Reviews
SILENT MELODRAMA BORDERLINE (12) 72min
(BFI retail) .0.
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Kenneth Macpherson's film tackles issues of race and sexual triangles head on. and With a cinematic inventiveness. in keeping with the radical commitment of those involved. MacPherson was a renowned Marxist and many of those involved were either on the board of the magazine Close Up. or artists interested in social progress.
As white man (Gavin Arthur) continues to have an affair with the non-white Adah (Eslanda Robeson) her black husband Pete (Paul Robeson) tries to Win her back. All the while. though. racist onlooker Astrid (Hilda Doolittlel is lusting after Pete. and her mindset can't do much about her bodily desires.
In keeping with this feverish content. Macpherson looks like he's absorbed Eisenstein's rapid. montage style and maybe the best. if most flippant way. to describe it is as a combo of SOViet montage meeting Griffith-like melodrama. Here emphatic gestures collide With fast cutting. all to a Courtney Pine soundtrack.
Extras include an interView with Pine and free booklet.
(Tony McKibbin)
MARTIAL ARTS DRAGON TIGER GATE
(1 5) 86mins (Showl )ox DVD retail/rental) .00
Based on the popular Manga Oriental Hero and directed by veteran Hong Kong action director Wilson Yip alongside Hong Kong actor and stunt choreographer Donnie
Yen. Dragon Tiger Gate is overblown. melodramatic and almost ludicrously kinetic.
The core plot — involving two brothers. Dragon (Yen) and Tiger (Hong Kong pop star Nicholas Tse) who were separated at birth and brought up to follow very different paths — is almost secondary. What really dazzles the imagination here are the lush. occasionally digitally-created sets Yip places his characters in, Yen's astounding.
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almost breathless stunt- work and combat scenarios. and the fast cutting technique the director employs. even wuthin talking heads sequences. The almost uniformly beautiful cast adds to the fact that Yip has come close to transferring the fast- paced hyper-reality of the best action comics to the screen. An extras bonus disc includes over two hours of add- ons. including a 'making-of' featurette and cast and crew interviews.
(DaVId Pollock)
EXISTENTIAL DRAMAS BAD TIMING
(18) 117min
(Network DVD rental/retail) 0.. INSIGNIFICANCE (15) 104min
(Network DVD rental/retail) 0000
it seems a very long time ago. but there was a moment when a new film by Nicolas Roeg felt like a true cinematic event. Looking back at his canon. some have lasted the test of time better than others (for every Don 't Look Now or Walkabout there's a Track 29 or Castaway). The release of two 1980s works are a case in point. As the decade dawned. Bad Timing seemed like a visceral adventure into identity and Jealousy with a
brittle Art Garfunkel snapping in two as his neuroses are steadily unveiled when his girlfriend (Theresa Russell) is rushed to hospital. Now. it all seems overblown and overwr0ught.
as].
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/nsignificance. meanwhile. is as essential and existentially brilliant as it was back in 1985. Russell again appears as Marilyn Monroe. who explains the theory of relativity to Einstein (Michael Emil) while her baseball husband goes bananas and a paranoid US senator (Tony CurIISl tries to get Einstein to spill the beans on his Communist pals. With flights of evocative fancy round every corner. this addictive tale might ultimately cerne to mean nothing. but it's a blast getting there. (Brian Donaldson)
THRILLER
THE MINUS MAN (15) 107min
(Optimum DVD retail) 0...
Made way back in 1999 (but here receiving its UK debut on DVD). this overlooked American
DVD ROUNDUP ,
ls death the beginning or the end? Who knows? Who cares? Unless. of course. somewhere on the other side there is a home cinema where one could watch Harold and Maude. Hal Ashby's 1971 morbid comic gem (Paramount COO. ) about death-obsessed 20-year-old Harold (Bud Cort) and his zesty relationship with septuagenarian Maude (the glorious Ruth Gordon). A film this singular and derailed could only have been made by a man as unreliable. drug- hazed and reclusive as Ashby. the director of Bound for Glory (1976). The Last Detail (1973). Coming Home (1978) and Being There (1979). Sadly considered unemployable by the end of his career. Ashby was one of the true mavericks of 703 US cinema, and this was his most personal piece of work. Beautifully packaged. this release is part of a new Paramount Originals series and includes a limited edition reproduction film poster. John Midnight Cowboy Schlesinger's much underrated film adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's searing novel The Day of the Locust (Paramount 0000 ) gets a long overdue release on DVD this fortnight. This pitch-black pertrait of the naive. abused. simple-minded and hysterical hopefuls of Hollywood in the 19303 is a lovely rediscovery. Though stylistically and tonally a little uneven. this 1974 film features superb performances from Karen Black as the cruel and manipulative aspiring actress Faye. and Donald Sutherland as local man-child Homer Simpson, so now you know where those boys at Fox get all their best jokes from. Also of note is a new edition of Lindsay Anderson's awesome 1969 feature debut If . . . (Paramount 00000) with great extras. Anderson's Oscar-winning documentary Thursday's Children and Nicholas Ray's remarkable steroid frenzy 1956 melodrama Bigger Than Life (BFI .0000) starring James Mason at the top of his form as a certisone-fuelled schoolteacher. If that tickles your fancy you may also want to invest in the James Mason Collection (Optimum
). which features. among other lesser films. the remarkable terrorist
drama Odd Man Out (1947) and 1952 espionage thriller Five Fingers (pictured). Volume one of two newly restOred Sergei Eisenstein Collections (Tartan 0000 ) also rolls down the steps in this period. A must for any student of film. this comprises stellar classics Strike (1925). Battleship Potempkin (1925). October (1927) and some fairly worthy extras about the recording of the new soundtracks for the films. 80 many good films. so little time. (Paul Dale)
indie about a compassionate serial killer finds frat-pack comic actor Owen Wilson in an unusually serIOLis role. Wilson was yet to make his name when he took the lead in this offbeat but pitch perfect psychological thriller about a drifter who ‘intervenes' in the lives of the unhappy and
gently puts an end to their misery. Although the proceedings are played straight. the titular existential killer Vann Siegert is a recognisable Wilson creation — an airhead with arrested development.
Among Vann's Victims are Brian Cox. Mercedes Ruehl.
Janeane Garofalo and Sheryl Crow. and that cast is well served by a decent script (adapted from Lew McCreaiy's novel) and even handed direction from Hampton Fancher. the writer of that post-modern sci-ti classic Blade Runner here making his directing debut. No extras. (Miles Fielder)
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