Lake Mungo purports to be a documentary about certain events in the small Australian town of Ararat in 2005. Sixteen year old Alice Palmer (Talia Zucker) drowns in a weir while picnicking with her family, and soon afterwards strange sounds start coming from her bedroom. Over the ensuing weeks, the dead girl appears inexplicably in photographs taken in the back yard and near the spot where she died. More murky manifestations are recorded by the battery of video cameras which the disturbed family set up around the house, and then it’s time to call in a psychic and have a séance around the kitchen table.

Aided by a thoroughly convincing cast, writer/director Joel Anderson mixes together fake news clips, eye witness reports, interviews with the family and bits and pieces of found footage competently enough. But audiences have come a long way since they used to quiver uncontrollably at the blurry goings on of The Blair Witch Project, and recent movies in a similar vein such as , Paranormal Activity and The Last Exorcism have pretty much strip-mined the docu-horror sub-genre of its potential to scare the bejesus out of you. And the less disarmed you are by the exercise, the more aware you become of the slightly absurd contrivances used to explain how it is there always seems to be a camcorder running at just the right time. In this case, the movie also suffers from the filmmakers breaking their own rules on occasion by having supposedly static lenses suddenly panning and zooming onto shapes skulking in the shadows.

The strength of Lake Mungo rests in the material, not the method. What starts off as a straightforward ghost story deepens into a portrait of a family struggling to come to terms with grief, the father (David Pledger) becoming a work zombie, the mother (Rosie Traynor) taking to nightly incursions into other people’s homes and the son (Martin Sharpe) trying to bring his sister back through the medium of trick photography. With the discovery of a diary exuding nebulous dread and a video tape showing the supposedly virginal Alice in a threesome with the couple next door, the narrative spreads into a Twin Peaks style, “Who killed Laura Palmer?”-esque exploration of the dark roots of the girl’s demise. One friend explains, “She kept secrets and she kept the fact that she kept secrets a secret.”

As the bewildered parents learn more about a daughter who was far more complex than they ever imagined while she was alive, the film delivers moments that are both gripping and touching, and the detective work eventually leads to a discovery of truly skin-crawling awfulness. Yes, it comes rather late to the docu-horror party, but Lake Mungo will definitely have anyone who sees it peering suspiciously at any vague blobs in the corners of their holiday snaps.

Lake Mungo is out now.

 

Watching the new X-Men and Green Lantern movies recently I couldn’t help pondering, as various costumed superhero characters hurtled and whizzed about the sky, how easy it all looks nowadays. The CGI age has made just about anything imaginable possible and now a man can fly on film as easily as he might once have walked. But it wasn’t always that way; back in 1977 when the first full-length colour Superman feature film was being prepared, heads were being scratched for months by special effects technicians and associated studio backroom boys on the vexed question of how they could make a man fly – and make him fly convincingly. Hard to believe now that something we take for granted in so many films these days was, just over thirty years ago, the one element of this colourful new superhero film which would decide whether the project would stand or fall. Or fly.

Fortunately Superman – The Movie flew – and flew high – and launched a franchise (long before the word became common currency) which would not only influence and inform superhero movies for the next three decades but also carried on for nearly ten years before bursting back into life a few years ago with a much-belated if misguided reboot. All five films, from Superman – the Movie to Superman Returns have been packaged together before, of course, most notably in a big chunky multi-DVD tin set issued a few years ago. But now the age of the Blu-ray is with us so here they come again in a glitzy new 8-disc boxset which ports over the films (looking shinier than ever before in the latest format), the extras from the old tin set plus a smattering of new bits and pieces, especially for Superman Returns.

The Salkinds, original producers of the series, hit paydirt when they discovered and cast the hitherto-unknown Christopher Reeve for their first movie. As Reeve explains in one of the accompanying behind-the-scenes features, he let the costume do the work as Superman while he concentrated on making the bumbling Clark Kent a more credible character. Reeve is the one constant in the first four films and while the movies themselves are of varying quality, he gives Superman a quiet dignity and an utter believability it’s impossible to imagine of any other actor of the time.

The series kicks off with Superman – The Movie (Rating: 7) and in many ways it’s the superheo origin movie against which all subsequent superhero origin movies are inevitably judged. The opening sequences on the doomed planet Krypton, with little Kal-El’s parents (Marlon Brando as Dad Jor-El pocketed the biggest paycheque in cinema history at the time for just a few days work) packing their son off in a rocket as their world blows up, is majestic and just the right side of pompous. The capsule arrives on Earth a couple of years later and the infant within is adopted by Smallville farmers Jonathan and Martha Kent. Their new son, Clark, grows up into a strapping lad who has to hide his burgeoning superpowers from his contemporaries but when Jonathan suffers a fatal heart attack Clark decides it’s time to move to nearby Metropolis (quite clearly, oddly, New York, Statue of Liberty and all) to start a new life. Here’s where Superman – The Movie begins to wobble. Director Richard Donner explains how, the moment Clark arrives in Metropolis, the film becomes a real comic strip and in truth this sudden, jarring change of tone, is a bit of a disappointment. Clumsy Clark quickly ingratiates himself with the staff of local rag the Daily Planet but when tongue-in-cheek bad guy Lex Luther (Gene Hackman) and his incompetent gang of two turn up – with quirky comedy background music to remind us they’re supposed to be funny – the film starts to get a bit tiresome, evoking memories of the 1960s Batman TV series which the film had initially seemed so keen to avoid. But things start to perk up as we see more of Superman in action in flight sequences which now look quaint but at the time were abslolutely revolutionary. However, the scene where Superman takes a dazzled Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) for a test flight around the world – and above – are as enchanting now as they were back in 1978. Ultimately Superman thwarts Luther’s dastardly plot to destroy California (for the purposes of obtaining some cheap real estate, it seems) but the alarming coda where Superman turns back time to save Lois Lane who has been killed in an earthquake tends to undermine the whole ethos of the character, suggesting that there’s no threat Superman can’t defeat just by reversing time.

