Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

REVIEW: HAROLD AND MAUDE / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: HAL ASHBY / SCREENPLAY: COLIN HIGGINS / STARRING: BUD CORT, RUTH GORDON, VIVIAN PICKLES / RELEASE DATE: JULY 14TH

Okay, I’m going to pitch you a coming of age love story about a young man obsessed with death, who falls in love with a 79-year-old free spirit that he meets at a funeral. Imagine that pitch being kicked around Hollywood these days. We’d probably be faced with a brooding, Robert Pattinson-esque Harold being paired up with a more comfortably aged Jennifer Aniston-esque cougar Maude.

Thank Zeus’ beard then that Harold and Maude was made in 1971 at the height of the new wave of experimental, independent American cinema.

There are two things that strike you most about watching Harold and Maude. The first is the brilliance of the comedy, which balances both subtlety and in your face gags with the perfect blend of script, direction and performance. There is a moment of comedy perfection when, after one of the film’s many mock suicides, Hal Ashby holds the camera on Bud Cort’s face. The punchline is delivered without a word of dialogue, simply by the look on Cort’s face.

The second, and possibly more striking thing about the film is how beautifully the love story plays out. The chemistry between Cort and Ruth Gordon has an ease and natural feel that makes them one of the iconic screen couples. The scenes they have together have a spark and humour that is so genuinely touching that you almost forget the age difference between them.

Harold and Maude is one of those cult classic films from an experimental age that most people have probably never even heard of, and that works in its favour. To tell you too much about the film before you’ve seen it would take away a lot of the delights to be discovered within it. Instead I will sell it to you the same way a friend sold it to me when he lent me his copy many years ago: “Just watch it. You’ll love it.”

The Blu-ray contains a really nice picture transfer of the film and offers two audio options (mono and stereo). The bonus features are fine, being made up of an interview/discussion with critic David Cairns and an audio commentary by Ashby biographer Nick Dawson and producer Charles B. Mulvehill. There are a couple of nice factoids in both, but they are quite dry and flat at times.

Extras: See above

REVIEW: ACROSS THE RIVER / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: LORENZO BIANCHINI / SCREENPLAY: LORENZO BIANCHINI, MICHELA BIANCHINI / STARRING: RENZO GARIUP, MARCO MARCHESE / RELEASE DATE: JULY 14TH

Across the River, from Italian filmmaker Lorenzo Bianchini, is a traditional ghost story in the fullest sense. Like The Woman in Black, it functions mostly on suggestion and whispers of the paranormal to spine-tingling effect. Unlike its American counterparts, Across the River is rooted in European horror, with nods to Dario Argento and Bergman.

The plot, what little there is, follows Marco Contrada (Marchese), an ethologist performing a periodic wildlife census, living out of his RV and fitting cameras to trees and animals. His dictaphone is the predominant source of dialogue.

The film, like the classic point-and-click adventure Myst, draws its scares from the unknown, from the environment and from the pressing sense of isolation while Marco pieces the mystery together from fragments. Indeed, it’s a film you could imagine translating well to a first person mystery in the style of Gone Home.

The punky monochrome film from the animal-mounted camera reminds you just what made The Blair Witch Project so unnerving. It functions especially well against the long shots which so evocatively capture the ethereal woodland setting of the Italian/Slovenian border. However, all this flitting between handheld and static cameras does get disorientating towards the end, and detracts from the beautiful and creepy shots of the trees and village.

Across the River is an unsettling film, with a simple yet melancholic score that is a reminder of what made horror so effective in the first place. It’s a good old-fashioned ghost story that’s a refreshing change from big budget, over-the-top American horror.

