Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

DVD REVIEW: RAPTURE / CERT: 12 / DIRECTOR: JOHN GUILLERMIN / SCREENPLAY: STANLEY MANN / STARRING: PATRICIA GOZZI, MELVYN DOUGLAS, DEAN STOCKWELL, GUNNEL LINDBLOM / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

John Guillermin’s coming-of-age love story involves a most unusual case of mistaken identity when handsome young escaped convicted Joseph (Stockwell, before his time-travelling and space adventures) is fancifully assumed by fey farm-girl Agnes (Gozzi) to be her scarecrow come to life.

All is not well in Agnes’ remote homestead. The silent expressions of the characters in the opening shots signal an oppressive tension, a storm front that lingers threateningly on the horizon. Guillermin fills his drama with a disquieting atmosphere to match his provocative themes – the young Agnes lusting after Joseph; comely housekeeper Karen’s (Lindblom) lover sneaking into her room late at night, leading to blackmail; the harbouring of a fugitive and a father’s distant relationship with his daughter. But all this is offset with an affection, compassion and thoughtfulness, and under Guillermin’s directorial eye, Rapture becomes a chamber drama of light and shadow. It moves at an assured pace, signalling Guillermin’s own self-confidence in the era of the titans of the Nouvelle Vague.

You see in the movie shades of Polanski’s early suspenseful works (Knife in the Water and Repulsion), and the iconic wandering women who are the core of the filmic worlds of Alain Resnais and Michelangelo Antonioni. The coastal setting pictorially frames Agnes as living on the edge of her world, and despite a desire to control and shape it, she is forced to dwell on the divide between fantasy and reality. In a way, she’s almost like Antoine Doinel’s (The 400 Blows) better half – the two iconic young dreamers of ’60s cinema who share an intimate encounter with the coastline.

Extras: Audio commentary Julie Kirgo and Nick Redmon / Booklet

DVD REVIEW: AVENGERS CONFIDENTIAL – BLACK WIDOW AND PUNISHER / CERT: 12A / DIRECTOR: KENICHI SHIMIZU / SCREENPLAY: MITSUTAKA HIROTA / STARRING: BRIAN BLOOM, JENNIFER CARPENTER, JOHN ERIC BENTLEY, GRANT GEORGE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The latest Marvel effort to be animated by the guys at Madhouse, Avengers Confidential looks to give some attention to Black Widow (Carpenter) and The Punisher (Bloom), two characters often left in the shadows of Captain America, Iron Man, et al. After Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, interferes in a S.H.I.E.L.D. mission, he’s taken prisoner by Nick Fury (Bentley) and his organisation. Then, when the Leviathan terrorist group gets hold of some S.H.I.E.L.D. plans, Fury’s only option is to team The Punisher up with Black Widow in the hope that the feisty duo can save the day.

Avengers Confidential is a feature that certainly shows some promise, although it ultimately feels a little flat when all is said and done. Key to the film’s charm, though, is the use of erratic, violent lone-wolf Frank Castle. After appearing in a supporting role in last year’s Iron Man: Rise of Technovore, also from Madhouse, Castle gets to take centre-stage here. And with Black Widow thrown in for good measure, this animated fare shows off two of the darker heroes that reside within the Marvel world. Whilst Widow has a few moments to shine, it’s the dirty, brutal, and trigger-happy Punisher who steals the show. Widow takes her orders from Fury, whereas Castle has no hesitation in giving S.H.I.E.L.D. the finger.

The dynamic between The Punisher and Black Widow works relatively well, and Castle’s anti-authoritarianism and single focus makes for a refreshing change in a Marvel movie. Unfortunately, when Castle isn’t on screen the film starts to trip over itself and become formulaic, repetitive, and dull. The threat of Leviathan, plus a unique adaptation of Marvel villain Elihas Star (George), never comes across as anything more than just fodder for Fury, Widow, and Punisher to butt heads over and merely acts as a convenient plot point.

In terms of animation, Avengers Confidential looks very impressive, although the feature has issues with the fluidity of its characters, and a lot of the action just comes off as being ripped straight from an anime movie of twenty years ago. Additionally, the English dub seems to suffer massively in terms of synching audio to visual, helped none by various musical samples that sound as if they’ve been pulled from an early ’90s video game finale.

