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Sleepy Hollow

Director – Tim Burton – 1999 – US – 15 – 105 mins

***

A nineteenth century policeman must solve a series of gruesome murders allegedly by a headless horseman wielding a sword – in cinemas from Friday, January 7th 2000.

Tim Burton’s last few movies have been a real treat, but this adaptation of Washington Irvine’s classic American tale is a disappointment. Murder scene-hardened, late nineteenth century policeman Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp) is sent to isolated hamlet Sleepy Hollow to solve a mysterious series of murders. As the locals and his own eyes keep telling him, the murderer is no mystery but a headless horseman riding around decapitating victims with his sword.

Splendidly creepy visual designs from regular collaborator Rick Heinrichs (Nightmare Before Christmas, 1993, Edward Scissorhands, 1990) looks as good as any previous Burton, if not better. The proceedings can commendably be accused of neither gratuitous gore nor shirking the necessary quantity or quality of decapitations. But Sleepy Hollow has major flaws. Namely, that one doesn’t feel for Ichabod Crane the way one felt for Johnny Depp playing prior Burton protagonists Edward Scissorhands or Ed Wood. Crane is supposedly a nineteenth century investigator who uses twentieth century investigative methods, yet Burton never properly gets to grips with this essential background material.… Read the rest

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The Lost World:
Jurassic Park

Director – Steven Spielberg – 1997 – US – PG – 129m

***

UK PAL laserdisc review.

Originally published on London Calling Internet.

Given the original Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) movie left out some of the best bits of a brilliant book, had a plot so full of holes it was virtually transparent and still elevated itself to the level of technically groundbreaking, cinematic achievement (not to mention making more money than any other movie ever) the quality of any sequel movie was nothing if not uncertain. Michael Crichton’s uninspired follow-up novel, with all the un-Spielberg-y rough edges removed, didn’t bode well and while audiences flocked to see the second film, most critics responded poorly to it. Their main criticism – it has a weak plot. Or scarcely a plot at all.

Basically, having escaped Jurassic Park, chaos theorist Dr. Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), his ideas this time round largely reduced to the repeated phrase “life finds a way”, journeys to the second island to bring back palaeontologist girlfriend Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore), who’s there documenting the dino-wildlife for founding billionaire Hammond (Richard Attenborough) before his nephew Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard) – who has just wrested control of the InGen company from his uncle – arrives there with an army of men and an arsenal of big game hunting weapons under the command of big game hunter Roland Tembo (Pete Postlethwaite).… Read the rest

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The Lost World
(1925)

Director – Harry O. Hoyt – 1925 – US – Cert. U – 110m

*****

Review of PAL VHS release originally published in Starlog UK, mid-1990s.

£12.99, Original Aspect Ratio (Academy), Mono (Golden Age Films)

Before Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg purloined the name for their Jurassic Park sequel, The Lost World was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Professor Challenger novel. In the book, the bombastic scientist leads an expedition to a plateau deep in the Amazon cut off from the rest of the world which he claims to be populated by dinosaurs.

This 1925 silent Hollywood adaptation (here released in 1993’s restored, untinted, black and white print with piano accompaniment) features prominently in any serious shortlist of live action movies featuring dinosaurs along with King Kong, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Godzilla, One Million Years BC and Jurassic Park. Indeed, leaving aside 1954’s Japanese, man‑in-a-rubber-suit entry Godzilla, the remaining titles are The Lost World’s descendants via their use of optical trickery and stop‑motion animation.

The Lost World’s miniature model dinosaurs and their incorporation as fully articulated giant beasts into live action cinematography was primarily the work of stop-frame animator cum special effects genius Willis O’Brien, later to put the dinosaurs into 1933’s King Kong and win a belated special effects Oscar on the back of 1949’s Mighty Joe Young.… Read the rest

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White Squall

UK PAL Laserdisc review

SURROUND SOUND MOVIE OF THE MONTH

Dir Ridley Scott (1996) Starring Jeff Bridges, Caroline Goodall, John Savage, Scott Wolf, Balthazar Getty, Ryan Phillipe Dur 124min Dist Encore; £26.99 Cert 12 DS Widescreen

1961 and a group of final year High School students sign up for a yacht cruise halfway round the world and back under a disciplinarian Cap’n (Jeff Bridges), the type of leader who’ll scare a boy into climbing the rigging even though he knows the lad’s brother died from falling out of a tree and breaking his neck. They slowly come together as a crew but then tragedy strikes.

Despite visually prettified opening, Scott’s visuals capture minutiae of nautical detail building to a crescendo in the terrifying storm sequence, where amazing sound effects engulf the living room. Great cinematography, unwatchable without widescreen, is well served by the crisp image transfer. Woefully underrated on theatrical release – this is one hell of a disc!

Film 5/5

Picture 5/5

Sound 5/5

Reviewed for Home Entertainment.

Trailer:

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Twister

UK PAL laserdisc review.