Superman 2 (presented here in its theatrical cut and in the extended cut assembled by fired director Richard Donner – long story) is probably the most satisfying film of the series (Rating: 8). Superman reveals his true identity to Lois Lane and surrenders his alter ego and superpowers so he can spend a normal life with the woman he loves. Awww. Unfortunately, three Kryptonian bad guys, imprisoned in the notorious ‘Phantom Zone’ at the beginning of the first film, escape their entombment and make their way to Earth where, also imbued with superhuman powers, they start to kick some puny mortal ass. Unfortunately Lex Luther’s out of prison and ruining the atmos but eventually Clark regains his powers and, in the Donner cut, turns back time again so the Zoners never arrive on Earth and Lois never found out about his secret identity. Superman 2 is a bigger, bolder movie; it still has some of the languid pacing issues of the first film but the action’s better and more spectacular and, despite the reappearance of Lex Luther, some of the comedy is toned down.

Superman 3 (Rating: 5) is very much the runt of the litter. After an ingenious and witty extended opening sequence, the film descends into farce with the introduction of the irritating Richard Pryor as computer nerd Gus Gorman. There’s some good stuff here as Clark Kent is reunited with childhood flame Lana Lang (in the absence of Lois Lane) and the battles between good Superman/evil Superman are powerfully done but there’s a nagging feeling that the well is starting to run dry a bit.

Superman 4: The Quest For Peace (Rating:6) is usually derided as the absolute nadir of the series and it’s true that there’s a lot wrong here. The film, produced now by the notorously tight-fisted Canon Group, looks much cheaper (many of the flying sequences are ghastly) and much of the live action is obviously filmed in the UK (famously in Milton Keynes). But this remains probably the least-seen of the Superman movies and it’s actually really not as bad as memory and popular opinion might have it. The tighter running time (it clocks in at barely 90 minutes courtesy of wedges of deleted material, some of which is included here) means it’s a nippier story, with the Daily Planet taken over by a vulgar media mogul (Sam Wanamaker) and Lex Luther (yes, again!) creating a new enemy for Superman in the shape of the snarling Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow). It’s a troubled film but it’s not without its moments, especially in Clark Kent’s fumbling relationship with the newspaper tycoon’s daughter and an attempt to recreate the magic of the Lois/Superman flying sequence of the first film which is scuppered by lousy visual effects. The film was a real labour of love for Reeve and whilst its underlying theme – Superman ridding the world of nuclear weapons – is hopelessly naive, Superman 4 is probably worthy of a bit of a re-evaluation.

Audiences had to wait a long time to see the Man of Steel back on the big screen and when he arrived it was with a new star – unknown Brandon Routh – and long-time fan Bryan Singer, hot off the back of two well-received X Men movies, in the director’s chair. But this was 2006 and the world had changed since Superman last flew in 1987. Not only was Singer far too reverential to the old movies – Superman Returns (Rating: 6) was sold as a sequel to Superman 2 – by it seems that an edgy American public, still shaken by the events of 9/11, weren’t in the mood for a flippant film about an all-powerful extra-terrestrial superhero who can sort out all the world’s problems. Despite a spirited performance by Routh as Superman, the film was hampered by stodgy pacing, a lack of much in the way of real visual spectacle, another comedic turn from Luther (this time played by Kevin Stacey), a dreary subplot about Lois Lane’s son (is he? isn’t he?? Who cares?) and the by-now seriously hoary old standby of Superman being robbed of his powers by green kryptonite. Been there, done that. Superman Returns isn’t a bad movie but it’s really the wrong one at the wrong time.

All eyes turn now to Zack Snyder and his new Superman in the form of Henry Cavill in the next instalment of the saga, due in a couple of years. Until then this lavish little Blu-ray set will more than pass the time, serving as a testament to the true legend of the Man of Steel and especially to the huge legacy of the late Christopher Reeve; he really did make you believe a man could fly.

Extras

The contemporary ‘making of’ stuff has dated badly but the set brings over the two-part restrospective hosted by Marc McClure (Jimmy Olsen) which itself hails from 2002. Disc eight houses the fascinating full-length Look, Up In The Sky documentary which charts the character’s long history as well as a more movie-specific documentary, a special tribute to Reeve and a 1958 TV pilot entitled The Adventures of Superpup. Honestly. Superman Returns gets some new deleted scenes, a new opening sequence and production diaries and the whole package is bulked up with the classic Flesicher and Famous’ Studios cartoons (but still no sign of the classic 1960s Filmation cartoons!) and the George Reeve Superman feature Superman and the Mole Men.

