Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Review: Death Game / Cert: 15 / Director: Hideo Nakata / Screenplay: Satoshi Suzuki / Starring: Tatsuya Fujiwara, Kin’ya Kitaoji, Haruka Ayase, Tsuyoshi Abe / Release Date: June 10th

Also known as The Incite Mill, this movie from Hideo Nakata (he of many Ringu/The Ring films) is based on the best-selling novel The Incite Mill – 7 Day Death Game. If you take the novel’s title, then the film’s a pretty much ‘does exactly as it says on the tin’ affair. A mixture of Big Brother and Battle Royale, the story follows ten strangers as they decide to participate in a social experiment for a hefty payoff. Of course, there’s a twist.

We join our test subjects as they are making their way to ‘the facility’ – on the face of it, a beautifully designed, luxurious house. As we’re given our introductions to the ten, there are the usual social stereotypes thrown into the mix. There’s the brain, the jock, the criminal, the basket case and the princess… wait, wrong film. No, here we have a web designer, a student, a doctor (and his wife-to-be), and an alcoholic, amongst others. To add to the tension, there’s also the lurking menace of Guard, a robot that patrols the corridors of the house to make sure that certain rules are kept to. Part RoboCop, part an extra from a Terminator-controlled future, Guard does any dirty work that needs doing.

It’s soon revealed, just to stir things up a bit, that each person has a weapon of choice in their room. These range from a poison capsule to a rather badass looking nail gun. When one of the group is found dead early on, suspicions rise and trust becomes lost. It doesn’t help that ‘the facility’ also announces that members of the group will get bonus money from committing any crimes or from solving said crimes. Plus there’s a regimented voting system in place for any atrocities that do happen, and a prison for anybody deemed guilty of causing said atrocities.

Whilst the initial tension, drama and setup of Nakata’s film are interesting, unique and thought-provoking, the film loses momentum in the final act. We’re not talking Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers walking, but there seems to be a good 20-minute portion of the film where we focus on two or three members of the group just strolling around the corridors of the house. Initially it adds something to the story, but it soon becomes played out. Then when the finale comes, it’s revealed that pretty much everything you predicated at the beginning of the film comes to be.

Despite an interesting premise, providing the chance to do something really different from the pack, Death Game is ultimately a bit of a letdown. There’s not the gore and shock value of a Battle Royale, not the twists and turns of many other such films. That said, there’s a lot worse out there.

Extras: None

Review: Maniac / Cert: 18 /Director: Franck Khalfoun / Screenplay: Alexandre Aja, Gregory Levasseur, C.A. Rosenburg / Starring: Elijah Wood, Norah Arnezder, Jan Broberg / Release Date: July 1st

It’s hard to work out why this remake of William Lustig’s seminal and infamous 1980 horror movie exists. Lustig’s version remains notorious for its unrelenting violence and graphic bloodletting, and whilst this new version is no less gruesome – and occasionally downright repellent – its impact is diminished a little by the fact that the audience has become inured, across the intervening decades, by the tidal wave of ever more extreme horror films which followed in the wake of the original and all the other groundbreaking, stomach-troubling horrors of the early 1980s. It’s to the credit of someone, then – probably director Khalfoun – that Maniac 2012-style is capable of shocking even the most hardened horror nut; this is grim, bleak and bloody stuff – and yet the artistry and stylishness it brings to what could so easily be dismissed as a grubby, ugly slasher is admirable.

The story, what there is of it, concerns loner Frank (Wood), abused and mistreated by his prostitute mother as a child, prowling the streets of Los Angeles and stalking young women whom he terrorises, tortures and finally, graphically, scalps. He then fixes the bloody hair to the mannequins he keeps as part of his… umm… mannequin repair business. Every High Street should have one. Frank meets up with attractive French photographer Anna (Arnezder) and tries to fight his murderous nature by forming a proper relationship with a real woman. But will Frank be able to set aside his impulses at last and become a normal member of society? What do you think? Before long it’s ‘hair today, scalped tomorrow’ as Frank carries on murdering a little too close to Anna’s home.

Maniac is a nasty film which asks too much of its audience by expecting them to sympathise with a brutal and deeply troubled, unpleasant young man. The first person filming technique – we see almost all the action from Frank’s point-of-view (Wood appearing in reflection or in the peripheral vision of others) – is strikingly effective yet simultaneously disconcerting, giving the film an off-kilter, nightmarish quality of unreality. The violence is extreme and relentless – the seriously-squeamish need not apply – and occasionally exhaustingly explicit. Undeniably well-made and difficult, Maniac is too savagely real-world to sit comfortably in the more fantastical arena of the horror movie and much too unpleasant to appeal to the more traditional serial killer flick fan.

