Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Dark Signal, the debut feature from writer/director Edward Evers-Swindell (with Dog Soldiers’ Neil Marshall on executive producing duties), is a brooding, atmospheric slasher/ghost story hybrid, set in the wilderness of North Wales and, to its credit, it hits or at least attempts to hit the spot more often than it doesn’t, thanks to sprightly direction and a game cast. But its aspirations are somewhat hampered by a sluggish and often unfocussed script, a batch of tough-to-root-for characters and, fatally, its delivery of a bogeyman who appears to have no motivation for his boorish behaviour and who, as a consequence, is difficult to find especially interesting or scary.

In a nicely developed set up, North Wales is being terrorised by a murderer who likes to hack off his victims’ wedding ring finger. Two convergent storylines see low-rent radio DJ Lawrie (Morris) making her final broadcast with the help of her wide-eyed technician Ben (David-Lloyd) and, to spice up their last show, they’ve wheeled in plausible psychic Carla (Fulci/Argento icon Monreale) to attempt to commune with the dead. When Carla appears to make contact with a tortured soul from beyond the grave, it’s easy to understand why Ken Bruce never pulls similar stunts on his Radio 2 show. Elsewhere Kate (Ignaczewska) is acting as a getaway driver for her dodgy boyfriend Nick (Duncan Pow), as he tries to recover a wodge of cash he’s owed by a client. But she finds herself stranded in the middle of nowhere receiving visitations both earthly and unearthly.

In theory this is good meaty stuff, with plenty of dramatic potential but somewhere along the line the film loses its sense of direction and its sense of purpose and begins to drift alarmingly where it should be racketing up the tension and jangling our nerves. The two storylines take an age to come together and rely too often on cheesy clichéd jump scares – look, something snarling has sprung out of the darkness! – and moments of turn-away-from-the-screen violence which seem to have been flung into the mix just to keep our interest from flagging. Fortunately the last act, where everything finally comes together, makes sticking with Dark Signal worthwhile in the explosive and wincingly-brutal confrontation between the murdering psychopathic lunatic and his final potential victim.

Dark Signal benefits enormously from gutsy performances from its cast with Siwan Morris as the jaded, cynical crisp-obsessed Lawrie working well with Torchwood’s David-Lloyd’s keen-as-mustard Ben. Veteran star James Cosmo delivers a typically-bearish cameo (even though he might well have stepped straight from the set of the recent dark BBC2 drama Stag) but Ignaczewska struggles to evoke much sympathy as the beleaguered Kate, even when her circumstances take a turn for the worse. Tautly-directed and deftly exploiting its cold, remote, dark locations, Dark Signal will provide a few thrills and the odd spill but it’s not, in the end, one which will linger long in the memory.

DARK SIGNAL / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: EDWARD EVERS-SWINDELL / SCREENPLAY: EDWARD EVERS-SWINDELL, ANTONY JONES/STARRING SIWAN MORRIS, GARETH DAVID-LLOYD, JOANNA IGNACZEWSKA, CINZA MONREALE, JAMES COSMO / RELEASE DATE: 30TH MAY

The very first Academy Awards were in 1929 and the best actor prize went to German Emil Jannings. Recipients were told in advance back in those days and as Jannings was planning on going home to Germany, he asked if he could have it early. Three months early, in fact. The Academy obliged so he actually became the first person to receive an Oscar, ever. If you’re wondering why we’re telling you this then, it’s because the movie he won it for was the silent classic The Last Command, directed by the legendary Josef von Sternberg.

There’s a movie-within-a-movie and director Leo Andreyev (Powell) is looking for the perfect Russian to play a general in his latest extravaganza when he comes across a photo of Sergius Alexander (Jannings). He has no acting experience but he claims to be a former Russian general himself, not to mention cousin to Tsar Nicholas II. The revolution of ten years earlier may have killed Nicholas and his immediate family but it brought the now sorry figure of Alexander to Hollywood. Nobody believes this old man with a nervous tick is a real general except Andreyev but how does he know and why cast a non-actor? The movie then flashes back to Russia just before the revolution, when Alexander was a feared and respected general and Andreyev was a Bolshevik actor. Yes, they’ve met before. Alexander has Andreyev arrested but he takes his colleague Natalie Dabrova (Brent) as his lover, despite information that she is the more dangerous revolutionary.

