Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

THE ASTRONAUT

When Sam Walker (Kate Mara) returns to Earth following a space mission, the splash-down finds her pod and helmet compromised. In hospital, she’s reassured that she’ll make a full recovery from her relatively minor injuries but it will take time for her body and mind to adjust to being back on terra firma.

Whisked off to a fancy and very remote house, Sam is visited daily by a team from NASA and her family – estranged husband Mark (Gabriel Luna), adopted daughter Izzy (Scarlett Holmes), and adoptive father General William Harris (Laurence Fishbourne). But the bruises on Sam’s body spread and her hallucinations get stronger. Has Sam brought something back from space with her, and is she actually alone in the house?

At the heart of The Astronaut is a really interesting idea, and the film pulls things off quite well in the first two acts, only to rush its revelations somewhat in act three. On the plus side, it looks great (until some dodgy CGI towards the end), Mara and Fishbourne are both good, and it uses the isolation of its main character to tension-building advantage.

Unfortunately, other areas let it down. The script doesn’t reflect the cleverness of the central conceit, so there are too many decisions that don’t make sense. The initial set-up of the compromised pod doesn’t add up to anything, nothing that happens afterwards requiring that to have happened at all. Later, Sam’s husband and daughter leave the house, promising to return that night, concerned that Sam is both frightened and alone. So, why not just stay? No reason is given for them to leave, other than that Sam’s character needs to be alone for the next plot device to work. There’s a bit too much of this – why doesn’t Sam just ask people to stay with her if she feels so vulnerable and alone?

The score is a little intrusive, often pushing home somewhat forcefully how you’re supposed to be reacting, and Luna is wasted in a role that requires him to be either morose or worried.

Pacing is also an issue. The first two acts become a little repetitive and then all hell breaks loose in act three, where the film mixes elements of Alien, all strobe lights and bursts of steam (why?), with the home invasion of Close Encounters and the wonder of E.T. It’s a mix that doesn’t quite gel, some budget-reflecting effects hampering the finale.

Still, there’s enough here to make The Astronaut a decent enough watch and it promises much from first-time feature writer-director Jess Varley.

THE ASTRONAUT is out now on digital platforms.

THE AMBULANCE (1990)

Perhaps one of Larry Cohen’s lesser-known movies, the 1990 thriller The Ambulance is finally making its way to Blu-ray in a limited-edition release of only 2,000 copies from Eureka Classics.

Marvel Comics artist Joshua (a lively Eric Roberts, sporting one hell of a mullet) plucks up the courage to talk to Cheryl on the streets of New York, when she suddenly falls ill. An older model ambulance (think Ecto-1) arrives to pick her up and rush her off to the hospital. Joshua does the rounds of the hospitals to find out how Cheryl is, but can’t find her anywhere, probably because she’s been abducted by a mad doctor who wants to cure her type-1 diabetes before killing her.

As Joshua tries to find out exactly what has happened to his dream woman, more disappearances occur, including Cheryl’s roommate, piquing the interest of Lieutenant Frank Spencer (played not by Michael Crawford, but a gum-and-scenery-chewing James Earl Jones). Spencer suspects that Joshua is heavily involved, but not in an innocent way.

The ambulance attendants and their synonymous vehicle pop up here and there, trying their best to stop Joshua and anyone else helping him from leaking their nefarious intentions, as Joshua does his best to stop them and convince others that he’s not insane or the kidnapper himself.

The Ambulance is a decent enough thriller, incorporating a fun giallo-style colour palette, building some good tension before letting it all go nuts in a bananas denouement. There is a fun Stan Lee cameo where he doesn’t actually say Excelsior!, and the seedy underbelly of New York is used well.

The extras coming with this release are interesting. A very good transfer of the main feature is as expected, but there is a lovely looking slipcase with brand new artwork from John Dunn, a booklet with an essay on the film from genre film expert Liam Hathaway, the usual audio commentaries, and a previously unseen interview with Cohen himself about the film, among others.

A fun release with a typically hammy Roberts performance, there is still some life left in this criminally unseen film. With this being such a limited release, make an emergency visit to order this as soon as possible!