Extras: TBC

Review: Children’s Film Foundation Collection – Weird Adventures / Cert: U / Director: Various / Screenplay: Various / Starring: Michael Wade, Terry Raven, Mark Dightam, Robert Eddison, Michael McVey, Patrick Troughton, Jeff Rawle / Release Date: June 17th

Volume 3 of the BFI’s themed compilations of classic sixty-minute feature films from the Children’s Film Foundation (1950-87) takes a turn for the weird in what might be generously described as three science fiction or fantasy tales dabbling with perennial kid’s obsessions such as time travel, monsters and… er… turning bright yellow and travelling through electrical wavelengths. The earliest of the three is 1961’s black-and-white Monster of Highgate Ponds in which three terribly posh kids come into possession of a mysterious egg which has been brought back from darkest Malaysia by a top scientist. The egg  soon hatches into a baby dragon – sometimes depicted by way of a cute stop-motion creature courtesy of the legendary animators Halas and Batchelor – and the kids have to save the animal from falling into the hands of ruthless crooks as it grows into a full-size monster (i.e. a man in a bad rubber suit). Directed by Brazilian-born Alberto Cavalcanti, Monster of Highgate Ponds is silly, knockabout stuff but worthwhile for its generous and endlessly fascinating location filming in and around London at the turn of the decade complete with pre-TARDIS Police Box footage.

In a trendier, flarier 1973 we meet The Boy Who Turned Yellow – an inauspicious final project for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger – in which schoolboy John Saunders turns yellow when he loses his pet mouse during a visit to the Tower of London. During the night John is visited by Nic, a mysterious old man dressed in yellow with a flashing light on his head who teaches John how to travel via electrical frequencies but their rescue attempt nearly turns into disaster when John is captured by the Beefeaters. We’re not sure what Powell and Pressburger were knocking back when they came up with this one but its highlight is surely the idea that, in 1973, Tower Beefeaters could randomly behead trespassers. It’s a wild flight of fantasy and Robert Eddison’s performance as Nic is seriously creepy for all sorts of wrong reasons. The collection is rounded off by 1978’s A Hitch In Time in which former Doctor Troughton projects two school kids progressively further back in time (with the help of his ramshackle knobs-and-levers time machine) where they keep meeting up with the ancestors of their irritating school teacher (Rawle). With hilarious, slapstick consequences.

The fantastical nature of these three ‘weird adventures’ makes this an oddly less relatable and identifiable release than the previous two in the series. The humour is broader, the action less subtle and the special effects, inevitably, strive to reach the level of homespun. But in their own way they serve to sum up the pioneering spirit and intent of the CFF as they sought, on tiny budgets, to tell good, moralistic adventure stories for Britain’s increasingly sophisticated kids. Achingly dated but beautifully spruced-up for DVD, Weird Adventures can’t help but leave a warm glow.

Extras: Commemorative booklet

Review: Falling Skies Season 2 / Cert: 15 / Director: Various / Screenplay: Various / Starring: Noah Wyle, Moon Bloodgood, Will Patton, Drew Roy, Connor Jessup / Release Date: July 8th

More war-war and less jaw-jaw seems to the watchword for Season 2 of this alien invasion show. That hardy fighting force, the 2nd Mass, originally 300-strong, has been whittled down to 170-odd and is in constant danger of being pinned down by its foes. Young Ben (Jessup) has gone all trigger-happy. Several cuddly supporting characters bite the dust in agonizing ways. Doctor Anne (Bloodgood) is running out of medical supplies and platitudes. What with one thing and another, there’s hardly a moment any more for those nice long chats against a background of plinky-plonky piano that were such a feature of Season 1.

On the bright side, Tom (Wyle) is back from his excursion on an alien spaceship, even if the joyousness of his return is dampened somewhat by Ben accidentally shooting him (told you he’d gone trigger-happy). Oh, and he and Weaver (Patton), croaky-voiced leader of the 2nd Mass, are getting on much better too – in fact, they’re almost inseparable as they mull over maps and dream up ways of imperilling their men. A couple of potential game-changers are also afoot. A provisional government, it is rumoured, is being established in far-off Charleston, and there are even suggestions that a faction of the dreaded skitters (some of the pug-ugliest aliens ever to be seen on mainstream TV, half Creature from the Black Lagoon, half occasional table) are plotting to overthrow the fish-headed Overlords who are responsible for this whole Earth invasion lark. 

