Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Review: Seven Samurai (60th Anniversary Edition) / Cert: PG / Director: Akira Kurosawa / Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni / Starring: Takashi Shimura, Isao Kimura, Yoshio Inaba, Daisuke Katō, Minoru Chiaki, Seiji Miyaguchi, Toshiro Mifune, Kokuten Kodo, Bokuzen Hidari, Kamatari Fujiwara, Keiko Tsushima, Yoshio Tsuchiya / Released: April 21st

In 1954 Japan’s Toho Studios produced a groundbreaking movie. Western cinema had inspired it but the film returned the favour by becoming a massive influence in the West. But you might be surprised to learn that at no point did it feature the destruction of Tokyo by an oversize reptile.

Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) is an epic story set in the late 16th century and dealing with the rigid divisions in Japanese society by way of a rollicking adventure. Villagers under threat from marauding bandits decide to hire samurai for protection even though all they have to offer is rice. But at a time of continual civil war, a masterless samurai from a defeated clan was common and social conventions prevented him from taking work outside the traditions of his warrior caste. These “ronin” often became bandits exactly like those threatening the village but others went hungry and it is from this group our villagers recruit, one by one, their prospective saviours.

Recruiting a team of disparate characters to carry out a mission is a standard trope today in anything from The Dirty Dozen (1967) to The Monuments Men (2014) but, movie historians would have you believe, it started here. Even our introduction to the group’s leader, Kambei (Shimura), in which he saves a kidnapped child by subterfuge and skilful violence represents the start of that Bond-esque tradition of meeting our hero embroiled in another adventure irrelevant from the main plot. But who cares about all this “influence” nonsense? That’s not a good enough reason to watch it. Is it any good? Dear Lord, yes.

Movies like this make the reviewer’s job rather difficult because lists of superlatives and cries that “they nailed it” aren’t very informative. But despite making many more samurai flicks, Kurosawa aced it first time. This latest (and very good) print from the BFI is just shy of four hours but you won’t notice the length. Kurosawa seems to delight in the conventions he’s just created and keeps it tight until he blows you away with action scenes that could be out of Saving Private Ryan. With the samurai’s detailed defence planning and Kurosawa’s use of multiple cameras and depth of field, we can tell exactly what’s going on in what could easily be confusing sequences. Half a million was a big budget back then and the use of non-studio locations adds to the feeling of authenticity. From now on all climatic battles would be fought in the mud.

We suspect there are two groups out there: Those who haven’t seen Seven Samurai but have heard it’s good; and those who have seen it and know it’s good. You need to join the second group. Believe the hype.

Extras: Original Japanese theatrical trailer / The Art of Akira Kurosawa (2013, 48 mins) / Fully illustrated 16-page booklet with essays and credits

Review: Butcher Boys / Cert: 18 / Director: Duane Graves, Justin Meeks / Screenplay: Kim Henkel / Starring: Ali Faulkner, Johnny Walter, Derek Lee Nixon / Release Date: Out Now

The writer of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has rehashed the premise and liberally sprinkled a dose of Jonathan Swift’s classic satire A Modest Proposal (it even opens with a quote), although the result lacks both the wit and abject terror of both.

A group of friends, out celebrating a birthday, end up in the wrong side of San Antonio and fall foul of a team of brutal cannibals. Sissy (Faulkner) manages to escape and is chased through the streets, and finally, their lair. But she is to find their plan is much more diabolical and nasty than just rape and murder.

Henkel obviously struck gold with his original TCM script, but there’s no real excuse for lazily going back to the well, particularly when any point you are trying to make is lost in a fury of dizzying chases and not-as-nasty-as-it-wants-to-be violence. It’s not that it’s badly made; the action is almost non-stop and there’s no shortage of threat. It’s just there’s also zero characterisation and almost no attempt to explain or delve deeper into why and how this group of reprobates managed to become feared by even the local police and gangbangers. Nor why there is a crazed mutant behemoth of a man chained up and drooling in the group’s dining hall or why their ‘doctor’ is running around in a dress. If you can overlook the intricacies that the film lacks, it’s a mildly entertaining, if brain-dead, ride which hits all the familiar beats, even in its bat-shit crazy climax. Although it is nice to hear some Bach, Grieg and Verdi in there and it’s mildly amusing to try to spot the cameos from several TCM alumni, it may not fully satisfy the gorehounds and due to the lack of depth, fails to be a truly effective horror film.