 

Trainee priest and would-be exorcist Michael Kovak (Colin O’Donoghue) has got a bit of a problem. He’s not sure he believes in God any more and he certainly doesn‘t believe in the Devil; yep, his faith is on the wane. One of his tutors, Father Xavier (Ciaran Hinds) dispatches him across Rome to meet his old friend Father Lucas Trevant (Anthony Hopkins… Sir Anthony Hopkins to you), a grizzled and experienced exorcist who’s making slow progress with his latest patient, a pregnant sixteen year-old girl named Rosaria (Marta Gastini) who’s clearly under the influence of some baleful and malevolent presence, possibly something supernatural. Michael remains sceptical and prefers to find rational explanations for what appear to be entirely irrational occurrences. But as he becomes more familiar with Father Lucas’s work and sees Rosaria’s condition deteriorate, he begins to doubt his own doubts and when Father Lucas himself falls prey to something demonic, Michael has to question everything he believes in – and everything he doesn’t.

‘The Rite’ is an odd one. It’s clearly a film which, by its very nature, is going to invite comparisons with ’The Exorcist’ (Father Lucas even obliquely references the film at one point) and while it’s refreshing to find a modern horror movie eschewing the gore and CGI so prevalent in the genre nowadays, the fact is that ‘The Rite’ doesn’t really have anything new to bring to its chosen table. We’ve seen this all before, although admittedly not recently. The shadows of ‘The Exorcist’ looms over every frame of ‘The Rite’; Rosaria is a twenty-first century Regan (although Rosaria’s demon is substantially less foul-mouthed and vomitty than Linda Blair’s invader) and the film tick-boxes all the expected tropes – supernatural signs and portents, gravely-voiced demons, ghastly physical transformations for the possessed. Oh, and there are some frogs…

But despite the sense of déjà vu it engenders, ‘The Rite’ is, curiously, fitfully entertaining and engaging. O’Donoghue’s a compelling leading man, neatly capturing the torment of the faltering priest whose previous dealing with death – watching his father preparing his dead mother for burial – has had a traumatic impact upon him. Then there’s Sir Anthony who can always be replied upon to pile on the ham when playing these somewhat larger-than-life types (his spectacular turns in ‘Dracula’ and last year’s ropey ‘Wolf Man’ reboot spring readily to mind) but here he dials it down a bit, only really letting rip when he’s possessed by the demonic Baal and even then he just raises his voice a bit, wheels out the Welsh accent and hurls a few mild insults in Michael’s general direction.  Mikael Hafstrom (who directed the John Cusack vehicle ‘1408’ in 2007) handles the material well, teasing out a few subtle scares and creating a nice Gothic atmosphere from his dank and often dingy Italian locations and he’s to be applauded for at least trying to create a real, physical horror film and resisting the urge to drown the screen in the red stuff and silly CGI demons. But the problem is that without anything particularly new in its story or its execution, it just becomes an efficient, if unremarkable little chiller; not so much ‘the rite stuff’, more of a case of just

about ‘all rite’.

DVD purchasers get some deleted scenes for their sins but those who go for the Blu-ray exeprience get some ‘real life exorcist’ guff and a ‘chilling alternative ending’ which didn’t particularly chill this reviewer.

‘The Rite’ is out now on DVD and Blu-ray

With ‘Antichrist’ (2009), Lars von Trier delivered a controversial cabin-in-the-woods shocker that had husbands all over the world hiding their toolboxes from their wives. It was all a bit of a slap in the face for those who wanted to pigeonhole the director as a purveyor of sensitive art movies. But actually von Trier’s roots in horror go way back to the start of his career – witness ‘The Kingdom’, his wonderful small-screen outing, available for the first time on DVD.

The box set contains both four hour instalments of the series, made for Danish television in 1994 and 1997. An intended third instalment never saw the light of day, so be warned, the whole thing comes to an abrupt stop with any number of loose ends in the air. Even so, that still adds up to almost eight hours of brilliant television you won’t want to miss.

The setting is Copenhagen’s real life premier hospital, which, we learn in a moody intro, rests upon ancient bleaching ponds full of evil emanations. Intended to be a centre of excellence and rationality, the whole fabric of the place is soaked through with eldritch influences. A ghostly ambulance makes regular stops in the forecourt, and one of the lift shafts is haunted by a little girl with a tinkling bell which sounds the death knell for whoever hears it.

Trying to lay the little girl to rest is Mrs Russe (Kirsten Rolffes), a charismatic supernatural sleuth who feigns obscure complaints gleaned from textbooks to get herself admitted to the neurological ward. Enlisting the help of her porter son, she goes delving into the hospital’s secrets. Unfortunately, her ghost-hunting inadvertently makes things worse by opening up a hole into the underworld down in the labyrinthine basement.

Part of ‘The Kingdom’s originality lies in the way in which it weaves this classic ghost story into a busy, multi-stranded, US style medical soap. Not that any of the staff of the Kingdom could be mistaken for Dr. Kildare. Holding regular masonic lodge meetings in the laundry room, they include such creepy individuals as Professor Bondo (Baard Owe), a morbid pathologist who transplants a rare tumour into his body and lovingly nurtures it in the hope it will reach record-breaking size. There’s Hook (Soren Pilmark,) the local fixer, who’s not above blackmailing a callow intern for his theft of a cadaver’s head. There’s Hook’s romantic interest, Judith (Birgitte Raaberg,) whose pregnancy by a mystery man begins to take a worrying turn as her belly swells alarmingly.