There are firefights galore, and Battlestar Galactica-style psychological games as several long-lost comrades turn up in mysterious circumstances. Beefed up, faster moving, more action-oriented and less character-driven than Season 1, it’s not quite The Walking Dead, but it’s pretty hard-hitting stuff. The SFX are impressive, a cunning mix of CGI and puppetry – the skitters skit, the Overlords build eerily glowing emplacements in the countryside, and Anne pulls a wriggling alien parasite out of Tom’s eyeball. The performances are very good too, although, as his character toughens up, there’s less scope for Wyle to exude the troubled decency that is his forte.

And then of course there are the constant references to the American War of Independence, which give the series a special relish for we Brits. Notice how the Overlords are tall and chinless? Just like us, by gad! All they’re missing is a monocle! (Still, we come off better than the French, who are presumably supposed to be the skitters.) Never mind – even if it won’t win any awards for diplomacy, Falling Skies is turning into a steadfast trooper of the small screen. This box set comes with a bandoleer of enjoyable features including a decent “making of”.

Extras: Audio commentaries / Writing the second American Revolution / Team Skitter / Designing the Spaceship / Creating the Crawlers / Terry O’Quinn is Manchester / Second Watch – Episode 20 / The Skitter Evolution / Season 3 Preview / Season 2 animated trailer

Review: Superman – Unbound / Cert: 15 / Director: James Tucker / Screenplay: Bob Goodman / Starring: Matt Bomer, Stana Katic, John Noble / Release Date: June 3rd

Superman: Unbound is an adaptation of Geoff Johns’ 2005 Brainiac arc, first seen in Action Comics #866-870. And whilst this 75 minute adaptation addresses the events on a slightly smaller scale, it is perhaps the most thorough and thoughtful deconstruction of the Man of Steel’s personal relationships that there has ever been.

Unlike previous DCU adaptations, Unbound makes a stark departure from the comic book’s artistic direction, opting for a younger, more angular Superman. That said, the animation is fantastic. The colours are deep, vibrant, and truly add to the spectacle of the story, especially in the otherworldly sections of the narrative. The character model for Supergirl has her own, slightly brighter colour palette, reflecting her naivety and youth, and looks absolutely fantastic. A little bit Swedish too.

Unbound is actually as much Supergirl’s story as it is Superman’s. Kara opens the film as she haphazardly foils a robbery and hostage (read: Lois) situation, earning her a scolding off from her cousin Kal-El, which leads to a nice, healthy dose of exposition and the first deconstruction of these Super relationships. Even with the cosmic scale of the film and the menacing threat of Brainiac, there’s an intimacy about Clark and Lois, Superman and Supergirl, and a keen sense of the two Kryptonian’s heritage.

Everything is turned upside down when Superman intercepts one of Brainiac’s scout drones, and leaves for space to pre-emptively save Earth. After witnessing the destruction of another alien planet, and experiencing firsthand Brainiac’s penchant for taking shrunken cities as souvenirs, the Last Son of Krypton confronts the Collector of Worlds aboard his Kafkaesque ship. Shenanigans invariably ensue.

There is an entire setpiece developed for the movie not present in the comic, which sees Superman trapped inside the infamous bottled city of Kandor, where he is able to interact with his people for the first time. His uncle Zor-El is wonderfully allegorical and summarises the film’s central theme, that you cannot control a living thing without destroying what is alive about it. And though he may be referring to Brainiac’s modus operandi, the viewer is left to muse on whether or not Clark being overprotective of Lois is really all that different.

In many ways, Superman: Unbound is the best Superman story out there, though that isn’t to say it doesn’t have flaws. The film has the uneven running pace of a peg-legged pirate, feeling rushed in some places and episodic in others, which is rather confusing considering its short run time. Plus, a villain who can be beaten with a series of pop-up ads for ‘Sexy Singles in Your Area’ should never be taken seriously.

Review: Journeyman – The Complete Series / Cert: U / Director: Various / Screenplay: Various / Starring: Kevin McKidd, Moon Bloodgood, Reed Diamond / Release Date: Out Now

They are a great many American TV shows that get cancelled before they have a chance to truly shine, and in most cases, they are quickly forgotten, which is a pity. Journeyman first appeared in 2007 and only lasted one season. The show follows the exploits of journalist Dan Vasser who becomes afflicted with the power to slip back in time. In true ‘story of the week’ style, the condition only stops when Vasser helps some stranger resolve some plot point or other.