Despite throwing in several familiar and not-so familiar Marvel faces, Avengers Confidential: Black Widow and Punisher never becomes anything more than just okay. In what feels like simply a marketing strategy to gauge interest in the Black Widow and Punisher characters, possibly with wider cinematic implications, it’s safe to say that Brian Bloom’s grimly engaging Frank Castle is the one served best. We can only hope that Marvel and Madhouse lose the hangers-on and give Frank his own dark, bloody, excessively violent outing next time.

Extras: Two Featurettes – “Espionage and Punishment”, “The Vigilante Vs The Spy”

MOVIE REVIEW: THE UNLEASHED / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: MANUAL H. DA SILVA / SCREENPLAY: DIANE DA SILVA, L.A. LOPES / STARRING: TRISHA ECHEVERRIA, JESSICA SALGUEIRO, COLIN PARADINE, CAROLINE WILLIAMS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with The Unleashed, an old school horror film in which a bunch of damn fool kids play around with a Ouija board and unleash (hence the title) forces they can’t and don’t understand. The acting’s decent, it’s competently directed and the script isn’t an embarrassment. But unfortunately, it isn’t scary. Not even remotely. Spooky, ghostly white-faced figures pop up every now and again to look over people’s shoulders but they’re just not frightening; The Unleashed is, in every sense of the world, an entirely bloodless experience.

After her mother’s death, Madison Kennard (Echeverria) returns to the family home after an eight year absence to finally come to terms with demons from her past. Before long, her feisty former-friend Lindsay (Salgueiro) is back on the scene looking for good times. Lindsay installs herself in the house to keep Madison company and she organises a house-warming party with some friends. But then someone discovers an old Ouija board in the attic and suddenly long-dead spirits have been invoked and Lindsay isn’t quite the girl she once was…

The Unleashed has the distinct and unmistakeable whiff of the TV movie about it. It’s a bland and gore-free concoction, allowing itself only to be as scary as it thinks it can get away with. It relies almost exclusively on exhausted seen-this-before horror clichés and the occasional appearances of random spirits who just tend to stand around looking white and sinister, or by appearing out of nowhere in a desperate attempt to give the audience a bit of a fright.

But there are no frights to be had here, for this is clearly a film with no aspirations other than to play with over-familiar genre tropes and with no real idea of how to do anything original with them. Not only are there no real scares but there’s not much sense of urgency either; once the ghostly genie is out of the bottle, as it were, the film just sort of dawdles along with little momentum, focussing on Madison’s childhood trauma and offering little in the way of knuckle-biting, edge-of-the-seat tension.

Indistinguishable from literally hundreds of similar low-budget, straight-to-DVD horrors, The Unleashed isn’t bad but it’s utterly indifferent, absolutely inessential and ultimately, totally forgettable.

Extras: None

REVIEW: FRAU IM MOND / CERT: U / DIRECTOR: FRITZ LANG / SCREENPLAY: FRITZ LANG / STARRING: WILLY FRITSCH, GERDA MAURUS, KLAUS POHL / RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 25TH

Anyone who knows their sci-fi history will know Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s genre-defining dystopian epic. They may be less familiar with Frau im Mond, or Woman in the Moon, released just two years later in 1929, though it too deserves consideration by the genre’s historians – it was the first movie to take space travel seriously.

After the scientific community ridicules Professor Manfeldt’s theories of gold on the moon, his friend Helius determines to prove him right. The opening act is certainly the weakest, as Lang takes his time with a drawn-out espionage plot – as Helius gathers his motley crew, including his colleague Windegger and Windegger’s fiancée Friede, a shady business syndicate threaten and manipulate him into letting their agent Turner on board. It’s over an hour in before we finally get to see the rocket, but from this point on, the film ramps up the excitement.

