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  • 05 Feb

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    DVD Review: The Ozu Collection: The Student Comedies

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    The Student Comedies is a DVD collection of some of Yasujiro Ozu’s earliest feature films, all part of the ‘student-comedy’ genre, popular in Japan at the time (the late 20′s and early 30′s). The films include Days of Youth (Wakaki Hi), I Flunked, But… (Rakudai Wa Shita Keredo), The Lady and the Beard (Shukujo To Hige), and Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? (Seishun No Yume Ima Izuko). Below I give brief reviews of each feature and look at the set as a whole.

    Days of Youth

    Director: Yasujiro Ozu
    Screenplay: Akira Fushimi
    Starring: Ichiro Yuki, Tatsuo Saito, Junko Matsui
    Country: Japan
    Running Time: 99 min
    Year: 1929

    (3/5)


    Ozu’s earliest surviving film and his first feature length film as director, Days of Youth follows two student friends as they (at first unknowingly) chase the same girl. One is a glasses-wearing bookworm, the other a cheeky prankster who will pull any dirty trick he can to get the girl. These come to a head when the three of them take a skiing trip together.

    Like most of the films in this collection, Days of Youth strikes an odd but successful balance between gag-comedy influenced by the Hollywood comedies Ozu loved and mildly melancholic drama which suggests the direction he would take in his later years. The film isn’t one of his masterpieces it must be said. The artistry and subtlety the director is famous for is in it’s fledgling years, but nonetheless there are signs of future genius in the film. Although not nearly as funny as the silent comedies of Lloyd, Keaton or Chaplin (Ozu’s cast don’t have the charisma or comedic prowess of these legends), the film does have a human and naturalistic element that most cinema of the time lacked. Visually there are a couple of nice touches too, with some early use of his famous low angled static wides and signs of his careful framing, although there are a fair amount of conventional Hollywood techniques on show too.

    So it’s an interesting glimpse into how the great master started out, but taken on it’s own is not much more than a simple yet charming diversion.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 27 Jan

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    Blu-Ray Review: Two-Lane Blacktop

    5

    Director: Monte Hellman
    Screenplay: Rudy Wurlitzer, Will Corry & Floyd Mutrux (uncredited)
    Starring: James Taylor, Warren Oates, Laurie Bird, Dennis Wilson
    Producer: Michael Laughlin
    Country: USA
    Running Time: 103 min
    Year: 1971
    BBFC Certificate: 15

    (4/5)

    Two-Lane Blacktop is a film I’ve been keen to watch for a long time. Being a big fan of 70′s cinema and road movies (well, car chase movies more so) I’ve had this on my radar for years, but it keeps passing me by for whatever reason. Well with Eureka releasing a finely polished Blu-Ray of the film under their prestigious Masters of Cinema banner, I leapt at the chance of firing it up. Now that I’ve finally watched the film I’m pleased to say I thought it was very good and it stood up to the hype for the most part, but I’m finding it difficult to articulate why.

    Two-Lane Blacktop follows The Driver (James Taylor) and The Mechanic (Dennis Wilson) as they drive aimlessly across America in their lovingly suped-up ’55 Chevy, challenging other petrol-heads to drag races to fund their travels. Along the way they pick up The Girl (Laurie Bird), an irritable youngster who seems to be drifting around just looking for kicks. Following the same route across the nation is GTO (Warren Oates), a middle-aged city-slicker driving a bright yellow 1970 Pontiac GTO, straight out of the lot. The two cars eventually meet up and set a race across the rest of the country, meant to end in Washington DC with the winner taking the pink slips of the other car.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 19 Jan

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    DVD/Blu-Ray Review: Le Silence de la Mer

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    Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
    Based on the short story by: Jean Bruller (a.k.a. Vercors)
    Screenplay: Jean-Pierre Melville
    Starring: Howard Vernon, Nicole Stéphane, Jean-Marie Robain
    Producers: Jean-Pierre Melville & Marcel Cartier
    Country: France
    Running Time: 88 min
    Year: 1949
    BBFC Certificate: PG

    (4.5/5)

    I‘m ashamed to say I’d only seen one Melville film before this and that was Bob le Flambeur which I thought was decent, but I didn’t quite see what all the fuss was about. From my lack of knowledge of his work and his fame as a director of super-cool new wave gangster films, I wasn’t sure what to expect from his World War II drama Le Silence de la Mer. What I got not only took me by surprise but blew me away.

