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MotoGP 10 Official Review (Review)
ThumbnailI should probably say at the outset that I'm not the world's biggest motorsport fan or expert as I've largely given up on F1 and only catch the occasional motorcycle race on TV, never tuning in religiously. However, I liked what I saw and have reviewed a couple of Duke's TT Review DVDs/BDs so when the opportunity arose to watch and reviews an entire season of MotoGP, I jumped at the chance and...

Soul Men (Review)
ThumbnailThere is never a good time for someone to die but it must be extremely inopportune when it happens during or just after shooting a film. Sometimes you can work your way around it as Terry Gilliam did following Heath Ledger's death midway through shooting The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus but when two of the actors in your film, both big names, die after shooting and just when you want to begin...

Drag Me To Hell (Review)
ThumbnailSam Raimi has had a varied career, beginning with The Evil Dead and going on to make a western (The Quick and the Dead), comic book films (Darkman and the Spider-Man trilogy) and a crime thriller (A Simple Plan) but, with Drag Me To Hell, returned to the type of film with which he made his name. I loved this at the cinema and thought the DVD was very good but, to my eternal shame, boss the Blu-ray...

Resident Evil: Afterlife (Review)
ThumbnailAlthough I've seen all three films, I'm not a huge fan of the Resident Evil series. I'm not sure whether it's because they are videogame adaptations or because, Event Horizon aside, I haven't liked a single film that Paul W. S. Anderson has made. Anyway, I missed this fourth instalment in the franchise when it was at the cinema so watched this disc with an open mind, hoping that Anderson had...

The Secret in Their Eyes (Review)
ThumbnailWhen it comes to predicting Oscar winners, I tend to go more by what I expect the Academy to do rather than which film/actor/director actually deserves the award. One of the categories I always seem to get wrong is the Best Picture in a Foreign Language as very few of them make it to the cinemas in the UK and it seems to take ages for them to appear on DVD/BD. I saw A Prophet at the cinema and...

Puppet Master: Axis of Evil (Review)
ThumbnailPuppet Master: Axis of Evil is the 10th instalment in the Puppet Master franchise (the 9th if you only include those made by Charles Band’s Full Moon Features production company) which dates back to 1969 with the original Puppet Master. For some reason, I'm not exactly sure why, this is one of the many titles and franchises that has completely passed me by so I went into this film without having...

A Serbian Film (Review)
ThumbnailI can't remember the last time I received a review disc of a film that had arrived on these shores with such controversy and notoriety, certainly not one that had been cut by as much as this one had by the BBFC, who demanded 49 cuts over 11 scenes totalling 4 minutes and 11 seconds. Critical and audience reaction to the film was divided with some people walking out and words like "disgusting"...

Deep Red (Review)
ThumbnailIf my DVD collection has been correctly categorised then the R1 Anchor Bay DVD of Deep Red was the sixth (of 26) Dario Argento DVDs and BDs that I have bought (following, in order, Inferno, Dawn of the Dead, Suspiria, Two Evil Eyes and Tenebrae) and it has not been one that I have seen as much as I ought but that has been remedied in preparation for this review which has led to me watching the...

Frozen (Review)
ThumbnailThere are so many films that are greeted with a journalist declaring it to 'Do for what Jaws did for swimming in the sea' and Frozen is no exception with one of the taglines saying that it will do skiing no good at all. It comes with a decent pedigree, directed by Adam Green who brought us Hatchet and produced by Peter Block who has worked on the Saw movies, Daybreakers, Crank and Rambo so there...

Splice: Double Play (Review)
ThumbnailI saw the trailer and read about Splice some time ago and was looking forward to seeing it at the cinema but, as is increasingly the case with the homogenised world of multiplex cinema chains, it wasn't shown. This is a real pity but, let's face it, Cineworld, Odeon or Vue would rather show a family friendly film about an animated dog than a potentially interesting horror film directed by the guy...

Fantasia: Double Play (DVD & Blu-ray) (Review)
ThumbnailIt struck me, before putting this DVD on, that I didn't recall watching Fantasia all the way through. I saw certain clips of it at school and remember going into a shop (probably Woolworths) to buy a CD and it was playing on every TV set. Aside from that, I hadn't seen Fantasia from beginning to end so this was going to be a new experience and one that I could go into with eyes wide open and no...