In a time when Germany was keen on the idea of one day going to the moon, Lang put a lot of effort into getting the details right, employing real rocket scientist Hermann Oberth as a scientific advisor and even funding Oberth’s experiments alongside the film. Sure, not everything’s perfect – they crack open a brandy to celebrate having survived blast-off and wear chunky cardigans instead of spacesuits, but, with the dangers of G-force and the first on-screen countdown to lift-off, it’s an amazingly accurate depiction of space travel compared to what you might expect from the silent era.

Once they reach the moon, however, any accuracy is flushed down the space toilet. Professor Manfeldt discovers a breathable atmosphere and bounds off, Wallace and Gromit-style, albeit in search of gold rather than cheese. By this point, though, tensions have risen among the group, and the characters’ story is engaging enough for these errors to be forgiveable. As Windegger panics and tries to turn the rocket back, Turner puts his evil plans into action. And of course, there’s a love story at the heart of it all – Helius’ real reason for initially not wanting Windegger and his fiancée to join him was his repressed love for Friede, and soon they must deal with the possibility that not all of them will make it back to Earth…

Frau im Mond, though not a patch on the revolutionary Metropolis, is a fascinating piece of cinema history, with a stunning depiction of space travel, impressive set design, and a strong character story, all demonstrating Lang’s artistry as a master of visual cinema. Combined with the superb crispness of this Blu-ray release and the intriguing fifteen-minute documentary that comes packaged with it (analysing the film’s place within real-life rocket science), it’s a purchase necessary for any classic sci-fi aficionado.

Extras: Featurette / Booklet

 

 

REVIEW: ACCEL WORLD – PART 2 / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: VARIOUS / SCREENPLAY: VARIOUS / STARRING: ERIK KIMERER, KIRA BUCKLAND, LUCIEN DODGE, MICHELLE T HSEIH, AMANDA C MILLER, SARAH WILLIAMS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

You’d have thought that Part 2 of Accel World would carry on where Part 1 left off, with Kuroyukihime and her allies battling for increasing dominance of the Accelerated World and their progress to supremacy revealing more about the multi-faceted dreamscape along the way. Sadly, we get nothing of the sort, and are instead subjected to a laborious and overextended story, driven by that most rancid of stale plot devices: blackmail.

Noumi is a Burst Linker and pubescent sociopath who frames Haru by hiding a camera in the girls’ changing rooms and then threatens to reveal fabricated evidence of him doing so and thus destroy what little respect he has, unless he regularly gives up his Burst Points. In a country as obsessed with propriety and social standing as Japan is, perhaps the scenario seems a lot more plausible, but to Western sensibilities it appears as just another tedious example of characters acting in certain ways for no other reason that the plot demands it.

A pantomime villain we’re expected to take seriously, Noumi talks in smug condescension and childish spite, making him irritating rather than threatening, and does little more than go on and on and on and on about how superior he is and how pathetic everyone else is and blah, blah, blah, as if it were manipulative genius that allowed him to orchestrate events rather him simply being a prick. He’s the kind of annoying antagonist who benefits from the protagonists’ mistakes, and is thus not required to actually do anything to remain in control.

At the midway point the story is interrupted by a couple of side episodes featuring Kuroyukihime on a school trip, where she encounters a group of local Burst Linkers and reveals a somewhat sapphic friendship with a classmate, which other than mild titillation serve absolutely no purpose. They’re even introduced by an introductory voiceover from Haru saying it’s a story he will never know about, highlighting their utter pointlessness. Aside from this, her only real contribution to proceedings is a Big Damn Heroes appearance near the series’ end, which is one of the only truly satisfying moments in the entirety of the dozen episodes.

At one point, it briefly looks like events are about to develop into the plotline that was promised at the end of Part 1, but despite the fact its introduction would have resolved this story and begun another one umpteen times more interesting, it’s interrupted after only a few moments and then never even mentioned again. When it takes half of an entire series to play out a narrative that could have easily been done with in three episodes, you can’t help but wonder how much effort the makers of the show are actually putting into it.

After such a great start, it’s really disappointing to see the quality of the show drop so sharply one disc to the next. If Accel World is granted another series, it desperately needs to pick up the pace again. Quickly.

