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Round Midnight. (15.)
Directed by Bertrand Tavernier Starring Dexter Gordon, Francois Cluzet, Herbie Hancock, Gabrielle Hacker, Sandra Reeves-Phillips, Bobby Hutcherson, Christine Pascal, Lonette McKee and Martin Scorsese. Out on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection. 133 mins. Tavernier’s splendid immersion into the world of bebop jazz musicians in the late 50s has acquired a certain infamy as the beneficiary of one of the Academy's most egregious miscarriages of justice: the award of the Oscar for the best original soundtrack to Herbie Hancock for this, rather than the overwhelming favourite Ennio Morricone’s score for The Mission. The Maestro stormed out of the ceremony after the announcement by Bette Midler. There are a number of reasons why it was controversial. The first of these being - it’s Morricone’s score to The Mission. Even among his endless back catalogue of excellence, The Mission stands out, a gust of celestial wind that swept up a donkey of a film to not quite greatness. You’ll probably never watch it again, but you’ll never forget that film because of its music. Secondly, this “original soundtrack” is mostly arrangements of other people’s work. Plus, of course, it’s bloody jazz. 
Nineteen Eighty-Four. (12.)
Directed by Rudolph Cartier. 1954. Starring Peter Cushing, Andre Morell, Yvonne Mitchell, Leonard Sachs, Campbell Gray, Wilfrid Brambell and Donald Pleasance. Out on Blu-ray from the BFI. 114 mins. While the BBC mutely celebrates its centenary and NetFlix coincidently on purpose screens a documentary about Jimmy Savile, the BFI at least is banging the drum for one of this country’s great cultural institutions by giving a blu-ray release to one of its landmark achievements, one whose notoriety would usually be an essential part of celebrations of the institution reaching a notable anniversary. In the past, whenever the corporation would do a special night to mark 50, 60 or 75 years of itself there would always be a mention of its production of George Orwell's classic novel and the horrified reaction to it: the thousands of complaints; the tabloid rage, the questions in Parliament. 
Dune (12.)
Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Starring Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Jason Momoa, Zendaya, Javier Bardem, Dave Bautista, Charlotte Rampling and Stellan Skarsgard. Available on 4k UHD, Blu-ray, DVD and VOD. 155 mins. Dune wasn’t the first post-pandemic global box office blockbuster – that would be Spiderman 3.3 – but it might be the first event movie whose performance wasn't hampered, indeed may even have been enhanced, by the big C. The adaptation of Frank Herbert’s esteemed sci-fi novels was a chancy proposition when it landed in cinemas; four months on, Dune arrives on the various physical formats as a triumph. 
The Thin Red Line. (15.)
Directed by Terrence Malick. 1998 Starring Jim Caviezel, Ben Chaplin, Adrien Brody, Elias Koteas, Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Dash Mihok, Woody Harrelson, John Cusack, George Clooney, Tim Blake Nelson, Jared Leto, John Savage, John C. Reilly and John Travolta. Out now on Blu-ray from Criterion Collection. 164 mins. Though Badlands is his masterpiece, a flawless work of art conveying complex and profound ideas, this is the one, the Malick film to be cherished above all others, the one that justifies his genius tag, the one that keeps us holding out for him even after all the crappy films he's subjected us to over the last decade. The world is not short of war films but this and Apocalypse Now stand above them all. It's not so much that they are better than all the others, rather that they reach something beyond all the others. Coppola found in Vietnam and Conrad an intoxicating madness; in his version of James Jones account of the battle for Guadalcanal in World War 2 Malick concocted a vision of war as hell, and heaven. 
Naked. (18.)