Surpassing them all in colourfulness is Helmer (Ernst Hugo Jaregard,) an internationally acclaimed neurosurgeon who’s only been on the staff two months and has already got himself in a legal wrangle over a botched brain operation. An unwilling exile from his beloved Sweden, he relieves his feelings of scorn for Denmark in general and his colleagues in particular by going onto the roof and raging, “Danish scum!” Caught in a turf-war with Hook, it’s not long before he’s contemplating turning the insubordinate junior doctor into a zombie with a dose of poison in his morning beverage.

The tangled parallel plots combine chills and intrigue with flights of awkward, seemingly improvised comedy that foreshadow ‘The Office’ (there’s an excruciating staff sing along which you would swear could only have sprung from the brain of Ricky Gervais.) Co-writing with Niels Versel, von Trier shows a deftness, an abundance of high spirits and a gift for cunningly slow-burning punchlines that will astonish those who associate him primarily with dour, doom-laden melodramas.

The directorial style is borrowed from the documentary feel pioneered by American cop shows such as ‘Homicide: Life on the Street’ and ‘NYPD Blue’, with hand-held cameras, in-scene cuts and jerky panning shots, but here it’s taken a step further with 16 mm film stock processed to give it the ultra-grainy, bleached out look of poor quality video. After the success of ‘The Blair Witch Project’, this approach became almost standard in horror. Von Trier (co-directing with Morten Arnfred) deserves credit not only for getting there first but for the sureness with which he deploys what were then new-minted techniques. The moment, shot with a night vision lens, when a couple of characters stumble upon a fully-fledged black mass in one of the hospital cellars still delivers an incredible chill. (‘The Kingdoms’ debt to American TV was repaid when Stephen King adapted it into the glossy but ponderous ‘Kingdom Hospital‘).

The cast are all impeccable. Kirsten Rolffes is a delight as the Miss Marple-ish Mrs Drusse, while veteran stage actor Ernst Hugo Jaregard delivers what is simply one of the great small screen performances as the ‘angry Swede’ Helmer. The second instalment isn’t perhaps quite as strong as the first (and its an enormous pity the third instalment was never made,) but taken as a whole ‘The Kingdom’ is a sublime TV show which finds von Trier on inspired form. With extras including lengthy documentaries and audio commentaries, this box set is an ideal portal to a world that is as engaging as it is disturbing.

‘The Kingdom’ is released on DVD in the UK on the 4th of July.

 

The most brilliantly-titled film of the year sees UK comedy dream team Simon Pegg and Nick Frost reunited for the first time since Hot Fuzz but without their long-time collaborator and friend Edgar Wright in the director’s chair. This time around the boys are working with Greg Mottola, talented director of Superbad and, inevitably, they’ve created a film with a different sort of energy, albeit one which relies on the same chemistry between the two leads which powered the superior Shaun of the Dead (possibly the best British film of the last decade) and Hot Fuzz.

Pegg and Frost are back in familiar territory playing a pair of British sci-fi geeks fulfilling a lifelong dream in attending the legendary Comic-Con in San Diego before renting an RV and setting off on a road trip across America’s UFO heartland. A speeding car careers off the road across their path and out from the wreckage appears Paul, a wise-cracking, foul-mouthed alien in the classic ‘grey’ tradition of all the famous faked alien autopsy footage. Paul’s on the run and our two heroes find themselves rushing across the States with Men in Black in hot pursuit determined to track down the escaped extra-terrestrial.

It’s good to see Pegg and Frost back on screen (in a script they co-wrote) not only because they work so well together but also because they seem to do their best work together. Pegg’s solo work can be hit and miss; for every Run Fatboy Run there’s a stinker like Burke and Hare and his misjudged comic interpretation of Scotty in the first new Star Trek movie threatened to unbalance a decent reinvention of a stodgy franchise. Frost is scarcely leading man material but he offers up decent support in films such as the otherwise dire Boat That Rocked and the recent Attack the Block and gave a good account of himself in Money on BBC2 last year. But the on-screen partnership created in TV’s Spaced is where the magic really happens and they’re both on top form in Paul where they only slightly compromise their comic sensibilities for a broader American audience in a mainstream American movie.

Paul is clearly a labour of love for Pegg and Frost, allowing them to slip easily back into their preferred nerdy sci-fi fan boy personas and their script is littered with references to the most influential SF films of the last thirty years from Star Wars, Aliens and Close Encounters via a cheeky recreation of a famous cheesy scene from the original Star Trek TV series. Some of the running gags are more obvious and less subtle but the film never slips too far into American Pie crudity despite the inevitable strong language and some of Paul’s gross-out behaviour. Paul himself is a masterpiece of special effects, CGI so convincing that it’s easy to forget that he generally didn’t exist as a physical presence during the filming. The animation is flawless and intricately-detailed with Seth Rogen’s vocal performance giving a potentially-unattractive character a real warmth and, ironically,  real humanity.