Despite its sci-fi premise, the show is more about the human drama rather than the consequences of adjusting history; the time travel is simply there to move the drama forward, this is not Quantum Leap or Doctor Who. The main protagonist’s friends and family assume that these strange absences are the result of his terrible life choices, and the whole thing has a patina of the mundane about it, and this does make some of the episodes slower than they should be.

Luckily the ongoing plot threads are interesting, and it eventually gets round to developing an arc-plot. It gets better as the series builds momentum, becoming more intricate and interesting as it progresses. The story ends too soon, but we do get a reasonable conclusion to the whole thing and it is a complete story, despite also being a big pile of wasted potential.

The DVD extras are nice enough; we get some insight into how the show would have progressed had it not been cancelled, and how the whole thing was put together in the first place. It is unlikely that the show has many fans, and we doubt they’ll be any campaigns to bring it back, but this DVD collection does have enough features and commentaries to appease anyone with an interest in the show.

Extras: Flashing Backward – 75 min “making of” documentary / The Back Nine – what might have happened had the show not been cancelled / Audio commentaries / Deleted scenes / Stills gallery

Review: Warm Bodies / Cert: 12 / Director: Jonathan Levine / Screenplay: Jonathan Levine / Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, John Malkovich / Release Date: June 17th

R (Hoult) is a zombie. He eats brains like any other self-respecting zombie, but he’s conflicted about it. He spends his days milling around an airport with other dead-heads, avoiding the Boneys – decomposed skeletal beings who have no issues with devouring anyone with a heartbeat.

On a shamble around town, R and a group of zombies run into a group of survivors scavenging for supplies. During the inevitable face off, R eats the brains of Perry, Julie’s (Palmer’s) boyfriend. As a result, R digests Perry’s memories and finds himself protecting Julie and hiding her from his buddies. He takes her back to the airport and keeps her “protected” in one of the planes. As their dalliance continues, R begins to find his humanity again. His heart begins to beat and he discovers that he can talk. This causes a problem for R as the Boneys begin to notice his new-found affection for life. The other zombies also start to realise the same thing and begin to feel again. It all ends up with the survivors teaming up with the zombies to snuff out the Boney threat and live happily ever after.

Wait, what?

A zombie film where a zombie and a live female fall in love? And everyone’s okay with this? If the film had decided to take a comic route with the subject matter, then it could have worked. There are a couple of moments that will help you smirk, but this is no Shaun of the Dead. Instead, we get a messed up Shakespearian (think about the names of the main protagonists) love story – hell, there’s even a balcony scene! The Boneys appear to be rejects from I Am Legend, and the happy ending just doesn’t feel right.

How can a zombie come back to life and fight the urge to devour flesh and brains? How can human survivors, battling for years against the inhuman threat, suddenly trust the zombies and work alongside them? Is this film just a set-up to a necrophiliac’s dream? Well, thanks to the Twilight saga, another horror monster trope has been diluted for a teenage girl’s fantasy. So be warned, unless you are a female under 18 years of age, go watch Romero’s classic trilogy instead. You’ll be much more satisfied.

Extras: Features / Gag Reel / Deleted Scenes / Audio Commentary

Review: Ultraviolet Collectors Edition / Cert: 15 / Director: Joe Ahearne / Screenplay: Joe Ahearne / Starring: Jack Davenport, Susannah Harker, Idris Elba / Release Date: Out Now

Back in the late ’90s, TV shows about vampires weren’t the sure thing they are now. Buffy the Vampire Slayer had just got going and that was about it. So Ultraviolet felt like a breath of fresh air; a procedural crime drama about bloodsucking parasites and global conspiracies was just the thing to capture the imagination of your average horror fan.

Show creator Joe Ahearne had just finished working on twenty-something drama This Life, and you can see the fingerprints of that soap opera in this character-driven work. This is a show that suffers from a healthy dose of the end times, written during that period of history in which the Cold War had only just ended and people still weren’t sure we’d make it to the year 2000. Ultraviolet’s core story arc is heavily influenced by the idea that an apocalypse is coming, and it’s only thanks to the efforts of the valiant few that mankind can carry on pretending that there’s no such thing as monster.