OBJECT Z (1965)

Obscure cult TV shows don’t get more obscure than Object Z, a six-part sci-fi thriller written by Chris (Freewheelers) McMaster, which aired across October and November 1965. The series – about a rogue meteor hurtling towards Earth and apparently dooming the human race to absolute extinction – was hugely successful, its audience figures peaking at around 9 million, and it earned a sequel serial, Object Z Returns, the following year (which sadly no longer exists). We’re lucky that the original six-parter survives. This is a bleak, clearly Quatermass–inspired story of humanity facing its greatest existential crisis and the efforts of a stoic band of scientists, soldiers, politicians, astronomers and Trevor Bannister’s wry TV presenter Peter Barry to find a way to save the world from destruction. Tough, uncompromising, nihilistic – Object Z is powerful and demanding stuff. Oh, and by the way… it was made as teatime post-school entertainment for kids. Blimey…

McMaster wrote Object Z as an adult drama series, but when it was rejected, director Daphne Shadwell persuaded him to refashion it for Rediffusion (ITV’s pre-Thames TV London-based franchise) into a children’s serial. Refreshingly, no concessions were made for its new audience; there are no young heroic kids leading the charge, and its cast of characters consists of middle-aged boffins, politicians, soldiers and Arthur White’s ranting, fascistic trouble-maker Keeler, who sees the approaching threat as an opportunity to wrest control from the Government. The only remotely kid-friendly character is Barry’s elfin-featured assistant Delia Winters (Celia Bannerman), but she spends most of her time trailing around in his wake as he travels the world (well, the world as realised in Rediffusion’s tiny TV studios in Wembley) like an over-enthusiastic puppy.

As a determinedly studio-bound show, Object Z betrays TV’s origins as a theatre-based medium. The six episodes are wonderfully wordy – scene after scene of intense-looking people talking in offices, laboratories, missile control rooms, and mock-up TV studios. There are a handful of exterior sequences – including one eerie montage of deserted London streets in episode three – and the show makes brave stabs at recreating a rocket mission control in Woomera, a cave in the Highlands of Scotland, and even an Arabian Desert complete with actor Milton Johns in blackface as a Bedouin tribesman.

Object Z, by any reasonable standards, should be creaky and clunky and desperately dated. While there’s no denying that it’s very much ‘of its time’ (there are plenty of fluffed lines due to the fact that the show was recorded ‘as live’ and broadcast a day or so after taping), it’s actually a thrilling and exciting production because everyone’s taking it all terribly seriously, the story is genuinely thrilling, and McMaster’s clever, fast-paced scripts, for all their wordiness, are full of great ideas and rounded, interesting characters as well as a handful of storming cliffhangers. Just when it looks as if the story might be running out of steam, episode four delivers an ending that’s probably as close to jaw-dropping as we might expect from a cheap kids’ sci-fi thriller series from fifty years ago. The show does lose a bit of momentum in its two final episodes (there’s a sense of exhaustion creeping into both the production and some of the performances), with perhaps one unlikely twist too many at the climax, but this is a startlingly good piece of long-forgotten archive cult TV that’s been beautifully restored by the BFI in a set that includes a wonderfully informative booklet, commentaries on every episode, shooting scripts and more. A real unexpected treat for fans of classic cult TV, Object Z deserves an A Plus.

OBJECT Z is available now on Blu-ray/DVD from the BFI.

SEVERANCE (2006)

The new 4K release of director Christopher Smith’s (Creep) 2006 horror movie Severance (no relation to the hit Apple TV+ show) from Icon delivers a film that has never looked better than it does here, and it’s hard to believe that that this British horror thrill ride was made nearly 20 years ago. Admittedly the presence of an extremely youthful Danny Dyer might give the game away somewhat, but this is otherwise a film that has aged rather better than we might have expected.

The film tells the story of a team of British office workers sent on a team-building exercise to a forest lodge in the Matra Mountains of Hungary. They are a mixed bunch, including a couple of posh boys (Toby Stephens, Tim McInnerny), two accomplished women (Laura Harris, Claudie Blakley), the inevitable nerd (Andy Nyman) ,and inexplicably, a particularly loutish individual named Steve, played by the irrepressible Dyer. It’s not long (minutes in fact) before the team discovers that they have entered a world of ever-increasing threat and horror that will eventually decrease their numbers in ways they and the audience could never have expected.

Director Smith, who co-wrote the script with James Moran (Cockneys vs Zombies, Doctor Who), masterfully combines horror and comedy elements in a style not dissimilar to the beloved Shaun of the Dead, and his talented cast do not let him down as they throw themselves with gusto into the story’s visceral excesses. The horror sequences are plentiful and very bloody indeed, and there seems to be little hope of survival for any of the team as none of them can be described as warrior types – though, inevitably, needs must as the gore progresses. Severance is still a tremendously entertaining film, by turns hilarious and horrific, and this pin-sharp new 4K print makes this minor horror classic a near-essential and highly rewatchable addition to any gorehound’s collection. The original DVD release back in the day had a wealth of extras, but this new 4K version has considerably more, including new interviews with Smith and Andy Nyman alongside archive interviews and featurettes, poster and art cards, etc.

