Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

REVIEW: FRANK / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: LENNY ABRAHAMSON / SCREENPLAY: JON RONSON, PETER STRAUGHAN / STARRING: DOMNHALL GLEESON, MICHAEL FASSBENDER, MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL, SCOOT MCNAIRY / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Frank Sidebottom was the surreal, two-headed (one inside the other) alter-ego of northern comic and singer Chris Sievey, who died in 2010 at the age of 54, apparently having given his blessing to this project. The film Frank is a wholly fictionalised account of an already fictional creation, co-written and based upon the articles of Jon Ronson, who had occasion to play in Sidebottom’s band. Anyone anticipating a biography of either Sievey or Sidebottom can check their expectations in at the door, because this is a film that takes place entirely in the neo-magical realist universe of Being John Malkovich.

Featuring an entirely new soundtrack of songs written by composer Stephen Rennicks in conjunction with director Lenny Abrahamson and the cast, and performed live as the cameras rolled, Frank resembles nothing so much as This is Spinal Tap by way of Adaptation., and shot in the naturalistic style and with much of the dreamlike pathos of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Fans of Frank Sidebottom might therefore wonder what there is to attract them here. The answer is in Ronson and Straughan’s screenplay, which dramatises Ronson’s relationship with Sievey’s cult creation in legitimately tangential ways.

The film is thus narrated by ‘Jon’, in the form of blog entries and Twitter updates, and commences with his rather odd introduction into the world of Soronprfbs, Frank’s band. Before he has time to adjust to this bizarre environment, Jon is whisked away to Ireland to begin recording on Soronprfbs’ new album, and so the story plays out detailing how Jon’s world of social media and material success encroaches upon the rarefied plane of Frank’s creativity.

The acting is low-key and brave, with Domnhall Gleeson the timidly charismatic lead, but it’s an astonishing and unrecognisable turn from Michael Fassbender as Frank that mesmerises. The amount of expression he brings to a simple twitch of a papier-mâché head is quite unnerving, and Maggie Gyllenhaal is equally impressive in the unflattering role of Soronprfbs’ thereminist. The dialogue and characterisations is a match for the ideas and performances, and Frank exists in a solidly built alternative reality in which a man who showers with a plastic bag over his head can seem completely normal.

In the final act, Abrahamson’s film risks falling apart as the meditations on mental illness and art-versus-success come to the fore, but they develop in such a natural fashion as to lead to an entirely appropriate and elliptical conclusion. This isn’t going to be a film that appeals to the masses, but anyone who has enjoyed the work of Charlie Kaufman will know exactly what to expect and, while this is neither homage nor plagiaristic, will not be disappointed.

Extras: commentaries, featurette, deleted scenes

BLU-RAY REVIEW: STAGEFRIGHT / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: MICHELE SOAVI / SCREENPLAY: GEORGE EASTMAN, SHEILA GOLDBERG / STARRING: DAVID BRANDON, BARBARA CUPISTI, GIOVANNI LOMBARDO RADICE / RELEASE DATE: SEPTEMBER 22ND

An oft-forgotten relic from the height of the video age, StageFright (or StageFright: Aquarius as it’s sometimes known) gets a welcome uncut reissue in HD courtesy of Exposure Cinema, and it’s a package well worth checking out!

As emotions at the rehearsals for a musical stage production called The Night Owl, in which the murderer wears a large owl’s head, get strained, an escaped killer (who just so happens to be an actor who went crazy and massacred his fellow thespians) gate-crashes the theatre, locking them all in, and proceeds to pop them off one-by-one. Wearing the grotesque owl-head costume of the leading man, the murderer, chops, slashes, drills, and decapitates the troupe, while those still living attempt to escape.

