Also out on DVD ... August 2008

Week of 25 August 2008

Rollerball * (Blu-ray; Chris Klein, Jean Reno, LL Cool J, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Naveen Andrews; £17.99; UK cert 15) Here we have yet another film that was not really crying out for a remake. The 1975 James Caan original was a clever take on man's capacity for violence and the rise of corporate control of our lives. The remake has thrown away any philosophical bent and has gone all-out for mindless action. And it's boring. The Rollerball scenes are poorly shot, Chris Klein has zero screen presence, the plot is a mess and one whole sequence is inexplicably shot in night vision. Do yourself a favour — ignore this tripe, and go rent the original. Extras include a commentary with stars Chris Klein, LL Cool J and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos; a featurette on the stunts; a music video; and some trailers. — Stuart O'Connor

Virgin Territory (Stars Hayden Christensen, Mischa Barton, Tim Roth, Matthew Goode; £15.99; UK cert 15) There are certain film experiences you have that, prior to even shunting the disc into the player or trundling into the screening room, you know will provide you with a chance to reflect on your life at its close and think, why did I do this? There are regrets in life, then there are films like Virgin Territory. The plot will make no difference to you but its basically follows a pauper-like bloke, played with an offensive English accent by Christensen who, if nothing else, reinvents the phenomenon of having literally no talent, who is for some unearthly reason in love with the plank-of-bland that is Barton (also taking on English accent-ism with no success). Then there's Roth being evil and Goode being stupid and other stuff (including a cameo from David Walliams!) and oh my God this is terrible. You see, the seeming pitch this would have been encapsulated into was that this was a kind of teen comedy set in ye olde Italy (yes, Italy despite the accents as this is actually based on the novel The Decammaron by Giovanni Boccaccio). So, bad as that sounds, they literally transplanted this by throwing in a load of entirely unnecessary nudity all over the place and embarrassing everyone further. Roth can do better. So can Goode. Christensen and Barton can't but even they don't deserve shit like this. Avoid at all costs, including walking over elderly members of the public to escape. You have been warned. Extras: just a making-of featurette and the trailer. — Sam Unsted

A Walk Into The Sea **** (Featuring Callie Angell, Brigid Berlin, John Cale, Nat Finkelstein, Gerard Malanga; £19.99; UK cert 15) A documentary about Andy Warhol's onetime collaborator and lover Danny Williams and his disappearance in 1966. Sensitively made and with all of the passion (and, of course, subjectivity) you'd expect given that it's made by the niece of the man himself, A Walk Into The Sea is a captivating look at one of the art world's most fascinating mysteries. One of the greatest aspects of this film is that isn't simply an act of nostalgia or hero worship, but a genuine investigation only hampered by its own inconclusiveness. No extras, sadly — Michael Edwards

Origin: Spirits of the Past *** (Stars the voices of Ryo Katsuji, Aio Miyazaki, Kenichi Endo, Toshikazu Fukawa; £17.99; UK cert 12) Origin: Spirits of the Past is very much in line with much of the output from Japanese animation studios, notably Studio Ghibli, in its focus on the environment and the foolishness of man as regards our treatment of the planet. The story picks up 300 years in the future where our poor attitude to green issues has caused the destrucution of civilisation and the birth of a dangerous, sentient forest. The world is split into those who want to co-exist with the forets and those who would declare war. The politics are a little confused here and there and a little on the nose at other times but it's beautifully filmed and drawn and represents a very nice new addition to Japan's animation canon. No extras — Sam Unsted

X-Men: Season 1, Volume 1 ***½ (Stars the voices of Cathal Dodd, Cedric Smith, Norm Spencer, Lenore Zann, George Buza, Alison Sealy-Smith, Catherine Disher, Alyson Court, Chris Potter; £12.99; UK cert PG) This is the cartoon series that ran from 1992 to 1997, and is one of the best animated versions of a Marvel comic. It's not an origin story; in the two-part introduction, Night of the Sentinels, the X-Men team is fully formed — Cyclops, Jean Grey, Wolverine, Beast, Storm, Rogue and Gambit. But into the mix comes teenage mutant Jubilee, who learns the secret of Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Children. Missing, though, are two of my favourites from the comics I read as a kid — The Angel and Iceman. Oh well, it's still terrific stuff: decent animation, good storylines and a genuine respect for the source material. This release features the first seven episodes, and includes the debut of arch-villain Magneto. And if you only know the X-Men from the feature films, you'll find a few familiar plot threads here. Extras: just a look at the digital restoration of the original footage. — Stuart O'Connor

