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DRAMA TICK TOCK LULLABY
(15) 72min (Peccadillo DVD retail) .0.
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{34" 1" it In one partiCuIar scene of this film. a good looking thirty-something notices that he's been trailed by a couple of ladies. and comments that it‘s the first time he's been cruised by two gay women. and that pretty much sums up the twist to Lisa Gornick's tale of life. love and London ladies'.
This is an example of the sort of queer cinema that is quirky but not remotely radical. It follows three stories throughout the film. In the first. two gay women (Gornick and Raquel Cassidy) are looking for a sperm donor for their child. the second charts a married couple with marital problems whilst the third follows a single woman (Sarah Patterson). a photographer. also looking to get impregnated.
Told in a breezy. chirpy style with voice—over and cartoon sketches detailing the story. Gornick's film could have utilised its London locales more than it does. and the characters never really become any more complex than the specific issues each has to address. Watchable enOugh though. Minimal extras. (Tony McKibbin)
HORROR
THE GRAVEYARD (18) 83min (Revolver DVD rental/retail) 0
Michael Hurst's horror- by-numbers film harks back very ineffectiver to the three decade old genre conventions of Friday The 13th and Halloween without evoking the slightest hint of the atmoSphere.
In it, a prologue sees a
group of college friends playing an unpleasant prank upon one of their number. who dies as a result. Bobby. (Patrick Scott Lewis) is held by the authorities to be responsible. After a five- year manslaughter sentence. Bobby reassembles his friends in the inevitable summer camp where the action began. and. completely unsurprisingly. they begin to come to nasty ends. It's difficult to see why this genre would be revisited at this time. but given a certain edge. the film might have scraped by under its tired formula. Yet a predictable plot and a thinly disguised villain quash any hope of success. Bury this one face down.
(Steve Cramer)
CANGSTER PARIS LOCKDOWN (18) 143min (Momentum DVD retail/rental) COO
This brutally efficient. thoroughly gratuitous French gangster film from Frederic Schoendorffer. director of Scene de Crime and Spy Bound, explores the lives of various gangsters on the make. Unfortunately when key crime figure Claude (Philippe Caubert) gets locked up for a couple of years the director becomes less interested in the mechanics of crime than the pyrotechnics of the violence. in one truly horrible moment worthy of the recent wave of terture porn. a gangster
is strapped to the chair and has his knee drilled and his nose cut off. which obviously has more to do with trying to make the audience wretch than with filling Out the context of the gangsters“ lives.
Though clearly influenced by Michael Mann and Martin Scorsese. this film never quite feels alive to Paris as a city: it's more an indifferent background to the violence that takes place in it. With Beatrice Dalle. Extras including a documentary on the film’s making. (Tony MCKit)bin)
ROAD MOVIE INTERSTATE 60 (15) 11 1 min
(Scanbox DVD retail)
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Subtitled 'Episodes of the Read. this plays more like an edited version of a primetime US televrsion comedy aimed at teenagers. Written and directed by Bob Gale. comic book writer and regular Robert Zemeckis collaborator - the pair's co—scripting credits include the Back to the Future trilogy and Spielberg's 194i - the tone is whimsical and the characters. young and attractive. These include James X-lt/len Marsden as existentially frustrated young loafer Neal and Amy Smart as his love interest.
It has the ambience of The OC washed together with Scrubs. and feels all the more inconsequential for it. But then there are some heavyweight cameos throughout. most notably from Gary Oldman as the wish- granting OW Grant. who sets Marsden off on a quest along the fictional Interstate 60. Sadly. pretty soon. antlerpating the appearance of Michael J Fox or Christopher Lloyd for a bit of scenery-chewing
DVD ROUNDUP
Folk from the Douglas Trilogy
The time has come to celebrate British cinema. Not the British cinema of Hitchcock. Powell and Pressburger. David Lean or Robin The Wicker Man Hardy. but the cinema of subsidies and struggle. the results of which have barely seen the inside of a cinema since they stumbled into life in the 1970s and 80s This is a cinema anchored by nationality and penury, much of which is still stranded in obscurity awaiting validation and re-release. It includes much of the cinema of arch politico/mockumentarist Peter Watkins and Barney Platts-Mills. whose raw funny pertraits of class and dissolution — Bronco Bullfrog. Private Road and Scottish period drama The Hero were last seen on Channel 4 in its agenda setting early days. Luckily for us a few of these neglected masterworks of underground British cinema are beginning to emerge on DVD. Chris Petit's stunning 1979 Wim Wenders produced existential road movie Radio On (BFI 00000) and Stuart Cooper‘s equally remarkable Overlord (Metrodome 00000) — a newsreel footage style recreation of one man‘s D-Day hell — were the first to see the light
of day earlier this year.
Arguably the greatest cinematic achievement to ever come out of Scotland. the Bill Douglas Trilogy (BFI 00000) is a compelling account of childhood in Newcraighall. It finally gets a decent DVD release (it's only taken 30 years) this month with loads of extras including other shorts by Douglas and an archival interview with the great man.
Douglas' Scouse counterpart Terence Davies. whose brilliant autobiographical 1988 film Distant Voices. Still Lives was finally given a decent DVD release last year. struggled with faith. homosexuality and hardship in much the same way as Douglas can be perceived as having done. Like Douglas. Davies poured his heart and soul in to a personal trilogy detailing life (and death) on the margins of society. which lay archived but largely unattainable for years. On the 28th July this month The Terence Davies Trilogy (BFl 00000) finally enters the public domain for the first time since its completion in 1983. excellently supported here by an illustrated booklet. which includes an essay by the late great Derek Jarman on the trilogy.
British cinema may not see their like again. (Paul Dale)
becomes the only reason for watching. Extras include a 'making of’ film. gag reel. deleted scenes and theatrical trailer. (David Pollock)
WAR
INTIMATE ENEMIES
(15) 100min (Contender DVD retail) 0..
Will the Algerian war turn the humanist lieutenant at the centre of Florent Emilio Siri‘s film into a monstrous shadow of his former self? After being posted to Algeria. Terrien (Benoit Magirnel). the well-adjusted husband and father back in
France. struggles to hold onto his values. simultaneously. pragmatic survival seems to dictate that if he doesn't adjust he'll end up less principled than naive. But can he become realistic about the dangers of the situation without becoming yet another blood baying war machine?
This is a crisis of conscience film. but more pessimistic than most as Terrien and the French Army are fighting a battle they have no real hope of winning. The strength of the film lies both in Magimel's very competent performance (no matter
‘IIU. It“ fill H! I m
.Imvsmr
' its J! I the continuing stiffness of his body language). and in the great support from Albert Dupontel. Marc Barbe and Aurenan Recoing as follow soldiers. Extras include an interview wrth the director. and interviews with veterans remembering the war. (Tony McKibbin)
13—47 Jul 2008 THE LIST 53