Plenty of action, some good gags, great supporting performances from the always-reliable Jason Bateman and Sigourney Weaver (swearing her head off), a resolution which just about manages to stay on the right side of mawkishness and a frankly killer deadpan final line of dialogue combine to create an affectionate, inventive fun romp of a road movie. Pegg and Frost are always a delight to watch and Paul will do nicely until Edgar Wright’s back on board for the long-awaited third in the so-called ‘Cornetto’ trilogy.

Paul is out on Blu-ray and two-disc DVD with a slew of brief special features (Bloopers, the Evolution of Paul) a forty-minute detailed ‘making of’ on disc two and the inevitable commentary and the film itself appears as the theatrical version and an extended ’unrated’ version.

Agree? Disagree? Your rating…

 

Paul is available now in the UK.

 

From the opening notes of Riz Ortolani’s romantic score Ruggero Deodato’s film sets out to sidestep audience expectation somewhat. There are cannibal horror movies and there’s Cannibal Holocaust. Has there ever been such a controversial film made in all cinema history?

Abusive, disgusting, lurid, misogynistic, racist, all these descriptions sit next to: brilliant, haunting, mesmerising and powerful. Whatever you throw at – accusation or praise – it tends to stick. The movie offers a murky, blood-soaked path for the viewer to navigate – if they’re brave enough.

The closing jungle sequence, in which the intrepid gang are hunted down by the angry Ya̧nomamös, is Deodato’s most excessive point and he uses the bleakest humour. So pitch-black, in fact, some probably don’t see the satire. Even at the moment of death the camera rolls to exploit the hopeless situation. It could be said Alan, Faye, Jack and Mark stop being characters all together and become mere objects of the director’s scorn for the media. Such is the barbarity of these last moments, the viewer feels disorientated and quite possibly numb.

Of course the major issue many have with Cannibal Holocaust is it sensationalises that which it seeks to condemn. Random acts of animal slaughter which serve no purpose beyond the perfunctory adds to this sense of confusion. The new cut presented at Cine-Excess V on May 26th, 2011, has recently been granted a BBFC certificate and passed with a mere fifteen seconds worth of cuts. They come from the muskrat scene. As Felipe the guide kills the poor little critter Deodato now cuts away to the jungle, but the gruelling shriek remains. Other contentious moments have been re-edited too.

Throughout the film, when things get extra gory, the director uses a smart special effects device which presents itself as scratches over the film. It works well. The turtle sequence has been trimmed and now seems to cause no problems for the BBFC. Again, special effects are implemented over the scene when it gets that little bit too gruesome but there’s plenty to see – whether you want to or not.

On the big screen Cannibal Holocaust’s ability to shock is undiminished and surely testament to the skill of its director. The savagery of the imagery packs a mean punch as much as the transgressive cannibalism. The forced abortion, impaled girl and the burned, rotting body of an old woman are still repulsive. The unflinching camera’s gaze and the excitement of the filmmakers maximizes audience discomfort.

After 30 years the film continues to be seen one of the most shocking ever made. Unlike the works of Umberto Lenzi and others who ventured deep into the cannibal subgenre Deodato’s fine craftsmanship shines. He began his career as an assistant to Italian master Roberto Rossellini and became a noted AD working with major European and American filmmakers throughout the 1960s.

Does Cannibal Holocaust exist within the fine tradition of Italian neo-realism? Perhaps on a superficial level it does. Yet the true inspiration, one less celebratory than an iconic period of Italian cinema, are documentaries such as Mondo cane (1962), which sensationalised other cultures, faked supposedly authentic rituals and included the slaughter of animals for extra kicks. Pushing boundaries and exploiting material walked hand in hand and to hell with taste!

Deodato’s new cut, to be released in a few months time – bar a moral panic or media shit storm, will no doubt further the debate on the film’s merits and failings and allow a new generation to experience Deodato’s picture close to as originally intended. Indeed, questions still remain over the validity of its message and stance but there’s no denying, however accidental, its cinematic power.

Cannibal Holocaust is released on Blu-ray by Shameless Films Monday 26th September, 2011.

Review: 5150 Elm’s Way (18) / Director: Eric Tessier / Screenplay: Patrick Senecal / Starring: Marc-Andre Grondin, Normand D’Armour, Sonia Vachon, Mylene St-Sauveur / Release date: Out now 

Sometimes you’ll watch a film that so subverts your expectations that it can generate immense goodwill regardless of any flaws it may have.

One such movie is the French Canadian thriller 5150, Elm’s Way, a quietly efficient tale of religious psychopaths, suburban imprisonment and chess. Directed by Éric Tessier, it is a film that takes an unconventional approach to the killer and captive story, managing to navigate its way successfully through a plot that, in less assured hands, would collapse under the weight of its own implausibility.

It begins when we meet Yannick (Marc-André Grondin), a young man recently enrolled in film school, who has just moved into his own place and seems to be on the verge of a new life of exciting possibilities. Cycling along an ordinary suburban street, he has an accident after a cat dashes across his path and so, hurt and unable to ride his damaged bike, he calls at a nearby house for assistance. However, through a series of contrivances he ends up entering the house uninvited and, after hearing someone shouting for help, is imprisoned when the owner of the house drags the pleading incumbent out and locks Yannick in.