Ironside *** (Stars Raymond Burr, Don Galloway, Don Mitchell, Barbara Anderson, Elizabeth Baur; £49.99; UK cert PG) Reviewing a show like Ironside is very difficult indeed. This is the sort of show that isn't so much critic proof, but that is almost DVD proof. So often can you watch Ironside in trhe UK on various Sky channels and on daytime television that I can't imagine a scenario in which you would need to buy this on DVD unless you were indeed a Raymond Burr junkie and needed to complement your sets of Perry Mason. In fairness to Ironside, in which the eponymous, wheelchair-bound detective takes on crime on the streets of San Francisco, it is somewhat superior to many of the similarly gimmicky shows that came in its wake. At least in this, his work on the cases is fully justifiable whereas, for example with Quincy, you have a medical examiner solving crimes (that should really be an insurance no-no for the police). Ironside is fine television and I suppose, should you not have access to the Hallmark channel, you could well invest. No extras — Sam Unsted

________________________________________________________________________
Week of 18 August 2008

Unearthed ½ (Stars Emmanuelle Vaugier, Luke Goss, Charles Murphy, Beau Garrett, Miranda Bailey, Whitney Able; £15.99; UK cert 18) An alien monster (which looks amazingly similar to the creature from the Alien films) is "unearthed" on an archeological dig in New Mexico and sets about killing the residents of a tiny desert town. The script is bad, the acting is bad, the cinetmatography is bad, the editing is bad, the direction is bad and the special effects are awful — the monster looks like it's been drawn on each frame of film with a crayon. Entire plot strands are left hanging — such as a child's death the sheriff was blamed for being referenced throughout the film, but never explained. And the camerawork and editing are so atrocious you're struggling to work out exactly what's going on. It gets a half star cos it has a couple of pretty girls in it. Even lovers of bad horror films will hate Unearthed, a film that's best left buried. Extras include interviews with cast and crew, and behind-the-scenes footage. — Stuart O'Connor

Sports Movie (aka The Comebacks) ½ (Stars David Koechner, Carl Weathers, Melora Hardin, Brooke Nevin, Noureen DeWulf; £15.99; UK cert 15) If jokes about masturbating horses, jockstraps and teenage whores are your bag, then this movie is for you. But for the other 99.9999% of us, Sports Movie is one to keep as far away from as possible. It's a "spoof" movie that sends up American sports films such as Friday Night Lights, Field of Dreams and Dodgeball. And yes, there is the obligatory Rocky reference. And like most of the recent "spoof" movies, the writers have completely forgotten to actually write any jokes. Available on its own, or in a 3-pack with two other alleged "spoof" films, Date Movie and Epic Movie. All three are fucking appalling. This only gets the half star cos there are a couple of pretty girls in it. Extras include a commentary from director Tom Brady, several behind-the-scenes featurettes, and deleted scenes. — Stuart O'Connor

Crime & Punishment *** (Stars Kate Ashfield, Lara Belmont, Ian McDiarmid, Mark Benton, John SImm, Katrin Cartlidge, Philip Jackson, Geraldine James; £14.99; UK cert 15) Dating back to 2002, when the BBC was trying to find things for John Simm to do and Life On Mars was still an idea in the ether, it stuck him into the middle of this bold adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s masterwork. A tale of curiosity, murder and the subsequent guilt, this is a decent stab at addressing what is effectively several hundred pages of inner dialogue. Extras include a pretty pointless photo gallery, but there’s also a decent commentary by Simm, the director, the producer and the writer. — Neil Davey

Bachelor Party 2-Pack *** (Stars Tom Hanks, Tawny Kitaen, Adrian Zmed, George Grizzard, Barbara Stuart, Robert Prescott, Josh Cooke, Sara Foster, Greg Pitts, Harland Williams, Warren Christie, Danny Jacobs, Emmanuelle Vaugier; £15.99; UK cert 18) What's with all the rerelasing of raunchy 1980s comedies going on? Porky's, Revenge of The Nerds etc have cropped up again in recent weeks. Maybe it's to show modern filmmakers how a funny and good-natured romp is done? Bachelor Party, released in 1984, stands up pretty well today. Tom Hanks — not long out of the TV sitcom Bosom Buddies, and coming off the success of Splash — is lovably goofy, back before he got serious and became the romantic leading man. He's the bachelor of the title, engaged to Tawny Kitaen (whatever became of her?) so best man Adrian Zmed (or him, for that matter?) and his mates throw him a bachelor party. With chicks, and guns, and fire trucks, and hookers, and drugs, and booze... The party's fun, everyone gets drunk, or laid, and a donkey snorts way too much coke. Classic stuff. Extras include three behind-the-scenes featurettes and some interviews with Tom Hanks (which appear in the featurettes anyway). The "sequel" (some 24 years after the original) is a direct-to-DVD cash-in that would be the second-billed movie at the drive-in, if drive-ins still existed. It's called Bachelor Party 2: The Last Temptation, but its only connection with the original is sharing a writer. The plot is about a guy getting married so his buddies take him to Miami for his bachelor party. Cue lots of booze, drugs, sex and topless girls (the bare breast count this time is quite a lot higher than the original). It's not a particularly bad movie (and there's one hilarious scene involving a dace contest) but it's just lazy, derivative, unoriginal and unimaginative filmmaking. On the plus side, there's lots of bare breasts. Extras include an audio commentary, a making-of featurette, deleted scenes and a gag reel. — Stuart O'Connor

