www.list.co.uk/film
DRAMA SOMETIMES A GREAT MOTION (12) 113min (Optimum DVD retail) OOOO
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Briefly seen in the UK under the title Never Give an Inch. Sometimes a Great Notion was a long gestated but never accomplished project by Sam Peckinpah before becoming one of the most unfairly underrated gems in the directorial canon of the late Paul Newman. Adapting the novel by One Flew Over the Cuckoo 's Nest author Ken Kesey. Newman makes a confident fist of painting a salty family portrait of the Stamper family, with Henry Fonda. Lee Remick, Richard Jaekel and Michael Sarrazin putting the accent of blue-collar pride against the vivid background of Oregon's logging community. “We're all God's children,‘ runs Charley Pride's theme song. but the film's account of fractious
familial existences resists
any such bland homilies about outdoor life; it's a tough. humane and - in one slow-burning sequence that reveals the hidden dangers of logging — haunting story about the limits of macho bravura. Minimal extras.
(Eddie Harrison)
WAR/DRAMA A TIME TO LOVE erD A TIME TO
(PG) 127min
(Eureka DVD retail) 0”.
For his penultimate American film in 1958. Douglas Sirk. master of Hollywood melodrama. returned to his native Germany to shoot his most personal film. Adapted from the novel by Erich Maria Remarque (author of All Quiet on the Western Front). it's the story of a soldier (hunky John Gavin) who temporarily
if!“
escapes the horror of
the RUSSian-German front on a furlough back home to bombed-out Berlin. Here he searches for his missing parents and falls in love With a local girl (sweet Liselotte Pulver). Sirk's own son — who was estranged after his father left the boy’s Nazi mother to marry a Jewish woman — went missing-in-action
on the Russian front and
this sad tale is reflected in the compassionate treatment of Gavin's tragically brutalised grunt. As usual with Sirk, everything is on a grand scale. from the glorious CinemaScope photography to the wildly emotive performances. Extras: Two-disc set featuring a new anamorphic film transfer and three documentaries plus an accompanying booklet and lots more.
(Miles Fielder)
ANIMATION/ADVENTURE WATCHMEN: TALES OF TH BLACK FREIGHTER
(15) 109min
(Paramount DVD rental/retail) no.
Tales of the Black Freighter. or ‘the pirate story' as it's also known, is the comic-within-the- comic that threads through the narrative of the Watchmen graphic novel. Excised from the film adaptation, it appears here as a 25- minute 2D animation featuring the voice of
Gerard Butler (apparently
it's going to be cut'n‘pasted into a longer version of the film
for a forthcoming absolute edition DVD). While it works well enough as a gruesome revenge yarn. it should really been seen as originally intended, prOViding metaphorical commentary on the Superheroes story. MOre satisfying in a single sitting is the back up featurette. Under the Hood. a 38-minute moc- doc that purports to be a 1975 edition of the current affairs teleViSion Show. The Cir/pepper Minute. in which the retired first Nite Owl (Stephen McHattie) is interviewed about his career as a masked crime fighter and his titular tell-all memoir. Beautifully made. it's full of sardonic references to the film. Extras: Story within a Story: The Books of Watchmen, Watchmen Motion Comics: Chapter 7 plus a first look at The Green Lantern feature.
(Miles Fielder)
DRAMA NIGHTHAWKS/ STRIP JACK NAKED
(18) 227min
(BFl DVD and Blu-ray retail) 0000
Nighthawks
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An unsung gem of 1970s indie Brit cinema (and not to be confused with the Stallone flick from 1981). Nighthawks chronicles the double life of a guarded. vulnerable and semi- closeted schoolteacher by day who spends most nights cruising bars and clubs in search of an unattainable Mr Right.
Unshowy. sometimes impressionistic. sympathetic yet detached, it is a carefully considered. quasi-documentary depiction of the transient mating rituals and unfulfilled longings of London's pre- Stonewall, pre-Aids gay scene. The film is more about pints and fags.
