out of the Postman Pat movie, and resolutions it’s impossible not to see coming the moment the title sequence fades out. In the circumstances, these aren’t necessarily the biggest of issues, and some of the character animation is – if sometimes a little dubious in terms of its movement and interaction with the backgrounds – pleasingly whimsical. The three bullies, for example, are idiosyncratic enough to be far more convincing than they ought to have been.

Which isn’t enough to make this a compelling watch, although there is plenty to ensure it’s a painless experience for parents curious enough to give it a go.

THE SON OF BIGFOOT / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: JEREMY DEGRUSON, BEN STASSEN / SCREENPLAY: BOB BARLEN, CAL BRUNKER / STARRING: PAPPY FAULKNER, CHRISTOPHER L. PARSON / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Written and directed by prolific filmmaker Sion Sono, Tag hits you at the outset with a gory set-piece as shy, poetry-writing schoolgirl Mitsuko narrowly avoids a malevolent gust of wind that slices her fellow students in half. It’s quite the opener and sets the tone for the film that follows. As Mitsuko makes her way back to school, everything seems fine and she begins to question her sanity. With her friend Aki and two other girls, Sur and Taeko, Mitsuko ditches school to head out into the woods to try and clear her head and figure out what’s real and what isn’t. From there on in, Tag becomes increasingly surreal and it’s soon apparent something even weirder than could be expected from that brutal opening is going on.

It’s been commented on already that Tag is a mix of arthouse and exploitation and that’s a fair assessment. Sono divides his film equally into beautifully shot emo whimsy and grinding, gory violence and CGI blood. There’s an explanation for everything at the end that ties all of the mystery together in an outlandish but relatively satisfying way that reinforces the feminist themes running throughout. Whether you enjoy this or not probably depends on your familiarity with Japanese cinema in general and the purposefully jarring, duelling tones of this film in particular. It’s well acted, often remarkably aesthetically captivating and whips by in less than 90 minutes. For those inclined, there’s plenty of subtexts to get stuck into. If not, well, there’s more than enough onscreen action and blood to keep your attention.

There are plenty of sequences of graphic bloodletting one minute and serene nature the next and for a recent film, as you might expect, it’s all very sharp and clear. The transfer on Eureka’s release is resplendent and serves this very visually orientated film well. What’s sadly not resplendent is the extra material, because there basically isn’t any. You just get a trailer that does a fine job of miss-selling almost everything interesting about the movie to make it appear a dumb grindhouse knock-off. No commentaries, no featurettes or anything at all, which is a shame as there’s enough to unpick about the film to warrant it, so perhaps there’s just nothing available.

If you really just don’t care about the supplementary material, or you must have the film on disc or have no other way to catch it, that’s pretty much the only reason to pick up this release. Overall, this is a decent and most definitely interesting film but is an inessential release.

TAG / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: SION SONO / STARRING: REINA TRIENDL, MARIKO SHINODA, ERINA MANO / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

There are probably people thinking, ‘Oh, another Cars film from Pixar, they do churn these things out.’ But there’s a short film included on this disc – Lou – that is so beautifully detailed in its construction, and so involving in its narrative, it packs a huge emotional punch that only the most cynical of viewers could fail to be moved by.

That’s Pixar down to a tee. There’s a level of professionalism in the company that sets their product so far ahead of the competition – just as there was with Disney back in the days of Pinocchio and Sleeping Beauty – you’d expect there to be a resultant diminishment of soul; after all, the two rarely go hand in hand. But it’s Pixar’s working methods, as demonstrated in the featurette about new car Cruz, that keep the soul of the piece right at the heart of the project, and all of their films, both long and short – Cars 3 being a prime example – simply wouldn’t work if authentic characterisation and genuine emotional content wasn’t front and centre in what they do.

Cars 3 is actually about the struggle between maintaining a professional attitude and retaining your sense of self. Adult viewers will recognise the tropes (this is basically a Rocky film with cars, although the kids won’t know that). The film starts with the ingenuous Lightning McQueen beaten in a race he was expecting to win, and when it becomes clear that it’s technology itself that is largely responsible for the victory, McQueen is given over to a new sponsor and put under a rigorous training regime designed to give him back the winning edge. Of course, our hero isn’t the type to adhere to strict organisation, and before long he and his trainer – the aforementioned Cruz – are seeking his mojo elsewhere.