Directed by Mike Leigh. 1993. Starring David Thewlis, Lesley Sharp, Katrin Cartlidge, Peter Wight, Claire Skinner, Greg Cruttwell, Gina McKee and Ewen Bremner. Out on Blu-ray from the BFI. Also in cinemas as part of a BFI Mike Leigh retrospective. 131 mins. Down in that London, nobody talks to you. Well, not since Naked they don't. During its 131 minutes various Londoners, or itinerant inhabitants thereof, strike up conversations with young Johnny (Thewlis), down from Manchester in a stolen car to avoid a beating, and soon come to regret it. Johnny is garrulous, well-read, highly educated, sarky and believes that humanity is inherently flawed and that the world will end in 1999. He's living proff of how a lot of learning and a little bible will mess you up. He constantly berates southerners for their coldness but turns on anyone who does show him kindness. 
Fantastic Mr Fox (PG.)
Directed by Wes Anderson. 2009 Featuring George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Wally Wolodarsky, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Jarvis Cocker and Michael Gambon. Out now on Blu-ray from Criterion Collection. 87 mins. I really wasn't going to bother with the Criterion disc for Wes Anderson's first full-length animation. I'd loved it when it came out but probably didn't need to see it again. But then I saw his latest The French Dispatch and was knocked out by it that I felt compelled to go back to the first WAnderson film I actually enjoyed, and the one that now looks like it was a decisive shift in his career. Mr Fox was the moment he shifted from realism to artifice, from location to the studio. 
Out of the Blue. (15.)
Directed by Dennis Hopper. 1980 Starring Linda Manz, Dennis Hopper, Sharon Farrell, Don Gordon and Raymond Burr. Out on 2 disc Blu-ray from the BFI on November 22nd. “Hey, hey, my, my, Rock'n'roll can never die.” The lyrics to Neal Young's Hey, Hey, My, My (Out Of The Blue) may or may not be words to live by but they are words to launch a career resurrection on. When, after two weeks working on a small scale Canadian production called CeeBee, the original director got the sack, Dennis Hopper was offered the opportunity to step in to replace him. Over the weekend he rewrote the script inspired by Young's song and an uplifting family-friendly drama about a young tearaway (Manz) from a troubled home who is saved by psychologist Burr, became a boozy, drug-fuelled whirlwind of punk rock alienation and youth disaffection. Not sure if he took it out of the blue, but it was definitely into the black. 
The Damned. (18.)
Directed by Luchino Visconti. 1969. Starring Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin, Helmut Berger, Helmut Griem, Umberto Ursini, Reinhard Kolldehoff and Charlotte Rampling 157 mins. Out on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection. This story of a rich German Industrialist's family and their decline during the early years of Nazi rule opens with a drag act being cut short - which is always a blessing. The 75th birthday party of patriarch Joaquim Von Essenbach is being ruined by his grandson Martin (Berger) doing a number dressed up as Marlene Dietrich until he is interrupted by news of the Reichstag fire in Munich. In contemporary nutjob vernacular the fire was a false flag operation to legitimise a crackdown on all opposition. It's the moment the Nazis cemented their grip on power and a suitable starting point for Visconti's epic study of the decadence and moral corruption of the Nazis – presumably he was against it, though at times it's hard to tell. 
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. (15.)
Directed by David Lynch. 1992. Starring Sheryl Lee, Ray Wise, James Marshall, Harry Dean Stanton, Grace Zabriskie, Kiefer Sutherland, Kyle MacLachlan, Dana Ashbrook, Madchen Amick, David Bowie, Chris Isaak, Miguel Ferrer, Moira Kelly, Peggy Lipton. Available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection. On September 13th. 129 mins. Fire Walk With Me is one of those rare films that I was on the right side of history for. The negativity of its reception in 1992, a year after the TV series had been cancelled, is almost legendary: the booing at its Cannes premiere (though apparently, that's a myth), Tarantino accusing Lynch of disappearing up his own backside and the box office flop. But I loved FWWM when it came out and, along with a few key episodes of the series, I've returned to it regularly over the three decades. Over that time it has become quite the thing to reevaluate it. Some have even declared it to be Lynch's masterpiece. But, the last couple of times I've seen it, I've started to wonder if those non-existent Kanz booers might have been on to something. 
Dune. (12A.)