    Le Silence de la Mer (translated ‘the silence of the sea’) is based on a short story by Jean Bruller under the pseudonym Vercors, which was written and distributed in secret in German-occupied Paris. It was a key work of the French Resistance and was highly regarded by the country. Melville at the time wasn’t so highly regarded, at least not in the film industry. He had been sent into military service in 1937 so hadn’t completed formal film school training. Instead he actually became part of the Resistance during the war, during which time he got hold of an English translation of Le Silence de la Mer. He was eager to bring this powerful tale to the screen, but was faced with many walls. For one he had no training or union membership to assemble a professional crew or work through the studios and on top of this Bruller himself refused to let him adapt his story. Melville wouldn’t take no for an answer though and in 1947 went ahead to shoot the film anyway, promising Bruller that he would only release the film if a panel of former Resistance members would give it the OK. All but one of these proud Frenchmen agreed to the release of the film and it went on to become a massive success in the country (due in large to the popularity of the book) and helped launch Meville’s career, acting as a much more powerful calling card than a degree or a union membership.

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  • 17 Jan

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    Review: El Monstro Del Mar

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    Director: Stuart Simpson
    Screenplay: Stuart Simpson
    Starring: Norman Yemm, Nelli Scarlet, Kyrie Capri, Karli Madden
    Producer: Fabian Pisani
    Country: Australia
    Running Time: 75 min
    Year: 2010

    (3/5)

    An Australian entry into the wave of B-Movie homages that have been flooding in since the release of Grindhouse in 2007, El Monstro Del Mar! (a.k.a. El Monstro!) is a truly independent addition that makes it’s influences known right from the outset. Opening in black and white with three buxom beauties ‘dressed’ in rockabilly-meets-burlesque style outfits dancing to 60′s soul music blaring out of the car stereo, writer/director Stuart Simpson has some serious love for cult legend Russ Meyer.

    This bunch of bad girls swiftly and brutally despatch of a couple of hapless locals who come to their assistance, then hit the road. We (vaguely) discover that they’re on the run after killing some nasty looking thugs and they end up in an isolated seaside town, where they plan to lay low for a while. After their elderly neighbour Joseph (Norman Yemm) warns them not to go in the water things start to get less sexploitation and more monster movie though as the girls awaken El Monstro Del Mar!

    Once this viscous beast starts wreaking havoc it’s up to the remaining girls and the repressed virgin Hannah (Kyrie Capri), Joseph’s granddaughter, to show the tentacled bastard who really wears the trousers around here!

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 14 Jan

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    Film Review: Tatsumi

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    Director: Eric Khoo
    Based on the Autobiography & Work of: Yoshihiro Tatsumi
    Starring: Tetsuya Bessho, Motoko Gollent, Yoshihiro Tatsumi
    Producers: Tan Fong Cheng, Eric Khoo, Phil Mitchell, Esaf Andreas Sinaulan, Freddie Yeo
    Country: Singapore
    Running Time: 94 min
    Year: 2011
    BBFC Certificate: 15

    (4/5)

    I‘m generally open to most genres when it comes to film, but there are a few that can rub me the wrong way. Romantic comedies and war movies for instance, although populated with some great titles that I cherish (e.g. When Harry Met Sally, Apocalypse Now), don’t interest me in their most generic form whereas I’ll enjoy a martial arts flick to some extent even if it’s purely by-the-numbers. One (sub) genre that I often struggle with is the biopic. Films like Ray and The Aviator for instance, although well put together, really don’t do it for me. Too often they try and cram the entirety of a person’s life into a couple of hours, which makes it feel like it’s being skimmed over, or they blow their achievements out of proportion making these people into some sort of Gods. I hate the pussy-footing around they often do too, trying to avoid a lawsuit when a personality is either alive or most of their family are. Granted some biopics are fantastic – Lawrence of Arabia could be called overblown, but admirably it questions Lawrence’s behaviour (without being preachy), avoids any tacked on love story (subtly nudging towards the rumour that he was gay) and of course it looks stunning. On a whole though, biopics are films that I generally avoid – The Iron Lady and J. Edgar are not on my radar this month for this very reason.