It is at this point that seasoned horror fans could be forgiven for thinking that they’re going to be subjected to prolonged depictions of torture, brutality and gore, all leading to a protracted chase sequence and a bloody showdown between killer and captive. However, this is not the case because the man who has imprisoned Yannick does not live alone, but rather shares the house with his wife and two daughters. And far from it being a charnel house of pain and degradation, it all looks rather normal, the only unusual aspect being that Dad considers himself one of the ‘righteous’ with a mission in life to punish the ‘unrighteous’. Granted, we soon learn that he is a religious maniac but as psychopaths on a mission from God go, he’s rather a sympathetic one. So when his wife persuades him that Yannick may be one of the righteous he resists the urge to murder him and instead has to work out what he’s going to do with him.

Jacques Beaulieu as Normand D’Amour is the film’s main strength, the father of the house and the film’s chief antagonist, eschewing as he does any temptation to rant or gurn his way through scenes in order to convince us of his religious mania. Instead he seems (for the most part) like the sort of guy you’d be quite happy to have as a next door neighbour, his attempts to use only reasonable force against his prisoner at odds with the cold flash of steel we glimpse in his eyes when he expresses a need to get back to work on his ‘project’.

Jacques’s relationship with the rest of the family, all of whom are aware of Yannick’s imprisonment, is one of the most interesting elements of the movie and it is a credit to the actors concerned that they are all such convincing characters, managing to sustain our interest and belief in a situation that could so easily have been one dimensional. There is the hot headed daughter Michelle (Mylène St-Sauveur), desperate for her father’s approval but constantly incurring his wrath for her use of unnecessary violence; his timid but basically decent w

ife Maude (Sonia Vachon), whose main purpose is to placate her husband while keeping her younger daughter, Anne (Élodie Larivière), safe from her father’s occasional bursts of anger; and then there is Anne herself, who is clearly psychologically disturbed by her home life, prone as she is to putting rat poison in her father’s coffee.

For most of its running time the film switches between Yannick’s attempts to escape and Jacques’s efforts to keep his domestic situation under control while carrying on with the work of punishing those he deems deserving. He does this while seeking to initiate his eldest daughter into the business of killing with a view to continuing his mission when his ‘project’ is complete.

The main psychological strength of the film is in the burgeoning relationship between Yannick and Jacques as the latter’s complete conviction in the rightness of his actions is challenged by the former. Yannick’s need to prove to Jacques that he is insane and that what he is doing is not the work of God gradually comes to eclipse his desire to escape. So when Jacques proposes that if Yannick can beat him in just one game of chess he will accept he is wrong and release him, Yannick’s desire to do so becomes all encompassing.

Throughout, Yannick is attempting to resist his own descent into insanity, made manifest through hallucinatory sequences brought about by his feelings of claustrophobia and his obsession with proving Jacques wrong. But, in keeping with its habit of gently subverting your expectations, the film resists the temptation to pursue a resolution that seems inevitable at this point and, by doing so, retains both the credibility of its story and the integrity of its characters.

This is a film that won’t be for everyone with a taste for horror/thrillers, as its pacing is occasionally uneven and there may be those who find the running time of 110 minutes a tad indulgent. In truth, the film does sag somewhat around the half way mark before picking up again once the chess challenge has been made. Also, the plot developments as it nears its finale will perhaps be a step too far for anyone unable to ignore the practical difficulties of one revelation in particular. But for me the dénouement was a gloriously ghoulish finale that, though pushing the bounds of credibility, exhibited a Grand Guignol sensibility that meant I couldn’t help but admire the audacity of it all.

5150, Elm’s Way surprised me a lot, there being very little in it that I thought was predictable or formulaic. This being a film that was made in 2009 it seems a shame that it seems to have garnered such scant attention (at least in the UK) since its initial release. I’d therefore advise anyone with an interest in seeing a thriller that offers something a little bit different to rectify that oversight, now that it has found a release on DVD.

If there is one horror film scenario that fans of the genre might project themselves into more than any other, it is perhaps the one where society collapses as the result of a Zombie Apocalypse. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve had conversations on numerous occasions with like-minded folk (and unlike-minded folk who always seem to want to move away from me if I’m honest) about where I would seek to hide out, who I would endeavour to take with me and what possessions I would be prepared to leave behind. Then there is that old chestnut where I’ve asked myself how ruthless could I be in dispatching a loved one who’d received a bite from the undead (I’ve been assured by my girlfriend that she wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet between my eyes the moment I went green around the gills and started to drool).

For such people, the arrival of season one of The Walking Dead on DVD and Blu-ray, is all of their Zombie Christmases come at once. Telling its story over 6 hour-long episodes, the debut season of The Walking Dead follows a small group of survivors as they travel across Georgia, trying to stay alive in a world where the dead have come to life. So far, so same old story. However, what elevates The Walking Dead above all but a handful of Zombie movies is the time it is able to take to focus on the survivors and their individual stories. So any fan of such classics as Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead or Zombie Flesh Eaters who has ever wondered what happens to the survivors after the credits roll, can get those questions answered as they go on at that very journey with them. Thanks to show runner, co-writer and sometime director, Frank Darabont, it is a journey that is often moving, frequently horrific and never anything less than thoroughly compelling.

