Film
Reviews
COME DY
THE RISE AND RISE OF MICHAEL RIMMER
(12) 94min
(Digital Classics DVD retail) 0...
Written by Peter Cook. John Cleese and Graham Chapman. this 19/0 political satire was panned on release. yet now looks startlingly prophetic. Cook was never more charismatic than as the mysterious Michael Himmer. arriyrng unannounced at the Fair‘bur‘n advertising agency one day and proceeding to take over the company. movrng seamlessly into politics and a posrtron of
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it's thrilling. With a supporting cast that includes Harold Pinter. Denholrn Elliot. Ronnie Corbett and Arthur Lowe. the film has serious comic pedigree. But it‘s as a steely eyed blueprint for spin doctorrng that it really succeeds. predicting the speakyour brains of text participation that now passes for public discourse and the phoniest of illegitimate Will's. i very feniale role belongs in a Benny l lr'I sketch but then every character is a (XillClelllO That Rirnrnei '2; career is an alleged spoof of executive producer Davrd l rost only makes rt more delicious. Minimal extras.
iJay Richardsoni
HORROR
THE BEAST MUST DIE
(15) 90min (Optimum DVD retail) OOO
Made in 19/4. this British monster rnovre produced by Hammer alike outfit Anircus attempted to bridge the transatlantic divrde by
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capitalising on the post Shaft blaxplortation cra/e and casting handsome African American actor Calvrn lockhart in the lead as a big game hunter who gets his kicks by hunting a werewolf. The lycanthrope in question is one of a number of l\.Vllll(,‘l guests ~ Peter Cushing. Charles Gray and a young Michael Cambon among them invrted to Lockhart's country estate that's wrred wrth hi-tech surveillance gear. Based on science fiction author James Blrsh's story There Shall Be No Dt'i/‘kness. it's essentially an Agatha Christie whodunnit Will) a supernatural twist. As creature features go lhe Beast Must Die is run of the-mill stuff. but it's enlivened \'./llll a great gimmick: at the clrrnax the film free/es for :50 seconds of 'werewolf time'. whereupon the audience is invrted to guess which of the guests is the monster. No extras. (Miles Fielder)
MUSlCAl. DRAMA SHAKALAKA BOOM BOOM (PG) 129 minutes (Blackhorse Entertainment DVD
rental retaril O
Surieel Darshaii's Bciiyii'food remake of Milos l or'iiaru's Amadeus modernrses the story in a transatlantic setting. xii/here naturally gifted but arrogant young upstart Beggi (Upen Patel) challenges
42 THE LIST 71 Jun 5) Jul 900/
experienced champion of Indian pap/pop AJ (Bobby Deol).
Great soundtracks should be par for the course in Bollywood films (the scores of Subhash Ghai's remarkable Taa/ and Part/es are still unsurpassed). Unfortunately 888 is neither musically innovative nor well crafted enough as a rnovre to Justify the poor behavrour and acting of the characters actors.
Full of 80s kitsch and lacking the qualifying genius of a modern lndran Mo/art. SBB resorts to gratuitous shots of garrshly 'mrcro- skrrted' females (Celina Jartley and Kangana Hanaut). randomly snogging the male leads 'onstage‘.
Star Patel pouts incessantly. while curly— penned Deol's histrronics are laughable at best. Tired. farcical and ridiculous. No extras. (Gha/ala Butt)
DRAMA MOLOCH
(12) 100min
(Soda Picture, DVD Retail) .00.
Where his mentor Andrei 'larkovsky would often take the ordinary and turn it into the extraordinary. frlrnmaker Aleksandr Sokuroy frequently works a partial reverse. In his trilogy of 'drctator' films. lair/"as (about lenini. The Sun (about Hrrohitoi as well as this lrlrn about Hitler. he seems to be searching out a curious combo of the strange and the commonplace.
This 199$) frlrn has Hitler (Leonid Mo/govoyl taking trrne out in the Alpine mountains. talking to a priest. devoting trrne and energy to Fva Braun (Yelena Hulanoval. and absorbing the lllElJOESlV of the surrounding landscape. There's a curious sense of
DVD ROUND-UP
‘Spring being a tough act to follow. God created June.‘ The great American writer. actor and boxing analyst Al Bernstein wrote that. But then he also said. ‘A tool and his money get a lot of publicity' so perhaps we shouldn‘t pay too much attention to him. As June winds down you should. however. be paying attention to the long overdue DVD release of Scottish filmmaker Richard Jobson's bizarre, intermittently enjoyable futuristic gang-banger flick The Purifiers (Lionsgate ooo ). Shot in Glasgow. this overly wordy but kinetic and unruly exploitation thriller pitches a bunch of Tae Kwan Do kids against megalornaniac underground gang leader Moses (Kevin lvchidd). Using Walter Hill's The Warriors. a million Hong Kong actroners and Manga as touchstones. Jobson creates a fairly silly but totally unique vision of this land of ours in the years to come. Jobson's film sets the tone for what is frankly a bonkers selection of releases this fortnight. British Transport Films Collection (Vol 5): Off the Beaten Track (BFl O... ) is (unbelievably) the fifth compendium of classic British Transport films. And. as mundane it sounds. you really can‘t beat the experience of watching a bunch of blokes in old wagons driving up and down pre—motonrvay Britain. Despite being collated around the theme of transport there is a strong natural history element to the short films (truckers go fishing. truckers go twrtching); two of the shorts were even nominated for Oscars.
Ken Loach's 1971 tribal dissection. Family Life (Optimum 0000 l. finally debuts on DVD this month. This painful. austere fictional documentary about a yOung lady who suffers at the hands of her authoritarian parents is worth checking out if you have the stomach for it. Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein's 2004 documentary Gunner Palace (Elephant Video 000 l is abOut the activities of the US 2/3 Field Artillery during the early part of the Iraq War. Though dated by the rivers of blood that have since washed through many of the film's locations this is an interesting wartime sketch by serious embedded film journalists. Box sets are pretty low on the ground this fortnight. One is pointless ~ the Nick Nolte Collection (Prism Leisure 00 ). It features only Farewell to the King and Affliction neither of which are particularly representative of this brilliant actor's work. The Oshima Box Set (Nouveaux Pictures 0000.). containing the great Japanese filmmakers two best known films w The Realm of the Senses and Empire of Passion (pictured) — is far more interesting. Both films have been restOred to their original erotic glory. This is sensual. heady world cinema at it's best.
Next time we'll be falling in love with the Coen Brothers all over again. (Paul Dale)
idealism here that's ostensibly problematic the suggestion that Hitler'signorant ofthe death camps. the stunning. rnrsty. milky opening where Eva wanders around naked
interesting double bili' Wllll Olner llir'schbiegel's much
as if offering herself as the model of Aryan perfection. Yet it's also a film that tries to understand less the banality of evil than the insulation of power. and would make an
more prosaic [)oii Ufa/l. Good extras include a 'makrng of' documentary
i'lony MCKIDDIll‘i