Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

GIOVANNI’S ISLAND

BLU-RAY REVIEW: GIOVANNI’S ISLAND / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: MIZUHO NISHIKUBO / SCREENPLAY: SHIGEMICHI SUGITA, YOSHIKI SAKURAI / STARRING: MASACHIKA ICHIMURA, YUKIE NAKAMA / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Director Mizuho Nishikubo and writers Shigemichi Sugita and Yoshiki Sakurai craft a hauntingly adorable vision of post-WWII Japan through the eyes of children in Production I.G’s Giovanni’s Island. The film follows two young brothers, Junpei and Kanta, who’s gentle island home is suddenly invaded by the Soviet Union. The film spans roughly a year in its story, and follows the two brother’s Homeward Bound-esque journey to find their father, who was captured by the Soviets after they discover his actions against them, and constantly trying to keep one step ahead of their enemy.

But unlike Homeward Bound, a happy ending for all concerned shouldn’t be expected when watching this film. Throughout their treacherous journey, the brothers take solace in the cult classic children’s book Night on the Galactic Railroad, even adopting two of the book’s character’s names, Giovanni and Campanella, for themselves.

The constant references and illusions to Kenji Miyazawa’s children’s novel paint a disturbingly enchanted view of the film’s scenario from the brother’s eyes. Giovanni having to accept that his island home becomes smothered in Soviets, his family’s home being taken from them by the Soviet leader, falling in love with the leader’s daughter Tanya, his family being evicted from their home island and beginning their journey – all these moments and more and narrated with Giovanni firmly in charge in terms of storytelling. His older self even narrates the film’s beginning and end, bookending a saga where the audience is given no quarter when it comes to emotional impact.

The film’s production values are as idiosyncratic as its depth, with characters illustrated in a rough, sketch-like manner, and even displaying subtle moments of pure cartoon-ish emotion – literal cross-eyes literally pop up here and there, resulting in Giovanni’s Island reminding its audience that despite its weary subject matter, its animated form brings some much needed lightness in its darkest moments. Kota Yokoyama and Junya Taniai turn in sweetly endearing performances as Junpei and Kanta respectively, and are backed by a fine supporting cast.

One slight flaw in an otherwise fine film is that, at times, there are moments when the audience is expected to suspend their disbelief far more so than any bog-standard fantasy-flavoured film. Such moments as the assumed cold-blooded murder of Junpei and Kanta’s reckless yet jovial uncle, and the finale involving an elderly Junpei returning to his home island in order to graduate from his primary school and meeting Tanya’s granddaughter plays around with the audience’s respect a little too much, but the latter is a sweet enough moment in a film chock full of soft brutality.

Giovanni’s Island, armed with its bittersweet ending and coupled with the audience almost never leaving Giovanni’s side (thus seeing the events of the film through his innocent yet mature self), is an immensely twisted concoction of being downright heart-breaking and eerily uplifting at the same time.

Special Features: Making-of / Digital art gallery / Music clip

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FLYING MONKEYS

DVD REVIEW: FLYING MONKEYS / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: ROBERT GRASMERE / SCREENPLAY: SILVERO GOURYS / STARRING: VINCENT VENTRESCA, MAIKA MONROE, BONI YANAGASAWA, LEE NGUYEN / RELEASE DATE: VOD OUT NOW

James Palmer (Ventresca) is feeling bad for not having his daughter, Joan (Monroe), and missing her high school prom due to his work as an architect. To make up for his misgivings, James purchases a cute little monkey from a dubious pilot who captured it in the wilds of Asia. A charming, cute and cuddy monkey by day, but when nightfall arrives, the beast shape-shifts into a demonic, snarling, flying winged monster, and before you can say “there’s no place like home” trouble starts a-brewin’.

Cheetah goes bananas, menacing innocent victims and out for blood, including Joan’s best friend; a very hot, 30-year-old high school teenager (where were these girls when we were in high school?) who just happens to be taking a shower as the primate, acting like a Peeping Tom-esque perv, waits for her to lather up before he makes an attempt on her.

With monkey maniac, madness abounding, James, Joan and her gal pal get help from Asian, kick-ass monkey killers Yin and Chin Lee (Yanagasawa and Nyguen.), who happen to be loaded with an arsenal of weapons and sharp wit reminiscent of the Frog brothers in The Lost Boys. They then plot to put the pint-sized aerodynamic King Kong on a permanent dirt-nap flight to the Land, Beyond Beyond.

In actuality, the movie should have been called Flying Monkey as there is only one of them, but somehow is just doesn’t have the same ring to it as it does plural. Director and veteran FX man Grasmere does a great job with the pacing of the story and the CGI work is very good, especially on the furry, freakazoid. This film is silly but a lot of fun – well worth watching.