Team-building exercises in uninviting locations were popular back in the early 2000s in the business community, but they proved to not be a lasting fad. Severance would hardly have helped make them an enticing prospect for even the sturdiest of office workers. Attacks by lethal zombie soldiers and assorted mayhem dealt by a variety of nasty-looking weapons can have that effect on you. See the absolutely superb Severance and you’re sure to agree.

Severance is released on 4K by Icon Distribution on October 20th.

THE SHADOW’S EDGE

October 3rd sees the Trinity Cine Asia release in the UK of Hong Kong action thriller The Shadow’s Edge, a startlingly good thrill ride from start to finish and the best film Jackie Chan has starred in since Martin Campbell’s The Foreigner back in 2017. If anyone has ever wondered what films like Heat or The Departed would have been like if they’d contained a heavy dose of superbly choreographed martial arts action, then wonder no more… The Shadow’s Edge is exactly that, and much more.

The movie is set in present day Macau, with Chan playing a retired surveillance expert enlisted to bring an end to the activities of an elite team of robbers led by a mysterious criminal known as the Shadow (a splendid Tony Leung Ka-fai). It opens with a brilliantly staged heist sequence in a heavily guarded bank vault, which shows us how efficiently skillful and deadly this team is, especially when it comes to the modern worlds of cryptocurrency and AI in which they ply their trade. Chan is aided by a young rookie policewoman (Zhang Zifeng), and the duo encounter all kinds of mayhem and personal trauma as they battle to bring the villains to brutal justice.

The selling point of this film is the quality of the plentiful, spectacular action scenes, which take up the bulk of the 141-minute running time. Chan excels himself in the leading role, and the film benefits immensely from a complete absence of the often gurning physical comedy that he’s nowadays too often associated with. The lengthy and gruelling fight sequences are shot in such a way that every move is clear to the eye throughout – Paul Greengrass, eat your heart out – and director Larry Yang is a rare talent who really puts his 70-year-old star through it as he punches and kicks his way through a bunch of much younger opponents in convincing style. The story is, however, quite complex as it progresses, and if you see the movie in its original language with subtitles, you may need to buff up your speedreading skills to get the most out of it. However it’s the action that matters, and that’s more than capable of speaking for itself and then some.

The Shadow’s Edge is one of the best action films of the year and it can’t be recommended highly enough – a pleasant surprise, to say the least. More of the same would be welcome and a sequel looks imminent in the near future.

THE SHADOW’S EDGE is released on Blu-ray on October 3rd.

RED SONJA

Director M. J. Bassett is no stranger to the world of pulp legend Robert E. Howard. After adapting the excellent Solomon Kane for the big screen, Bassett now turns her lens to another of Howard’s fierce creations – Red Sonja. While this version of Sonja was originally created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Barry Windsor-Smith for Marvel Comics in 1973, she was inspired by Howard’s Red Sonya of Rogatino. Bassett reintroduces the She-Devil with a Sword in a new cinematic chapter that blends mythic grit with modern relevance.

Matilda Lutz leads with a powerful performance that redefines the iconic warrior, balancing a warrior’s fury with a protector’s grace. Her Sonja is not driven solely by vengeance, despite witnessing her mother’s murder as a child, but by a deep connection to the natural world. Raised among ancient trees rather than royal courts, she becomes a fierce protector of the wild. When Emperor Draygan, played by Robert Sheehan (Misfits, The Umbrella Academy), brings the machinery of empire to her forest home, Sonja finds herself powerless to stop the destruction.

Draygan is a villain both timeless and timely – a destroyer who mistakes devastation for progress, echoing the colonial and corporate forces that continue to ravage ecosystems. Screenwriter Tasha Huo threads environmental consciousness into the genre’s mythic DNA with remarkable finesse. Sonja’s act of liberating arena beasts destined for slaughter becomes a moment of mercy and defiance, a symbolic stand against exploitation.

This iteration of Sonja channels the feminist spirit that Gail Simone infused into the character during her acclaimed run at Dynamite Comics. Her strength is not born of trauma, but of unwavering justice and a sacred duty to protect the land and its forest gods. While the film occasionally reveals its modest budget, its ambition and heart shine through. Bassett keeps the focus on character and meaning over spectacle, and the Belousova-Ostinelli score – evoking the grandeur of Basil Poledouris – adds mythic resonance to the journey.