Extras: Trailer

Review: Psychophony – An Experiment in Evil / Cert: TBC / Director: Xavier Berraondo / Screenplay: Xavier Berraondo / Starring: Ferran Albiol, Dafniz Balduz / Release Date: TBC

Something my spellcheck and I have in common: neither of us thought ‘psychophony’ was a real thing. But it is, and it’s the subject of this Spanish horror film, subtitled An Experiment in Evil. Positing that some cases of schizophrenia are indicative of paranormal activity, a doctor conducts the titular experiment, using a young girl as his test subject.

Because no film of our time can involve spooks or paranormal activity without getting the handheld camcorders involved, he records some of it too. Thankfully, Psychophony is not a found footage movie, merely using its segments of ‘real’ recordings to punctuate the real story; a slow, occasionally dull spook feature enlivened by several genuinely creepy moments and some inventive pieces of imagery during its faster paced second half.

Where the first act is slow and uninspired, the second kicks into loud overdrive – more cacophony than psychophony – making up for its lack of originality with plenty of things going bump in the night, and one particularly odd sequence involving a mattress and a girl that wouldn’t have gone amiss in a Nightmare on Elm Street sequel. There’s nothing here that you’ll remember a week from now, but nor is it bad either. Psychophony is merely middling, inoffensive and a little cheap. Distributed by US company Chemical Burn, along with their other titles America’s Alien Invasion and Bordello Death Tales, you’d be forgiven for passing it up, but it’s nowhere near as bad as it could have been.

Update: a ‘psychophony’ is definitely a real thing. A spiritual term, referring to the way a spirit talks, using a medium as its voice (like Derek Acorah, except not fake). So now we know.

Extras: TBC

Review: The Guillotines / Cert: TBC / Director: Andrew Lau / Screenplay: Various / Starring: Ethan Juan, Purba Rgyal / Release Date: TBC

The title may befit a punk rock band or anarchic straight-to-DVD horror film, but The Guillotines is, in actuality, anything but. A Chinese wuxia (martial arts adventure) film steeped in history and politics, it’s about as not-punk as one can get.

There’s a definite audience for The Guillotines, which looks incredible and is very well written, but there’s perhaps even more who will be turned off by the whole thing. Even the story is difficult to describe, without getting into paragraphs full of context and drama. In brief (which is something this lengthy movie could never be accused of being), the eponymous Guillotines are a team of elite assassins operating in Qing Dynasty China, acting as their emperor’s headsmen. The once favoured assassins are deemed expendable as advances in technology threaten to make them – and their beautiful toys – redundant.

Chief reason to see The Guillotines is for its depiction of the team’s weapons – a curved blade with a detachable head on a string used to, well, detach heads. The film’s fight scenes are well done, being grand, balletic and gory in equal measure (as you’d expect from a film with such a title, there’s a good deal of beheading action). Directed by Infernal Affairs choreographer and director Andrew Lau, it certainly looks the part, with an attention to detail that extends to its writing, costumes and politics. Reminiscent of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Four, it’s as beautiful as it is violent.

With so much going for it, it’s a shame that The Guillotines is defiantly hard to get into. There are no allowances made for those not so clued-up on their Chinese history, nor those who’ve just tuned in to see heads getting separated from their bodies. It’s very impressive, but that doesn’t always translate to a good viewing experience. Beyond the pretty visuals, fancy footwork and nifty knives, it’s all very much an acquired taste that some will simply have no time for.

Fans of wuxia and the historically accurate (give or take the odd steampunk beheading sword) should find much to enjoy with The Guillotines, which offers a little more than your standard beat em’ up flick. Alas, everyone else is likely to be by turns bored, perplexed and irritated by this overly serious genre piece. It has a good heart, but far too sensible a head on its shoulders.

Extras: TBC

Review: Lost Girl – Season 3 / Cert: 15 / Director: Various / Screenplay: Various / Starring: Anna Silk, Kris Holden-Ried, Ksenia Solo, Rick Howland, Zoie Palmer / Release Date: Out Now

Lost Girl is one of those odd little genre shows you’re either utterly addicted to or can completely pass by. For the uninitiated, it’s all about Bo – a young lady who just happens to be a succubus. This means that she draws power from intimate contact; the more she gets the better for her, though if she’s not careful she can completely drain the life energy from her lovers, killing them in the process. Bo lives in a world much like our own, but there are similar supernatural beings (called Fae) lurking on the fringes of society and Bo has to navigate between the machinations of the nicer and nastier sort of Fae simply in order to survive.