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COHERENCE

DVD REVIEW: COHERENCE / CERT: 15 DIRECTOR: JAMES WARD BRYKIT / SCREENPLAY: JAMES WARD BRYKIT / STARRING: EMILY BALDONI, MAURY STERLING, NICHOLAS BRENDON / RELEASED: FEBRUARY 16TH

“(Coherence) contains several distinct concepts, which are limited cases that never occur in reality but allow an understanding of the physics of waves, and has become a very important concept in quantum physics.” Thank you, Wikipedia. But come on, you lot are sci-fi fans so you’re bound to know someone geeky enough to explain it better than that. You see, this is what Coherence is (probably) all about. We think that’s what it’s about anyway. If we’re honest, we’d have to say our A-level physics is a bit rusty, but they mention Schrödinger’s cat at some point so that’s good enough for us (and please don’t write in if we’ve got it wrong – this is a film review, not our homework). But if Austrian thought experiments of the ‘30s aren’t your thing, don’t worry; this is not a film you have to entirely understand to enjoy (and that’s probably just as well for those of us who review these things).

Eight friends meet for a dinner party on the night a comet is passing overhead. Weird stuff begins to happen (phone screens spontaneously crack) and it’s all blamed on the aforementioned comet because you can normally blame most things on a comet (including the Norman Conquest). When the lights go out, only a single house a couple of blocks away seems to have power. Two of the guests investigate and discover a very similar dinner party. They also return with a box containing a table tennis bat and photographs of all eight guests with apparently random numbers written on the back. Then things get really weird…

Sounds intriguing? Well it is. It sucks you right in and keeps you wanting to know more. It’s made on a pretty small budget (it was filmed in five days in the director’s house) with just those eight actors but the largely improvised performances are all top-notch. Low budget movies can be let down by the director recruiting his mates, but when your mates include the likes of Nicholas Brendon (we’re embarrassed to admit we spent at least half an hour trying to remember where we’d seen him before) then that’s not so much of a problem. There are a few scares on the way and a great deal of entertaining confusion, but what we were most impressed by was the fact that it ends up making a certain amount of sense. These kinds of messed-up-reality movies can often really disappoint in the end when the ideas run out and the film needs to finish, but Coherence even manages a decent climax and twisty conclusion.

Any faults? Well apart from the fact that comets don’t look like that, “there was this comet in Finland” is one of the dumbest lines we’ve ever heard. But it is improvised and people do say dumb stuff…

Incidentally, “coherence” was an answer on last week’s University Challenge but it was a physics question, not a film round.

Special Features: None

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THE SHOOT

DVD REVIEW: THE SHOOT / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: JOHN ADAMS, TOBY POSER / SCREENPLAY: JOHN ADAMS, TOBY POSER / STARRING: SAM RODD, JOHN ADAMS, TOBY POSER, JOHN DIMAGGIO, DOUG SPEARMAN / RELEASE DATE: TBC

Two weathered musicians living the rock and roll lifestyle, Tommy (Adams) and Dougie (Rodd), are busted broke and desperately dreaming of their big break, whilst Tommy’s wife Maddy (Poser) is stuck in her own soulless job as an assistant fashion stylist. The rockers pay for their big album by taking out a loan, but unfortunately from the wrong kind of lender who threatens them to pay by the end of the week. Unable to repay the loan, they plan to rob Maddy’s fashion photo shoot in the desert for a high-end jewellery line. It’s there when it all goes wrong for all of them.

The Shoot appears to be in the vein of a heist thriller in which the robbers prepare for a heist to sort out their own problems only for it to conveniently go wrong and leaves the predicament of what they are going to do about it. The characters of Tommy and Dougie are established early on, with Tommy being the brains of the operation and Dougie being his concerned sidekick. What the film cleverly does, is that as soon the heist goes wrong those roles become reversed; Tommy ends up becoming the troubled and paranoid helper, whilst Dougie becomes more violent and unhinged by the experience.

The film also seems to be a sly undercutting of the fashion industry, showing it in its vacuous and poisonous form. Plus, that whole element wouldn’t look too out of place next to The Devil Wears Prada. Also, the whole thing has a blackly comic attitude to it all that is quite out-there and shocking at times. However, despite how solidly put-together it may all be, it’s not something that is entirely 100% original and it’s not going to change the face of its genre.