After years of development hell, Red Sonja emerges as a rollicking sword-and-sorcery adventure. Bassett has crafted a film that feels both nostalgic and contemporary, a rare blend that deserves your attention.

DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS (1971)

Harry Kümel’s 1971 erotic vampire horror, now getting a shiny new 4K release courtesy of Radiance, follows newlyweds Stefan (John Karlen) and Valerie (Daniele Ouimet). After they check in to a grand hotel in Oostend, on the Belgian seafront, the plan is for Stefan to make contact with his mother ahead of them visiting her in England, but he seems reluctant to, and keeps on prolonging their stay.

Enter Countess Elizabeth Báthory (Dephine Seyrig) and her “secretary” Ilona (Andrea Rau), whose appearance at the hotel coincides with a series of grisly murders of young women in nearby Bruges – murders which Stefan finds himself fascinated by. As Báthory – an immortal vampire incarnation of the real-life Hungarian noblewoman and serial killer – Seyrig is deliciously engaging, as powerful a female take on the Dracula myth as has graced cinema. It’s no wonder that Valerie gets entranced by her.

Though Báthory has left behind a trail of bodies, her real evil is in turning the possessive Stefan and his new wife, already yearning to break free after seeing his violent side, against each other. It’s a manipulation that leads to some unpleasant scenes of cruelty, the unravelling of pent-up desires, and Báthory eventually getting what she wants, albeit at a cost. Though not as bloody as you might expect from a vampire movie, it’s a mesmeric, intense and female-focused take on the mythos, with a wonderful edge of the bizarre, most notably when Stefan’s mother is revealed. It’s only let down by an unimpressive performance from Ouimet, whose Valerie is all too often over-the-top in her horror and bland in her later possessed state.

The film looks beautiful in this new 4K restoration – from the light tinkling off Bathory’s extravagant Dietrich-inspired outfits to the striking seaside landscape. And, the release comes packed with special features, including a new interview with Kümel, a visual essay by Kat Ellinger, two of Kümel’s short films, an 80-page booklet of essays, and much more.

DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS is available from October 13th on 4K UHD and Blu-ray.

ELEVATION

Imbued with the aesthetic of a 1990s monster movie, post-apocalyptic creature-feature Elevation is a high-concept actioner which recognises the value of injecting interesting character dynamics into end-of-the-world jeopardy. Making a virtue of budgetary necessity, the film focuses on a small ensemble of characters and relies on breathtaking real-world locations. Director George Nolfi gets great cinematic value from the stunning backdrop of the Colorado mountains, and whenever the action unfolds in the great outdoors, Elevation looks fantastic.

Opening three years on from a global calamity which saw subterranean monsters (‘Reapers’) emerge to lay waste to global civilisation, the few survivors of the disaster in the US have retreated to the safety of the high mountains. At huge human cost, they have discovered that the creatures, who can be seen at a distance because of the red light of their laser probe, refuse to move above 8,000 feet elevation. Members of one of the communities, now eking out an existence as a new frontier town, need urgent medical supplies and access to laboratory facilities. A high-risk mission to reach the town of Boulder, deep within the danger zone, is their only option.

There’s a lot of hard-working exposition in the opening minutes, but the intrepid trio of travellers who set off are reasonably well drawn, and there are some sparky exchanges between them – exposing jealousy, regret and self-doubt. The Reapers are a serviceable design – part lizard, part rhino, part armadillo and all killer – and are framed and shot sufficiently obliquely to keep them intriguing. The set pieces involving a ski lift, a mining complex, and an abandoned city block are well-shot and accompanied by a punchy musical score. The film’s premise inevitably invites comparison with Tremors, A Quiet Place or War of the Worlds, but while Elevation spends much of its denouement setting out its sequel and franchise ambitions, it fails to reach the same heights. This is, though, an efficient, no-nonsense monster romp that – while it’s pretty derivative plot-wise – is eminently watchable.

ELEVATION is available on Blu-ray and DVD from August 11th.

SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET (2007)

It isn’t often that a movie based on an acclaimed stage musical is granted an 18 certificate for ‘strong bloody violence’, but that’s wisely the case with this superb 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray release of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Tim Burton’s masterful rendition of composer Stephen Sondheim’s classic musical could well be the director’s best work – he’s arguably not matched it since. The same can be said of star Johnny Depp, who is staggeringly good as the titular murderous barber, who first became popular in Victorian ‘penny dreadfuls’, immediately became the stuff of nightmares, and has remained so ever since.