Darabont may not have seemed the most obvious contender to bring Robert Kirkman’s comic book series to life but anyone who has seen his adaptation of Stephen King’s The Mist will appreciate his ability to focus on human dynamics, bringing drama to the fore in a tale ostensibly concerned with monsters. It is this human drama that sustains The Walking Dead, with several episodes featuring surprisingly little Zombie action. But that’s okay because as well as having to cope with the end of the world, this bunch of happy campers have to deal with dilemmas such as spousal infidelity, red neck racists, wife-beaters, and Latino street gangs, all whilst looking for a place to which they can retreat and rebuild their shattered lives.

However, Zombie action is never far away and just when you’ve become engrossed by the struggles the survivors are experiencing within their group, a large horde of very hungry Zombies will hover into view to focus everybody’s minds on the overriding issue of the day. It is this balance of the human drama interspersed with adrenaline pumping scenes of action and peril that makes The Walking Dead so utterly gripping. Highlights include Deputy Sheriff Rick Grimes’ (Andrew Lincoln) arrival in a seemingly deserted Atlanta and a daring attempt by Rick and Glen (Steven Yeun) to make their way through Zombie infested streets covered in blood and entrails to disguise their human scent. The cliffhanger to episode three suggests that the second season will see the return of a problem that may force the unwanted attentions of the undead onto the back burner (and if you don’t consider yourself to be in this for the long haul by the end of this thrilling episode, then stories of Zombie survival horror are clearly not for you).

Although this is a television show boasting a wonderful emsemble cast, it is the Zombies themselves who are the stars of the show. I’ve seen a lot of Zombie movies but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a finer array of the undead on screen anywhere before. The series’ make-up and special effects teams have been employed superbly to create an army of shuffling, flesh hungry corpses in various stages of decomposition, all of whom look so thoroughly repulsive that you cannot wait to see various implements and weaponry utilized creatively in an effort to remove their stinking Zombie heads from their filthy, reeking Zombie shoulders. Of course, there’s plenty of that.

In a nutshell this is a DVD that offers everything anybody could ever want from a quality TV serial about zombies. The story arc of this first season sets things up very nicely for a more substantial run of episodes in Season 2, scheduled to air on FXUK later in the year. Season one has done such an astounding job of setting up a variety of enthralling sub-plots and character arcs that I for one cannot wait.

Extras: Quite a bumper package. The “Making Of” documentary includes contributions from all the main players, including creator Robert Kirkman who is clearly delighted with the way season one turned out. There are featurettes that focus on each of the individual episodes as well as a fair bit of on-set footage presented by both Kirkman and Andrew Lincoln. My favourite extras were “Zombie School”, where we learn what it takes to be a walking corpse, and Zombie make up tips that illustrate how you can use porridge oats and gelatine to achieve that ‘just stepped out of the grave’ look. There are also special effects features and footage from a convention panel that includes contributions from all of the producers on the show.

Sergio Sollima’s excellent (and virtually forgotten) spaghetti western, Faccia a faccia (Face to Face), made in 1967, features an inventive pop art credit sequence which recalls Andy Warhol’s iconic silk screen prints. The stylish montage and Ennio Morricone’s blaring score helps create a brilliant cinematic frisson. This film is just waiting to be re-discovered from the movie crypt of obscurity and celebrated as a great piece of cult cinema. The brilliant Eureka label release it on DVD for the first time ever in the UK.

Sergio Leone’s successful Dollars trilogy heralded a fresh perspective on a dying but quintessential American genre and other directors quickly followed suit. Genres, whether exploitation flicks or not, tend to thrive after a particular title goes down well at the box office. The mean-eyed stare of the Euro Western ended up influencing the very genre it was aping.

‘Violence is an Italian art,’ said Lucio Fulci, and the country’s take on the cowboy flick delivered such a notion in spades. Faccia a faccia stands out from the crowd by front-loading a political metaphor. It is easy to read Marxist subtexts in spaghetti westerns with their emphasis on avarice and commodity fetishism. Men kill for ‘a fistful of dollars’ and a dog-eat-dog world walks hand in hand with death. The high-pitch sound of a revolver firing is like a cash register. As the bodies drop the take goes up. Money drives men to murder as if led by the spiritual verve of possessing riches. Faccia a faccia attempts to do things a bit differently.

The story takes place in the arid climes of Texas and focuses on themes of identity and corruption of the soul, not by money, but power. The film has been noted as an allegory of fascism, and it’s clear to see why.

Brad Fletcher (Gian Maria Volonté) is a professor with an unspecified illness. Given he’s seeking warmer climes out west and insinuates he’s dying we can safely assume the man suffers from tuberculosis. Solomon ‘Beauregard’ Bennet (Tomas Milian) is the eccentric-looking leader of the Wild Gang. If you thought Javier Bardem’s mop top hairdo in No Country for Old Men (2007) was wacky – wait until you see Milian’s haircut in this! Bennet has finally been captured by the sheriff’s posse but makes his move for freedom when Brad offers him water to drink. Demonstrating civility turns into high drama when Bennet shoots down the sheriff and his men then holds Brad hostage.

The professor and the bandit, however, become friends allowing Brad’s moral decline to begin as his rise to inner strength occurs. What follows is a genuinely brilliant tale of outlaws, bank jobs, duplicity and murder.

Its Texas setting is pure fantasy, too, as the largest US state is as flat as a pancake. Sollima, like others, shot the picture around

Almería and Madrid with interior scenes done in Rome. There is striking use of locations, especially, with the Techniscope photography.