It’s a fairly standard slasher set-up, but the addition of a number of things raises StageFright above the mediocre. The first is obvious; the instantly creepy and memorable costume the killer wears. However, we also have to take into account the fantastic visuals both director Soavi (a protégé of Dario Argento, and it shows) and cinematographer Renato Tafuri bring to the proceedings. There’s a plethora of stunningly beautiful shots, with the camera swooping across the theatre stage like the proverbial night owl. Plus, the pedigree behind the film goes even deeper. Radice (billed under his Anglo-name, John Morghen), was already famous for such horror classics as The House on the Edge of the Park, City of the Living Dead and Cannibal Ferox, and is instantly recognisable. In addition, behind the scenes, George Eastman, the foetus-eating wrong ‘un from Anthropophagus – the Beast, wrote the script (although the dialogue was extensively re-done) and apparently played the killer when the owl-head is on, and it’s produced by that film’s director, Joe D’Amato. That it’s not more well known is quite a sin.

Despite (or maybe because of) the ludicrous dubbing – Radice’s camp dancer is a scream; literally – there’s a lot of fun to be had, and the pomptastic ’80s synth score is as rousing as any of the more famous Italian classics. The killings are perhaps not as elaborate as those committed to celluloid by Mario Bava, Argento, or Lucio Fulci, but are impressively bloody nonetheless. It’s also still remarkably suspenseful, and a number of now-clichéd jump scares still actually succeed.

However, the release is an essential purchase by virtue its array of extra features. The Blu-ray boasts almost three hours worth of bonus goodies. Some are short but sweet, like a comparison between the uncut print presented here, and the 1987 UK video release. A talking heads feature with director Soavi and actor Barbara Cupisti talking (subtitled) their way through their career highlights is very enlightening, as is an on-screen interview with Radice. UK film journalist (and head honcho behind FrightFest) Alan Jones spouts the virtues of the film and the director. The two meatiest morsels are an archival documentary about producer D’Amato, which while low quality, is fascinating, and a newly made item, The Revenge of the Video Cassette, which is a fun homage to the old tape format. Featuring interviews with collectors and amusing asides highlighting some of the weird and wonderful things that have been inspired by the machines (a VHS recorder converted into a toaster, anyone?) it’s a greatly entertaining item, only hampered by the insistence of overdoing the faux ‘drop-outs’ and tracking lines. It’s a fantastically put together package of a good – if not great – film, and well worth having.

DVD REVIEW: GRAVE HALLOWEEN / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: STEVEN R. MONROE / SCREENPLAY: RYAN W. SMITH / STARRING: KAITLYN LEEB, CASSI THOMSON, DEJAN LOYOLA, GRAHAM WARDLE / RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 27TH

You pretty much always know what you’re going to get with a Syfy channel movie. It’ll be wise to the rules of its genre and have something ridiculously weird but somehow entertaining happen every ten minutes, but ultimately it will fall apart if the script or performances are at all scrutinised. It would be great to say Grave Halloween departs from that mould. But it doesn’t.

From I Spit on Your Grave director (and all-round fan of the word ‘grave’) Steven R. Monroe, Grave Halloween follows – stop me if you’ve heard this one before – a group of shockingly attractive young students who venture into the deep, dark woods to make a documentary about a dead person. The woods in question are Japan’s Aokigahara, a notorious suicide hotspot, and the corpse in question is the mother of Maiko (Leeb). She wants to give her mother, who topped herself when Maiko was a child, the ritual burial she deserves, while allowing Amber (Thomson) to film it for a college project.

“Damn, if only I’d thought of exploiting my friend’s childhood trauma to get me through school”, you’ll probably be thinking. That, or, “Ah shit, not another found footage movie” – but Grave Halloween isn’t quite that. The film intercuts the group’s documentary footage with more traditionally shot scenes – a wise choice that allows Monroe the freedom to craft a spine-chilling atmosphere and to cut away to other people, mostly so we can see them die horrifically. Yes, this is a film which knows how to raise hairs, particularly in its dark and troublesome climax.

The problem is, when the film slows down between scary bits, you’re at risk of accidentally thinking about the plot, and that’s when it all goes downhill. There’s little consistency as to what’s actually going on – it’s a ghost story, but at one point a guy’s attacked by evil trees. Not sure why. And I’m no expert on the Japanese justice system, but I don’t think it’s common practice for arrested thieves to be handcuffed to a shelf in a morgue.

