www.list.co.uk/film DRAMA/THRILLER LAST STOP 174 (ULTIMA PARADA 174) (18) 110min (Bright Spark) ●●●●●
Following on, and taking it’s lead from, Jose Padilha’s 2002 documentary Bus 174 this Brazilian film fictionalises the story of former street kid Sandro do Nascimento who hijacked a public bus in Rio de Janeiro in 2000. By opening the story out to follow the lives of two orphans who struggle through a life of homelessness, crime and betrayal that hurtles towards tragic inevitability, director Bruno Barreto’s film bears obvious comparison to City of God (one made stronger by both films sharing the same writer, Braulio Mantovini).
The cast are astounding – doubly impressive, considering many are amateurs. Inspired more by the post-war Italian neorealist cinema than the spate of recent favela thrillers, tricks of editing or camerawork are forgone in favour of showing the obvious clash between the grim reality of the shanty towns and the sun- drenched beaches of Copacabana. The dialogue could be sharper, as it occasionally seems clichéd, although this could just be an issue with subtitles – but the actors, for their part, never falter. No extras. (Niki Boyle)
HORROR DR JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE (15) 94min (Optimum) ●●●●●
By the turn of the sexploitastic 1970s Hammer Films were upping the erotic content of their already titillating takes on horror
develops between two young women. Aspiring concert pianist Marie has moved from the countryside to Lyon to study at the city’s prestigious music conservatory. She admires her elegant blonde flatmate Emma (Isild le Besco), but the latter turns out to have a powerfully possessive personality. Doubtless this will be
pigeon-holed as a Gallic Single White Female, yet Laloy wisely concentrates on the ambiguity of Marie’s feelings and responses towards Emma’s advances and how her professional development is affected by internal turmoil: creative success, it seems, requires emotional ruthlessness. The darkened and claustrophobically framed apartment is an atmospheric central location, there are fine performances from the two leads, and the classical soundtrack (including excerpts from Ravel, Chopin, Bach Schumann) is integral to the film’s impact. Extras include ‘making of’ documentary. (Tom Dawson)
THRILLER THE SHINJUKU INCIDENT (SAN SUK SI GIN) (18) 120min (Cine Asia) ●●●●●
classics with this transgender spin on Stevenson’s evil alter- ego tale of terror. Released in 1971, the same year as Countess Dracula and Lust for A Vampire, it’s certainly the most accomplished of Hammer’s lasciviously lurid films. The simple but brilliant twist on Stevenson’s original was conceived by veteran film and television scriptwriter Brian Clemens, who also works into the story of a sex-changed psycho-nympho murdering women for their female hormones, the legends of real-life killers Burke and Hare and Jack the Ripper. Hammer stalwart Roy Ward Baker directs with a mix of flare and efficiency and his twin stars, Ralph Bates (who married cameo player Virginia Wetherell shortly after cutting up her prostitute on screen) and Martine Beswick (the former Miss Jamaica who replaced buxom beauty Caroline Munroe, who balked at the nudity requirement) acquit themselves equally well. No extras. (Miles Fielder) ROMANCE/DRAMA HIGHLY STRUNG (15) 96min (Peccadillo) ●●●●●
Hundreds of Chinese refugees wash up on the shores of Japan hoping for a better life, and none more so than Steelhead (Jackie Chan), who hasn’t only come for work but also to find a childhood sweetheart Xiu (Xu Jinglei). A mélange of the sentimental and the predictable, colliding with the monstrous and the complex, The Shinjuku Incident is a pretty good bad movie. Steelhead’s love for Xiu
Passed over for a UK theatrical release, this debut feature from French writer-director Sophie Laloy is an intimate melodrama, which explores the complex and intense relationship that
DVD Reviews Film
FILM BOOKS Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde
Actor, writer, director and lothario Warren Beatty allegedly gave Peter Biskind verbal permission to write his authorised biography. And then he withdrew it in the most vague, least declamatory way he could. The result of their curious professional relationship is Star: The Life and Wild Times of Warren Beatty (Simon & Schuster ●●●●●). Biskind’s heavyweight (627 pages) biography is actually a rattling good read. Written with Biskind’s usual feverish, mildly objectionable verve, it is a compulsive rendering of the life of the last of the screen idols from cinema’s golden era. Beatty’s is a story of good genes, creative success, fame, sexual promiscuity and control and finally diminishing box office returns. No one does scurrilous abandon with a greater sense of place, time and unearned decadence than Biskind. You will not read a better biography of a major Hollywood player this year. It’s a regrettable cliché but one that does retain a grain of truth. Most film
critics are social recalcitrants whose personal interaction equivalency is to retreat in to darkness only to emerge later and scribble the under-informed mutterings on any cave wall they can find. Nothing in Mark Kermode’s likeable memoir of sorts It’s Only a Movie (Random House ●●●●●) will convince otherwise. Like any other jobbing hack Kermode has seen a lot of films and has favourites (The Exorcist, Slade in Flame) which he carries with him like a perversion. The highlight of his career seems to have been a meeting with Werner Herzog amongst the stray bullets of LA and he has some amusingly acidic things to say about the malaise of the modern film festival. Kermode’s has clearly been a privileged life in a gnomic and unimportant profession but he never takes things too seriously and the book is effortlessly readable. Chris Fujiwara’s Jerry Lewis (University of Illinios Press ●●●●●) dissects the
great comedy actor’s directorial work with the discipline of an academic and passion of an advocate. Centred on a very probing interview with Lewis, this is an incomparable work about one of the 20th century’s most misunderstood clowns.
Finally Farber On Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber (Library of America ●●●●●) is a must for anyone interested in writing on film. Farber was a painter, film critic and writer whose contributions to The New Republic, Time and Film Culture in the post-war period helped delineate between the bloated ‘white elephants’ of mainstream cinema and the ‘termite art’ of underappreciated B-movie auteurs. We owe him a debt. (Paul Dale)
is too often made up of doe-eyed looks on Chan’s part, and predictable flashbacks on veteran filmmaker Yee Tung-Shing (it’s also hard to believe that Chan and Xiu are about the same age). But the film is fine on the various factions at play in the Japanese
underworld, and how Chan must negotiate his way through them. Whether it is dealing with a cop who helps him out, Xiu’s husband whose life he saves, or the fellow Chinese immigrants who turn against him, Chan gets caught in an ever- deeper mess. Extras include making of/behind the scenes featurettes; extended and deleted scenes and interview gallery (Jackie Chan, Daniel Wu, Xu Jinglei, Masaya Kato, Naoto Takenata, Chin Kar Lok, Pater Kam Pau-Tat). Also available in Blu-ray. (Tony McKibbin)
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