Film
Reviews
ANTHOLOGY
EROS
(1 5) 1 1 5min
(Artificial Eye DVD retail) O
How could such an intriguing idea go so horribly, flaccidly wrong? If the demonstration of some pent-up sexual emotion was needed. who better to call than Messrs Antonioni, Soderbergh and Kar-wai to unleash a cinematic torrent? Except this shambolic triptych (a kind of New Pork Stories if you will) wastes everyone's time, with each segment actually getting progressively worse. Kar-wai's tale is of typically restrained passion between a tailor and a harlot, Soderbergh gets all noir on us with a softboiled tale of an ad exec’s dirty dreams while Antonioni's dubbed manage a trois monstrosity is an insult to his own intelligence. The mini-movies are tedious when they should be stirring and embarrass when they should scintillate. Fortunately, there are few extras of note to wade through, some potted histories of the three directors and a trailer that hints at far better things than the movie ever delivers. (Brian Donaldson)
POLEMlC/DRAMA THE GREAT EOSTASY OF ROBERT CARMICHAEL
(1 8) 97min
(Tartan DVD rental/retail) OOO
Thomas Clay's visceral, disturbing but interesting 2005 film did not get a theatrical release in Scotland so
now is your chance, if you have the stomach for it, to catch it on DVD. Set in an English seaside town at the beginning of the war in Iraq, it details the spiraling exploits of Robert Carmichael (Daniel Spencer) a bright school kid who becomes involved with drugs and casual violence through his association with a bunch of local youths. The film's controversial reputation is due to a gang rape scene that comes towards the end of the film, which takes place while footage of the invasion of Iraq is played out on the television.
iiiriitiiilclii‘i 4.. There is no denying that The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael is an uneasy watch, but Clay, as writer and director, is attempting to encapsulate the dyspeptic and diseased spirit of a nation on the edge of a pointless war. Despite paying lip service to the ‘new brutalism’ in European cinema that gave birth to Gasper Noe's Irreversible and Marina de Van’s Dans Ma Peau. Clay's film also builds on the rich seam of British polemic dramas that stretch from Alan Clarke's Scum to Tim Roth's The War Zone, which certainly makes it worth a look. Minimal extras. (Paul Dale)
WAR
THE STAR
(15) 97min
(Nouveaux Pictures DVD retail) so
This is a disappointing Russian WWII film about a team of ‘scouts' sent on a very risky mission behind German lines to check out the enemy's equipment and tactics. Selling itself as a film in
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the tradition of Elem Klimov’s great war film Come and See (it shares an actor and comes from the same studio). the film captures less the horror of war than the cinematic cliches of it. There is the greenhorn translator who has to confront death; the ragbag team on a mission, and too many scenes where we ‘suspensefully' wonder if the scouts will be caught, whether found hiding in bushes or in the back of a truck. This is all very efficiently done, but like many recent Russian films (from Bratan to A Driver for Vera) there is a clear sense of commercial ends over aesthetic means. So comparisons to Klimov’s masterwork are invidious. Extras include interview with producer Karen Shakhnazarov, interview with director Nikolai Lebedev and deleted scenes. (Tony McKibbin)
CRIME/DRAMA TOKYO DRIFTER (15) 82min
(Yume Pictures DVD retail) 0...
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One of three excellent reissues of the films of the great Japanese filmmaker Seijun Suzuki (the other two on release are his erotic and darkly humorous 1967 gangster film Branded to Kill and his most directly autobiographical film
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Back in the early part of the 20th century when cinema first spluttered to life,
all films were short films. Film stock was expensive and temperamental and the idea that anyone would want to spend longer than 15 minutes in a Nickelodeon was an anathema. If only it had remained so. Should you wish to escape from the indulgence of special edition re-edits, commentary tracks and spiralling film lengths then there are two rather fine short film compilations out this fortnight. Best V Best: Volume 2 (Vital coo. ) is an excellent selection of award-winning short films, including winners and nominees from the Sundance, Berlin, Tribeca and Cannes festivals. Highlights include UK entry Hibernation and The Shovel from the US. There are also a few shorts of note on Best of 14th Raindance Film Festival Shorts (Aaltra
dazzling exercises in all too rare brevity. There are heaps of box sets out this fortnight too. First up there's the fairly
disappointing Marlon Brando Collection (MGM coo
), this DVD also contains the 2006 Nokia 15 second shorts, which are
), which features
second string Brando flicks Viva Zapata. Sayonara, The Young Lions and best of a mediocre bunch, Arthur Penn’s The Missouri Breaks. Hello Playmates! For those who like their vaudeville unsalted there's The Arthur Askey Collection (ITV DVD 0000 ), which contains the great man's finest movie moments. Highlights include his first feature from 1940 Band Waggon (sic), a spin—off from Askey's popular radio show, and the rarely screened Bees in Paradise which takes place on a bee-worshipping island of women. Best box set of the fortnight by quite some margin, however, is Norman McLaren: The Masters Edition (Soda .0000) Scottish Canadian McLaren (1914—1987) was the god-like genius of experimental world cinema. This beautifully restored, near definitive collection of seven discs, containing his extraordinary body of work includes his Neighbours (pictured), for which he won an Oscar in 1953, and Pas De Deux for which he won a BAFTA in 1969. Extras include 40 test and unfinished films and an 88-page booklet.
There's also lots of cheapy reissues out, all pitched between $5.99 and $27.99. The best of which, Time Bandits (Anchor Bay .000 ), Withnail and I (Anchor Bay 00.00) and Sergio Leone's extraordinary Jewish gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America (Warner Home Video 00000) are essential purchases.
Finally, two great standalone releases worth renting or purchasing are Warren Beatty's critically underrated 1981 John Reed biopic Reds (Paramount «O. ), which is almost unique in modern US cinema in that the protagonist is a communist. Reds also features one of only two screen performances by the great Polish American writer Jerzy Kosinski. Shunya Ito‘s 1972 film Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (Eureka 0000 ) is the stunning, perverse and occasionally mindblowing exploitation/feminist fable that inspired Tarantino's Kill Bill cycle. It's a trip, take my word for it.
Next issue we'll be mostly watching snuff movies, Kazakhstan hooligans and the beautiful Catherine Deneuve. Au revoir pour maintenant. (Paul Dale)
Fighting Elegy). Often cited as Japan's answer to Jean-Luc Godard (circa Breathless), Suzuki is in fact unique and immensely influential in Japanese cinema. This 1966 film is arguably his finest, a kind of pop art gangster flick that follows the violent, occasionally
existential adventures of ice cool hit man Tetsu (Tetsuya Watari) as he tries to go straight despite his Yakusa
: clan's best efforts. With
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its great soundtrack. camp garish visuals and absurdist dialogue Tokyo Drifter has been a huge influence on everyone from Jim
Jarmusch to Ouentin Tarantino. A bona fide
noir potboiler gem. Good extras include a UK exclusive Suzuki interview. an essay by Asian cinema expert
Tony Rayns and a trailer f reel of Suzuki's other
films. Your appetite
should be well and truly
whelted. (Paul Dale)
BY LOUD 8: CLEAR
44 THE LIST 15 Feb—1 Mar 2007