What’s worse is that, Maiko’s determination to bury her mother aside, the characters are sorely underwritten. In the opening sequences, Loyola’s Terry is introduced as the easy-going, ‘everything-will-be-fine’ member of the gang, and Wardle’s Kyle is tipped as the new guy whom the others can’t yet trust, but neither of these characteristics are at all returned to once they get into the woods. Actually, considering the quality of acting on show, maybe it’s for the best that they don’t have to bother with depth…

Grave Halloween may not stand up to much analysis, but if shockingly attractive students and the horrifying murders of the aforesaid are the kind of thing you like – well, there are worse ways to spend a night.

BLU-RAY REVIEW: BLACULA – THE COMPLETE COLLECTION / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: WILLIAM CRAIN, BOB KELLJAN / SCREENPLAY: RAYMOND KOENIG, JOAN TORRES, MAURICE JULES / STARRING: WILLIAM MARSHALL, VONETTA MCGEE, DENISE NICHOLAS, GORDON PINSENT, PAM GRIER, DOM MITCHELL / DATE OF RELEASE: OCTOBER 27TH

When the ‘blaxploitation’ genre exploded in the 1970s – ‘black exploitation’ films ostensibly aimed at a black urban audience (but which actually reached out to a far broader church) – it was inevitable that super cool titles like Shaft and Superfly would lead to studios chasing after a slice of the always profitable horror film pie. Blacula appeared in 1972, an extraordinary footnote to the story of Dracula on the big screen. It might well have appeared bold and audacious in the 1970s but in 2014 Blacula just looks fantastically dated and sensationally ill-judged and clumsy, an amusing title in search of a decent film.

Visiting Castle Dracula in 1780, Prince Mamuwalde (Marshall) and his wife Luva (McGee) fall foul of the vampire lord’s bloodlust when Dracula refuses to assist the prince in his fight against the slave trade. Bitten and imprisoned in a coffin, Mamuwalde wakes up in Los Angeles in 1972 (the timeshift never remotely bothers him); after slaughtering two ludicrously stereotyped camp interior decorators, Mamuwalde stalks the streets of Los Angeles in search of Tina Williams who, as luck would have it, is a dead ringer for his long-dead wife.

Racial and sexual stereotypes aside, Blacula is lightweight fun, its shonky production values and inelegant action sequences shored up by the powerful and commanding presence of Marshall as the titular vampire. Blacula is more avuncular than animalistic and whilst the film’s plot occasionally mirrors the plot of Stoker’s Dracula novel, it more often goes its own way and its funky, bass-heavy incidental music is in itself a thing of joy.

1973’s sequel Scream, Blacula, Scream is a more accomplished and confident affair – but oddly much less fun. Marshall’s vampire is much more feral here and the whole film is gutsier and more assured, with better direction from newcomer Kelljan. Mamuwalde (he finally – and rather ludicrously – calls himself ‘Blacula’ at the end of the film) ingratiates himself with a group of squabbling voodoo practitioners in the hope that their rituals can rid him of the ‘demon’ within him which has made him a vampire. And he would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for… oh, never mind.

Never have the words ‘a product of their time’ seemed more appropriate than in relation to the Blacula films. Produced at a period when Hollywood was finally starting to recognise the importance and profile of the black audience, they now appear a little patronising and heavy-handed. Blacula looks bright and shiny in its new Blu-ay transfer (particularly in its daytime sequences) but the sequel is noticeably grainier. Both films are worth a look for Marshall’s fruity cod-Shakespearean tones alone; just don’t expect anything with the bite even of one of Hammer’s tamer 1960s efforts.