To say anymore would be a shame because we’d hate to ruin the story on this one. Old it may be but not many have seen it nowadays and it’s a real gem. Let’s just say that while the bullying Alexander is set up as a villain and the revolutionaries the heroes, things get turned on their head more than once and our sympathies are rather cleverly thrown about. As we learn how the general got that tick and became a broken man.

Modern audiences might be familiar with silent fare such as Nosferatu (1922) or the even more contemporaneous Metropolis (1927) but, to be honest, The Last Command is superior to both. This is silent movies at their zenith just before the short but bumpy transition to sound. The story is intriguing, the direction tight and the wordless acting pitch-perfect. Jannings delivers a modern and harrowing performance, while slipping into brilliantly-judged melodrama for the climax. As for Evelyn Brent, she was very much von Sternberg’s go-to actress at the time but he was about to discover Marlene Dietrich and despite a decent transfer to talkies, Evelyn was soon overshadowed. So watch this and get her at her peak, when she was not only a great actress but also one of the foxiest women to grace the silver screen. Can we say that?

Special Features: Interview with critic Tony Rayns / Sternberg Till ’29 (a video essay by scholar Tag Gallagher) / 32-page booklet featuring an excerpt from von Sternberg’s autobiography Fun in a Chinese Laundry / Two original reviews from 1928 / a 1929 profile of Jannings / archival images

THE LAST COMMAND (1928) / DIRECTOR: JOSEF VON STERNBERG / SCREENPLAY: JOHN F. GOODRICH, LAJOS BÍRÓ, JOSEF VON STERNBERG / STARRING: EMIL JANNINGS, EVELYN BRENT, WILLIAM POWELL / RELEASED: 16TH MAY

There are times when you encounter a film that appears to have been wilfully discarded by the filmmakers. Even with a high profile cast and director a film can arrive with so little fanfare as to crave obscurity. This is a film destined to occupy the streaming wasteland, only to be discovered through chance or misfortune by some unlucky, wandering-thumbed soul. Go With Me is one such film.

Directed by Daniel Alfredson (brother of Tomas) and starring Anthony Hopkins, Ray Liotta and Hal Holbrook, Go With Me – or Blackway if you prefer – is a meandering, revenge drama that begins slowly, and yet still manages to lose any sense of pace towards its bland final act. The nominal plot revolves around Liotta’s apparently “mythical” bad-guy who, after harassing Julia Stiles’ stubborn new-girl-in-town, is pursued by Hopkins’ ageing logger out into the woods with the latter harbouring intent to exact revenge. Revenge for what exactly remains something of a mystery, even long after the film has finished, but revenge he seeks nonetheless and what follows is an elongated game of hide and seek set against some admittedly stunning scenery.

It may seem unnecessarily harsh, but Go With Me is a waste of everyone’s time, money and talent. Hopkins, who also acts as producer, looks increasingly weary through the film, as if any enthusiasm and energy is slowly being drained from him by the virtually sedentary pacing. Stiles and Liotta for their part are equally miscast and under-used, with characters who are woefully undefined and unconvincing. All three leads also struggle with lines of dialogue that are often as clichéd and clunky as you will ever hear, and this all contributes to the suspicion that the script underwent many changes, and that the film everyone signed up for is not the film that has finally been made.

The biggest problem with Go With Me, though, is that it is just so dull. Unlike Tomas’ Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy which embraced it’s meditative pacing to great dramatic effect, this Alfredson Brother has struggled to insert any element of intrigue or interest. Go With Me wants to be a modern day Western; a film focussed on themes of honour, pride and revenge, classical in style and similar in many ways to True Grit or Unforgiven. Sadly, the finished film, while well-made and beautifully shot, is a tedious test of patience that belies its relatively short running time.