________________________________________________________________________
Week of 11 August 2008

Robot Chicken Star Wars *** (Stars the voices of Seth Green, Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, George Lucas, Seth MacFarlane, Conan O'Brien, Donald Faison; £12.99; UK cert 15) If you've seen the Family Guy Star Wars spoof, Blue Harvest, you'll remember the scene right at the very end where son Chris (voiced by Seth Green) says: "Didn't Robot Chicken already do this 3 months ago?" And he's right, Robot Chicken did do its Star Wars spoof first. And now here it is on DVD, some 6 months after the Family Guy Star Wars DVD was released. If you're unfamiliar with Robot Chicken (and, seeing as it's not actually screened in the UK, you probably are) it's a pop-culture pisstake created by Seth Green — who you may recall from his roles as Oz on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Scott Evil from the Austin Powers films. Robot Chicken is a series of comedy sketches (usually with a slightly demented twist) made using the old-fashioned technique of stop-motion animation. And usually, with action figures (aka dolls). And with voices supplied by Green's Hollywood pals, such as Rachael Leigh Cook, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mila Kunis, Scarlett Johansson, Hayden Panettiere, Amy Smart, Linda Cardellini, Melanie Griffith, Sarah Silverman, Melissa Joan Hart, Michelle Trachtenberg, Christian Slater, Stan Lee, Bruce Campbell and Joss Whedon, just to name a few. Anyway, the Star Wars special is pretty much sketches based on the six Star Wars movies. Sketches such as Luke and Leia sleeping together, or George Bush learning he has Jedi powers, or George Lucas being cornered by a fan at a Star Wars convention. It's not very long — just 22 minutes — but damned funny throughout. Although an uncensored version for the DVD release would have been nice. And £12.99 for a 22-minute DVD with no extras? Hmmm ... No extras — Stuart O'Connor

Brooklyn Rules **½ (Stars Alec Baldwin, Scott Caan, Freddie Prinze Jr, Jerry Ferrara, Mena Suvari, Monica Keena; £12.99; UK cert 15) On the plus side, Brooklyn Rules confirms Scott Caan as a mesmerising young actor and proves that Terence Winter can really write dialogue but hey, he's won three Emmys for The Sopranos so you knew that. What Winter can't do though is make Freddie Prinze Jr into an actor and Prinze is, sadly, the lead in this tale of a young man attempting to escape the local Mafia connections, while one of his best friends (Caan) falls headlong into organised crime. Winter's dialogue — at least in the mouths of Caan and, particularly, Alec Baldwin as the local boss — crackles and helps you overlook the deeply cliched nature of the story. Prinze just leaves a pretty-boy shaped hole in the centre of the film. Extras: A good commentary by director Michael Corrente and Winter. — Neil Davey

Zoo ½ (Stars John Paulsen, Ken Kreps, Coyote, Jenny Edwards, John Edwards, Paul Eenhoorn, Russell Hodgkinson, Bob Fink; £19.99; UK cert 18) Zoo is about people who fuck horses. Or, in the case of the real-life death that forms the central point of the film, people who let horses fuck them. In 2005, a man known as "Mr Hands" was part of a group of, er, horse enthusiasts (or zoophiles, to give them their proper name / explain the title of the film) who congregated in Enumclaw, Washington State. After an unfortunate, but utterly predictable incident — the perhaps unnecessary moral of this story is "do not allow a horse to shove approximately two feet of penis up your bottom" — another of the group dropped "Hands" off at the emergency room where he shortly bled to death. Using security camera footage, investigating police traced the car that dropped "Hands" off to a local farm, where they found a number of videos showing men and animals in assorted intimate situations. The group were thus pilloried (yeah, go figure) but not arrested as bestiality wasn't illegal at the time in this state (although it is now). When Seattle filmmaker Robinson Devor hear the story he was struck by one thing: the nature of the coverage. As his co-writer Charles Mudede explained to the New York Post last year: “There seemed to be two responses: repulsion or laughter... Early on Rob and I said to each other, ‘We’re going to revive their humanity.’ ” They may well have done that in private but they certainly haven't achieved it in this rambling, incoherent film. Mixing documentary and drama is a structure that can work well but you have to have a modicum of talent to achieve it and, on this evidence, Devor and Mudede have neither. Avoid. No extras — Neil Davey