    Which brings me to Tatsumi, which is a biopic. However, it’s a biopic with a difference. Based on Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s manga autobiography A Drifting Life and directed by Eric Khoo, Tatsumi is an animated look at the life and work of the Japanese manga artist who is thought to have started the gekiga style of alternative comics in Japan, even supposedly coining the term in 1957. Gekiga is Japanese for ‘dramatic pictures’ and is similar to the term ‘graphic novel’, when describing more adult or serious storytelling done in a ‘comic-book’ style.

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  • 29 Dec

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    DVD Review: 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy

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    Director: Christopher Sun
    Screenplay: Stephen Siu, Mark Wu
    Based on the novel: “The Carnal Prayer Mat” by Yu Li
    Starring: Hiro Hayama, Leni Lan, Saori Hara
    Producer: Stephen Siu
    Country: Hong Kong
    Running Time: 110 min
    Year: 2011
    BBFC Certificate: 18

    (2/5)

    I don’t normally review this kind of film. Softcore porn comedies are not films I have much of an interest in watching let alone reviewing, but this was an exception. After gaining a lot of press attention for its claim to be the ‘first 3D erotic movie’ (which I very much doubt), as well as its phenomenal success in China, I’d been strangely interested in this follow up to the popular Sex and Zen series so jumped at the chance when I was offered a screener to review. From the posters and trailers it looked like a lot of fun too so I actually had fairly high hopes for 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy. Unfortunately it didn’t really live up to these, but it’s still worth writing about.

    Sex and Zen’s “story”, which is based on a novel surprisingly enough, tells of a man who marries the woman of his dreams but finds he can’t satisfy her in the bedroom due to his lack of ‘longevity’. He therefore seeks the assistance of an evil prince who is famous for his rampant sexual activities and huge member. In doing this our hero becomes the prince’s slave though and after ‘practising’ on various ladies from his harem, the young man’s wife leaves him. To top this all off our hero also discovers that his minuscule trouser snake is not sufficient to satisfy any woman. This all leads to much silliness, love-making and waving around of giant fake penises.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 05 Dec

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    The Flight Before Christmas

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    Directors: Michael Hegner & Kari Juusonen
    Screenplay: Hannu Tuomainen, Marteinn Thorisson & Mark Hodkinson (additional dialogue)
    Starring: Andrew McMahon, Norm MacDonald, Emma Roberts (English version – reviewed)
    Producers: Jaana Hovinen, Petteri Pasanen, Hannu Tuomainen, Kristel Tõldsepp
    Country: Finland/Denmark/Germany/Ireland
    Running Time: 78 min
    Year: 2008
    BBFC Certificate: U

    (4/5)

    Largely a Finnish production in terms of talent, but with Danish, German and Irish backing, I’d actually seen the Finnish language version of this a year ago under the title Niko – Lentäjän Poika (Niko, the Pilot’s Son, translated), but now it hits the UK on DVD with an English language soundtrack added. With Christmas just around the corner I thought it would be a perfect time to post a review of this surprisingly good European CGI-animated children’s Christmas film.

    Niko is a young reindeer who longs to join the ranks of Santa’s Flying Forces, the crew of aerial masters who pull Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve/Day. The fledgling struggles to get off the ground himself, leaving him stranded with his grounded pack in the forest, miles from Santa’s Fell. However Niko is certain that he has the ability somewhere within himself to fly as he is told that his father, who left before his birth, is a member of the famous troupe. After getting into trouble with his reindeer family after accidentally bringing a pack of wolves back to their patch, Niko heads off to find Santa’s Fell and his father to fulfil his life long dream. In tow is father-figure Julius (a flying squirrel) who tries his best to keep him out of trouble and hot on their trail is the pack of wolves, whose new target are the Flying Forces and Santa himself!