If this quirky Canadian show sounds more than a little titillating, that’s because it is; the premise of the show is a sexy one and the lead character is an extremely attractive young lady who likes to kiss both men and women. The first episode of Season 3 sees Bo in a special prison for Fae and all the prison guards are Amazons (apparently Amazon’s are mystical creatures). Of course, they carry whips and the warden dresses in tight leather. Despite all this, it manages to walk the fine line between ‘sexy fun’ and ‘tacky and dull’, coming up more often than not on the side of silly yet exciting adventure.

The stories are an interesting mix of high stakes emotional drama and monster of the week fantasy TV. Seeing a bunch of very attractive people kung fu kick their way through stories filled with witches, were-crocodiles and similar horrors, only to then watch them explore their feelings might remind you slightly of Buffy the Vampire Slayer but the approach is more tongue-in-cheek and yet at the same time also more mature.

Season 3 distinguishes itself from the previous seasons by focusing more strongly on the interpersonal relationships between the key players. Though this is essentially an urban fantasy soap opera, it is still far superior to your mundane daytime TV fair. As reasons for not being able to stay monogamous go, being a soul-sucking succubus is one hell of an excuse and it’s handled in an entertaining and engaging way, making you want to watch more. The acting and special effects are okay but this is made-for-TV fantasy, don’t expect it to get too exciting.

If you ever wondered what the lovechild of Buffy and Anita Blake would look like, then this is for you.

Extras: None

Review: Blind Woman’s Curse / Cert: 15 / Director: Teruo Ishii / Screenplay: Teruo Ishii, Chûsei Sone / Starring: Meiko Kaji, Hoki Tokuda / Release Date: Out Now

Arrow Films have made quite the name for themselves re-releasing cult not-quite-classics for a modern audience, beautifully packaged and laden with special features. It’s brought us such gems as Deranged, The Stuff and White of the Eye, among many more. Truly, we are living in the golden age of cult fandom. As odd as anything they’ve ever brought us so far is Blind Woman’s Curse, a supernaturally tinged Japanese Yakuza film, with an added touch of horror and erotica for good measure. It is, frankly, bizarre.

When gang leader Akemi slashes out the eyes of an opponent during a battle with gangland rivals, a sinister black cat appears to lap up the blood and set the titular curse in motion. Akemi is now cursed; doomed to watch her minions die, one by one before her, their dragon tattoos peeled off and licked by the Blind Woman’s grudge-holding kitty and ghastly shadow-dwelling hunchback.

A forbearer to the work of Takashi Miike and Quentin Tarantino, Blind Woman’s Curse is a thoroughly enjoyable oddity. It seamlessly (and at other times, not so seamlessly) crosses genres without pause for thought. It’s always effective, the horror and the humour working just as effectively as the crime drama and the erotica. It’s bound to put off or annoy some, but plenty more will love it for its bizarro sensibilities.

Crude and juvenile as it sometimes might be (we could do without the repeated flashing of its villain’s sort of speedo-clad, apparently stinky arse cheeks), the story is always gripping, its shocks frequently effective and vividly depicted. The more surreal horror imagery works best; most notably during a stage show in which our Blind Woman reclines with her kitty while a hunchback tramp alternately licks and washes her bare feet. If the film rambles on a bit, it is forgivable, since everything else it does is so enjoyable and original. Kinky, weird, scary and funny in equal measures, Blind Woman’s Curse is an excellent re-release of a true cult gem that many won’t even know existed in the first place. Some will overlook it due to its age and subtitles (shame on you) but those who do give it a chance should find much to enjoy. Even better, old fans and horror aficionados can bask in its all-new high definition glory. The Blind Woman and her curse have never looked better.

As you’d expect from Arrow, the film comes accompanied by a whole host of extras, including an audio commentary by Japanese film expert Jasper Sharp and a lovely looking collector’s booklet. Gorgeous to look at and utterly bonkers to boot, Blind Woman’s Curse is the cat’s whiskers.

Extras: Audio Commentary / Trailer reel / Booklet

 

Review: Carrie / Cert: 15 / Director: Kimberly Peirce / Screenplay: Lawrence D. Cohen, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa / Starring: Chloë Grace Moretz, Julianne Moore, Gabriella Wilde / Release Date: Out Now

Don’t piss off Matilda. The tale of Carrie White is updated for our age in Kimberly Peirce’s remake of Brian De Palma’s horror classic and re-adaptation of Stephen King’s first published novel. Stepping into Sissy Spacek’s mighty big shoes is rising star Chloë Grace Moretz. At least Moretz is no stranger to playing troubled youths with unconventional upbringing – she’s the face of comic book icon Hit Girl, after all.