Extras: Introduction by Kim Newman introduction / Trailers / Booklet

DVD REVIEW: FROM THE NEW WORLD PART 2 / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: MASASHI ISHIHAMA / SCREENPLAY: YUSUKE KISHI, MASASHI SOGO / STARRING: HARUKA KODO, AYUMU MURASE / RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 6TH

The second part of From the New World compiles episodes 14 – 25 of Masashi Sogo’s intelligent anime. Based on Yūsuke Kishi’s manga (itself an adaptation of his own young adult novel), the series offers a vision of Japan a thousand years from now, a far cry from the post-apocalyptic worlds of other other speculative fiction. While Tokyo itself may be a desert waste, much of the country still retains its majesty. The population has dwindled down to 50,000 people, some of whom possess telekinetic powers. The series focusses on six children who come to realise the bloody history that has ushered in their apparent tranquil existence, which sets them on a journey filled with dark discoveries and loss.

Children with powers is familiar territory in the young adult genre, but From the New World does something altogether more inspired and exciting. The plot is a labyrinth of twists, held together by quality writing. Unexpectedly, the story approaches a burgeoning lesbian relationship with integrity, not unlike in The Last of Us: Left Behind; though it’s only recapped in the second half of the series.

The characters are an interesting bunch, with the second half mostly focussing on Saki and Satoru, both of whom are easy to warm to, though it’s Saki who really carries the series. She’s a complex and driven individual whom we watch grow from ages 12 to 36.

The music is superb, a cut above the usual underwhelming anime soundtrack, making an affecting use of Dvorak’s New World Symphony. It’s worth noting that there’s no opening theme, and the show is all the better for it.

Even with the English dub, this is a tale steeped in Japanese culture and history, a series which addresses Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the country’s history of warfare and which demonstrates the folly of putting the sins of a culture’s past onto its children. Despite its intended young adult audience, the story makes no compromises, tackling theology, ethics, bureaucracy and politics. There are no binary opposites, no black and white conflict; instead you see the conflict from both sides and understand the other’s plight.

Director Masashi Ishihama’s approach is stylish and cinematic, leaving the story’s manga origins well behind. But perhaps the most surprising element of From the New World is just how moving it is. To My Beloved Saki and Scarlet Flower are both standout episodes, and the self-titled closer offers a poignant and poetic conclusion.

The series may be a bit bogged down with exposition, and it does occasionally edge towards the sappy, but it’s dark and beautiful and demonstrates the strength and potential of the genre, tribes of mutant naked mole rats and all.

Extras: Trailers

DVD REVIEW: EDGE OF TOMORROW / CERT: 12A / DIRECTOR: DOUG LIMAN / SCREENPLAY: CHRISTOPHER MCQUARRIE, JEZ BUTTERWORTH, JOHN-HENRY BUTTERWORTH / STARRING: TOM CRUISE, EMILY BLUNT, BRENDAN GLEESON, BILL PAXTON, TONY WAY / RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 13TH

Hollywood’s current approach to sci-fi is to add a novel element into the plot. It is not enough to have a simple space opera or futuristic war; the whole thing has to revolve around some clever and mind-bending twist. Edge of Tomorrow’s gimmick is that the main character is doomed to repeat the same day again and again. Unlike Groundhog Day however, the day the protagonist is doomed to repeat is the day that mankind loses to a powerful alien invasion force.

The plot is anything but simple. Earth is at war with an implacable alien menace known as the Mimic. Tom Cruise plays the photogenic Major Cage, a PR man who has spent his military career avoiding active service by being the smiling face of military recruitment. When Cage’s luck and charm run out, he finds himself on the front. His first encounter causes him to become cursed with an ever-repeating day, and he swiftly works out that his only path to victory is to ally with Emily Blunt’s character, a woman he had previously been hyping to the media as ‘The Angel of Verdun’.

The result is a high-octane alien invasion action movie in which you get to see Tom Cruise die many, many times. For some, this is worth the price of the DVD alone. The movie looks appropriately gritty and at points has a very First Person Shooter video game feel. This effect is only heightened by the fact that Cruise has seemingly infinite replays. The aliens are very well done, being mostly a mass of tentacles mixed with molten lava. This contrasts with the soldiers’ power-suits very nicely indeed, allowing for really eye-popping special effects whilst still maintaining some suspension of disbelief.