Extras: Across the River – Short Documentary / Introducing ‘A Night with Friends’ by Daniele Trani / A Night With Friends / Trailer

 

ACCEL WORLD – PART 1 / CERT: 12 / DIRECTOR: VARIOUS / SCREENPLAY: VARIOUS / STARRING: ERIK KIMERER, KIRA BUCKLAND, LUCIEN DODGE, MICHELLE T. HSEIH, SARAH WILLIAMS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

In the near future where emerging technology allows the information grid to be directly accessed by the human brain via neural implant, people now spend just as much time in the virtual world as the real one. Haru is a short and overweight schoolboy with crippling self-confidence issues whose only solace is his skill at online games, but after a beautiful older girl known only as Kuroyukihime invites him to join MMO fighting game Brain Burst, his life begins to change. Players accumulate Burst Points from winning fights that can be used as a kind of neural enhancement, where the user’s perception of time in the real world can be slowed (one second equating to sixteen minutes), allowing them to do almost anything.

The world building of Accel World is fantastic. Each episode reveals something new about the realm of Brain Burst as Haru is introduced to it, progressively building our understanding of the rules and laws by which it operates. The locations the characters cross into upon entering the virtual world are dystopian reflections of the sterile brightness they left behind. Rusted, crumbling and shadowed, they wouldn’t look out of place as background shots in Blade Runner or Silent Hill’s Otherworld. A person’s avatar and abilities are automatically created from the user’s personality, meaning that no two are ever alike, although in some cases, such as one character having a four-foot drill dangling phallically between his legs, it’s probably best not to think too much about it.

It’s not uncommon for an anime’s protagonists to be teenagers, but the show gives a neat justification for the lack of any adults in the virtual battlegrounds. It’s stated that only those who have had a neural implant since birth can access Brain Burst, and with the technology being only 15 years old, any prospective candidates therefore cannot be any older, which justifies the petty and vindictive behaviour of some of the characters.

Haru is something of a wish fulfilment character for teenage boys. Introverted and bullied, his prowess in the online world as Silver Crow eventually leads to him becoming respected and admired while also having several pretty girls fighting over him. Kuroyukihime remains something of an enigma, while her goal of overthrowing the Six Kings of Pure Colour (high-level players who rule Brain Burst’s territory) to attain the highest level possible in the game and her past actions as the fighter Black Lotus and the renegade seventh King reveal much about the history of Brain Burst’s world.

There is a good deal of darkened subtext to much of the show that, while not explicitly addressed, is also in no way disguised. For many of the Burstlinkers, their life revolves around the game and so while they may not be fighting against genuine death, getting defeated too often incurs losing access to the game, which at the risk of being a little melodramatic, is for them much the same thing. In this respect the game is like an addiction, at one point the Red King observing, “The more time you spend playing Brain Burst, the less you care about your life in the real world.” Likewise, the use of Burst Points is comparable to performance enhancing drugs as they allow people to think and act at speeds they would otherwise be unable to, while their accumulation becomes a compulsion since they would be lost without them. There is also an odd moral inversion to the plot that doesn’t seem to be properly addressed. Black Lotus – a selfish, treacherous, power hungry warrior looking to overthrow a peaceful regime for personal gain – is actually the big bad of the story, while the other Kings banding together to stop her are like an alliance of nations standing against a megalomaniacal overlord. However, this perspective is never directly pointed out, and we are somehow continually drawn to root for people who are, if not entirely villains, then certainly antiheroes.

Extras: Trailers

REVIEW: THE ZERO THEOREM / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: TERRY GILLIAM / SCREENPLAY: PAT RUSHIN / STARRING: CHISTOPH WALTZ, MÉLANIE THIERRY, DAVID THEWLIS, LUCAS HEDGES, MATT DAMON, BEN WHISHAW, TILDA SWINTON / RELEASE DATE: JULY 21ST

We all love Terry Gilliam: one of the great originals and, having moved to Blighty in the ’60s, very much “our” Terry. So it’s no surprise to see a film come along that looks like an impersonation of the great man’s work. Except, of course, The Zero Theorem isn’t an impersonation, a homage or even a tribute. This is Gilliam himself. So why doesn’t it quite feel like it?