When this movie was released back in 2007, Warner Bros seemed to downplay the fact that it was even a musical at all, with the trailers not containing much musical content. Shame on them for their lack of faith in Burton’s immaculate vision. The truth is that the score is breathtakingly good and performed with gusto by the enthusiastic cast. Helena Bonham Carter matches Depp’s impact in her role as Todd’s accomplice in mayhem, the equally deranged pie maker Mrs Lovett, whose song The Worst Pies in London leaves no one in doubt that her culinary skills are more deadly than delicious.

As usual, Burton is no slouch when it comes to hiring strong British supporting players, apparent here with the likes of Timothy Spall, Sacha Baron Cohen, and the late Alan Rickman all making their presence felt in eye-catching performances. Victorian London is vividly portrayed and the set design and costuming rival Carol Reed’s 1968 Oliver! in their efficacy, filling the screen with period authenticity and style.

There’s no denying that Sweeney Todd is very bloody indeed, and the graphically portrayed murders are gruesomely enhanced in all their 4K glory. It would be no exaggeration to say that the film has never looked better than it does on this comprehensive package from Warner Bros.

The bonus content is also impressive; there’s a whole raft of featurettes that include plenty of behind-the-scenes footage of this stellar production, covering every aspect of its journey to the screen. Even if you’re not a fan of musicals, there’s so much to enjoy in this magnificent film, a textbook example of how this sort of material works when handled by a master filmmaker at the peak of his game. It’s simply Burton at his best.

SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET is available now on 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray.

ZODIAC (2007)

Robert Downey Jr and Jake Gyllenhaal in Zodiac

Despite the gritty, committed performances of its triumvirate of stars – Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Jr (the latter two not quite drawn into Marvel’s all-encompassing web at this point) – David Fincher’s uncompromising 2007 exploration of the real-life 1960s serial killer case failed to make much on an impression at the box office.

Fortunately, the film has found a more appreciative audience in the years since. This new 4K release – so sharp and so clear it’s like being back in the 1960s in offices full of sweaty men in suits wreathed in a fug of cigarette smoke or knocking back booze in seedy bars – is likely to accrue even more admirers in those looking for the very best feature film presentation that physical media has to offer (the Blu-ray disc version includes commentaries and featurettes).

Based on two non-fiction books written by political cartoonist Robert Graysmith (portrayed with breathless, dogged determination by Gyllenhaal), Zodiac tells the story of the manhunt for the so-called ‘Zodiac killer’ who terrorised the San Francisco Bay area during the late 1960s and early 1970s, taunting police with letters and cyphers mailed to newspapers.

It’s a cat-and-mouse story, with ‘Zodiac’ (he was never caught, but the authorities have a pretty good idea who he was, even though they were never able to pin him down at the time) almost toying with the police, Graysmith, the press, and even powerful celebrity lawyer/former actor Melvin Belli (Brian Cox), leaving clues and puzzles and even, horrifyingly, scraps of bloodstained clothing torn from his victims.

Zodiac is a heavily dialogue-driven affair with endless scenes of powerful men arguing in offices. Fincher brings it all to the screen with his trademark attention to detail and tireless quest for truth and verisimilitude – after the film’s release, the cast spoke of the fact that Fincher would often film 70 takes or more of a scene to make sure that he got exactly what he wanted from his performers. The handful of scenes that depict some of Zodiac’s kills actually look a little out-of-place, as if they belong in some Scream-style slasher movie, but they add a much-needed sense of urgency to a film that, while beautiful to look at and stunningly crafted, can feel a bit dry and heavy-going in places.

Ultimately it’s a film about three obsessed men; Graysmith takes his passion for the case to extremes by continuing his search for the truth long after Zodiac’s killing spree has ended, Mark Ruffalo gives police inspector Dave Toschi an exasperated, sometimes twinkling charm, and Robert Downey Jr is pretty much rehearsing for his defining role as Tony Stark as the cynical, rule-breaking, alcoholic journalist Paul Avery.

18 years on, it’s hard to imagine a film like Zodiac being made today. In many ways it’s a throwback to 1970s thrillers like All The President’s Men and Chinatown. While it isn’t a film that anyone’s likely to want to revisit regularly, it’s a reminder that, at its best, cinema needn’t really be all about franchises and sequels and reimaginings and that there should still be room for tough, torn-from-the-headlines films for adults that demand a bit more than the passive experience delivered by much of today’s cinema. Zodiac, by its very nature, isn’t easy viewing, and that alone is enough to make this new release highly recommended for lovers of hard, powerful noir cinema.