Extras: Trailers

 

 

REVIEW: ALMOST HUMAN / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: JOE BEGOS / SCREENPLAY: JOE BEGOS / STARRING: GRAHAM SKIPPER, JOSH ETHIER, VANESSA LEIGH / RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 4^TH

Joe Begos’ debut feature film is a lovingly made and knowing homage to the glorious excesses of ’80s horror. At a humble 76 minutes, Almost Human is filtered through the nostalgic haze of a childhood spent watching horror films and reading Stephen King novels.

Like the infamous lights over Phoenix in 1997, Almost Human opens with a statement of authenticity, which in film terms, of course, means it’s all made up. It opens with Josh Ethier (who also edits and co-produces) getting whisked away in a flash of light, to a chorus of a nose-bleed inducing noise. It’s a simple enough plot that proves alien abduction is still fascinating and ripe for the picking.

Begos doesn’t skimp on the gore front and the effects are especially good, with the axe-cam being a particularly gruesome treat. In fact, there’s video nasty-levels of mayhem and lashings of blood to boot, loaded with Re-Animator-style black humour.

That’s not to say it’s all bite and no bark, it taps into the idea of pod people, explored in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Thing, which, in the ’50s, brought a nation’s fear of communism to the silver screen. While the commie threat isn’t a modern concern, the idea of an alien entity walking around as your next door neighbour is a chilling one.

The film is perpetually fuzzy, like a thrice-copied videotape, adding to the idea that you’re watching a lost ’80s gem. Shrugging the film off as unoriginal is to miss the point entirely. Instead, it fills a void for good old fashioned horror: bloody, funny and creepy. Oh, and be sure and wait until after the credits.

Extras: FrightFest Q&A

 

DVD REVIEW: ALIEN ABDUCTION / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: MATTY BECKERMAN / SCREENPLAY: ROBERT LEWIS / STARRING: KATHERINE SIGISMUND, COREY EID, RILEY POLANSKI, JILLIAN CLARE, JEFF BOWSER / RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 25TH

Hallelujah and praise the Gods of straight-to-DVD movies. Here’s something we thought we’d never seen again in our lifetime – a tense and inventive found-footage movie which belies its lurid title to deliver some effective, economical visuals, a few scares and a real ‘didn’t see that coming’ twist ending. Movie miracles can happen, it appears.

With its loose basis on real-life events – the ‘Brown Mountain lights’ phenomenon of North Carolina and the United States Air Forces’ Project Blue Book investigation into UFOs – Alien Abduction introduces us to the Morris family, vacationing in the Brown Mountain woods. Fortunately everything they say and do is being recorded by the family’s autistic son Riley (Polanski) and the film at least tries to rationalise his obsession with filming everything, no matter how terrifying, by depicting it as his way of coping and communicating with the world. Credulity is inevitably strained but our scepticism is soon swept away by the usual found-footage mantra of ‘Oh my God, oh my God’ as the first weird thing happens in the middle of the night.

And to be fair to Alien Abduction, much of it actually is pretty weird. The film quickly puts the Morris clan into jeopardy; brights light illuminate the night, dead crows rain from the sky and most creepily, they find a tunnel full of abandoned cars, amongst which stalk mysterious inhuman creatures. The family flee deep into the woods and encounter a dubious grumpy gun-happy redneck, all the time pursued by fleetingly seen creatures. It seems there’s no escape; before long the family are trapped, the blinding lights of some thunderous alien machine flooding through the cracks in the walls and ceilings. It’s eerie and it’s unsettling because of what we don’t see rather than what we do and it becomes gripping and unnerving enough for us to briefly forget that this nightmare is being scrupulously filmed by an 11-year-old boy who would in reality, have dropped his camera and run for the hills screaming at the top of his voice hours earlier.

The film punches way above its weight the last few minutes. Abductees are lifted into the air in beams of lights, their backs casually broken, before they’re swept up into some sort of machine in which terrible experiments are conducted. Riley’s still filming until the aliens decide that enough’s enough and chuck his camera out of their ship and it spins back down to Earth where it’s found and collected by the USAF. As the credits roll there’s one last twist in the tale which is genuinely worth sticking around for.