There are a couple of fairly predictable twists leading to an equally predictable, but nevertheless extraordinarily well-executed conclusion – and a worthwhile demonstration of the virtue found in generosity – in what is a slighter entry in the Cars series than the second instalment, but one which manages to tread similar ground to the first while successfully finding enough innovation to remain fresh and compelling.

The freshness comes from the characters. Owen Wilson’s Lightning McQueen is a defining Disney / Pixar protagonist, the artless hero who recognises his achievements no more easily than his shortfalls, and here he’s complemented well by the comedian Cristela Alonzo as Cruz, a character who would be just as driven as McQueen (no pun intended) but for the obstacles life has placed in her way. They’re terrific, and Cars 3 is an object lesson in overcoming the problems life might put in front of you, while never losing sight of who you really are in doing so.

It is, of course, as much a film about Pixar – about managing to retain that sense of independence, those very human working methods, and that ideal of promoting a sense of passion and personality, in an increasingly time sheet-led world. It’s filled with invention, idiosyncrasy and humour, and takes place in a world as rich and filled with both wonder and disappointment as our own.

If you think it’s just another Pixar film, then you’re right, it absolutely is. And that’s what makes it so wonderful and so worth having.

CARS 3 / CERT: U / DIRECTOR: BRIAN FEE / SCREENPLAY: KIEL MURRAY, BOB PETERSON, MIKE RICH / STARRING: OWEN WILSON, CRISTELO ALONZO, CHRIS COOPER, NATHAN FILLION, LARRY THE CABLE GUY, ARMIE HAMMER, BONNIE HUNT / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Luc Besson’s SF fantasy was much maligned upon its release earlier in 2017 and left audiences as well as critics as cold as deep space. You’d believe it was a huge flop but, despite horrible reviews, it managed a worldwide gross of $225m against a whopping $177m budget, so there’s clearly appeal in this tale of two young guardians of the galaxy. Now out on DVD and Blu-ray, does this dismissed as a mess film deserve a second chance?

Based on a series of French comics beloved by Besson when he was a boy, this is the story of special government agents Valerian and Laureline, tasked with finding and guarding a precious creature whilst trying to uncover what’s behind the threat at the heart of Alpha, a 28th Century ever-expanding metropolis where all known species in the universe mix in peace. Along the way, they discover that all is not what it seems and become involved in an alien race’s struggle for survival whilst wrestling with their own romantic feelings for each other.

But if ever a film was less about plot and more about the visuals, this is it. It’s a stunningly realised vision, perhaps one of the boldest in film, with a level of imaginative sophistication which makes Besson’s earlier The Fifth Element look like an episode of Blake’s 7 by comparison. Every frame is a visual feast, with so much going on that it can overwhelm.

After a brilliant opening sequence and some beautiful early scenes set on the planet Mul with its stunningly realised Pearl people, things speed up like a formula one race and never let up. The frantic pace, eye-popping visuals and dodgy dialogue start to lose you despite a basically simple plot so we have to rely on the performances to guide us through. Cara Delevigne does a great job as Laureline, throwing herself into the action and giving someone to care about and, elsewhere, Clive Owen and Rihanna do well. But the decision to cast Dane DeHaan is perhaps the film’s biggest flaw. He’s a fine actor but is miscast here, coming across here like early Keanu Reeves – monotone, uninteresting and somewhat annoying. Consequently, there’s no chemistry between the leads and that’s a great shame.

On Blu-ray, it all looks stunning and you may find yourself watching bits again as there’s so much to take in. An hour-long documentary is broken down into smaller parts which look at the origin of the story from the original comics, special effects etc and it’s clear that the film was a hoot to make, Besson coming across as a joyous figure. Just a pity the finished film isn’t quite so joyous to watch…

VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS / CERT: 12 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: LUC BESSON / STARRING: DANE DEHAAN, CARA DELEVINGNE, CLIVE OWEN, RIHANNA, ETHAN HAWKE / RELEASE DATE: NOVEMBER 27TH