Battle Royale: Limited Edition (Review)
ThumbnailBattle Royale is one of those films that arrived in the UK without a great deal of publicity and it snuck under the radar before becoming a huge cult hit and one of the most loved and respected contemporary Japanese films. Directed by Kinji Fukasaku who was, for those who know his work, one of the greatest Japanese filmmakers who ever lived, and that includes people like Akira Kurosawa, Yasujir&...

Salt: Extended Edition (Review)
ThumbnailSalt is the latest political action thriller by renowned Australian director Phillip Noyce, the man behind Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger and The Bone Collector - evidence that he has some pedigree when it comes to making a neatly constructed and engaging thriller with a political subtext. Salt came to him as a screenplay written for a male lead to play a CIA agent who goes on the run...

A Bay of Blood (Review)
ThumbnailMario Bava is one of the three greatest Italian horror directors who ever lived, with the other two obviously being Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci. Of the three, Bava had the greatest grasp of how important a strong and coherent narrative was to a film, moreso than Argento, with Fulci’s films often found lacking when it comes to the narrative with the visuals making up for plot holes and...

White Material (Review)
ThumbnailDespite being a fan of schlock and trash cinema, I love it when a director doesn't treat the audience like a bunch of idiots and gives them something to think about whilst they are watching the film. The most recent case of this was Christopher Nolan's Inception which proved that blockbusters don't have to be aimed at the lowest common denominator in order to be successful. Based loosely on the...

The Exorcist (Review)
ThumbnailI've been a massive fan of The Exorcist since I saw it when it was released in 1998. Having bought both the theatrical version and The Version You've Never Seen on both R2 and R1 DVD for completist sake (I think this is something unique to hard-core horror fans) in order to own all of the extra features, soundtracks and artwork, the announcement that Warners Bros were releasing a Blu-ray with both...

The Evil Dead (Review)
ThumbnailThe Evil Dead has been a favourite of mine for about 10 years since I first bought the DVD when it became available with a host of other horror films in 1999. I've bought several versions on DVD -- I wasn't into horror films when it was out on VHS -- and was overjoyed when a Blu-ray release was announced. Usually for me, I decided to rent before buying and, when I discovered that the UK version...

Exorcist II: The Heretic (Review)
ThumbnailThere must have been a time in the mid-1970s when filmmakers all over the world were wondering how to jump on the coattails of The Exorcist and either make a film inspired by William Friedkin's masterpiece or make a direct sequel. There were an absolute slew of Exorcist rip-offs from around the world including Abby, a blaxploitation version, L'Anticristo, an Italian rip-off and Magdalena:...

Freaks (Review)
ThumbnailTod Browning had somewhat of a mixed career in Hollywood, receiving wide acclaim for directing Dracula (1931) and bringing the horror film into the sound era but then his career faltered as he struggled to find another project that would interest him and not rehash the main themes of his most successful movie. With Universal dominating the horror scene with Dracula, Frankenstein and (later) Bride...

Eraserhead (Review)
ThumbnailLong before he was a director acclaimed around the world for his abstract films such as Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire and mainstream films like The Straight Story and The Elephant Man, David Lynch was in the same position as so many great filmmakers when they were younger: an ambitious prospective filmmaker with a burning desire to make films and a few ideas of his own. The...

La signora di tutti: The Masters of Cinema Series (Review)
ThumbnailEureka have done it again. A film, of which I was previously unaware, is being released and I have received a review copy so I now want to check out the director's (in this case Max Ophüls) previous work. I can't remember how many times this has happened but it is one of the perils of being a reviewer and film addict. The film in question is La signora di tutti (1934), one of the first films by...

Shogun Assassin: Limited Edition Steelbook (Review)
ThumbnailI suppose I have Quentin Tarantino to thank as, if he hadn't included a scene at the end of Kill Bill Vol. 2 with The Bride sitting with her daughter and watching Shogun Assassin as bedtime viewing, I wouldn't have ever bought or watched Robert Houston's 1980 re-editing of the first two 'Lone Wolf and Cub' films, nor watched the entire six film series. Based on the popular manga series by Kazuo...

Leaving (Review)
ThumbnailIt is not atypical to find a French film that deals with the bourgeois family in distress, from attack from either outside or from within and to deal with marital strife in the middle of some form of crisis. There was therefore no surprise to begin watching the critically acclaimed Leaving (Partir) and to notice that the central character, Suzanne, begins to have feelings for a builder who works...

Splice (Review)
ThumbnailI saw the trailer and read about Splice some time ago and was looking forward to seeing it at the cinema but, as is increasingly the case with the homogenised world of multiplex cinema chains, it wasn't shown. This is a real pity but, let's face it, Cineworld, Odeon or Vue would rather show a family friendly film about an animated dog than a potentially interesting horror film directed by the guy...