Directed by David Lynch. 1984. Starring Kyle MacLachlan, Francesca Annis, Jose Ferrer, Sian Phillips, Brad Dourif, Dean Stockwell, Sting, Virginia Madsen, Everett McGill, Jack Nance, Paul Smith, Patrick Stewart, Sean Young, Freddie Jones, Linda Hunt, Kenneth McMillan, Richard Jordan, Jurgen Prochnow and Max Von Sydow. Available on Limited edition Blu-ray/ limited edition UHD/ Dual format limited edition Steelbook. 136 mins. Dune is not a great film. It wasn't when it came out in 1984 and still isn't nearly four decades later. So why the hell am I still watching it? Why did the sound of the review disc of it dropping through the letterbox excite me more than the prospect of Denis Villeneuve's new big screen version? Because David Lynch's version of Frank Herbert's monumental Sci-fi classic is a maddening mix of brilliance and rubbish and what is inspired in it is inspired to such a degree that it keeps you coming back. It's a terrible old tease: taunting and torturing you with glimpses of the remarkable. It sets your mind racing, imagining a whole film on a level with the best bits. I'm someone who prefers watching the Matrix sequels to the original; for me it's always the tease that stays with you, not the consummation. |
Enter the Void. (18.)
Directed by Gasper Noe. 2009. Starring Nathaniel Brown, Paz de la Huerta, Cyril Roy, Olly Alexander, Masato Tanno and Sara Stockbridge. Out on Blu-ray from Arrow Video. Director’s Cut. 154 mins. UK theatrical cut. 137 mins. This was my third time around with Noe's should've-been-masterpiece, a hallucinogenic swirl of life, death, love, pain and the meaning of existence fuelled by drugs, squalor and sex, set in a toytown Tokyo, and I still can’t get it to fly for me. The start of the film always gets you, thrilling you with its formal daring but the world of possibilities it throws open soon close up into the same old, same old. Most of your initial enthusiasm will likely have been used up by the halfway point. 
Lux Aeterna. (15.)
Directed by Gasper Noe. Starring Béatrice Dalle, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Abbey Lee, Karl Glusman. Out on Blu-ray from Arrow Video. 51 mins. It’s difficult to pin down what exactly Gasper Noe’s half-length film is. It’s a little bit Me Too, a little bit meta examination of cinema, a little bit backstage film set drama and a study of the history of the demonisation of women through accusations of witchcraft. More than anything though it is an upping of Noe's ongoing assault on people with epilepsy. It begins with a quote from Dostoevsky on how he envies the epileptic the moment before they have a fit and culminates with an extended sequence featuring strobe lighting and throbbing sound effects. Most of his films have at least one of these sequences but the final one in this film is so prolonged, so intensive that it is almost like an audience interrogation, a thinning of the herd, trying to weed out any hidden epileptic tendencies in the viewers. 
Revolver. (15.)
Directed by Sergio Sollima. 1973 Starring Oliver Reed, Fabio Testi, Agostina Belli, Paola Pitagora, Daniel Beretta and Frédéric de Pasquale. On Blu-ray from Eureka. 109 mins. Revolvers, there’s a lot of them about: The Beatles album; Guy Ritchie’s philosophical thriller; the late-night punk era music show hosted by Peter Cook. A lot of Revolvers but no particular reason that I can see for any of them to be called revolver and I’m struggling to see what the connection is to this 70s Italian crime thriller starring Oliver Reed and featuring an Ennio Morricone score has to the title. There are revolvers in it but they have no more significance than in any cops and robber drama. 
The Battle At Lake Changjin. (15.)
Directed by Kaige Chen, Tsui Hark and Dante Lam. Starring Jing Wu, Jackson Yee and Yihong Duan. Available on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital Download from Trinity CineAsia from 16th May. 176 mins. Spider-man: No Way Home didn’t just save the movies by getting the masses back into the cinemas, it also managed to save America from a massive loss of face. Such was its runaway box office success that in the few weeks before and over Christmas, it managed to become the top-grossing film globally in 2021. It just pipped this and spared Hollywood the indignity of the world’s biggest film being a patriotic, propaganda heavy Chinese war film for the second year in a row. In 2020, when The Eight Hundred broke a century of American global box office dominance, its success could be explained away by Covid. The Battle at Lake Changjin though had held off James Bond, a couple of Marvels and a Fast and Furious, and had done so almost entirely on the returns from the Chinese market. 