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 27 Nov

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    DVD/Blu-Ray Review: Guilty of Romance

    4

    Director: Sion Sono
    Screenplay: Sion Sono
    Starring: Megumi Kagurazaka, Miki Mizuno, Makoto Togashi
    Producers: Yoshinori Chiba & Nobuhiro Iizuka
    Country: Japan
    Running Time: 144/112 min (112 min version reviewed)
    Year: 2011
    BBFC Certificate: 18

    (3.5/5)

    Sion Sono draws his ‘hate trilogy’ to a close with Guilty of Romance. From what I’ve heard there is little in common between the three films (Love Exposure and Cold Fish are the first two – neither of which I’ve actually seen so I can’t comment), but nonetheless Guilty of Romance is clearly the work of the maverick Japanese director behind oddities such as Suicide Club and Exte. This is more serious in tone than those two films, but retains the dark, twisted and occasionally baffling take on it’s subject matter.

    Guilty of Romance opens with a female police detective arriving at the scene of a brutal murder where the body parts of a woman have been attached to those of mannequins to create two creepy human dolls, and neon pink paint has been splashed around the seedy surroundings. Body parts that could be used to identify the victim (head, hands and feet) as well as the sexual organs are missing though so the detective heads off to investigate. This classic murder mystery aspect is pretty much left there other than a few glimpses in the version I saw. The film has two cuts, the original 144 minute Japanese one and a shorter international version. This 112 minute cut pretty much removes the detective story whereas the longer one retains it. Both cuts have been endorsed by Sono, so I can’t see a need to get too worked up at the UK release being shorter. In fact what little we see of the detective story is bland and fairly unnecessary in my eyes anyway so I’m actually pleased I got to see the international version.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 23 Nov

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    Review: Between Two Rivers

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    Directors: Jacob Cartwright & Nick Jordan
    Starring: Robert Streit (narrator)
    Producers: Jacob Cartwright & Nick Jordan
    Country: UK/USA
    Running Time: 95 min
    Year: 2011

    (4/5)

    Heading to festivals and hopefully distribution in 2012, Between Two Rivers is an independently produced documentary from first time feature documentary makers Jacob Cartwright & Nick Jordan. I was lucky enough to be sent an early screener of the film to help get it’s name out there.

    The film charts the tumultuous history of the town of Cairo, Illinois, which is importantly based at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. It’s a town that thrived in it’s early days for this reason but is now practically a ghost town, it’s once crowded high street now reduced to deserted and derelict shells of the shops that once took advantage of the vast amounts of trade running through on the rivers. On top of all this, the area stood on the precipice of total destruction as the record breaking floods of spring 2011 threatened to wipe out Cairo forever. Between Two Rivers uses the looming shadow of this and the controversial plan to solve the problem by diverting the water to local farmland as a framing device for an investigation into what exactly went wrong in the town. As the film-makers look into this they uncover a town poisoning itself largely through racism. Technically set in the north of America, but founded by rich southern whites, there was a deep seated bed of racism in Cairo for years and it became home to some of the most infamous scenes of violence and arson during the civil rights movement. As the film unfolds, we look at the causes and repercussions of this history of hatred in the town.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 15 Nov

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    Blu-Ray Review: Touch of Evil

    4

    Director: Orson Welles
    Screenplay: Orson Welles, Paul Monash (additional scenes – original theatrical release) & Franklin Coen (contributing writer for reshoots)
    Based on a novel by: Whit Masterson
    Starring: Charlton Heston, Orson Welles, Janet Leigh, Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff
    Producers: Albert Zugsmith, Rick Schmidlin (1998 restoration)
    Country: USA
    Running Time: 96/109/111 min
    Year: 1958
    BBFC Certificate: 12

    (5/5)

    In watching this latest Blu-Ray release of Touch of Evil, it was only the second viewing of the film for me, my first only being around a year ago. I loved it the first time, but now it’s sailed right into my all time favourites.