Metropolis: The Masters of Cinema Series (Review)
ThumbnailThere are certain films come with a weight of expectation as there has been so much written and said about them that you watch them expecting a masterpiece; these would include movies like Citizen Kane, Tokyo Story and Metropolis. Regarded as the granddaddy of science fiction films which has influenced everything from Blade Runner to Dark City and The Matrix and even entering the world of music...

Ricky Gervais: Live IV: Science (Review)
ThumbnailAs a big fan of The Office and Extras, I went into Ricky Gervais’ first stand-up gig, Animals, with high expectations which it failed to meet as I was unconvinced by Gervais as a stand-up comedian. I haven't seen his next two stand-up DVDs, Politics and Fame but, assuming that he has grown into his role as a stand-up comedian rather than a television writer, director and actor (and on the back of...

Deadly Outlaw: Rekka (Review)
ThumbnailOne might reasonably assume that a film called Deadly Outlaw: Rekka would feature, as its central character, someone called Rekka. Oh no. This is a film by Takeshi Miike, the enfant terrible of Eastern cinema and the man behind Ichi the Killer, Dead or Alive and Audition so you know that nothing is as it seems and should really prepare yourself for some outlandish violence, stylised kills and a...

The Hammer and Tongs Collection (Review)
ThumbnailHammer & Tongs is a production company and collective pseudonym for filmmakers Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith who spent their career up until 2005 making music videos before branching out into feature films with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and, two years later, Son of Rambow. They have worked with some of the biggest artists in the world including Blur, Radiohead and REM. This...

A Town Called Panic (Review)
ThumbnailI first became aware of this bizarre Belgian animation series from the Aardman's Darkside DVD which contained the first (and only) season and I loved the surreal humour and completely off the wall nature of the short stories and character interactions. In case you're never seen A Town Called Panic, it is set in a rural area where a Cowboy, an Indian and a Horse live together. They are just...

Peeping Tom: 50th Anniversary (Review)
ThumbnailMichael Powell enjoyed a long and successful partnership with Emeric Pressburger, making such classics as A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. In the late 1950s, he decided to make a film with Leo Marks, a wartime cryptographer, who had written a story about Mark Lewis (Karlheinz Böhm, credited as Carl Boehm), who works as a focus...

City Lights: Dual Format Edition (Review)
ThumbnailCharlie Chaplin made a career of directing, producing and starring in one great film after another and everyone will have their personal favourite, mine is City Lights. Described in the opening titles as a pantomime, it is, as far as I'm concerned, the greatest silent movie ever made and that's including things like Battleship Potemkin, Nosferatu andBirth of a Nation. There are several stories...

The Circus : Dual Format Edition (Review)
ThumbnailThere is something wonderful about Chaplin's on-screen persona of the Little Tramp as he manages to maintain his dignity despite the various scrapes and unlikely situations in which he finds himself. In the case of The Circus, the Tramp is busy enjoying himself by a circus when a pickpocket, who is about to be arrested by the police, puts the wallet and watch he has just stolen into the unwitting...

The Chaplin Revue (Review)
ThumbnailThis 1959 film was released when Charlie Chaplin was in exile in Switzerland because of the HUAC hearings in the States, where Chaplin was suspected of being a Communist. Deciding to revitalise his dwindling star power -- his last three films: Limelight, A King in New York and Monsieur Verdoux had not been as popular as his silent films -- Chaplin decided to revisit some of the shorts from his...

Billy Connolly: Live in London 2010 (Review)
ThumbnailBilly Connolly is one of those comedians who I've always wanted to see but have never been able to do so because his gigs always sell out in minutes so I've had to make do with audio tapes, VHS cassette and DVDs. I first became aware of his work nearly 16 years ago now when a friend gave me an audio tape of one of his gigs to listen to when I was in hospital and I thought it was one of the most...

The Karate Kid (2010) (Review)
ThumbnailThe Karate Kid, released in 1984, was a coming-of-age movie in which a troubled teenager triumphs against all adversity in typical Rocky style -- unsurprising as it was directed by John G Arvidsen, the man who helmed Sylvester Stallone's story of an unlikely prizefighter being given a shot at the World Heavyweight Title. Given the success of the film and the kudos it brought to its stars, Ralph...

Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves (Review)
ThumbnailAli Baba and the Forty Thieves has become somewhat of a popular fairy tale with parts derived from Arabian Nights (in which it first appeared) and The Book of One Thousand and One Nights and has drifted somewhat from the original story into something more adventurous and romantic. In the case of this 1944 film, it is really a matter of forget everything you thought you knew about the Ali Baba...

The Concert (Review)
ThumbnailThe problem with cinema output being dominated by multiplex cinema chains is that it has brought about a lack of variety with just about every chain, whether it is Odeon, Showcase or Cineworld showing just about exactly the same films at exactly the same time. There isn't any room for small independent films because they aren't as profitable as the bigger, blockbusters that bring guaranteed income...

Revenge of the Creature (Review)
ThumbnailIn the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s, Universal had a string of successful (and not so successful) films following the fortunes of their great monsters: Count Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. All of these had sequels, many of them crossing over and involving more than one character -- particularly Dracula, Frankenstein and...

The Snowman: The Live Stage Show (Review)
ThumbnailBased on the book by Raymond Briggs, The Snowman is a perennial Christmas favourite that is virtually guaranteed to be on television at some point during the festive season. It is a wonderful piece of television which, at about 25 minutes long, doesn't seem to have dated at all despite the book being published in 1978 and the TV adaptation for years later. It must have been compulsory bedtime...

The Secret of Kells (Review)
ThumbnailThis Irish/French/Belgian co-production was nominated for the Best Animated Feature at the 2009 Academy Awards, unsurprisingly losing out to the brilliant Pixar film Up and was a film that I was only aware of because my brother saw it at a film festival in New Zealand. Drawing on Irish mythology and including a great deal of Celtic language and history, The Secret of Kells is set in the 9th...

Not Like Others (Review)
ThumbnailThe term 'Swedish vampire film' wouldn't really have gathered much attention several years ago and may even have conjured images of Ingrid Pitt (or the like) in some high camp horror flick but, thanks to the critical and commercial success ofLet the Right One In, those three words will have the attention of any horror fan. I imagine, then, that Peter Pontikis will be extremely grateful to Tomas...

Temptation (Review)
ThumbnailThere are no two ways about it -- vampires are popular. Whether it's the Twilight saga of books and films or the HBO series True Blood (the third season having recently finished the US), there is something about the undead that is -- and has always been -- erotic and this British film plays on that by featuring a group of female vampires who have taken temporary residence in London. When Isabel,...

Siege of the Dead (Review)
ThumbnailThere will always be a certain expectation for any film that title finishes with '... of the Dead' due to the classic films of George A. Romero but that is something that any distributor has to weigh up because that phrase will get the attention of any horror fan but inevitably raise expectations perhaps beyond where they would be if the film had another title. In this case, the original title was...

Frozen (Review)
ThumbnailThere are so many films that are greeted with a journalist declaring it to 'Do for what Jaws did for swimming in the sea' and Frozen is no exception with one of the taglines saying that it will do skiing no good at all. It comes with a decent pedigree, directed by Adam Green who brought us Hatchet and produced by Peter Block who has worked on the Saw movies, Daybreakers, Crank and Rambo so there...

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?: The Masters of Cinema Series (Review)
ThumbnailThere are some films that you really don't know where they're going even nearly half an hour into the picture -- There Will Be Blood is probably the most recent examples -- and others we know right off the bat what you you can expect from the next 90 minutes. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (known in America as Oh! For a Man!) Is one of those as, when the 20th Century Fox logo appears, Tony...

Make Way For Tomorrow: The Masters of Cinema Series (Review)
ThumbnailThere are certain films that carry such an emotional impact that even someone with a heart of stone couldn't help but be moved by them and Make Way for Tomorrow is one of them. According to Peter Bogdanovich, at a dinner with Orson Welles, he mentioned the film to which Welles replied that it is the saddest film ever made and would "make a stone cry". When you consider that the film was directed...

Possession (Review)
ThumbnailThis was on the DPP's list of 72 'video nasties' but was on the second half of the list, the ones that were dropped or successfully appealed against their branding as 'obscene' and has not been released on DVD in the UK until now. Andrzej Zulawski, who wrote the original story, screenplay and directed the film, is hardly the most prolific filmmaker around and has had to move around Europe from...

Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide (Review)
ThumbnailWhen the home cinema market first began in the early 1980s with VHS and Betamax vying for the position of top dog, the big distributors were a little bit wary to plump for one format in case it was the loser so the sort of films that were the quickest to try their hand at home video were pornography and low budget horror. There were myriad distributors that could appear one week and disappear the...