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. (18.)
Directed by John McNaughton. 1986 Starring Michael Rooker, Tom Towles, Tracy Arnold. Out on limited edition two-disc UHK/ Blu-ray from Arrow Video. Except it isn’t. A portrait of a serial killer. Not really. The original film poster when it came out announced “He Isn’t Freddy, He Isn’t Jason, He’s Real.” but he isn’t. Serial killers are known to be creatures of habit, notoriously picky. Every murder has to be just so. Our Henry – like most film serial killers – is a gadfly killer, never killing the same way twice. The film gives him a rationale for this – that it makes him harder to track to work under the radar of law enforcement if he doesn’t have a signature MO – but it is still a way of glamorising him because it is making him more interesting. 
Matrix Resurrections. (15.)
Directed by Lana Wachowski Starring Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jessica Henwick, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jonathan Groff, Jada Pinkett Smith and Neil Patrick Harris. Available now digitally and out on 4K, Blu-ray and DVD on March 21st. 147 mins. Of all the moribund properties to be considered for sequelising or prequelising, remaking or rebooting, The Matrix is surely the one most worthy of another go or two on the big screen. The 1999 original was ultimately just a set-up for more adventures: what we got was two sequels, Reloaded and Revolutions, that meandered along dispensing varying levels of dissatisfaction to paying audiences while still not destroying its allure. So the case for a Resurrection is that the concepts and characters are still strong, and the sequels left plenty of room for improvement. The case against a Resurrection is that having not done such a great job on the sequels, or with anything else really, can the Wachowskis still deliver anything worthwhile? 
Modern Times. (U.)
Directed by Charles Chaplin. Starring Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard. Black and white. Out on blu-ray March 14th from the Criterion Collection. 87 mins. Charlie Chaplin was one of the defining figures of the 20th century: he was its biggest movie star and in terms of global pop culture influence probably only The Beatles and Elvis were comparable. He was all of that while being a painfully annoying, unfunny t***. 
King Richard. (12.)
Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green. Starring Will Smith, Aunjanue Ellis, Jon Bernthal, Saniyya Sidney, Tony Goldwyn and Demi Singleton. Out on Blu-ray, DVD and VOD from Warner Bros Home Entertainment. 145 mins. The problem with the biopic of a famous sporting figure is that it is fundamentally the same as a murder mystery where you already know whodunnit. Every time we see their relentlessly driven, man-with-a-plan father Richard Williams (Smith) trying to persuade some tennis coach or agent that his two girls Venus (Sidney) and Serena (Singleton) are future champions; or when he makes a decision that everybody else thinks is crazy, we know that he will be proved right. So the film offers you the dramatics of a foregone conclusion. 
Wild Strawberries. (15.)
Directed by Ingmar Bergman 1957. Starring Victor Sjostrom, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Ingrid Thulin, Bibi Andersson, Bjorn Bjelfvenstam, Folke Sundquist and Jullan Kindahl. Out on blu-ray from the BFI https://shop.bfi.org.uk/ or as part of their Ingmar Bergman: Volume II collection. Black and white. 92 mins. There will be a review of Bergman’s seminal movie but before we get to that I wanna tell you a story. Like all good stories, it's a story about the good old days. Back in the 80s, there used to be a magical place called The Scala, a repertory cinema in Pentonville Road. It was a beautiful old building in a rough part of town and every day and all night on Saturdays, it showed a wide and wild variety of films. Cult films, classic films, crap films, obscure films, naughty films, popular films, films with Dick Miller in. They published these beautiful monthly programme posters that were works of art and you could just pick them up for free when you were walking past. 
My Little Chickadee.