The DVD release only contains limited extras for some reason. Weapons of The Future and Creatures Not of this World are fairly standard insights into the movie-making process and don’t really add to the experience. Additional extras have been added to the Blu-ray, presumably to encourage you to start using that format.

Edge of Tomorrow would have been a solid and interesting sci-fi movie without it’s time-warping premise. With it, it becomes something much deeper and more entertaining. Though the movie wastes a lot of its potential in favour of clever action sequences, this does seem to be a worthwhile trade-off. If you ever wondered what the love child of Aliens and Groundhog Day would look like, then this could well be your answer.

BLU-RAY REVIEW: GHOST IN THE SHELL STEELBOOK / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: MAMORU OSHII / SCREENPLAY: KAZUNORI ITO / STARRING: ATSUKO TANAKA, AKIO OTSUKA / RELEASE DATE: SEPTEMBER 29TH

To coincide with the 25th anniversary of Masamune Shirow’s seminal cyberpunk manga series, Ghost in the Shell has been given an HD overhaul and released on Blu-ray. A product of the anarchic digital age of the late ’80s and early ’90s, the techno-punk of code and internet access, Ghost in the Shell followed in the wake of Akira to profoundly impact pop culture, positively changing Western views of Japanese animation. Its effect, some 19 years later, is still keenly felt, from The Matrix, to the novels of William Gibson and, more recently, Wally Pfister’s Transcendence.

Directed by Mamoru Oshii and penned by one of the finest voices in anime, Kazunori Ito, Ghost in the Shell is set in 2029 and follows Motoko, a cyborg operative of Section 9 – an elite security agency which deals with counter-terrorism and cyber crime. The agency is put on the case of the notorious hacker Puppet Master, who has been infiltrating the brains of innocent people in order to make them his accomplices. Motoko is quickly embroiled in a clandestine mix of futurist musings and real world concerns.

The source material is undoubtedly inspired by Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, with concerns such as the fallibility of memory and the existential musings of identity, but Ghost in the Shell exists very much in its own right. It is steeped in the subject of sentience, artificial or otherwise – how birth is merely an issue of context, of definition, and what humanity actually means.

With hacking, viruses and the illegal acquisition of private information all now commonplace, the storyline is even more relevant in 2014 than it was in the ’90s. Indeed, the speculative elements (integration with machinery, computerisation, implanted memories, etc) are more of a nightmarish peek into the immediate future rather than straight-out science fiction.

The animation is still visually dynamic and exciting, more so with this evocative remaster. The 3D elements in particular hold up to scrutiny, with the dizzyingly detailed city shots and the sequences of Motoko’s ‘birth’ as sublime and ambitious as any additions to the genre over the last two decades.

Kenji Kawai’s score is gorgeous, the main theme incorporating elements of traditional Japanease minyo chanting, coupled with the tones of the classical Japanese music scale, culminating in a haunting effect.

Ghost in the Shell remains a striking, breathtaking and culturally relevant film. Motoko is firmly cemented as one of the most iconic characters of sci-fi, up there with Ellen Ripley. While the remakes or subsequent sequel and series have helped flesh out the multifaceted world of Ghost in the Shell, the original remains the most vital.

Extras: Booklet

BLU-RAY REVIEW: THE BEAST / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: WALERIAN BOROWCZYK / SCREENPLAY: WALERIAN BOROWCZYK / STARRING: SIRPA LANE, LISBETH HUMMEL, ELIZABETH KAZA, PIERRE BENEDETTI, GUY TRÉJAN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Although a popular cult hit at the European box office when it was originally released in 1975, Walerian Borowczyk’s notorious French erotic fantasy horror film The Beast fell foul of the censors in both the UK and the USA. Its extensive nudity, explicit sex scenes and underlying themes of bestiality were considered too much for British and American sensibilities. Fast forward nearly forty years and the film finally makes its debut uncut in the UK courtesy of Arrow Video via this respectfully presented and commendably crisp new Blu-ray edition.