Writers John Adams and Toby Poser play both Tommy and Maddy, and it’s quite clear they have a strong chemistry with both acting and writing. Sam Rodd is a dynamic screen presence, and the supporting performances are perfectly adequate and fine. However, the brilliant John DiMaggio (the legendary voice behind Jake, Schnitzel, Bender and Joker) is relegated to little more than a glorified cameo, and it leaves the question as to why they needed him to fill this frankly tiny role.

Overall, while it definitely has its flaws, The Shoot is still perfectly enjoyable entertainment with some dark and absurd moments and some solid performances. It’s fun, if a little bit hollow and forgettable.

Special Features: TBC

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PHANTOM OF THE OPERA

DVD REVIEW: PHANTOM OF THE OPERA / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: ANTHONY D.P. MANN / SCREENPLAY: ANTHONY D.P. MANN / STARRING: ANTHONY D.P. MANN, SAVANNAH KIMMERER / RELEASE DATE: TBC

Every once in a generation, a filmmaker comes along who is so consummate in every aspect of the process, their name becomes synonymous with the films they produce. Then there are the filmmakers who simply aspire to be the next Orson Welles. Anthony D.P. Mann, whose retelling of the Phantom of the Opera bears his name and hallmark at every conceivable turn, certainly has ambitions towards being another Welles; sadly his aspirations outstrip his capabilities by some considerable margin.

Straddling the modern day and a 1930s parallel (and including a fifty-something character who was apparently present in both), Mann’s amateur dramatics involve a TV crew fetching up at the mostly disused Garnier Opera House (relocating Gaston Leroux’s story to Canada) to learn about the eponymous Phantom, in one case rather too closely for comfort. Mann, as well as writing and directing and composing two songs, gives in truth probably the best performance here – which isn’t saying a great deal. The rest of the cast are all at sea, with even the more capable acting reminiscent of a senior school performance transferred out onto location but without the requisite recalibrating taking place. The script is ponderous and badly paced but it is the unnatural cadences in the dialogue that really sink the actors.

The home-made feel of the camerawork – Mann has a particular fetish for pulling focus midway through his scenes – isn’t helped in any way by the sound design. The music is adequate, if lacking in passion and atmosphere, but the voice recordings dip in and out of the mix at the will of the boom operator, with no attempt being made either to balance the volume or to clean up the soundtrack via the use of foley. It sounds like a home movie, and that would undermine the production even if better care had been taken with the pictures; if Mann was reaching for a classical feel the truth is he doesn’t even achieve “TV movie”.

You have to feel sorry for Savannah Kimmerer as Christine, playing a double role and having been chosen for the production via a local channel TV reality show; her singing is melodious enough, but the director never manages to bring the passion out of her, leaving the Phantom’s obsession with her voice utterly mystifying. And while the poor girl, 17 at the time of casting, no doubt has a brighter future ahead than this might suggest, her acting is at times woeful and sadly this again comes back to Mann. That he plays the tragedy at the film’s end with as much vanity as he does tells you all you need to know.

One for Leroux aficionados only – and even then, approach cautiously.

Special Features: TBC

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BUDDY HUTCHINS

DVD REVIEW: BUDDY HUTCHINS / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: JARED COHN / SCREENPLAY: JARED COHN / STARRING: JAMIE KENNEDY, SALLY KIRKLAND, SARA MALAKUL LANE, DAVID GERE / RELEASE DATE: TBC

Writer and director Jared Cohn asks the audience to side with Buddy, a deadbeat man-child hell-bent on revenge for a situation he put himself in. One time rocker, Buddy is a recovering alcoholic toxic to all and everyone around him, even if his poorly-written daughter is too blind to see it.

Even from the start, the dull script and duller direction doesn’t leave the viewer wanting to go back two months and play catch up to what brought Buddy to be fighting off the police. Jamie Kennedy is a poor man’s Bill Paxton in the titular role, and he himself isn’t a bad actor, but headlining such a vile little film does him no favours.

There isn’t a strong female lead at all, in fact there’s a severe lack of female characters all round, and those involved are viewed with suspicion, slut shamed or regarded only as curiosities. Despite his film already being deeply misogynist, Cohn goes one step further and offends just about everyone, with both homophobia and racial stereotypes.

Unlike shocking titles like A Serbian Film or Cannibal Holocaust, this won’t become a cult classic. Indeed, if this was just a midlife crisis slasher, American Beauty with a chainsaw, we’d have an interesting title at hand, but Buddy Hutchins is symptomatic of straight white male entitlement, and a relic from a time we can’t pass soon enough.

The worst thing is, despite his selfish killing spree, Buddy has his cake and eats it. With its sociopathic script, lacklustre direction, and detestable main man, Buddy Hutchins is better left ignored.