Blackway / Cert: 15 / Director: Daniel Alfredson / Screenplay: Joe Gangemi / Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Julia Stiles, Ray Liotta, Alexander Ludwig, Hal Holbrook / Release Date: 6th June
 

The Palme D’or Best Director winner and Sight and Sound magazine’s best film of 2015, The Assassin comes laboured with plaudits and expectations. But can it deliver on them

Snatched when she was ten years old, Yinniang (Qi Shu) was trained as a deadly assassin. After failing a mission due to her empathy she is sent back to her homeland where she is ordered to kill her former intended husband, Tian Ji’an (Chen Chang).

Firstly, we must address a misleading idea of what The Assassin may be like. From its title and trailer it appears that The Assassin is an action and martial arts heavy film that will have pulses racing and, though it is a wuxia movie, this is not the case. It is a much more meditative and introspective film. The few fight scenes that appear are entertaining and well choreographed, suddenly erupting and over quite quickly. They are much more grounded and realistic than the high wire fights of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon or the blood gushing violence of samurai films like Zatoichi, though a strange and distracting use of magic and mysticism later in the film plays against this stylistic choice. If you’re after an all-fighting action film this is not it.

Certainly, The Assassin has a languid pace, moving slowly, and often quietly due to a sparsely used score, through its scenes and stories, often just focusing on people or places which don’t seem to be doing a lot and this may be quite a big turn off for some viewers, making the film seem like a chore rather than a pleasure. However, the film has an almost hypnotic feeling that draws you in and caresses you, leading you through the film and its hour and forty minute running time without ever really feeling like its dragging its heels. The Assassin is often gorgeous to look at, with its exquisite production design showing off the beautiful architecture and the elegant costumes of Ancient China, that often add a splash of colour to the screen, and also the wonderful landscape shots seen in the forest, waterfall and cliff side scenes.

The film has a predominantly smaller aspect ratio than many, the older style 4:3 that is much squarer than the usual widescreen aspect, and this lends itself to the film’s scope. Films set in China that involve warring factions and families are often quite epic in scope, taking in armies and grand palaces but The Assassin is a much more drawn in story, concerning itself with the relationship and history of the eponymous assassin Yinniang and the family that have wronged her. The camera peeks at and views the action from a human level, making the viewer feel like they are watching through Yinniang’s spying eyes. Occasionally the view is partially obscured, like when we view a conversation through breeze-touched curtains, reinforcing this feeling of voyeurism. This scope does mean that the film gently glides you through its story before ending not with a bang and not quite a whimper but more of a gentle exhale.

The Assassin is a mesmerising and gorgeous film that you have to let yourself get wrapped up in. Don’t go expecting Kill Bill and you might find a lot to enjoy.

THE ASSASSIN / CERT: 12 / DIRECTOR: HOU HSIAO-HSIEN / SCREENPLAY: HOU HSIAO-HSIEN, CHU TIEN-WEN, HSIEH HAI-MENG, ZHONG ACHENG / STARRING: SHU QI, CHANG CHEN, ZHOU YUN, SATOSHI TSUMABUKI / RELEASE DATE: 23RD MAY

If there’s one thing we could say about Takashi Miike… he certainly keeps his audiences on their toes. From the hardcore horror of Audition to the psychopathic Sound of Music weirdness of The Happiness of the Katakuris to the bizarre surrealism of Gozu, to the classical revenge opus Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (and many, many more), Miike must be cinema’s busiest loose cannon, somersaulting across genres and karate-kicking his way through filmmaking conventions. Yakuza Apocalypse is no exception and, even though it isn’t an outright success, it is ridiculously imaginative, infectiously audacious and packed with moments that will leave you asking ‘Did that really happen?’ as you hit the rewind button.

It’s a simple story: Kamiura (Lily Franky) is the boss of a Yakuza clan who (although his underlings don’t know this yet) is also a vampire. After he is killed during a brutal confrontation with a witch-hunter and his assistant (Yayan Ruhian, dressed like the world’s deadliest nerd), Kamiura’s disembodied head bites the neck of his chief enforcer Kageyama (Hayato Ichihara) and enlists him into the ranks of the undead.