Qohen Leth (Waltz) has a job that’s something to do with computers (like Mum thinks we do) in a hellish and unfathomable workplace supervised by Joby (Thewlis) under the shadowy direction of Management (Damon). But really he just wants to work from home. Perfectly normal if you ask us but he also needs to be home to take a mysterious phone call about the meaning of life or something. Surely “I hate my colleagues” would do? He claims the job is killing him (oh yeah, been there) but Management only grants his wish on the condition that he takes on a new task: to solve a theorem that proves the universe is destined to implode into a black hole and that all existence is ultimately pointless. We’ve all had jobs like that.

All your Gilliam tropes are present and correct: retro hi-tech with an array of grotesques in those inexplicable plastic clothes and odd hairstyles; everything is inefficient and we’re left in no doubt that this your basic Gilliam dystopia. As it’s Gilliam we also have a fairly illustrious cast but you can’t quite ignore the fact that the brilliant Christoph Waltz is actually a bit wasted here; Matt Damon, Ben Whishaw and (especially) Tilda Swinton seem, like Robert De Niro before them, to be there for the sole purpose of inciting a collective “ooh, isn’t that…? I’d never have recognised them”, and dear old David Thewlis seems to be playing, well, David Thewlis. Like Brazil (1985), this isn’t a warning of what our world might become, it’s a satire on what it already is. We spend our time doing pointless tasks and looking at our devices rather than communicating with each other. Qohen avoids contact with the outside world and when Management sends a call girl to keep him happy (Thierry) he’s impotent until he makes cybersex contact via her website. Even then he screws up. Like the theorem he’s trying to prove, it’s all pointless.

But herein lies the problem. The message isn’t particularly subtle, this is as sledgehammer as you’d expect from Gilliam. What it doesn’t have is any of that originality, flair and unexpectedness that we’ve come to, er, expect. We’ve seen it all before. This, if you can imagine such a thing, is Gilliam-by-the-numbers. If you’re a fanatic, you might just enjoy this but there’s also the danger you’ll come away thinking you’ve just seen a Gilliam pastiche.

Extras: The Rats featurette / Location Breakdowns (Qohen’s Chapel, City Streets, Mancom, Mancom Mainframe, Virtual Beach, The Park) / London Film Festival Q&A with Terry Gilliam

REVIEW: THE DOUBLE / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: RICHARD AYOADE / SCREENPLAY: RICHARD AYOADE, AVI KORINE / STARRING: JESSE EISENBERG, MIA WASIKOWSKA / RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 4TH

If Richard Ayoade’s debut feature, Submarine, established the comic actor as a serious director, then The Double sees him paying dues to his idols and inspirations. The Double is hardly Terry Gilliam-lite, instead it’s Ayoade celebrating his cinematic and literary heroes rather than creating something fresh.

Ayoade’s sophomore effort is a pleasing patchwork of some of cinema’s finest. Yes, it most closely resembles Gilliam’s Brazil both aesthetically and politically, but it also owes a debt to Hitchcock’s Rear Window, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and, to a lesser extent, French auteur Gasper Noa.

Based on the novella by Dostoevsky, Ayoade and Avi Korine have written a sharp script, which is remarkably well cast. After portraying Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, Jesse Eisenberg has carved himself out a niche playing slightly unhinged characters. He brings life to both Simon James and James Simon, having them exist on their own merits. Mia Wasikowska, though, is especially good in the role of Hannah, perhaps her finest since 2011’s Jane Eyre. Yasmin Paige, as in Submarine, plays a confrontational woman, which is seemingly becoming a trope of the director’s work.

The film’s colour palette is made up of varying shades of tonal grey, some softer, most harsh and industrial. It’s set in a timeless netherworld with a curious mix of technologies and art, giving the film a strange, almost cyberpunk quality.

Andrew Hewitt’s soundtrack and score take a leaf from Trent Reznor’s book, and really brings another level of quirkiness to the proceedings. It’s far from a quirky film, however, with themes of obsession, voyeurism, suicide and identity at the heart of a frankly gloomy 90 minutes.