Special Features: TBC

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SHADOW WORLD: THE HAUNTING OF MYSTI DELANE

DVD REVIEW: SHADOW WORLD: THE HAUNTING OF MYSTI DELANE / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: DANIEL E. FALICKI / SCREENPLAY: WARREN COYLE, JEFFREY PALMER / STARRING: PERI JILL PHILLIPS, LIZ NOLAN / RELEASE DATE: TBC

After a tragic incident within her own past, a young woman is living in isolation in a shack out in the middle of nowhere. She has grown to loathing the outside world and is taking solace in transporting her mind own into a dream world where she can be happy and have no outside interaction. However, a mysterious shadowy creature is invading her world and haunting her at every moment. Soon, her estranged sister arrives, knowing more than she’s letting on, and agrees to help her out in stopping the creature.

Shadow World does delve into some classic horror movie tropes with the use of a dilapidated house, monsters lurking within shadows, supernatural worlds and a character that has unusual psychic connections with the threat imposed upon her. Those conventions and devices aren’t so cliché here as perhaps they might be in a modern horror movie, but there isn’t anything that is new or exciting to surprise us. The whole film seemed a bit like a short movie extended, and there was the sense of the idea being dragged out to fill its targeted running time. Plus, there didn’t seem to be any real ending as it closed so abruptly, so a solid conclusion would’ve been appreciated.

However, it isn’t going to offend anybody, it’s solidly put together for what budget they had, the music is superbly haunting, and the performances are perfectly fine. Plus, the diary entries detailing the troubled protagonist’s plights, her addiction to her dream world and her spite of modern life, were brilliantly compelling and created a perfect insight into her disturbed mind. It’s just a shame we were just shown snippets of this and that is wasn’t delved into more.

Shadow World: The Haunting of Mysti Delane isn’t something that’s going to reinvent the horror genre in the same way as Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook recently, but for what budget they had, it is solidly made and it does have a good idea at the heart of it, even if it is stretched out to a feature-length movie.

Special Features: TBC

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IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE

DVD REVIEW: IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: HANS PETTER MOLAND / SCREENPLAY: KIM FUPZ AAKESON / STARRING: STELLAN SKARSGARD, KRISTOFER HIVJU, BIRGITTE HJORT SORENSEN, PAL SVERRE HAGEN, BRUNO GANZ / RELEASE DATE: FEBRUARY 2ND

Stellan Skarsgård is Nils Dickman, a stoical Swedish snowplough driver working in Norway who wins a “Citizen of the Year” award (“You’re the most Norwegian person around without actually being Norwegian”) before drug dealers kill his son. He then embarks on a shambolic killing spree, working his way up through the ranks of this drug organisation in order to get to the bottom of this terrible tragedy. All this has makings of an angsty revenge thriller steeped in nihilism, especially with its mournful chiming score and recurrent end-of-scene slo-mo techniques. However, the tone is surprisingly more absurdist, as this snowblinded black comedy is essentially a Scandi-noir becoming Scandi-blanc.

At the centre of the film is Skarsgård’s performance, and he brilliantly does what can only be described as a deadpan hangdog performance. The whole film takes place in this snowbound area with a lot of bright glaring colours, and a lot of people have made the comparison with the Coen Brothers’ work, especially Fargo to some extent, as well as the work of Quentin Tarantino with the gangster characters talking to each other about stuff that seems incidental whilst being involved in acts of strange violence.

The original Norwegian title Kraftidioten (“the prize idiot”) tells you more about the tone of the film than the English-language title does, because as the body count mounts up, the deaths and disappearances becoming more and more absurdist and insane. The film definitely has a blackly comic tone to it, which is juxtaposed against this white landscape. It’s sort of a satirical, wry, somewhat darkly morbid take on the traditional Death Wish formula, with Skarsgård stepping into Charles Bronson’s shoes. Skarsgård does have a fantastic frostiness to his performance and it’s his personality that perfectly embodies the personality of the film itself, which is resolutely Scandinavian.

Overall, In Order of Disappearance is an odd movie that is darkly comic and morbidly funny, if ultimately incidental in the end. But it is good fun while it’s there, even if it’s in a sick, twisted and rather wicked way.