Directed by Edward F. Cline. Starring Mae West, W.C. Fields, Joseph Calleia, Dick Foran and Margaret Nolan. Black and white. 83 mins. Part of the ten film/ six disc Mae West In Hollywood Blu-ray box set out now from Indicator/ Powerhouse Films. This glorious comedy western is a beautiful meeting of minds. Or maybe it is an artfully contrived accommodation of egos. Either way, it works. West and Fields star together and even get married but mostly go their own way and do their own thing. The script is credited to the two stars and, though it's much debated, the story goes that they each wrote their own parts. It's also claimed that the pair hated each other, in which case it was an inspired marriage of convenience because they play off each other perfectly. 
Mae West In Hollywood. 1932 - 1943.
Night After Night/ She Done Him Wrong/ I'm No Angel/ Belle of the Nineties/ Goin' To Town/ Klondike Kate/ Go West Young Man/ Every Day's a Holiday/ My Little Chickadee/The Heat's On. 10 films on 6 discs from Powerhouse Films Indicator. When it came to leading men, Mae West took on all-comers. Across these ten films, which make up the entirety of her period of Hollywood stardom, they range from Cary Grant and W.C. Fields. Like Fields, West in someone that I’ve really only known through impersonation. When I was a boy every comic or impressionist would do their “Come up and see me some time” or “My Little Chickadee" turns but even in the 70s it was rare to actually see the originals on screen. So this comprehensive boxset from Powerhouse Films/ Indicator is my first time seeing West in action. It's quite a shock. 
Bleak Moments. (PG.)
Directed by Mike Leigh. 1972. Starring Anne Raitt, Joolia Cappleman, Eric Allen, Sarah Stephenson, Mike Bradwell and Liz Smith. Out on Blu-ray from the BFI. 106 mins. Whatever misgivings and reservations you may have about his work, Mike Leigh is surely one of the finest British filmmakers of the last fifty years. His films are passionate, funny and sad. Quite rightly, the BFI are celebrating his half-century of filmmaking, though I don't really see why they are showing him as a dark, glass half empty guy. The attitude of most of his films is that, granted, the glass could be fuller but tempered with gratitude for the half that is there. But the film they chose to put in cinemas, Naked, is a film whose glass isn't just empty, but broken and being shoved violently in the direction of your face. Alongside that, they have picked out his debut for a blu-ray release, a work which delivers fully on the Bleak and has a generous interpretation of what counts as a Moment. |
Mirror. (PG.)
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. 1975 Starring Margarita Terekhova, Ignat Daniltsev, Larisa Tarkovskya. Partly black and white. In Russian with subtitles. Out on Blu-ray and DVD from The Criterion Collection on 26th July. 107 mins. A cinematic poet isn't really something to be. The movies disdain poetry – it's one of the things I love about them. The humble page may choose to indulge their poncey ponderings but the cinema is ruthless with them and will expose any chancer with highfaluting notions of the lyrical or poetic, no matter how small the budget. Many have tried, almost all have failed: a cinematic poet isn't really something to be because whatever you try, the films of Andrey Tarkovsky are going to dwarf you, and none of them will dwarf your efforts quite as much as Mirror (or sometimes The Mirror), a plotless, loosely autobiographical, free-flowing book of memories and dreams. It's a tiny epic, trying to encapsulate not just a person's whole life but also that of Russia itself in the middle part of the Twentieth century 
World of Wong Kar Wai.
As Tears Go By (1988)/ Days of Being Wild. (1990) Chungking Express (1994) Fallen Angels (1995) Happy Together (1997.) In The Mood For Love. (2000.) 2046 (2004.) Available on a seven-disc Blu-ray boxset from The Criterion Collection on March 23rd. My WKW ignorance: I always thought of him as Wonky Wah, but the preferred pronunciation is something closer to One Car Way. I was also under the misguided impression that I'd seen more than half of these films before. To see them on Blu-ray in these pristine, director-approved restorations is to realise how much telly, video and DVDs just don't cut it. Profound blessing on Criterion for finally making them available on Blu-ray in the UK. These seven films offer a truly remarkable record of a unique collaboration (with cameraman Christopher Doyle) over a single inspired decade (the 90s) which produced quite simply some of the most beautiful films ever made. He's not deep. This is a man who believes wearing sunglasses indoors and smoking is still cool. But his shiny surfaces and stylishly posed slices of pop culture resonate more deeply than everybody else's profundity. Beware, these films will ruin everything else for you. After watching them it's Wong Kar Wai or the highway. 