Less chunky and acne-ridden than the Carrie of the novel and more conventionally pretty than Spacek, Moretz nevertheless imbues the girl with a sense of otherworldly, aloof oddness that makes her high school bullying seem plausible. The film opens with a departure from adaptations past – her very birth – but soon cuts to the familiar, with Carrie being pelted with tampons in the school shower. With slicker, less dreamlike direction than De Palma’s original, it’s not as upsetting or effective, while the introduction of mobile phones to that scene simply feels facile and predictable.

And therein lies the problem of remaking, rebooting or re-adapting material from the seventies and eighties onwards – the apparent need to include things like Facebook, YouTube and Tim Tebow. There are times when Carrie feels more like Mean Girls without the jokes than an adaptation of a Stephen King novel. Portia Doubleday and Alex Russell up the stakes in their vindictiveness towards Carrie, but neither of them are remotely memorable; much less when you compare them with their predecessors, young John Travolta and a fantastic Nancy Allen. As innocent Tommy Ross, Ansel Elgort is so vacant you’ll forget he was ever there.

Only Moretz and her on-screen mother make a real impact. Julianne Moore is the best thing in the film, exuding a sense of menace and mania that the film desperately needs. Moretz is good as Carrie, but one can’t help but feel that she’s been desperately miscast in the role, never really making it her own. More is made of her telekinetic abilities, while the finale is extended and bloodied up, but it lacks any feeling. At times – particularly during the pivotal prom scene – it simply seems to be going through the motions, more interested in getting to the (once 3D, now not) bloodshed than making us care about Carrie, Tommy or anyone else in the bloody film.

Past its gory Final Destination-style cataclysm (too much CGI, and a ridiculous-looking levitation effect), Carrie limps on to a disappointing denouement. Fans of the original will be rankled by this remake’s lack of initiative, while the uninitiated will find it to be dull and silly. It’s not outright awful, but it is annoying, obvious and unwilling to take risks. There are too many mobile phones, not enough John Travoltas and an utter dearth of sympathetic characters. The Blu-ray comes with two endings; a stupid one, and an even stupider one, which rips off and tries to differentiate itself from De Palma’s at the same time. Neither ending has Carrie White recruited by the X-Men, but both are accompanied by a completely inappropriate piece of music that sums up everything wrong with the film itself. They’re all going to laugh at you? No, the Carrie remake doesn’t even have that going for it.

Extras: Alternate ending

Review: The Last Keepers / Cert: 12 /Director: Maggie Greenwald / Screenplay: Peter Hutchings, Christina Mengert / Starring: Zosia Mamet, Aidan Quinn, Virginia Madsen, Olympia Dukakis / Release Date: April 21st

About ten minutes into The Last Keepers, it becomes blindingly obvious that this is not a movie aimed at jaded, aged film reviewing hacks. This is, in fact, a movie aimed at slightly rebellious teenage girls who quite fancy the idea of going off the straight and narrow but probably won’t if it’s all the same to you. And that’s okay. With its decent cast, sharp (if occasionally sappy) script and warm cinematography, it’s an easy-on-the-eye movie which passes eighty-odd minutes agreeably enough even though you might feel the need to go out and out-stare a puppy when it’s over just to reassert your maturity or, in this reviewer’s case, your masculinity.

Zosia Mamet (I had one but the wheel fell off) plays quirky, arty Rhea Calver, who lives with her quirky, arty parents and her quirky, arty gran and she, like, just doesn’t fit in with all the other kids in school. This might be because she wears ghastly frocks which look like exploded lampshades and has geeky friends. Her classmates snicker and sneer but softie Simon (Sam Underwood) has a crush on her and woos her with terrible self-written poetry. Rhea is just coming to terms with the fact that someone outside her family likes her when she’s hit by the bombshell that she’s actually the latest in a family line of witches and that she’s set to inherit the powers of her ma and gran which she, as a ‘chosen one’, will use for the good of Mankind. Rhea tells Simon, who blabs it to the school and, before long, she’s an outcast again for all sorts of reasons. Rejecting her destiny, she squeezes into a tight skirt, starts flirting with a bad boy and goes to illicit booze parties. No good can come of this, you might think; but fortunately when she’s faced with a situation where she can use her powers for the greater good, Rhea discovers the power of love, the importance of family and that there is a reason for all things – even magicky things.

The Last Keepers is the very definition of a light and inoffensive thing and there’s not a house in the land that would find anything even remotely disturbing here. But that’s not the point of it. It’s a slightly racey fantasy romance for slightly older kids and whilst it’s undeniably anodyne to the point of sickliness it’s still hugely less offensive and button-pushing than stuff like the Twilight saga and can be happily recommended for teenagers of a curious disposition. 