The Beast undoubtedly still has the capacity to shock and disturb but possibly not in the way it did four decades ago. Clearly no one really needs to see the long and lingering scenes of horses copulating which open the film and the constant phallic symbolism and, indeed, phallic representations, remain a bit of a culture shock to Western eyes used to films where blokes still keep their pants on in bed. But a lot of what once shocked here now looks vaguely ridiculous and almost comedic and certainly fantasy sequences involving a woman whose clothes all fall off as she frolics unashamedly with an over-excited man-bull can’t help but recall the late great Benny Hill at his best with a dash of Monty Python visual absurdity thrown in for good measure.

The film is really all about bestiality and how we’re possibly all fighting to keep our inner animal under control – some more successfully than others. Lucy Broadhurst (Hummel) has been left her father’s estate and fortune but she can only claim them if she marries the oafish Mathurin (Benedetti), the son of her father’s best friend the Marquis Pierre de L‘Esperance (Trejan). Lucy and her aunt Virginia (Kaza) arrive at the family’s dilapidated country home on the eve of the wedding. But the house is full of weirdos; a dodgy priest who’s over-fond of his young choirboys, the horny houseboy Ifany, Pierre’s raunchy daughter Clarisse and even Mathurin who himself has a rather bizarre secret.

The Beast is a rum old experience beyond its quite blatant desire to shock rather than titillate. It punctuates its continual nudity with random digs at religion and religious ritual and boasts an off-kilter fairy tale aesthetic which evokes a sort of debauched version of Beauty and the Beast. But for all its full-frontal nakedness, human/animal romping and ‘shocking’ explicit content, it’s hard to shake off the feeling that Borowczyk is actually poking fun at art house cinema itself; he’s pushing the envelope but his tongue is in his cheek as he parades his sexual absurdities in front of the camera in full anticipation of the pretentious audience who will lap it all up and applaud it as an important work of art and a milestone in modern European cinema. In actual fact it’s a rather silly, if occasionally unpleasant piece of soft porn hiding in plain sight under the cover of a thin, farcical family comedy of manners.

Extras: Introduction / ‘Making of’ feature / Short film / Trailer / Booklet

DVD REVIEW: THE CAPTIVE / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: LUKE MASSEY / SCREENPLAY: LUKE MASSEY, BENJAMIN READ / STARRING: JOSEPH MORGAN, MATT RYAN, WILLIAM TROUGHTON / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Royal Marine AJ Budd (Morgan) wakes up in a strange house. He doesn’t know where he is or how he got there, but every now and again he gets attacked by things which looks like cut-price orcs. Alone and isolated, he starts to lose his grip on sanity as the days roll by with no end in sight for his inexplicable predicament.

There is the kernel of a good idea lurking somewhere in the middle of The Captive. The movie’s psychological conceit – one man’s slow mental deterioration in an impossible situation – has a lot of potential, but in the end it all amounts to not really very much as there’s just not enough going on even to justify the film’s meagre 60-odd minute running time. What we have here might just about pass muster as an episode of a supernatural anthology series, if such a thing were to still exist, but it’s thin gruel indeed across an extended running time.

There are other problems. Paying careful attention to the very beginning of the movie pretty much flags up the ‘twist’ ending, and the limitations of the film’s clearly pitiful budget are impossible to overlook. The Captive looks as if it was filmed almost entirely in someone’s living room (and occasionally their cellar) and Budd‘s “grotesque inhuman opponents” (who attack one at a time) are clearly just the same bloke in the same ropey costume. Although Joseph Morgan gives his role as the disintegrating soldier his all, he’s hampered by the fact that he really hasn’t got enough to do and the story lacks the breadth of material needed to give the film or his performance any real momentum.

But despite its shortcomings, The Captive isn’t entirely without merit. Director Luke Massey makes the best of the meagre resources available to him and whilst he’s not able to rustle up a silk purse out of this sow’s ear, he makes the best of a bad job and churns out a workmanlike and watchable film. But it could have been so much better with a bit more cash and a slightly more ambitious script.

Extras: None