Special Features: TBC

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THE OTHER

BLU-RAY REVIEW: THE OTHER (1972) / CERT:12 / DIRECTOR ROBERT MULLIGAN / SCREENPLAY: TOM TRYON / STARRING: UTA HAGEN, DIANA MULDAUR, CHRIS UDVARNOKY, MARTIN UDVARNOKY / RELEASE DATE: FEBRUARY 23RD

To describe Robert (To Kill a Mockingbird) Mulligan’s The Other, based on the 1971 novel by actor-turned-writer Tom Tryon, as a horror movie is to do it an enormous disservice. It is quite clearly, as recognised and acknowledged by countless movie enthusiasts across the decades, actually a taut psychological thriller which predates by a couple of years what we might loosely identify as the ‘horror movie boom’ of the mid-1970s, characterised by classics such as The Exorcist and The Omen. In fact, in many ways it’s The Omen which possibly bears the closest resemblance to The Other in that it features a creepy demonic kid who does terrible things to suspicious adults who might not have his best interests at heart. But The Other is much less adrenalised and high-concept than Richard Donner’s enduring genre classic (and not, we rush to point out, the ropey and pointless 2006 remake) and certainly not concerned with graphic or exploitative displays of gore and horror.

We’re in Kentucky in 1935 and twins Niles and Holland Perry are enjoying lazy, hazy summer days in the countryside around the family’s farming homestead. Their mother is a recluse, grieving over the recent death of her husband and Grandma Ada encourages Niles to develop a psychic ability that allows him to project himself out of his own body and into the body of other creatures. Holland is a cheeky, naughty scamp and Niles finds himself trailing along in his brother’s mischievous wake. But as the summer wanders on, some of Holland’s pranks become a little more sinister and have tragic consequences. But there may be more – or possibly even less – to Holland’s behaviour than meets the eye and the greatest tragedy is just around the corner when the truth about Niles and Holland finally becomes apparent.

The Other isn’t a film likely to appeal to fans of modern quick-fix horror movies. It’s a languid, slow burn affair which takes its time in setting up its characters and its scenario and establishing the slightly-oppressive air of a situation which isn’t quite right and people who aren’t necessarily quite as they appear to be. Eagle-eyed viewers familiar with genre tropes that have been done to death (quite literally) since The Other first appeared are likely to spot the twist well before it’s revealed. Fortunately, there’s more to the story than what initially appears to be this core plot point and in many ways the last reel takes the movie into darker and occasionally more disturbing territory than ever, resolving in a bleak and nihilistic ending which is like to linger longer in the memory than the rest of the film.

But in the end perhaps that’s what makes The Other so unfussily triumphant. It has a subtlety and restraint lost to later entries in what we might call the ‘creepy kid’ movie sub-genre and its bright cinematography, emphasising a long-gone idyllic lifestyle of endless summer days, blazing sunshine and boyish exuberance and imagination, cleverly subverts its story of a carefree life of fun and games beneath which beats a dark and twisted heart.

Extras: Trailer, souvenir booklet

NINJAS VS. MONSTERS

DVD REVIEW: NINJAS VS. MONSTERS / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: JUSTIN TIMPANE / SCREENPLAY: JUSTIN TIMPANE / STARRING: DANIEL ROSS, CORY OKOUCHI, JAY SAUNDERS, DEVON BROOKSHIRE / RELEASE DATE: JANUARY 26TH

The ’90s have a lot to answer for. In addition to giving us Pogs, digital pets and Vanilla Ice, it also gave a rather odd sub-genre of horror in which a team of quirky misfits goes against supernatural horrors. This trend, which was popularised via various cheesy tabletop roleplaying games and made mainstream by Buffy the Vampire Slayer is still with us today and has become a trope in cult media. Ninjas vs. Monsters carries on the fine tradition of wisecracking geeks getting super powers and beating up monsters.

The story may be a little bit confusing to those who haven’t seen the previous two Ninjas Vs movies, but it’s not that complicated and besides, there’s a handy recap at the start of the movie just in case. The plot is quite straightforward; Dracula, the Wolfman and chums have come to the conclusion that people are no longer scared of them. Mostly they blame Twilight for this, but rather than going round to Stephanie Meyer’s house to extract their revenge, they instead hatch a plan that involves murdering a team of unlikely nobodies who spend their evenings beating up vampires, zombies and the like.

They are many unanswered questions; why does Frankenstein have lightning powers and arm mounted blades? (Pedants who are itching to jump in at this point, by the way, are wrong.) Why is the mummy in a Halloween costume? Why is one of the generic monsters Neo from The Matrix in Cenobite drag? Who cares! It’s not that sort of movie. Invite your friends round to watch, order pizza, turn your brain off and have a junk food day with this film.

Writer/director/actor Justin Timpane has clearly put his heart and soul into this movie, and has tried to do an awful lot with very little. The budget really shows, and this feature isn’t going to win any prizes for its writing, direction or acting. That said, the sheer energy behind it all is present in every scene and the sense of geeky joy that has caused this movie to exist bleeds into every part of the production. It’s monster fun, in every sense of the word. Just don’t look too hard at the special effects.