It has a peculiar humour, at times farcical, and at others fatalistic. That’s not to say it doesn’t make you giggle, it’s just often muted, as if it’s been processed through the photocopier Simon so often frequents.

After the director’s whimsical coming of age drama, The Double is a bit dull in comparison. It may very well be Ayoade in his imitation (and art school pretension) stage, but he’s one of Britain’s brightest filmmakers, up there with Ben Wheatley and Paddy Considine.

Extras: Making of / Deleted scenes / Extended scenes / Trailers

REVIEW: THE LEGEND OF HERCULES / CERT: 12 / DIRECTOR: RENNY HARLIN / SCREENPLAY: SEAN HOOD, DANIEL GIAT, RENNY HARLIN, GIULIO STEVE / STARRING: KELLAN LUTZ, GAIA WEISS, SCOTT ADKINS, ROXANNE MCKEE, LIAM GARRIGAN, LIAM MCINTYRE, RADE SERBEDZIJA / RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 4TH

If you’re expecting the twelve labours of Hercules, then look elsewhere. The only labour involved in this film is the effort it will take to get from one end of it to the other.

Following essentially the same trajectory as Gladiator, our Hercules is born a bastard (albeit son of the God of Gods) and sent to die by his stepfather King Amphitryon, after falling for his elder brother’s bride-to-be Hebe. What follows is a cartoonish series of post-bullet time gladiatorial battles, as Hercules survives and returns to the family bosom to avenge the death of his mother and dispatch the King, all before Iphicles can consummate a marriage to Hercules’ true love.

With dialogue pared down to a level beyond perfunctory, and characters with less flesh on them than the actors they’re played by, The Legend of Hercules has the feel of a second-rate video game lacking entirely in flair or finesse, and constitutes little more than a checklist of every clichéd action camera move imaginable – generally multiple times over.

Finance and fashion are the two main culprits when adaptations of great works don’t learn from the productions of the past, and The Legend of Hercules fails on both counts. With a budget spent almost exclusively on unconvincing CGI, the acting is no more authentic than the backdrops, and in the afterglow of Game of Thrones it’s an astonishing choice to have made a production so thin. You need to spend it where it can be appreciated, and reflect what you wish to emulate; this is a production that misunderstands both concepts.

Finnish director Renny Harlin’s 30-year career in Hollywood is distinguished by a lack of imagination, an enthusiasm for formula, and a willingness to pound his audiences into submission with all the elegance of a heavy metal Eurovision contestant and none of the attendant irony. The Legend of Hercules is yet more proof, if any were needed, that the zeitgeist is well and truly beyond him; it wants so badly to be 300, but falls short on every front. It’s too prim to appeal to the swords ’n’ saucy crowd, too bloodless to be an exploitation pic, too dour for pulp and far too slender to be taken seriously. It’s not even so camp as to be entertaining, although the ‘electrifying’ climax was hilarious, and the line, “Have you come to bring the wrath of Zeus upon me, boy?” did bring our house down at least.

If The Legend of Hercules was intended as the origin film to a series of sequels, the disappointing box office has made it unlikely the labours will ever be undertaken. And that is, perhaps, the film’s one saving grace.

Extras: Making of / Commentary

REVIEW: HELIX – SEASON 1 / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: VARIOUS / SCREENPLAY: VARIOUS / STARRING: BILLY CAMPBELL, KYRA ZAGORSKY / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

An Antarctic-based bioresearch facility is the main setting for Cameron Porsandeh’s Helix, one of the latest editions to Syfy’s growing roster of original programming. Helix is structured with a thirteen day episodic narrative, blending whiffs of The X-Files, The Twilight Zone and Fringe with the trappings of a medical drama – more House than Grey’s Anatomy. The show, however, has more in common with horror than the aforementioned; the ‘vectors’ are zombies in all but name.