The major set-piece is a bank heist. Sollima overlaps Brad explaining what is to be done with a flash forward device. The winning effect sees the action taking place as Brad explains the plan to the Wild Gang. The desert finale, too, makes for a thrilling and heavily symbolic finish with Brad and Solomon facing off against a gang of vigilante’s led by a former friend. The film works so well largely due to its clever role reversals much like John Woo achieved in Face/Off (1997).

Solomon is an instinctual, unthinking killer but his moral compass (if we can call it such) is in better shape than Brad’s. The character arc of this intellectual, wonderfully played with growing malevolence and arrogance by the iconic Volonté, is the movie’s true core.

He embraces the outlaw life with vigour and applies logic and calculated menace to contrast with Bennet’s approach. Brad injects fascist steel into his philosophy as he becomes de facto head of the gang. The small outpost, Pietra di Fuoco, becomes a personal fiefdom and the inhabitants his subjects. It really is an unusual kind of narrative for a western to explore.

The DVD presents Faccia a faccia in its original aspect ratio and new audio mix. Although it hasn’t been given a Blu-ray release it’s still a must-have for Italian cinema fans. Included in the bonus features is an insightful sixteen minute interview with the director which goes into the movie’s origins and how they relate to his experiences during the Second World War. He notes how plenty of people he knew underwent personality changes much like his lead character Brad Fletcher.

There are a couple of trailers and the option to watch in the original dubbed Italian or with English subtitles. A sixteen page booklet by spaghetti western expert Howard Hughes rounds off a fine release. Faccia a faccia is a fantastic movie.

Appearances really can be deceptive. Director Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go looks like many a British period drama that has gone before and its depiction of life at an English boarding school, set in the midst of verdant, rolling fields, is one that will seem familiar to anyone with a taste for the likes of Brideshead Revisited. However, in what is only the first of its many surprises, you’re almost half an hour in before you realise that what you are actually watching is science fiction. Because although this adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel may wear the comfy cardigans and prissy blouses of an England glimpsed in Brief Encounter, within its breast beats the dark dystopian heart of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

Kathy (Carey Mulligan), Tommy (Andrew Garfield) & Ruth (Kiera Knightly), are all pupils at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham Boarding School in the 1970s. When we first meet them they are children on the verge of adolescence, Kathy falling in love with Tommy only for him and Ruth to start a relationship. However, there are darker secrets at work in their world and we soon learn the harsh reality of their existence when Miss Lucy (Sally Hawkins), a teacher new to the school, explains to them their true purpose in life. It is a horrific revelation but is presented with very little drama, the children seemingly unfazed and blithely accepting of their destiny. The next day at school, the teacher is gone, never to be mentioned again; the headmistress (Charlotte Rampling) alluding to the need to eradicate disruptive influences.

As the three of them grow up together they are moved to a place called The Cottages, where they meet and live with others like them. And as the suppressed feelings that Kathy and Tommy have for each other come to a head, they discover the possibility that their love for each other may be crucial in postponing a fate that they had accepted as being inevitable.

Never Let Me Go is told almost exclusively from the perspective of the three protagonists, a narrative device that serves to heighten the empathy you feel for them. The life that is set out for each of them is never questioned or challenged and their eager and childlike fascination with a wider society that we never really see (and they will never know) is often heart breaking in its naivety.

All three leads give remarkable performances, with Mulligan in particular offering an astonishing portrait of a young woman haunted as much by her future as she is by her past. She is the sort of actress who manages to convey a stillness beneath which a maelstrom of feeling is conveyed and Romanek’s camera dwells on her visage of thoughtful fragility to remarkable effect. Garfield too demonstrates his increasing versatility with the tricky task of portraying a character who rages against his fate while at the same time being utterly accepting of it. It is a dichotomy that could have fallen flat in less capable hands but one that he pulls off convincingly.

Along with the strength of the performances, much of the power of Never Let Me Go lies in its depiction of a world that looks virtually indistinguishable from our own.  In that regard it calls to mind Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, a movie that also took a contemporary social and ethical issue (in that case immigration) and developed it to the extreme, setting its story in a country where some human beings are degraded  by a faceless society that condones their treatment. What is disturbing in both movies is that it is recognisably our society.

I finished watching Never Let Me Go and then sat thinking about it for the next 20 minutes. Since then I’ve thought about it off and on every day. Although it is both a drama and a love story, I’m increasingly convinced that it’s one of the best science fiction movies I’ve seen in the last decade. It’s just that it is one concerned with very powerful ideas and real human drama, rather than special effects or interior design.

In the end, this is a film from which you may take many meanings. It is a film about the choices we make and how we deal with our own mortality. It is about the inclination within many of us to accept what we perceive as our fate and our remarkable ability as adults to live with it. But perhaps more than anything, it is about how a society can raise its children to believe everything they are told and how completely they will accept it. And that is a responsibility in which we all share.

Extras: Both the Blu-ray and DVD release feature a decent ‘making of’ featurette in The Secrets of Never Let Me Go, along with various stills galleries including Mark Romanek’s photography (taken on set) and a selection of Artwork created by the character of Tommy in the film. A theatrical trailer is also included.

Never Let Me Go is released on Blu-ray & DVD on 27 June