    Orson Welles’ final Hollywood film is one with a troubled past. As is often the case with Welles’ work, the studio behind it meddled with the final cut. Whilst the director was off in Mexico working on the ill-fated Don Quixote, Universal’s production head Ed Muhl brought in a new editor and Harry Keller to direct additional scenes with Welles barred from set. When a rough cut was finally screened for Welles, he wrote a furious 58 page memo to Muhl detailing a host of changes to be made to the film. A new 109 minute version of the film (known as the “Preview Version”, officially released after being discovered in the 70′s) was produced with a few of these tweaks made, but the film remained untrue to Welles’ vision. Worse than this, when the film was released theatrically in 1958, it was a hacked up again into a 96 minute version. However, in 1998, Rick Schmidlin approached Universal with the idea of taking Welles’ memo and re-editing the film to follow his instructions, using footage available from the Preview Version and other sources. Unfortunately not all of the raw takes were available to follow the memo exactly and of course Welles wasn’t on hand to supervise, so there’s still no definitive director’s cut of the film. To most cinephiles though, this 1998 version is as close as you’ll get. This is the version I watched fully for the purposes of this review although I watched the Preview Version with a commentary over and I’m not sure which version I saw previously.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 12 Nov

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    Silent Running

    11

    Director: Douglas Trumbull
    Screenplay: Deric Washburn, Michael Cimino & Steven Bochco
    Starring: Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin
    Producers: Michael Gruskoff & Douglas Trumbull
    Country: USA
    Running Time: 89 min
    Year: 1972
    BBFC Certificate: PG

    (4/5)

    Sci-fi classic Silent Running makes it’s way to Blu-Ray in the UK this week and I was lucky enough to get my hands on a copy to review. Now I only watched the film for the first time last year and I wasn’t totally blown away by it, so would a second viewing grant it the rank of ‘classic’ in my eyes that it generally receives from others?

    For those of you that haven’t seen Silent Running or aren’t aware of it, let me fill you in. After the surprise box-office goldmine of Easy Rider in 1969, Universal Studios in a bid to emulate this success, signed up a group of five young up and coming directors to make them five ‘semi-independent’ feature films with a minimal budget, but a promise of no interference from the studio bigwigs. Those films were The Hired Hand, The Last Movie, Taking Off, American Graffiti and Silent Running, which was directed by first timer Douglas Trumbull, previously the special effects supervisor on 2001: A Space Odyssey.

    Silent Running is set on a spacecraft (the Valley Forge) drifting through space with the last remaining forests from Earth, which has been decimated by nuclear war. When the crew are contacted and told to abandon the mission, destroy the forests and return home, one crew member, Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern), refuses and murders the other three crew members, flying the ship and it’s final forrest pod off into the black of space with only two robot ‘drones’ as company.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 08 Nov

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    Weekend of Trash VI

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    After struggling to organise a weekend we were all available to get together, we finally gave in and a cosy three of us met up at Justin’s place to enjoy the 6th (recorded) Weekend of Trash (back story and previous write-ups can be found here – 1, 2, 3 & 4 & 5).

    After the last marathon’s criminal lack of VHS titles and inclusion of far too many ‘classy’ and known titles to be truly called ‘trash’, we went all out this time, with 3 tape titles and only 1 known-ish film (maybe 2, I’m not sure how well known Grand Duel is).

    I’m afraid my time’s a bit restrained at the moment so my write-ups will be a bit brief compared to usual, but I’ll still include trailers and concise thoughts on the merits (and otherwise) of each title.

    Friday Night

    Kindred

    Directors: Stephen Carpenter, Jeffrey Obrow
    Screenplay: Stephen Carpenter, Jeffrey Obrow, John Penney, Earl Ghaffari & Joseph Stefano
    Starring: Rod Steiger, Kim Hunter, David Allen Brooks
    Year: 1987
    Country: USA
    Duration: 91 min

    (2.5/5)

    Kindred is an 80′s creature feature about a scientist, John (David Allen Brooks) whose mother (also a scientist) tells him to burn all of her notes and drops a hint that he might have a brother that he wasn’t aware of. Unfortunately it begins to look as though (and the cover gives this away) John’s brother isn’t quite fully human and might not be full of ‘brotherly love’.

    It’s a very dumb film and it’s ropey script makes for a rocky first half, but it actually picks up later on and became quite a fun watch. The presence of five screenwriters was always a sign towards a clunky uneven story (why do we never go back to the evil scientist’s basement full of crazy mutants!?) but at least one of the writers knows that the film works best when it doesn’t take itself too seriously and throws in a couple of witty lines. The main draw though are the make-up effects. The practical monster and mutation effects aren’t realistic, but they’re pretty damn cool at times, especially when one woman sprouts gills!

    The Trailer:

    » Read the rest of the entry..

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