FILM BOOKS ROUND-UP
Liberal. Jewish. prolific, daring and bald - there can be little doubt that theatre and film director Otto Preminger (pictured. above) was one of Austria's greatest gifts to Hollywood. Literary consideration of Preminger's oeuvre. which includes a handful of genuine greats (The Man with the Golden Arm. Anatomy of a Murder, Angel Face. Advise and Consent. Bunny Lake is Missing) is thin on the ground. Writer. critic and translator Chris Fujiwara's critical biography The World and Its Double: The Life and Work of Otto Preminger (Faber mo ,) seeks to redress this. Fujiwara follows Preminger's career trajectory and output with a forensic closeness. He brings this volatile and much misunderstood filmmaker to life in all his old world glory. This chunky volume was clearly something of a labour of love and is undoubtedly the most rewarding and thorough of biographies about Preminger.
Mark Bould‘s Lone Star: The Cinema of John Sayles (Wallflower 000 ) is another in the Director's Cuts series from this progressive publisher. Again it's a series of very highbrow discussions about each of this great lilmmaker's works. As with all these books. Bould treads across a critical theory minefield and evokes Gramsci. Marx. Freud and Lukacs by way of analysis. When not overpoweringly academic in tone. Bould's prose style is actually a little too flat to maintain interest but still this may be of interest to film studies students.
Carole Zucker's Dark Carnival: The Cinema of Neil Jordon (Wallflower oooo ) is slightly better mainly because Jordon's cooperation is evident from the beginning with some interview material and an introduction by his friend and actor Stephen Rea. Also. Jordon's work is so rich in violence. gothic horror and myth that it allows Zucker to move away from the fog and mirrors of critical theory speak and address some fundamental themes in Jordon's work.
Tony Bill's mildly amusing Movie Speak (Workman Publicity no
)isa
dictionary of 'How to Talk Like You Belong on a Film Set'. All the technical and slang terms you will ever need to blag your way on to the set of George Clooney's latest film are her — just make sure you know your billy clip (a vice grip) from your BFL (Big Fucking Light) or your Rhubarb (gibberish dialogue) from your Rembrandt (on set painter). (Paul Dale)
cups of tea and morning-after transport negotiations than horny nocturnal encounters. The semi-imprOVIsed dialogue is full of telling banalities. Ken Robertson, the sole professional actor. is good enough to make you regret what seems to have been a permanently stalled career. Two great scenes: one an
extended and extreme
close-up of his restless eyes, the other his coming out in the classroom.
The follow-up to this quiet landmark was the little-known Strip Jack Naked. a rumination On the first film and Peck's own maturation and radicalisation as a gay Brit. Extras include several shorter works.
including Peck's conteiitplative dOCumentary about Edward Hopper. Nighthawks is the title of one of the latter's most famoos paintings. Clearly their moody isolation was an influence here. (Donald Huterai
HORROR MANHUNT (18) 80min (Metrodome DVD rental/retail) 000
Europe is the best place for horror at the moment With Spain (The Orphanage, [Rec/i. France (Frontier/Si, Martyrs) and Sweden (Let the Right One ln‘i produCing some of the most startling. original and terrifying films of recent years. With Manhunt and Cold Prey. Norway is throwmg its
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hat into the rill/j. this liiiit: (,‘nhtiiiiij froiii [ff/{1.2 C/h’ll/l.‘s(ll‘/ l/fr'i.';.‘;t’ir.rr.'. Deliverance riiirl Wrong him as a quartet of young backpackers arr: hunted (fr/xiii by rednecks, The gore is harsh and realistir, as the prolaqoiiists abandon their principles to fight tooth and claw for survival in this slick and brutal slasher. Minimal extras.
(Henry Northiriorei
fjf) A:/— 1-1 Ma, Zli’i’t THE LIST 57