________________________________________________________________________
Week of 4 August 2008

The Elephant Man: Special Edition **** (Stars Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, Anne Bancroft, John Gielgud, Freddie Jones, Michael Elphick; £17.99; UK cert PG) "I am not an aminal. I am a human being." Based on the true and touching story of Joseph Merrick, a man born with Proteous Syndrome in Victorian era England, David Lynch's 1980 film is a masterpiece. Rescued from his life as a sideshow freak by kindly surgeon Frederick Treves (Hopkins) the hideously deformed Merrick — stunningly portrayed by Hurt through layers of prosthetic make-up — is not the imbecile many thought him to be, but a sensitive, intelligent man. Despite this, he is still a prisoner of his misshapen body. It's both joyful and heartbreaking, and beautifully directed by Lynch in glorious black and white. Yes, it's a monster movie, but the monsters are those who ridicule and abuse Merrick, not Merrick himself. It's a film that speaks to all of us about the dignity of the human spirit. Extras include new interviews with John Hurt and David Lynch; a 19-minute documentary called Joseph Merrick: The Real Elephant Man; and the theatrical trailer. — Stuart O'Connor

Gettin' It (Stars Patrick Censoplano, Cheryl Dent, Trish Coren, Mandy Henderson, Shiloh Fernandez, Sandra Staggs, Salvatore Crivelo, Ali Davis; £12.99; UK cert 15) See all those "stars" names listed there? Have you ever heard of any of them before? Nope. And are you going to ever hear of any of them again? Not a chance. This film is an abomination. The press release that accompanied the preview disc called it an "hilarious sex comedy" ... well, one word right out of three ain't bad, because sex is pretty much all the plot revolves around. A teenage virgin (Censoplano) wants to get laid, but his girlfriend dumps him. Then a misunderstanding leads to his mother (I kid you not) spreading a rumour about the size of his penis (huge, apparently) and so every woman wants him. It's awful — the plot is all over the shop, the acting is the worst I've seen since ... well, almost ever ... and there is not one laugh to be had. Avoid. Extras: Just the theatrical trailer. — Stuart O'Connor

Big Stan *½ (Stars Rob Schneider, David Carradine, M Emmet Walsh, Jennifer Morrison, Scott Wilson, Marcia Wallace; £15.99; Uk cert 15) To say this is the strongest Rob Schneider centric-vehicle I have yet seen is faint, faint praise indeed but this is the first film he's made for some time that didn't make me reach for the off-button on my DVD player. Schneider plays Stan, a conman who learns martial arts before going to prison and ends up brining gangs together in the jail. There are a couple of okay gags and generally, this isn't as bad as say, The Animal, but it's just so hard to recommend a film when its only real attribute is that it's not as offensively awful as other bad films. No extras — Sam Unsted

Doctor Who: Season 4, Volume 3 (Stars David Tennant, Catherine Tate, Alex Kingston, David Troughton; £17.99; UK cert 12) And so we enter the second half of Season 4 and we begin with a belter of a two-parter from the man who, from 2010 will be at the helm of the show, Steven Moffat. Set in the 51st century we enter the largest library in the universe, so large in fact it covers an entire planet, the Doctor and Donna are naturally impressed. Here they are warned to fear the shadows come face to face with The Nodes. Elsewhere a young girl begins to have strange, haunting dreams. These two episodes, Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead, illustrate what a versatile writer Moffat really is and the safe hands the fifth season is in. Totally different to what he's produced already for the series (Blink, Girl in the Fireplace to name only a couple of his episodes) the story brings together a series on seemingly unconnected events and draws them to a truly memorable conclusion and a nice new monster for us all to enjoy. Effects are grand and well realised while the acting is deep and very honest. The third episode on the disc, Midnight, starts off looking like a low-budget version of Red Dwarf. The Doctor leaves Donna resting while he goes off on a trip around the planet Midnight. Soon the trip grinds to a halt and an alien presence attacks the small party of people. Up until now Russell's scripts have lacked the "scare factor" necessary for classic Doctor Who, but here he begins a run of episodes that will prove what a genius he is. The seemingly innocent trip descends into a living nightmare complete with a claustrophobic setting. It's a sort of haunted house premise with science fiction added to the mix and given to a talented ensemble cast. Lesley Sharp as a possessed passenger is truly unnerving and David Troughton reminds us just why he's Britainís best character actor. Tennant too is deep without having to resort to his sarcastic and shouty Doctor mode. This was Davies' best episode — until the next one, but that's another story. No extras — James Whittington