Within moments, Kageyama is laying waste to the civilian population, and everyone he bites becomes a ‘yakuza vampire’ as well – a schoolteacher and his wife, a schoolgirl, a Nurse, a wimpy young boy who suddenly becomes extremely proficient with an axe. But when a kappa water-demon with very bad body odour arrives on the scene, quickly followed by ‘the world’s toughest terrorist’ (a phenomenal martial artist dressed in a giant frog costume, who also has the power of the death-stare), the madness goes into overdrive. And did we mention the cartel boss who begins squirting icky white fluid out of her ear, and then starts growing people in a greenhouse?

Yep, this movie is insane. It also plays hard and fast with conventional vampire mythos so ‘Dracula’ purists should probably not apply.

The performances are terrific (especially the noxious scene-stealing water demon, who looks like a tramp with a pantomime beak jammed in his mouth) and, unsurprisingly, the violence is impressive and extremely well staged even though many of the martial arts duels are executed with tongue planted firmly in cheek. And the transition from victims-into-vampires, although subtle, looks extremely unpleasant (when the vampire schoolteacher and his wife chase down the screaming schoolgirl it’s genuinely horrifying.) But Miike doesn’t seem to realise that too much ridiculousness can be a bad thing, the climactic battles become repetitive, the ending of the story is incoherent (and, unlike everything that came before, not in a good way) and, ultimately, the film outstays its welcome by at least twenty minutes. Still, considering the first hour and a half is rampant genius, most of those faults are easy to overlook.

Far from being Takashi Miike’s best work, this is still a film that’s worth digging your teeth into.

YAKUZA APOCALYPSE / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: TAKASHI MIIKE / SCREENPLAY: YOSHITAKA YAMAGUCHI / STARRING: YAYAN RUHIAN, RIRI FURANKI, HAYATO ICHIHARA / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

In his childhood, US astronaut Captain Eugene Cernan often spent time on his grandparent’s farm in Wisconsin and dreamed of owning a ranch. In his twenties, he was a pilot in the US Navy and as he says, at that age ‘there isn’t anything you can’t do.’ And, ‘there is no room for error if you get sloppy you kill yourself.’ The attitude was that ‘I won’t screw-up’. You have to have a big ego to be a naval aviator to compete with fellow pilots and tackle the complexities of bombing, or landing on an aircraft carrier at night. This background certainly served him well when he became an astronaut.

In this period, he met his future wife, Barbara and another significant milestone was in 1961 when Yuri Gagarin became the first man to be launched into space. Gene was excited by this, but thought everything would be achieved before he had a chance to get involved then he was unexpectedly invited to carry out written and physical testing. After that he got a phone call ‘we’ve got a job for you in Houston’ and he became part of the NASA space program. He and fellow trainee astronauts, were kept busy every day and became famous and ‘special’. 

In 1965, he was allocated, with Thomas Stafford, as a backup crewmember for the Gemini 9 mission. The following year the prime crew for the mission was killed in an aircraft accident, so Gene and Thomas took their place. One of the main objectives was for them to carry out a 2-hour long space walk. The EVA was intensely hard work, Gene’s temperature steadily rose, and his bulky spacesuit caused several problems for him that could well have had fatal consequences. From this, they knew they had many lessons to learn, and Gene’s failures helped them eventually know how to do it right in future.

At NASA it was a ‘small band of brothers’ who worked and socialised together and they were a ‘little crazy’. In 1967, the Apollo 1 tragedy struck them all hard, when three astronauts were incinerated during a Launchpad test. Gene wondered if the space program itself would be buried along with their bodies, and he had to accept that this was the price of progress. 

The astronauts worked so intensely they hardly saw their families and had to be selfish. The Apollo mission continued and Gene was selected for the Apollo 10 flight that went around the Moon, in preparation for Apollo 11’s actual moon landing. 

Archive footage and home movies accompany Gene’s reminiscences about these events in his life, and he provides a human insight into what it is like to ride on the top of the huge Saturn V rocket and explain what it is like to look out of the spacecraft window. Due to human error a button wasn’t correctly set, the lunar module span around before they got it back under control, once more showing the dangers of being an astronaut.