Extras: None

Review: Stalled / Cert: 18 / Director: Christian James / Screenplay: Dan Palmer / Starring: Dan Palmer, Antonia Bernath, Tamaryn Payne / Release Date: Out Now

If there’s one thing fright film fans really don’t need – apart from more found footage features, obviously – it’s another British comedy zombie movie. Seriously, after Shaun of the Dead and Cockneys vs. Zombies, what more is there to say from a UK perspective? Stalled, written by and starring Dan Palmer and set almost entirely into a toilet cubicle, isn’t anywhere near the same league as its two more illustrious predecessors, but by the same token isn’t as vacant as it might first appear and is actually, on occasion, reasonably engaging.

Palmer plays seedy office janitor W.C. (see what they did there?) who finds himself trapped in a toilet cubicle when a zombie apocalypse inexplicably starts during the Christmas party. As the bathroom fills up with more and more shuffling zombies and his desperate attempts to escape all go down the pan, W.C. realises that someone else is stuck in the cubicle two doors down. He strikes up a not-especially-funny dialogue with Heather (Bernath) and becomes more determined than ever to escape a situation which is, very probably, driving him around the bend. But Heather isn’t quite what he expects and the zombies are getting more and more determined…

Stalled isn’t especially funny. There’s nothing much going on in the way of jokes or witty banter but Palmer just about makes up for it with an interesting line in physical and facial comedy. His long confessional chat with Heather has a forced artificiality about it and it’s not long before the cramped and restrictive location runs out of both comedic and dramatic potential and just becomes tedious. But on the plus side, the zombie make-up is decent, there’s some imaginative gore and the final scene – W.C. flushed with the excitement of freedom and determined to make amends to his family – opens up the film in ways that just make you wish Stalled had had the budget to be a bit bigger a bit sooner. Top marks for trying something different and very nearly pulling it off, but when your best gag is your tagline – when there’s no bathroom left in Hell – then you’ve got problems with your comedy.

Stalled might float your boat if you’re after a zombie film that’s at least a bit different and it might be worth a visit even if it’s bound to end up in the bowels of your DVD collection.

Extras: Behind the scenes footage / Trailer / Storyboard comparisons / Two commentaries

Review: The New (Incomplete) Complete and Utter History of Britain / Cert:12 / Director: Maurice Murphy / Author: Michael Palin, Terry Jones / Starring: Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Roddy Maude-Roxby, Colin Gordon, Johnny Vyvyan / Release Date: April 7th

Screened in January 1969, just nine months before the debut of the groundbreaking Monty Python’s Flying Circus and never aired nationally (being produced by and screened only in the region then known as London Weekend Television), The Complete and Utter History of Britain is very much Python in embryo. The natural accompaniment to earlier free-form comedy shows such as Do Not Adjust Your Set and At Last The 1948 Show, Britain (as we shall call it for the sake of brevity) establishes the style of offbeat, surreal and slightly slapstick comedy which the Python series would later refine and fine-tune. Here, Pythons-to-be Palin and Jones work with the core idea of important historical events viewed through the imaginary prism of contemporary television coverage, using still-popular sensationalistic reporting techniques. William the Conqueror is interviewed post-Hastings in a football team’s communal bath, Rome’s first incursions into England are displayed as larky holiday home videos and more traditional sketches depict Stone Age man’s attempts to patent the first chair and Palin’s wily estate agent espousing the virtues of draughty Stonehenge as a first home for a pair of newlyweds: “It’s got character, charm – and a slab in the middle.”

Only two episodes of Britain exist – and even on Blu-ray the quality is pretty ropey – so it’s hard to get a feeling for how the series might have developed across its six episodes (seven were recorded but LWT demanded that the first two were amalgamated into one episode because they weren’t funny enough). Even from the two which remain, however, its easy to see what works and what doesn’t. Palin and Jones bring the same wide-eyed enthusiasm and versatility they’d bring to Python, though Colin Gordon as the ‘narrator’ is an uneasy fit, slowing down the proceedings and looking distinctly uncomfortable. The highlight of the remaining footage, though, is Roddy Maude-Roxby as dotty Professor Weaver, a clueless and clumsy resident history expert whose meandering monologues descend into a series of fitfully funny mannerisms and well-observed sight gags.

Network have done an admirable job in turning a massively incomplete TV series into a worthwhile purchase, but even without the comprehensive bonus material, Britain is an important release because it’s pretty much the last step on the road which would lead to Monty Python.

Extras: Episode footage presented with new, original linking material from Palin and Jones/ Interview with producer Humphrey Barclay/ The two episodes as transmitted and recorded / Film insert material / Collector’s booklet / Picture gallery