Baywatch: The Complete Season Two (Review)
ThumbnailThere was a point in its lifetime when Baywatch was just about the biggest TV show on the planet with an estimated 1 billion people watching it at some time. This is no mark of quality but just an indication of the universal appeal of very well toned men and women in swimwear, a fairly formulaic plot for each episode and nothing that would cause any trouble in moderate Arab states. The show had a...

Black Christmas (Review)
ThumbnailSchool has finished for the winter and the residents of a sorority house are having a party and packing to return home for the holidays. Unbeknownst to them, someone has taken up residence in the attic and he's not just there to shelter from the cold. When Clare Harrison goes missing, the remaining women including Jessica Bradford, Barbie Coard and Phyllis Carlson, together with Clare's father...

Night of the Demons (Review)
ThumbnailI am normally dead against remakes and prefer filmmakers to come up with an original concept to develop and make into a feature film rather than using someone else's idea that has already been done several years (or decades) beforehand. There are exceptions to this rule such as when the original film wasn't any good or was just mediocre and can be improved upon. This applies to the 1988 film Night...

The Tortured (Review)
ThumbnailThere is obviously something in the film industry across the world that makes revenge thrillers the flavour of the month at the moment as this is probably the sixth that I've seen this year. The last one was the French film 7 Days in which a grieving father, a surgeon, kidnapped the man who raped and murdered his daughter intending to torture him for six days before killing him on the seventh, at...

Life Blood (Review)
ThumbnailI love the term 'lipstick lesbians' and according to the extensive research that I did (read: Wikipedia), there is no steadfast rule for dates as to where the term came from or who invented it although Ellen DeGeneres did say something about 'a Chapstick lesbian'. Anyhow, the phrase refers to the more glamorous lesbians who like to dress up in traditional feminine clothing, apply make-up and make...

Baccano! - The Complete Collection (Review)
ThumbnailAs someone who isn't a huge anime fan, I hadn't heard of Baccano! until it became available for review and, after a little research on the Internet, I decided to give it a look. From the very first episode I was hooked and went through all four discs fairly quickly. First premiered on the Internet and then on DVD in 2009, Baccano! is really something that almost defies explanation as it is so...

Isle of Man TT Official Review 2010 (Review)
ThumbnailThe Tourist Trophy held on the Isle of Man for two weeks every year, during which roads are closed to create a 37.75 mile circuit, is one of the greatest motorsport events in the World – Murray Walker says it is THE greatest. The Isle of Man TT Review 2010, produced by IoM based company Duke Video, contains the highlights of the action from Superbikes, Superstock and Sidecar races over Snaefell...

30 Days of Night: Dark Days (Review)
ThumbnailOne of my favourite vampire films (and horror films in general) of recent years is 30 Days of Night, directed by David Slade and based on the graphic novel by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith. The film was a really claustrophobic and intense horror film because it had a definitive timescale and characters who were introduced very carefully along with the environment and different locations within...

The Loved Ones (Review)
ThumbnailI am extremely glad that the American phenomenon of 'the prom' hadn't crossed the Atlantic when I was in school and college as I can't believe the sheer expenditure, organisation and inevitable heartbreak that is associated with what should be one evening but, if you go from one school year to another and on to sixth form college, there will be more than one Prom Night. Just to show that it isn't...

Modern Family: The Complete First Season (Review)
ThumbnailThe 2010 Emmys possibly saw a changing of the guard as 30 Rock, the brilliant comedy series starring Tina Fey, saw its run of consecutive wins brought to an end by Modern Family, one of the few television shows that I had watched week in, week out. As the title suggests, this is about a very modern family or, to be precise, three families which are all interlinked. If you haven't seen this, I'll...

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (Review)
ThumbnailWhen the film begins and you see 'David Lynch presents a film by Werner Herzog', you realise that you have really leapt into the deep end and are about to watch something that is directed by a man who has made a film in the middle of a civil war, has almost driven actors to madness and pulled a gun on his leading man and is produced by one of the most eccentric, abstract and infuriatingly...

Bad Lieutentant - Port of Call: New Orleans (Review)
ThumbnailAccording to Werner Herzog, his Bad Lieutenant is neither a sequel nor remake of Abel Ferrara's infamous 1992 film of the same name but more a crime thriller that just happens to share the same title. Furthermore, Herzog has said that he hasn't even seen Ferrara's film and even unsuccessfully tried to change the title of the film. Subtitled Port of Call: New Orleans, Herzog's film is set in...

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