Alien Abduction is surprisingly solid stuff, a breath of fresh air in the stale found-footage world. The script gets the job done; the acting’s no better than it needs to be, but the film drips atmosphere and delivers moments of genuine unease as the Morris family come to terms with the fact that they’re dealing with something way outside the sphere of human experience. Their terror is real, it’s palpable and it’s believable. Even if you’re bored witless by found-footage films by now – and who could blame you? – Alien Abduction gives the genre a much needed shot in the arm and comes surprisingly highly recommended.

DVD REVIEW: A NEW YORK WINTER’S TALE / CERT: 12A / DIRECTOR: AKIVA GOLDSMAN / SCREENPLAY: AKIVA GOLDSMAN / STARRING: COLIN FARRELL, JESSICA BROWN FINDLAY, RUSSELL CROWE, JENNIFER CONNELLY / RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 18TH

“What if once upon a time there were no stars in the sky at all… what if they aren’t what we think at all? What if they come from our wings as we turn into angels?” is the first line of A New York Winter’s Tale. Fuck me, that’s terrible, isn’t it? But it’s OK, lots of films stumble on the opening voiceover, I’m sure it’ll get better… oh, the monologue’s continuing with some tedious bullshit about the miracle in all of us. It’s fine, we’ll have some actual dialogue soon and surely it’ll improve. I mean, imagine if every second line in the whole damn film exhibited the same awfully po-faced seriousness. But that wouldn’t happen, right? Oh.

There really isn’t a lot to recommend in Akiva Goldsman’s ridiculously failed attempt at mimicking Neil Gaiman. Colin Farrell, a thief with a fabulous 1910s-style emo fringe, is on the run alongside his inexplicably flying horse (who also has a fabulous fringe) when he falls in love at first sight with some girl from Downton Abbey and packs in thievery to mope over her. The problem is, she’s dying of tuberculosis and needs to be kept in chilly environments, Victor Freeze-style. Cue love story with worse romantic dialogue than Attack of the Clones, the lowlight being “Give me a chance and you’ll melt all the snow in the world”, somehow simultaneously turning both her terminal illness and a potential climate change catastrophe into a chat-up line.

There’s also a bit set in 2014, in which Farrell is still young and active. Why? She made him love her so much that he didn’t die. No, really. That’s it. That’s actually in the actual film.

Adversity comes in the cracked face of Russell Crowe, who makes a half-assed attempt at playing a mob boss demon out to catch Farrell for reasons I can’t be bothered to remember. Maybe you and your mates can entertain yourselves for five minutes with a game of ‘guess which accent Russell’s trying to do’.

The one thing that does score Winter’s Tale some points is Will Smith’s absurdly weird cameo as the Devil. Not because it’s at all good, but I’m not sure it’s terrible either, it just… is. It defies explanation. If you watch it and understand what you just watched, and why, you’re a cleverer person than me. I wanted him to come back, just so I could maybe understand and learn something about myself in the process.

That surreal transcendental experience aside, A New York Winter’s Tale is a big steaming pile of magic flying horse shit. With an utterly muddled plot and dialogue that would make Tommy Wiseau cringe, the only real miracle in this film is when it ends.

Extras: Featurette

DVD REVIEW: ASHENS AND THE QUEST FOR THE GAMECHILD / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: RIYAD BARMANIA / SCREENPLAY: STUART ASHEN, RIYAD BARMANIA / STARRING: STUART ASHEN, WARWICK DAVIS, ROBERT LLEWELLYN, VICTORIA BROOM, DAN TOMLINSON, CHRIS KENDALL, CHRIS BINGHAM, MILLIE REEVES, SULE RIMI / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Stuart Ashen is best known for his YouTube videos in which he sarcastically reviews tat on his brown sofa under the cunning pseudonym Ashens, though you may also know him through his sketch comedy. Ashens and the Quest for the GameChild is a humorous science fiction caper that casts this unlikely celebrity as an Indiana Jones-like seeker of pointless artefacts, specifically the Gamechild which in this movie is a super rare handheld games console. In reality, it is a rather worthless bit of tat, that’s the joke.

