Reviews
HORROR
GHOST SHIP (U) 71 min
(Optimum DVD retail) .0.
In this genial. seaworthy
but fright-lite low budget
British horror film from 1952. a couple purchase an old steam boat with the intention of turning it into a luxury love nest only to find the crate has a history akin to that of the Marie Celeste and more than one skeleton in its below decks closet.
Writer-director Vernon Sewell makes an able- bodied attempt at steering the film into safe harbour. which is where most of the action takes place (as opposed to upon the high seas). In fact. Sewell was very much at home off dry land. given that he had previously directed The Silver Fleet for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and earlier made the voyage with Powell to The Edge of the World in 1937. Later in his prolific career. Sewell would go on to hack his way through everything from horror The Blood Beast Terror to comedy Strict/y for the Birds. No extras. (Miles Fielder)
BLACK COMEDY LTRA
(18) 93mins (Bluebell Films DVD retail) 0..
Gustave de Kervern and
Benoit Delepine — the writers. directors and stars of this odd but
strangely heart-warming
Belgian road movie — are comedians in their home country. and quite obviously blessed with the blackest and most oft-the-wall senses of humour imaginable. Here's the gag: the duo play countryside neighbours — one a farmer. the other a white collar worker in the city — who hate each other and end up managing to cripple one another in an industrial threshing machine.
Against all the odds. japes ensue. and the misfortune of the misanthropic pair's situation is treated with bare-bones humanity. As they develop a grudging understanding and set out to claim six million euros from the company which manufactured the faulty farm equipment. the pairs amusineg sullen delivery is as dry as the beautiful black and white photography which accompanies them wheeling their way across the countryside to Finland. Extras include a director's interview. deleted scenes. and a short film by Delepine.
(David Pollock)
WESTERN
SILENT TONGUE (12) 101 min
(Optimum DVD retail) 0...
Although filmed on the expansive plains of the Old West. Pulitzer Prize- winning playwright Sam Shepard's 1994 western is a very stagy affair. switching between handfuls of dusty. dialogue-heavy scenes and boasting some scenery-chewing performances. Not that the film's theatricality is a bad thing. given that it addresses. in an admirably literate and dramatic manner. the literal and metaphorical rape of the people and theland.
Elderly thespians Richard Harris and Alan
Bates go head-to-head as. respectively. a plainsman desperate to acquire an Indian squaw for his deranged son and a drunkard medicine showman who's sired a pair having forcing himself upon the titular Native American. But it's River Phoenix. playing the prairie farmer son whose grieving for the loss of his Indian bride has sent him doolally. who contributes the most mannered performance. It's a haunting film (not least because it was Phoenix‘s last) that juxtaposes the Spirituality of the natives with the bankrupt morality of the settlers. No extras.
(Miles Fielder)
DRAMA
SACRED HEART (15) 116min
(Soda Pictures DVD Raanooo
Ferzan Hamam: Turkish Bath Ozpetek‘s latest film plays a little like a combination of two much better, fairly recent Italian works which haven’t received a wide release: The Spectator and Marco Bellocchio's My Mother '3 Smile (both available on DVD outside the UK). the first about a young woman in emotional crisis; the latter about the possibility of the miraculous within a family. Here Barbora Bobulova. who starred in The Spectator. plays another wounded soul. but this time out with money to burn. She's a young property developer who finds her conscience after befriending a little female street urchin who may well have all the attributes of a saint. Will Irene (Bobulova) continue to use her and her family's wealth for endless development in the capitalist sense. or will she start to find a
DVD ROUNDUP «
No mucking about this issue; the home entertainment selection is just too good. After slim pickings last time the box set market is booming. The Coen Brothers Box Set (Fox oooo ) contains three of their best films - Raising Arizona (1987). Miller's Crossing (1990) and Fargo (1996). As fantastic as these three films are it's difficult to see the point of this box set, considering that anyone in the world with half an ounce of taste already owns them on some format. Plus there are no extras; the phrase money for old rope comes to mind. The transfers are. however. very crisp and clean, but really who
cares?
You'd be better off with the Francois Truffaut Boxset (Fox 0000.). which contains a selection of the great French auteur's work that have not seen the light of day in the UK (outside the National Film Theatre anyway) since a BBC2 retrospective following his death in 1984. These five films from Truffaut's mid period include his most accessible — The Man Who Loved Women (1977) and his most crafted work, The Story Of Ade/e H (1975). and at least one real masterwork in the shape of The Wild Child (1970). plus two outstanding. very rarely screened character pieces — Mississippi Mermaid (1969) about a wealthy tobacco factOry owner's slow build relationship with his mail-order bride and The Bride Wore Black (1968). in which Jeanne Moreau plays a suicidal widow in search of retribution.
As the theme tune to 19808 clip show bearing his name used to go: ‘Hurrah for Harold Lloyd! /A pair of glasses and a smile!’ Harold Lloyd: The Definitive Collection (Optimum 0000.) contains all 13 of this great silent slapstick comedian's shorts and five of his talkies. Lloyd's genius for timing and agility is on show here in re-mastered classics Safety Last! (1923), The Freshman (1925) and Movie Crazy (1932) along with some lesser known gems. Very good extras include a load of featurettes looking at Lloyd‘s oeuvre and his place in the Hollywood of the 208 and 308. And if all that is not enough for you there's always the Robert Altman Box Set (Fox 0000 ). a pentet of good and quite average films by the late. great filmmaker. Highlights include The Long Goodbye (1973). Thieves Like Us (1974) and of
course MASH (1970).
There‘s just space left to urge you to go out and rent. buy or steal John Cassavetes' very adult. challenging. long unavailable. theatre-based 1977 melodrama Opening Night (Optimum 0000 ) and Gillo Pontecorvo's 1969 follow-up to the Battle of Algiers — Burn! (Fox 0000 ). the first film to tangentially tell the story of William Walker (played beautifully by Marlon Brando). the English mercenary who led a colonial slave revolt in the mid 19th century. Brando himself believed the film contained some of his very best
work.
Next issue. death may just be the answer for us all. (Paul Dale)
way of redistritmtrng her vast resources? Ozpetek's films usually deal with some sort of impending crisis in the
face of a certain situation, location or person. and this is another very efficiently made example. But
seek Out the vastly superior Bellocchio film it you can. Extras are a director's commentary only. (Tony McKibbinl
f» 1‘.) .Jul 2007 THE LIST 41