Blow Out. (15.)
Directed by Brian de Palma. 1981. Starring John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow and Dennis Franz. Out on Blu-ray and DVD from Criterion Collection. 108 mins The deck of Brian De Palma films are dealt into two packs: the ones for them and the ones for him. The ones for them are usually big-budget studio projects like Mission Impossible, Scarface and The Untouchables. There's been a fair few flops among that stack (Bonfire of The Vanities, Mission to Mars) but often they are films real people enjoy. The ones for him are opulent, stylish, women-in-peril thrillers (Raising Cain, Body Double, Obsession) that endless rework Hitchcock. Or, more precisely, endlessly rework Psycho and Vertigo. Generally, these only find favour with other filmmakers and a particular form of film nerd. Blow Out was the film for him that it was hoped would be successful enough to double up as one for them. That audiences in 1981 shunned it was a disappointment that De Palma arguably never quite recovered from. It is though the one that is generally considered to be his masterpiece. If you had a dollar for every person who has called it underrated you'd probably have enough to have made it a box office hit in 1981. It is one of the least underrated underrated films ever; to my eyes, it continues to be a slightly overrated underrated film, though I keep trying to find in myself the love for it everybody else seems to have. |
La Dolce Vita. (12A.)
Directed by Federico Fellini. 1960. Starring Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimee, Alain Cuny, Yvonne Furneaux and Walter Santesso. Black and White. In Italian with subtitles. Available on Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection from October 18th. 174 mins. La Dolce Vita is like a small boy romping around gleefully in a playpen while trying to tell you about his profound sense of ennui. Sixty years ago Fellini's sprawling epic about a smooth, suave, sophisticated, gutter journalist (Mastroianni) floating through the decadent circles of Roman society passed for a damning indictment of contemporary moral degradation. Seen today though, this long hot summer of chasing after film stars, going to parties and orgies, eating out on the Via Veneto and never going home before it gets light, looks very much like the time of your life. 
Irma Vep. (15.)
Directed by Olivier Assayas Starring Maggie Cheung, Jean-Pierre Leaud, Nathalie Richards, Bulle Ogier and Arsinee Khanjian. In French and English, partly subtitled. Part of a three-disc The Films of Olivier Assayas box set, available from Arrow Video, from Sept 6th. 97 mins. The world of work is incredibly diverse but there is one thing that unites all strands of employment: nobody has it as tough as you do. Even librarians bemoan their lot whenever they are gathered together, comparing papercuts and inventories of the stomach-turning contents glimpsed in the Tesco bags of dossers who shelter in the periodicals during winter. But no area of employment analyses the challenges of its work as thoroughly and as lucratively as the film industry. The extras on every disc has interviews with actors and technicians exploring the difficulties and complexities of their craft. And sometimes the whole film is a Making Of. 
The Night Of The Hunter. (12A.)
Directed by Charles Laughton. 1955 Starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Billy Chapin, Sally James Bruce, James Gleason, Peter Graves, Evelyn Varden and Lillian Gish. Out on 2-disc Blu-ray/ DVD from Criterion Collection. Black and white. 89 mins. Because it happens to most everything else, it's a small wonder that nobody has made a musical of Night Of The Hunter. Everybody in the film seems to have their own tune or musical cue, and Walter Schumann's score offers up a variety of themes that ranges from gentle lullabies to storming menace. More than that, its mix of queasy menace and parenthesized sentimentality seems ideally suited to musical theatre. |
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