For those unfamiliar with the Ashens channel, this is a deeply silly and laugh-out-loud screwball comedy, filled with pop culture references and some rather strange characters. Those in the cult of Ashens will recognise the likes of rubbish corporate mascot Chef Excellence and camp villain The Silver Skull. The feature manages to squeeze these things in without confusing the uninitiated; a chap in a silver mask and nylon moustache playing a synthesiser is going to be funny regardless of context after all. Though at times it feels like a series of skits stitched together with a very broad plot, it’s the performance of both Mr Ashen and his sidekick, played by the excellent Dan Tomlinson, that keeps it all together. Highlights include an animated sequence by Oli Putland and a theme song by Harry Partridge, a surprise appearance by Warwick Davies and a suitably silly performance from Red Dwarf’’s Robert Llewellyn.

If all of this sounds familiar, be aware that Ashens and the Quest for the GameChild is a remastered version of the movie that was launched on YouTube, with the original production costs met through crowd-funding and multi-platform firm Channel Flip. Every penny spent can be seen on the screen and for a small-budget flick, the result is pretty fantastic. The movie will also stay available (for free) on the internet, though the DVD/Blu-ray features upgraded sound and picture quality and a few extra bits (mostly jokes) have been added. They’ve also stuffed the disc full of very silly extras. The art gallery tour is particularly daft and filled with Ashens’ trademark sarcasm. Over all, this a great little movie that could well be the start of a new wave of British comedy.

Extras: Behind the Scenes / Life Through a Lens / Rob Llewellyn Interview / Stormtrooper Costume Tour / GameChild Commercial / Art Gallery Tour / Outtakes / Character Profiles / Trailer / Deleted Scenes / Director and Actor Commentary

DVD REVIEW: THE BUNNYMAN MASSACRE / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: CARL LINDBERGH / SCREENPLAY: CARL LINDBERGH / STARRINNG: DAVID SCOTT, JOSHUA LANG, JULIANNE DOWLER, MARSHALL HILTON / RELEASED: OUT NOW

In case you weren’t aware, this is a sequel to 2011’s Bunnyman, also from Lindbergh. Based on the legend/urban myth of the Bunnyman – a man in a bunny suit that apparently scared the piss out of people several decades ago – the best way to describe the titular character (Lang) is as Leatherface in an Easter Bunny outfit. Whereas Michael Myers has Haddonfield, Jason Voorhees has Camp Crystal Lake, and Freddy Krueger has Elm Street, the Bunnyman is housed in a ghost town in the deep south of the USA. For any poor soul who that comes across his or brother Joe’s (Scott) path, things don’t end well.

Linbergh’s mission for this film was to take on the concerns from the first movie (let’s just say it didn’t fare well with critics or genre fans) and right those wrongs second time out. Thing is, there are just so many flaws. Firstly, the continuity goes down a wayward path from the opening gambit, and then the film is simply riddled with clichés, bad dialogue and largely hokey acting. That’s all well and good for certain films, but The Bunnyman Massacre portrays itself as a serious horror film. Even more worryingly, the biggest concern is the hopping mad killer at the centre of this (rabbit’s) tale.

In all our years of watching horrors, even the worst of them, we’re hard pressed to think of a central killer who is so unscary. Yes, he does some dastardly deeds and the film has an impressive body count, but there is just nothing sinister about a man in a head-to-toe (minus boots) rabbit costume regardless of what heinous acts he commits. The marketing around the film bangs the drum that Bunnyman is the next horror icon. No. Just… no. Sadly Bunnyman simply relies on stealing horror icons’ gimmicks; he hears voices, like Michael in Rob Zombie’s Halloween films; there’s a ‘body in a sleeping bag’ scene that’s pulled straight from Jason X; and there are soundbites, plus chainsaw, that seem directly pulled from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

The Bunnyman Massacre isn’t all bad, once you get past it’s killer. David Scott is impressively engaging as Joe; a backwards redneck with a love of homemade jerky. Similarly, David Marshall does well, if not underutilised, as a tough and worn local sheriff. As the film progresses, there are some interesting moral dilemmas for the heroines of the piece, but it’s all too late to stop the film really standing out from the low-budget horror pack. For a film that does have some decent moments, it’s just a shame that its central rabbit lacks any sort of sinister kick.

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