Apollo 10’s success led to the launch of Apollo 11, which put Neil Armstrong’s boots on the lunar surface. Gene is shown giving an emotional tribute at Neil’s funeral service in 2012. 

Gene would have loved to be the first to land on the moon, but he got his chance to go there with Apollo 17 in 1972. Yet, as they were deciding whom to send, he crashed a helicopter and narrowly escaped death. Fortunately, he was selected and achieved his personal ‘moment’ by having the opportunity to explore the lunar surface, and to have the honour of being the last rather the first there. 

This is a poignant tribute to the Apollo program and to the life of Cernan, his family and everyone who sacrificed themselves to get a ‘man on the moon’. 

THE LAST MAN ON THE MOON / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: MARK CRAIG / STARRING: EUGENE CERNAN, ALAN BEAN, CHARLES DUKE, RICHARD GORDON, GENE KRANZ / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

“Do you know yet which one of us is the bad guy?”

Such is the crux of Academy Award winning screenwriter William Monahan’s hard-bitten existential thriller, in which Tron: Legacy’s Garrett Hedlund is Tom, travelling to the desert following a personal crisis and discovering his own doors of perception – in the form of Jack, a drifter with a penchant for philosophy and a potential thief and/or serial killer. The meeting does not go well, and the bulk of the film deals with what happens when the two men return to civilisation, such as is Los Angeles. Tom commences an affair, while Jack follows him home and turns his life inside out.

Any number of other films have considered the relationship between the desert and L.A. – notably Polanski’s Chinatown – and here it’s presented as a sparse and laconic cousin to Boogie Nights (hence, presumably, the inclusion of Wahlberg in the cast), the Mojave a place where the dirty secrets of the filmmaking world can be laid to rest in isolation from the earning potential in the city. In some ways this is a revenge thriller – one in which the revenge is retribution for an affront deliberately provoked by the retaliating dark angel himself – and Mojave bestrides profundity and machismo in a purposefully uncomfortable manner. Intentionally thin on character and background, Monahan (author of Scorsese’s Infernal Affairs remake The Departed) draws a picture of the superficial nature of success, but stops short of any third act revelations of the kind seen in Fight Club. Indeed, Mojave stops short of providing any definitive answers, preferring instead a conclusion that looks like a happy ending but might well be anything but.

Hedlund as Tom consciously echoes Val Kilmer’s Jim Morrison, even down to the macho lolloping gait; a taciturn blank space of a man bored with success and all too ready to take his fame for granted, thus ripe for Jack’s extreme form of reconstruction. Isaac (Poe Dameron in Disney’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens) is by far the livelier of the two, but that’s not to say he’s particularly animated. His is an incredibly dry performance, of the most sinister amicability.

The sparseness of Monahan’s film is an echo of the remoteness of the Mojave desert, the dialogue exchanges for the most part are brief and colourless – albeit peppered with plenty of colourful language – and for once this feels like it might have benefitted from an extra half hour. Conversely, by keeping it sleek and thin, Monahan is able to focus almost entirely on his two principals, and their scenes together are electric. This probably isn’t as clever as it thinks it is, but it’s a darned sight cleverer than most of its genre cousins.

MOJAVE / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: WILLIAM MONAHAN / SCREENPLAY: WILLIAM MONAHAN / STARRING: GARRETT HEDLUND, OSCAR ISAAC, LOUISE BOURGOIN, MARK WAHLBERG / RELEASE DATE: 16TH MAY

One thing with a good reputation: comedy horror movies from New Zealand. One thing with an awful reputation: zombie movies with words like ‘holocaust’ and ‘apocalypse’ in the title. Another bad thing: horror films about people making horror films. The three meet in I Survived a Zombie Holocaust (the alternative title presumably already pinched by BBC3 for their not good gameshow), a battle of supremacy between all things good and bad. Which will win out?

Set on the, um, set of a zombie horror film, I Survived a Zombie Holocaust drops wimpy runner Wesley (Harley Neville) in the midst of a real life undead outbreak, kicking off a zero-to-hero transformation the likes of which would make Braindead’s Lionel proud. Indeed, it couldn’t be more different in terms of story, but the blood-sticky fingerprints of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit-free masterpiece are all over this one.

