DVD/Blu-Ray Review
Blu-Ray Review: The Draughtsman’s Contract
Of all the British directors of the last 50 years, Peter Greenaway is arguably the most interesting. A painter by training, he brought this art into every inch of his filmmaking. Every shot feels meticulously composed. Celluloid is his canvas. Using landscape and portrait to ensure that each scene is impeccably constructed. Using nature as …
Blu-Ray Review: Reservoir Dogs
When Quentin Tarantino released Reservoir Dogs in 1992, it had a huge impact on Hollywood. The early 1990s were a time of change. A scrappy, almost risqué, period, when a DIY ethos and ‘pulp fiction’ were enjoying a renaissance. He would go on to have a profound influence on a generation of filmmakers. A voracious …
Blu-Ray Review: Audrey Rose
The question of what happens to us when we die has taxed the human psyche since the days of early man. The innate need for something more, something better, than this mortal coil has driven us towards religion. The carrot of paradise for ‘being good’ or the stick of eternal damnation for ‘being bad’ is …
Blu-Ray Review: The Sleeping Tiger
Nurture of nature? One of the oldest debates in the book. Are we fated to live out the lives our genes afford us, or is our upbringing instrumental in making us the person we will become? For those who are proponents of the latter, childhood is the most important stage of development. It’s in these …
Blu-Ray Review: Eve’s Bayou
Some people seem to have the ideal life. The big house, the great job, the beautiful partner and children. Popular, with a large number of glamorous friends and associates. Everyone wants to know and be seen with them. Courts their favour. However, looks can be deceiving and when you peek behind the curtain there’s often …
Blu-Ray Review: Censor
While it seems like a long time ago now, the 1980s was a great period of change. The social and political unrest of the previous decade was replaced by a Conservative government led by the inimitable Margaret Thatcher and her free market politics. Technology was moving at pace and cheap access to VHS meant people …
Blu-Ray Review: Lost Highway
There’s nothing quite like a David Lynch mystery to get the old grey matter working. There’s no one quite like him in modern cinema and, despite some obvious influences and recurring themes, his reluctance to explain anything ensures the mystique endures. So many column inches have been dedicated to attempting to decode the inner meaning …
Blu-Ray Review: Raw Deal
Arnold Schwarzenegger was one of the most recognisable faces of action cinema during the latter part of the twentieth century. He was arguably the biggest box office pull at one stage and his muscle-bound image became part of popular culture. Most of his early films follow a similar pattern. His dialogue was restricted (due to …
Blu-Ray Review: Deathsport
Roger Corman was never a man to pass up the opportunity to jump on a bandwagon. So, when Deathrace 2000, which he produced, became a huge hit (relatively speaking) in 1975, he decided to cash-in on it. Deathsport was the first of a number of proposed sequels, but its failure and difficult shoot put an …
Blu-Ray Review: Take Out
Sean Baker has been one of the more interesting independent filmmakers to break through into mainstream cinema in the last few years. He has built a career around capturing the stories of marginalised groups within the USA. While Red Rocket, The Florida Project and his breakthrough Tangerines have put him on the map, he’d been …