The show is highly stylised, the editing, in particular, is sharp and slick with many sequences cut together like a Lars von Trier film. The colour palette is striking, mixing harsh reds with moody blues against stark black and, of course, clinical white. The digital effects may leave a lot to be desired, but the make-up and practical effects are spot on.

The opening sequence is an exercise in minimalism, a discipline the latter half of the show sadly failed to utilise. Like The Thing, Helix uses the desolate expanse of the Antarctic to rev up the isolation, desperation and fear.

There’s a dark thread of humour running throughout the series, best realised in the muzak of the title sequence which, like a cosmic joke, interrupts moments of tension and high emotion. Pairing Dionne Warwick’s “Do You Know The Way To San Jose” to a tense and unsettling sequence was a stroke of genius. Gary Jules’ maudlin cover of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World”, however, is cynically used to generate emotion in the place of decent writing.

The characters and cast are a mixed bunch, some, like Catherine Lemieux’s endearing Doreen are great, though others, like Robert Naylor’s The Scythe less so. Campbell whispers his way through the series as Dr Alan Farragut, head of the CDC team sent to the Antarctic to deal with the mysterious disease. Jeri Ryan (Voyager) guest stars as the brilliantly pantomime villain Constance.

The narrative gets progressively weirder but never absurdly so. The story does fall into familiar territory and the spark is lost by the last three or four episodes. Though the series is well-paced, it’s an episode too long. Forty minutes could have been cut leaving a tighter show with fewer cheesy lines.

Helix proves that it’s not masked killers, bloodsuckers or aliens, but disease and illness that’s truly terrifying. It suffers from not living up to the smart, fresh show it set itself up to be, but the final cliffhanger may very well have you counting down for the second series.

Extras: None

REVIEW: VARSITY BLOOD / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: JAKE HELGREN / SCREENPLAY: JAKE HELGREN / STARRING: LEXI GIOVAGNOLI, WESLEY SCOTT, DEBBIE ROCHON, BLAIR JACKSON / RELEASED: AUGUST 18TH

As fans of disposable teen-filled slashers, we were hoping for something breezy, fun, gory and a tad sinister from Varsity Blood. The film centres on a group of jocks and cheerleaders who are a year removed from a dark accident that took the life of one of their friends. Just in time for the anniversary of this incident, people start to get offed by a masked figure. All sounds promising for throwaway slasher fans, right?

To be blunt, Varsity Blood is an atrocity of a movie. Everything about the film ranges from poor to embarrassing. A paper-thin plot is explored by a cast who seem to struggle with even the simplest of tasks. As well as the bad acting on show, the actual ‘horror’ when it does come is horrendously choreographed, without genuine emotion, and the film seems to spend a lot of its time seemingly ticking off a checklist of bad horror clichés. But the biggest drawback of Varsity Blood is the characters on show. Yes, these are disposable stereotypical slasher fodder-types, but not a single one of them is appealing in any way. These highly unlikeable characters aren’t helped any by dialogue that is obnoxious, grating and that offends on a whole host of levels.

Varsity Blood is a film that has a premise that feels at least two decades too late, although even if it was released in the ’80s or ’90s it would still be a dull, draining and soulless experience that is trying to pass itself off as an actual movie. Helgren’s story is nowhere near strong enough to maintain your attention, the film’s gore isn’t plentiful enough to appeal to horror fans who dig the splatter, and you have literally nobody to root for. As well as a bunch of victims that you’re happy to see offed, Varsity Blood doesn’t give you a strong killer either. There’s a kill in the opening scene, then there’s not even a sniff of danger until a further 45 minutes into the movie’s 80 minute running time.

If you like cocksure jocks, bitchy sluts, and horror-less horror films, this effort may be for you. For the rest of us, Varsity Blood is a genuine struggle to watch. The only slightly redeeming feature is Troma vet Debbie Rochon, who does well as the mother of Lexi Giovagnoli’s lead girl Hannah. When all is said and done, Varsity Blood churns out a formulaic effort that not even the biggest fans of the slasher subgenre will enjoy. The only thing equal to the struggle of watching the film in its entirety is trying to think of a movie in recent memory that has been quite so bad.