Like Braindead, Guy Pigden’s debut movie is a good-humoured, upbeat zombie romp that uses its surprising gore in tandem with a cheery tone, likeable stars and rom-com aspirations. As a result, it’s incredibly likeable itself, all good vibrations and jokes which frequently hit the sweet spot. The film’s low budget is noticeable… but then, so was Braindead’s. Utilising its authentic splatter and decent performances well, it papers over many of the inherent cracks, the charming New Zealand accents going some way to endear audiences to the film’s plight also.

In a film full of fun characters and performances, Andrew Laing and Ben Baker stand out as the film-within-the-film’s director and star, respectively. The former is particularly wonderful, giving a scenery-chewing performance up there with the best of zombie movie antagonists, and ensuring that there’s never a dull moment when he’s onscreen. As the possibly closeted action hero, Baker is also a lark, his character even getting a surprisingly layered arc.

That said, there’s never been stronger competition in the Kiwi horror stakes than recently, and I Survived a Zombie Holocaust is nowhere near up to the standard set by the wonderful Deathgasm and What We Do in the Shadows. In a world in which the likes of the Werewolves (not swearwolves) stand as competitors, something as quaint and cheap as this will never stand a chance. See, it’s not the (admittedly incredible) gore or the (hilarious) jokes which make the comedy horror stylings of New Zealand cinema stand out… it’s the originality. And it’s here where I Survived a Zombie Holocaust sadly falls down.

Its characters and the actors behind them do well to prop up the shortcomings though and, taken on its own merits, I Survived a Zombie Holocaust is a lot of fun. As a film, it’s as clunky as its own title, but, ultimately, the good far outweighs the bad.

I SURVIVED A ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: GUY PIGDEN / STARRING: HARLEY NEVILLE, JOCELYN CHRISTIAN, BEN BAKER, ANDREW LAING / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Strewth and other Australian stereotypes – popular antipodean comedian Jim Jefferies stars in this comedy horror film about friends fending off zombies in an industrial office building. It’s a lower-budget party than one might expect from a film starring known name Jeffries, but worth a look all the same.

Here two popular subgenres meet – the Shaun of the Dead bro-ish zom-com and the Australian horror flick. It’s not the best of either world, but it’s a whole lot better than it could have been. After all, if there’s one thing the horror scene could do with less of, it’s Shaun of the Dead-esque zom-coms. This one has a familiar setup: the dead have risen, and a bunch of mates hole up together to ride it out. In terms of tone and attitude, it bears more in common with Doghouse or Stag Night of the Dead than it does Shaun or Braindead.

It’s a beer-swilling, potty mouth vein of humour that’s easy to hate but even easier to watch. Low as the budget is, the action is pretty good, the banter (with apologies for using the word ‘banter’) reasonably amusing. ‘Reasonably amusing’ is far from stunning praise, but it’s the best you can expect from Declan Shrubb’s debut feature. In typical low-budget zombie fashion, much of it involves grubby men sitting in a room together bickering and leering over the only girl in the movie (in this case, the daughter of one of their number). Alex Williamson is the ‘me’ of the title, a cheery hat-wearing type who seems relatively unfazed by the zombie apocalypse unfolding around him. Jeffries plays mate Joel, very much a deadpan Jim Jeffries type performance; familiar to anyone who’s a fan of his stand-up routines. Greg Fleet’s Roy rounds up the trio of mates, playing the dad to ‘me’s’ crush and subtly the funniest of the three (sorry Jim). One’s enjoyment of Me and My Mates vs the Zombie Apocalypse will very much depend on how funny you find its leading men. This reviewer did laugh quite hard at “a nightmare on balls street.” 

A better setting could have solved some of its problems. With no offence to people who work in Australian telephone exchanges, there’s nothing remotely interesting about a zombie movie set in Australian telephone exchanges. Even if one of the people hiding in there is Jim Jeffries.

ME AND MY MATES VS THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: DECLAN SHRUBB / STARRING: JIM JEFFRIES, ALEX WILLIAMSON, GREG FLEET, ANDY TRIEU, ADELE VUKO / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW