Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Review: Absence / Cert: TBC / Director: Jimmy Loweree / Screenplay: Jimmy Loweree, Jake Moreno / Starring: Erin Way, Eric Matheny, Ryan Smale / Release Date: TBC

What better way to recover from the traumatic loss of an unborn child than to head to a remote cabin with your husband and horrible brother? And what better way to make the experience even more awful than recording everything on your handheld camera? Goody, it’s another found footage movie.

Doctors are baffled when pregnant lady Liz’s nearly-to-term baby suddenly disappears overnight. To aid her recovery, her husband and brother take her out to a lovely cabin in the middle of nowhere. Because that worked out so well for the bereaved of Antichrist and drug addict of Evil Dead. Hiding out at a cabin in the woods (or wilderness, in this case) is always a terrible idea. “Why is it that every time we’re in the cabin in the woods, weird stuff happens?” Quite. Even more so when you bring your video camera with you.

Like most found footage horror movies, Absence is ninety percent build-up and ten percent action. While there are much worse subgenre pieces out there, this one isn’t interested in re-inventing the wheel. It’s slow, boring and populated with terribly annoying characters. Why, when your sister and brother-in-law have just lost their unborn child in awful circumstances, would you insist on being such a dick to them? It just perpetuates the found footage cliché that the most abhorrent character is always the one carrying the camera. It takes a special kind of arse to continue filming in the face of terror and tragedy. The characters of found footage horror films are the sort you find recording suicide bids and fatal car accidents on their iPhones in the street. While there is some schadenfreude in that these characters typically get a comeuppance of some sort, their adventures rarely make for enjoyable viewing.

That’s a shame, since Absence has a very intriguing central mystery, a good cast and some level of technical competence. Were it not for the fact that nothing actually seems to happen for most of the run-time (beyond a camera effect that worked better in V/H/S) Absence could have been very good. Sadly, this isn’t the case. The only Absence here is of originality.

Extras: TBC

Review: Comic-Con – Episode IV – A Fan’s Hope / Cert: 15 / Director: Morgan Spurlock / Starring: Stan Lee, Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith, Eli Roth, Seth Rogan, Seth Green, Paul Dini / Release Date: Out Now

Morgan Spurlock has always liked to explore the weird and wonderful in his films – from living off burgers for a month, to product placement in film, to the art of male grooming – so he is the ideal filmmaker to take us into the world of Comic-Con in a documentary. Unlike previously however, Spurlock doesn’t appear in the film at all, instead presenting us with the experiences of six different people, all with their own reasons for being at the Con.

We’ve seen Comic-Con on film before (most particularly in Mark Hamill’s Comic Book: The Movie) but none until now have looked at it from the point of view of your average real life nerd, and the film has a genuine affection for these people and the journey they go on, which at times makes for compelling viewing. They are never mocked or shown as figures to be ridiculed, but just as people following their passion and you find yourself rooting for them.

The rest of the film is made up of talking head scenes of various famous faces sharing their Comic-Con experiences. They’re all good value for money and speak with a passion for the event, particularly (as you’d expect) Joss Whedon and Kevin Smith, but you do get the feeling at times that they are taking part in an extended promotional video for Comic-Con.

There are some nice asides from the celebs – Guillermo Del Toro talking about what it is to be a collector and the one-upmanship of having something a fellow collector doesn’t, Eli Roth describing the experience of taking a pee stood between a Klingon and a Stormtrooper, or the genuine pleasure that comes from seeing Stan Lee walk the convention floor being cheered on by the people who worship him, to name a few – but it’s in the average nerds that we are really interested in and get behind throughout the film.

The film’s focus on what Comic-Con means to people is both its strength and its weakness. The short running time means that the history of the Con is barely touched upon (it’s set up in an introduction and then not looked at again) nor is there any real focus on the Hollywoodization of the event apart from a couple of references to the comic book side of it almost being the dirty secret hidden deep within the convention centre.

By walking the line between appealing to a fanboy audience and the average person with a passing curiosity in nerd culture, the film fails to give you absolutely everything you’d want, but it is a very enjoyable watch, even if it doesn’t totally satisfy.

Extras: Deleted scenes / Extended interviews / Trailer

Review: Steins;Gate – Part 1 / Cert: 15 / Director: Takuya Sato, Hiroshi Hamazaki/ Screenplay: Various / Starring: Mamoru Miyano, Asami Imai, Yuraki Tamura / Release Date: July 15th

The world of anime is full of ideas, some good, some bad, some crazy as a soup sandwich. For a prime example of the latter, check out Steins;Gate. Originating as a visual novel for the Xbox 360, it centres around the activities of the Future Gadget Lab. This down-at-heel operation consists of exactly three members: Daru, a hacker; Mayushi, who’s more of a mascot than an active contributor; and their Pied Piper of a leader, Okarin. A mad scientist and proud of it, he parades around all day in a lab coat and is given to wild, self-aggrandising statements and paranoid ravings about secret organisations bent on world domination. Together, the three toil away in a room muggy with male hormones and stocked with second-hand stuff from the grotty TV repair shop owned by their long-suffering landlord. Their current project: a phone-operated microwave.

Sounds harmless enough, but then Okarin starts having what appear to be disconcerting lucid dreams and lapses of memory. He finds a girl stabbed to death, then a few hours later bumps into her again, alive and well. What’s going on? Gradually, he realizes that the Phone Microwave is in fact a kind of time machine, one that can send text messages back into the past, thus potentially altering the course of events. Meanwhile, Okarin himself possesses a unique ability to retain memories across different timestreams.

That’s not the half of it, though. Okarin becomes convinced that SERN (for which read CERN – yes, that CERN) is also working on a time machine, and that if it succeeds it will end up ruling the planet. The only way to find out more is to a track down a rare old IBM 5100 portable PC whose operating code will enable them to break into the SERN database.

Well, it all seems to make sense at the time, and anyway you hardly have a moment to quibble as the series bowls along in a whirl of conspiracy theories, crackpot science and nerdy undergraduate humour. Beneath it all is an underlying air of edgy, nervy expectation, a quality heightened by the animation, which locates the story in a recognizable version of Tokyo’s Akihabara district but one presented in a muted palette which reduces it to a ghostly, half-real backdrop to the intellectual wild goose chase.

It’s a show that’s likely to divide opinion, and depending on your point of view you’ll probably think Steins;Gate is the best thing since sliced bread or the worst thing since fish sausages. On top of that, even its most fervent admirers would have to admit that occasionally the weird mixture of whimsy and baffling temporal puzzles can be a bit too much to take, and that Okarin  – who’s like a geeky 21st century Billy Liar with a degree in physics and an incipient bipolar disorder – could have done with being dialled down a little. Nonetheless, this is the stuff of which cult TV is made.

Extras: Audio commentaries / Clean opening and closing credits / Trailers / Previews

Review: The Sigil / Director: Brandon Cano-Errecart / Screenplay: Brandon Cano-Errecart, Nathan Dean Snyder / Starring: Matthew Black, Brandon Cano-Errecart, Brittney Daylee, Miki Matteson, Sumiko Braun, / Released: July 22^nd

The Sigil is a found footage movie that… Oi! Get back here. We haven’t finished yet. We watched it so you can jolly well read the review. That’s better. Anyway, where were we? Look, we’re well aware that the found footage genre has bred a certain amount of contempt through familiarity but it’s still a Good Idea in theory, especially for micro-budget horror movies; and micro-budget this undoubtedly is. For most of those involved this is their first feature film so it’s as good a way to start as any and it would be terrible if we were to be too unforgiving about it. This is going to be an awkward one. Perhaps we should have just let you run off. Oh well. *sigh*

The Sigil is a found footage movie about a house in Los Angeles where 41 people have died of radiation burns some months previously. While you might very well think that this would cause a public enquiry, international headlines and the closure of the suburb in question, your willing sense of found-footage-disbelief will buy into the fact that the house is just left derelict for the sister of one of the victims to break in with some chums and a video camera. You can probably work the rest out yourselves.

One supposes that found footage movies are actually supposed to be confusing to a point, so we won’t dwell on that too much. But at least they take the whole movie-within-a-movie thing seriously, because we swear that at one point they get the camera out just so they can have an argument. On the subject of which, we’ll probably just gloss over the acting on display; it’s definitely for the best and, after all, they aren’t working with the most brilliant script in the world. Mind you, it’s still a bit surprising to see the cast behaving like they know they’re in a horror movie long before they can have possibly realised. It’s not like it’s easy to tell (shaky camera work aside): this reviewer scares really easy (you heard correctly) and can confirm that at no point did he feel in the slightest bit uneasy. In fact he spent most of its running time wondering how a movie of little more than an hour actually managed to drag so much.

The whole point of the shaky camera is for you to wonder whether you saw something or not; implied horror and audience imagination are the key. Here, there’s nothing really going on. Perhaps we have just seen too much of this sort of thing. As we said we didn’t want to be too scathing about it, we will point out that the scene where they try to ask passers-by about the house is quite well handled. We’ll applaud the effort but it might be time to give this jaded genre a rest.

Extras: None

Review: Hulk Vs Wolverine / Cert: 12 / Director: Frank Pauer / Screenplay: Christopher Vost / Starring: Fred Tetasciore, Steve Blum, Nolan North / Release Date: July 8th

Marvel Studios may have DC Comics licked when it comes to their live action blockbusters but they have seriously lagged behind them in the direct-to-DVD animation market. Marvel have tried, with the first two Ultimate Avengers movies being fairly decent, but mostly the animation and storytelling has never risen above the Saturday morning cartoon standard, never reaching the heights of The Dark Knight Returns or All Star Superman. The latest is Hulk vs. Wolverine, which is cribbed from an earlier release which also included a short of Hulk vs. Thor.

This release finds everyone’s favourite angry mutant, Wolverine, despatched to the Canadian wilderness by the government to get the Hulk under control after his latest rampage. Once there the two of them fight of course, but then they come across evil/misguided mutants Sabretooth, Omega Red, Lady Deathstrike and Deadpool and are captured. In captivity, Wolverine learns that they are to be part of a revived Weapon X experimental programme and that the programme has been specifically after Hulk and Wolverine has been used. Wolverine isn’t very happy about this obviously.

Unlike some other Marvel animation efforts, this actually looks quite good and stylised. It’s still not up to the standard of DC but it’s a start. What is surprising about this release is how brutal it is. Wolverine goes to town on Hulk with his claws, drawing blood. Limbs are hacked off, bones are broken and Hulk pounds Wolverine into pulp. With this aspect being taken seriously, it’s disappointing that they didn’t pay as much attention to the story. Nothing wrong with it, but the fact is that it’s so short and so inconsequential that it barely registers. It’s good to see Deadpool in animated form and the possibilities of exploring this character and his specific quirks are mind boggling, but apart from one scene though they don’t do much of anything with him. The flashbacks to Wolverine’s past are welcome moments of character development but the whole thing is so slight that none of it seems to matter.

Marvel has tons of opportunity with their animated universe but so far they don’t seem to understand its potential. They keep timing these releases to coincide with the release of the latest Marvel based movie and think that will be enough. Hulk vs. Wolverine is a prime example of this, being a short with masses of scope for a more substantial feature but never becoming more than something fan-made you might find on the internet. This release is really only for those who really really have to, otherwise the full Hulk Vs. set (with Thor) is still available on DVD at the moment.

Extras: Audio Commentary / Making Of

Review: Grave of the Fireflies / Cert: 12 / Director: Isao Takahata / Screenplay: Isao Takahata / Starring: J. Robert Spencer, Rhoda Chrosite / Release Date: July 1st

Thirteen years before the incredible Spirited Away, Japanese animation powerhouse Studio Ghibli were already churning out classics such as Grave of the Fireflies, a wartime film based on the semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by Akiyuki Nosaka. It follows a teenage boy called Seita as he looks after his four-year-old sister Setsuko in the midst of World War II Japan.

After the death of their mother, Seita and Setsuko go to live with their aunt who becomes increasingly resentful towards them as the war and food supplies worsen. Seita tries his best to stay positive and shield Setsuko from the tragedy surrounding them. While Seita waits for his father to write back from his navy post, he and Setsuko move to a disused bomb shelter where they happily discover the fireflies from the movie’s title. Too proud to return to their aunt and struggling to find food, Seita dangerously tries to ignore the cold reality of war as he devotes himself to his increasingly ailing sister.

The animation in Grave of the Fireflies is incredible, from the bomb-ravaged city of Kobe to the glowing bioluminescence of the fireflies. The story is heartbreaking and something that haunts you long after watching it, and is deservedly considered one of the best films of all time, not just in the genres of animation or war.

Extras: Interview with director Isao Takahata / Japanese Release Promo (ft. Interview with Isao Takahata and Akiyuki Nosaka) / Deleted scenes storyboards / Interview with Roger Ebert / Historical perspective directory / Trailers

Review: Jack the Giant Slayer / Cert: 15 / Director: Bryan Singer / Screenplay: Darren Lemke, Christopher McQuarrie and Dan Studney / Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Eleanor Tomlinson, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, Ian McShane, Bill Nighy, Eddie Marsan, Bill Nighy, Ewen Bremner, John Kassir / Release Date: July 22nd

Jack the Giant Slayer is a big budget reimagining of the classic children’s fairytale Jack and the Beanstalk, directed by Brian ‘X-Men’ Singer. In the film, giants have faded into legend, along with the king who once defeated them using a magic crown. Jack (Hoult), a young farmhand adopted by his uncle, recollects the stories being read to him by his now-deceased father.

The titular hero is sent to town to sell a horse, where he unwittingly defends the rebellious Princess Isabelle (Tomlinson) from a group of thugs before the king’s guards Elmont McGregor and Marsan) arrive to take her back to the palace. Jack then acquires ‘magic beans’ from a desperate monk, stolen from Roderick (Tucci), the corrupt king’s adviser and future husband of Isabelle.

The princess later escapes again and seeks solace at Jack’s house. The rain causes one of the beans to sprout a giant beanstalk, taking Isabelle and Jack’s house with it into the sky, where the realm of giants supposedly exists. King Brahmwell (McShane) sends his best men to save her, along with volunteers Jack, Roderick, and Roderick’s assistant Wicke (Bremner). You can guess what happens next.

An impressive British cast all put in fine performances in a thoroughly enjoyable film (a lot more than the concept suggests). The CGI impresses; the giants are gloriously revolting and seem to imitate Arthur Rackham’s illustrations. The on-screen worlds of both giants and medieval men are enchanting and believable.

The film is a bit scarier than parents might expect and may not be suitable for sensitive children, hence the 12A rating upon its cinema release, although it will definitely keep their attention. The action and fight sequences are impressive, with one scene almost reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings’ Battle of Helms Deep. All in all, this is one of the better of the recent spate of folk tale adaptations, one which leaves the words ‘fee-fi-fo-fum’ strongly engrained in the memory.

Extras: Gag reel/ Deleted scenes

Review: Kiki’s Delivery Service / Cert: U / Director: Hayao Miyazaki / Screenplay: Hayao Miyazaki / Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Phil Hartman / Release Date: July 1st

One of Studio Ghibli’s most popular films, Kiki’s Delivery Service is a light-hearted story about an excitable teenage witch called Kiki, based on Eiko Kadano’s 1985 children’s novel. After her thirteenth birthday, Kiki enthusiastically sets off into the world for something of a gap year, a witch tradition supported by her parents. She is joined by her best friend, a talking black cat called Jiji, as she tries to master her broom flying skills and find somewhere to settle down and practice magic.

Kiki settles on the coastal city of Koriko, where she is greeted with curiosity and a mixture of admiration and contempt (witches are relative celebrities in this world). Despite her initial enthusiasm, Kiki experiences a few setbacks, mostly due to her naivety and lack of confidence.

She soon realises her only real skill is flying and decides to make the most of it by starting a delivery service with the aid of a kind bakery owner called Osono. Through this service she befriends an artist and a pair of old ladies and attracts the attentions of Tombo, a local aviation-obsessed boy. When the ‘real’ world begins to depress Kiki, she loses her ability to fly and must find a renewed purpose.

Kiki’s Delivery Service is a highly imaginative tale, full of ambitious animation. Scenes of Kiki flying over a beautifully detailed Koriko, escaping a forest of angry crows and admiring a friend’s painting are just some of the highlights. An unusual but original take on the coming-of-age genre, the film is warm and positive and still holds its own against more modern kid’s films.

Extras: Complete feature length storyboards / Ursula’s Painting / Creating Kiki’s Delivery Service / Kiki and Jiji / Flying with Kiki and beyond / Producer’s perspective: Collaborating with Hiyao Miyazaki / The Locations of Kiki / Beyond the Microphone / Original Japanese theatrical trailers / Studio Ghibli Trailer Reel

Review: The Brood /Cert: 18 / Director: David Cronenberg / Screenplay: David Cronenberg / Starring: Oliver Reed, Art Hindle, Samantha Eggar / Release Date: July 8th

Body horror obsessive Cronenberg’s third feature, 1979’s The Brood, marks a significant leap in quality from his earlier efforts Shivers and Rabid. Although still produced on a relatively tiny budget, the film at least allows the director/writer to craft a proper, if outlandish, story to support his often stomach-troubling images of the human body being corrupted and violated to create some twisted, bloody parody of the human condition. The Brood is a slow burn, horribly over-talky for its first hour, and lumbered with a crashingly melodramatic score before getting to the point and coasting towards a typically nasty blood-drenched finale.

Oliver Reed (he was fond of a tipple, you know) is the sinister Hal Raglan, a psychotherapist who runs the Somafree Institute where his ‘psychoplasmics’ therapy encourages patients to unleash their pent-up rage via physical manifestations. Frank Carveth (Hindle) is understandably a bit worried about his estranged wife Nola’s ongoing treatment, especially when her rages lead to the brutal deaths of those at whom it’s directed courtesy of ferocious deformed ‘children’ who aren’t quite human. Desperate to rescue their daughter Candice who has been abducted by two of the ‘children’ Frank finally confronts his wife at Somafree and discovers the grotesque truth; Nola (Eggar) has been parthogenetically creating a ‘brood’ of feral killer children who respond and react to her rages.

Cronenberg’s movies are often acquired tastes and The Brood remains a difficult and occasionally even harrowing film; the slaughter of a kindergarten teacher in front of a full classroom of young children is difficult to watch because the kids look genuinely shocked and distressed. Then there’s the final reveal of Nola, twisted and deformed, ‘giving birth’ to a new ‘creature’ from the bulbous growth attached to her body and ravenously licking the birth-blood from her newborn. Not for the fainthearted. Visually the film has the bland, no-nonsense palette of most films of its era and while it’s been nicely scrubbed-up for Blu-ray (and supported by the sort of in-depth bonus material rare in modern blockbusters packed with bland Electronic Press Kit stuff) it still appears cold, remote and, by virtue of its subject matter, hard to engage with and difficult to admit to enjoying without feeling some sense of shame and perhaps even guilt.

Extras: Art Hindle and Cindy Hinds (the young Candice) are reunited / Producing the Brood looks at the genesis of the film / The Look of Rage interviews the film’s cinematographer / Cronenberg discusses his early work

Review: Oz the Great and Powerful / Cert: PG / Director: Sam Raimi/Screenplay: Mitchell Kapner, David Lindsay-Abaire / Starring: James Franco, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, Michelle Williams, Zach Braff / Release Date: July 1st

In retrospect, only the vaguely childlike Sam Raimi could have even hoped to make a decent fist of a ‘prequel’ to one of the most famous motion pictures of all time. Somehow, through some extraordinary alchemy of Raimi’s own skills and an innate understanding of the world created by Frank L. Baum in his legendary series of children’s adventure novels, Oz the Great and Powerful is not only a joyous, vibrant and clever fun-for-all-the-family movie in its own right, it also has the decency to pay discreet homage to MGM’s 1939 The Wizard of Oz, staying true to the world, the characters and even the sometimes-simplistic style of the original without making trendy concessions to the expectations of a modern audience. This is Oz much as it was in 1939, albeit with all the green screen, motion capture and CGI technology now available to bring it to life; but Raimi uses real sets and practical effects alongside all the digital trickery and there’s a pleasingly unreal aesthetic about the finished product which creates a gloriously naïve fairytale world full of talking flying monkeys, girls made out of china and wand-wielding witches. Raimi even finds the time to remind us of the cowardly lion and shambling scarecrow of days gone by.

In a wonderfully evocative black-and-white sequence set in Kansas in 1905, struggling magician and incorrigible flirt Oscar ‘Oz’ Diggs (Franco) is eking out a living in a tatty travelling circus. Fleeing in a hot air balloon from the fury of the husband of one of his lady friends, Oz is sucked into a tornado and finds himself quite literally (and visually) ‘over the rainbow’ and washed up in the colourful world of Oz where he quickly teams up with friendly witch Theodora (Kunis) and flying monkey Finley (Braff). He’s soon revered as the legendary ‘Wizard of Oz’, prophesied to come to Oz to rid the land of the tyrannical Wicked Witch. But at the Emerald City there’s duplicity afoot in the form of Theodora’s evil sister Evanora (Weisz) who has her own terrible secret and who turns Theodora against Oscar with potentially devastating consequences.

Oz the Great and Powerful is terrific, four-colour fun. Sprightly, uncynical and utterly unpretentious, this is charming, old-fashioned good vs. evil storytelling in its purest, kind-hearted form. Raimi’s Oz is populated by outlandish creatures, scary monsters likely to terrify only the tiniest, evil green-skinned cackling witches and lots of sizzling fantasy action and romance. Franco is a likeable, if slightly too modern, Oz, Rachel Weisz is a boo-hiss baddie in the great panto tradition and Mila Kunis is clearly having the time of her life as Theodora and her green-skinned alter ego. A lively script avoids any sense of knowing post-modernism – this is pure, unadulterated magic through and through – and even if it could lose ten or fifteen minutes from its running time, there’s surely little doubt that this is a movie which, with its vibrant colours and stunning effects and make-up which make it a natural for the Blu-ray format, will be a family classic for years and maybe even generations to come, just like the 1939 musical which inspired it.

Extras: Walt Disney and the Road to Oz / My Journey to oz by James Franco, China Girl and the Suspension of Disbelief / From Kansas to Oz, Mila’s Metamorphosis / Elfman’s Musical Concoctions / Bloopers