Extras: None

REVIEW: SLASHER HOUSE / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: MJ DIXON/ SCREENPLAY: MJ DIXON / STARRING: ELEANOR JAMES, WELLINGTON GROSVENOR, ADAM WILLIAMS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The low budget horror film is a great British tradition, from the cult campy Hammer films to The Wicker Man and, more recently, Eden Lake. Homegrown indie horrors are something to be celebrated, not maligned, but Slasher House, from writer, director and producer Mj Dixon, does so little to keep the faith.

Slasher House was made for around £5000. But the budget itself isn’t the problem, it’s the end result; 90 minutes of garish, badly shot nonsense that’s little better than a GSCE media studies project. If Shane Carruth can make Primer for $7000/£4000, Dixon has no excuses.

Eleanor James, who’s starred in an impressive list of low-budgets since 2005, is the best of a bad bunch, wondering around like a lost Suicide Girl after waking up naked and with amnesia. Adam Williams has all the charisma of a watering can as Nathan, squawking his way through a lifeless script.

The film’s sickly hues owe a debt to Saw, specifically the third in the franchise, with both Eleanor and Angus Macfadyen looking confused and being shepherded about a derelict industrial setting. As Dixon fronts the metal band Subject Seven, it goes some way to explain why the killers are inspired by members of Slipknot, including another forgettable killer clown who has nothing on Pennywise or Captain Spaulding. Bizarrely, Blaze Bailey (Iron Maiden frontman 1994-99) lends his voice.

Mj Dixon may have gotten it right with this year’s Legacy of Thorn, better received and with a much bigger budget than its predecessor, but Slasher House leaves you longing for amnesia yourself.

Extras: None

REVIEW: SX_TAPE / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: BERNARD ROSE / SCREENPLAY: ERIC REESE / STARRING: CAITLYN FOLLEY, IAN DUNCAN / RELEASE DATE: JULY 28TH

Sx_Tape had a lot of festival buzz last year, despite a surprisingly lacklustre online presence, even on director Bernard Rose’s own website. Rose is no stranger to the genre, directing the cult favourite Candyman 21 years ago.

He opts for the POV angle here, lamented somewhat in recent years but still capable of churning out a good result now and then, e.g. , Grave Encounters, and keeping with the camera premise, Paranormal Activity. Sx_Tape borrows heavily from all three of these, reinforcing the concept that nothing is original any more, just reconstructed from other pieces.

The film starts with much promise, following camera-obsessed Adam (Duncan) filming his extrovert girlfriend Jill (Folley) while looking for a suitable venue to shoot a sex tape. A simple and silly premise perhaps, but without it there’d be no film. The venue turns out to be an abandoned hospital in downtown Los Angeles.

Despite the abandoned hospital, the first half of the film is surprisingly refreshing and clever. Many clichés are instantly avoided – the film takes place during the day, there is mobile phone reception, and the characters leave the hospital at the first sign of trouble. But then they call their friends to meet them, and they all go back in.

The fear and uncertainty is a slow burner, the genre’s standard loud sounds and flash scares are efficiently used and Folley carries the film well, interacting with the unseen Adam while reluctantly creeping towards the unknown in a dark room or corner. Unfortunately the second half of the film goes rapidly downhill, with an obvious and ridiculous twist and a confusing and unsatisfying ending, which seems tacked on as a last resort. The aforementioned Grave Encounters and Paranormal Activity borrowings seem obvious, as well as shadows of other recent horror flicks Mama and Woman in Black, but ultimately it’s far less frightening than any of them, with some of the scare gags even being unintentionally comedic.

What started as a very promising film ultimately becomes a let down, and a disappointing return to horror from someone who could have done much better.