The performances are superb, but then when you have the likes of Jack Davenport, Susannah Harker and Idris Elba as your main cast, it’s hard to go wrong. The series only lasted for six episodes, and this gritty and believable crime drama with fangs ended way to soon. The DVD extras that come with the set explain a lot of why there isn’t any more, and it’s fascinating to hear Ahearne explain his thinking around the show. If you have a taste for intelligent horror and urban decay, this one is worth a look, especially if it passed you by the first time.

Extras: Audio commentaries / Directing Ultraviolet / Creating Ultraviolet / Casting Ultraviolet / Deleted scenes / TV spots

Review: Blow Out / Cert 18 / Director: Brian De Palma / Screenplay: Brian De Palma / Starring: John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, Dennis Franz / Release Date: Out Now

Brian De Palma’s often overlooked classic was much maligned on its original release, but has garnered a worthy reputation as one of his best. It now receives a welcome release on HD in a transfer supervised and approved by the director himself.

Film sound-man Jack Terry (Travolta) is out late at night recording ambient and incidental sounds when a passing car suffers a tire blow out and crashes off the road into a lake. He manages to rescue the passenger, Sally (Allen), but the driver is dead. Listening back to his recordings, he discovers another sound prior to the tire blowing: a gunshot. When he finds out the driver was a prospective presidential candidate and that Sally was not his wife, he becomes convinced that something more sinister is afoot, and is compelled to investigate further.

De Palma’s film is often dismissed as little more than a remodelling of Michelangelo Antonioni’s brilliant Blow-Up (1966) and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974), but this is far from a pointless retread. The focus on the technical process adds a fascinating element to the action and suspense, which De Palma is deft at. With healthy nods to real-life conspiracy theories, De Palma constructs a film which is fluid and completely compelling but which doesn’t get too bogged down in complex plot strands. Travolta shows he is more than just a song and dance man, which is how he was seen as at this point in his career, Lithgow demonstrates what a brilliant bad guy he makes, and Allen is wonderful once you get past the annoying accent.

Arrow’s release is packed with some great features, as we have come to expect. The producer, composer and Nancy Allen all have brilliant insights, but it is the feature on cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond which is most rewarding, just as his work in the film is.

Extras: Black and White in Colour – An Interview with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond / Rag Doll Memories – Nancy Allen on Blow Out / Return to Philadelphia – An interview with Producer George Litto / A gallery of on-set photos by photographer Louis Goldman / Original Theatrical Trailer / Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Michael Atkinson, a conversation between Quentin Tarantino and De Palma, and more.

Review: Combat – Season 3 / Cert: TBC/ Director: Various / Screenplay: Various / Starring: Vic Morrow, Rick Jason, Dick Peabody/ Release Date: June 4th (Region 1)

Certainly the longest running (5 years) and one of the best television shows depicting the lives of soldiers in World War II, Combat delivers the goods! The top-notch cast is headed by Vic Morrow as the tough, Thompson machine gun-wielding Sgt. Saunders and Rick Jason as the serious, Lt. Hanley. Together, this formidable duo lead their men through numerous dangerous missions.

Season 3 has more than its fair share of highlights. The Duel sees Saunders, on foot, single handedly engaging a German tank in a deadly game of cat and mouse. In The Little Carousel, a 13-year-old French nurse wants to help Saunders and his men after they infiltrate a German-held town. The Steeple is loosely based on the true story of American paratrooper John Steele whose chute caught on a church steeple during the battle of St. Mare Ingles. Hanley and Saunders have to rescue a soldier in the same predicament in a town overrun by the German army. In Cry in the Ruins, Hanley and a German lieutenant form a temporary truce in order to work together to rescue a woman’s baby. Well written, with lots of twists and turns, it’s a great character study of men in combat. Odyssey is about Saunders making his way back to his lines by pretending to be a shell-shocked German soldier, while The Enemy sees Hanley capturing a German demolitions expert (wonderfully played by Robert Duvall) who has booby-trapped the town they’re in. Lots of tense moments in this well-thought out story.

Guest stars were frequent on the show and, as well as Duvall, Season 3 is graced by the likes of Charles Bronson, Telly Savalas, James Whitmore and Frank Gorshin. The thirty-two hour-long episodes are in stunningly crisp black and white with great sound, and they look remarkably realistic given that they were shot on the MGM back lot in Culver City and in Thousand Oaks, California (sadly, all condos today). A great show, and if you want to learn more, check out Jo Davidsmeyer’s Combat: A Viewer’s Companion to the Television Series, an incredibly well written and researched book with a ton of behind-the-scenes stories.

Extras: None