Originally published on London Calling Internet.

Distributor Pioneer LDCE

Cat No: PLFEB 35411

£24.99

BBFC Certificate PG

Director Jan De Bont (1996)

Starring Assorted CG tornadoes

(oh yes, and Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Jami Gertz, Cary Elwes)

Running Time 108 min

Dolby Surround

Widescreen: 2.35:1

Chaptered? Yes

CLV

2 Sides

(4 sided CAV version also available for £34.99)

Trailers (Twister – two different ones, Jurassic Park)

A twister, as lovers of The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) will know, is a tornado that snatches up objects in its path into the air and then dumps them down again. The one that snatched Dorothy into the air was a cheap special effect in a wonderful film. The current movie, on the other hand, is the other way round: basically, it’s a rotten movie with awe-inspiring special effects. The cast here is not so much the workmanlike group of American actors playing uninspired characters as the incredible series of tornadoes which appear one after another, each seemingly darker and by inference more evil than its predecessor.

This may also be one of those rare movies (I can’t think of another) that requires a big (cinema) screen, with all the resolution that a projected celluloid image can give these tornadoes, to really work its magic.… Read the rest

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Videodrome

Director – David Cronenberg – 1983 – Canada – Cert. 18 – 87m

*****

This review originally appeared in What’s On In London during the film’s revival at the ICA. See also my review for London Calling Internet.

In a career-defining performance from 1983, the young James Woods is Max Renn, glutted on the diet of video porn he watches as buyer for a Cable TV station. Everything he sees is “too soft”. “I’m looking for something tough,” he proclaims, “something to break through the market.”

In the station’s basement, his technician assistant Harlan (Peter Dvorsky) finds the very thing. Videodrome. Women strung up and beaten to death. No cuts. One locked off camera. Nil production values. Here, indeed, is something tough.

Welcome to a world of media personalities like Brian O’Blivion (Jack Creley), a man who no longer exists as flesh but merely as viewable video images. Like Nikki Brand (Debbie Harry), who agrees with Renn on a TV chat show slot that her red dress is a come on, later vanishing after declaring she should audition for the Videodrome show.

A world where hands mutate into guns, men literally bury their heads in eroticised television screens and one person loads a videocassette into another’s stomach to programme him.… Read the rest

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Videodrome
(Director’s Cut)

Director – David Cronenberg – 1983 – Canada – Cert. 18 – 85m

*****

UK PAL laserdisc review.

Originally appeared in London Calling Internet. See also my review for What’s On In London during the film’s revival at the ICA.

Distributor Pioneer LDCE

Cat No: PFLEB 36041

£19.99

BBFC Certificate 18

Director David Cronenberg (1982)

Starring James Woods, Sonja Smits, Debbie Harry

Running Time 85 min

Mono

Widescreen: 1.85:1

Chaptered? Yes

CLV (Side 1)/CAV (Side 2)

2 Sides

A decade and a half on and still retaining its incredible power to shock, this is the film in which David Cronenberg first coined his battle cry, “Long Live the New Flesh.” If a clear lineage can be traced in his films from Shivers’ aphrodisiac turds through to Crash‘s orgasmic collision of swingers and twisted metal, Videodrome remains unique in Cronenberg’s oeuvre – a black joke, a come on to the censor.

Just suppose, runs the pitch, violent porno (television signals) directly affected people causing them to hallucinate. This is the fate which befalls sleazoid Channel 83 cable television executive Max Renn (a young Woods in his best – and edgiest – role to date) who tells porno programme sales agents their merchandise is “too SOFT…I’m looking for something TOUGH.”… Read the rest

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Crash

Director – David Cronenberg – 1996 – Canada – Cert. 18 – 100m

*****

This review was originally published in the Arts Centre Group‘s member’s newsletter. See also my review for What DVD.

All stills from Crash apart from the one from Videodrome.

Canadian film director David Cronenberg has a reputation for filming the unfilmable. Formerly dubbed The King Of Venereal Horror (“a small kingdom but I’m happy with it”), his debut (commercial) feature Shivers / The Parasite Murders / They Came From Within (1977) is a low budget horror outing in which high rise tenants are invaded/possessed by little slug-like creatures resembling a bloody cross between phallus and faeces.

For renowned British producer Jeremy Thomas (Bad Timing, The Last Emperor, First Love) he has adapted and directed books considered impossible to turn into movies, notably William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch (in 1991) and J.G.Ballard’s Crash.

I was first drawn to Cronenberg’s work from the special effects angle, specifically an article on prosthetics expert Rick Baker which contained some amazing production stills (the shape of a hand-held gun pushing through the unbroken membrane of a television screen) from Videodrome (1983). An image suggesting television can kill?… Read the rest

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Crash

Director – David Cronenberg – 1996 – Canada – Cert. 18 – 100m

*****

This review of the UK DVD was originally published in What DVD. See also my review for the Arts Centre Group’s member’s newsletter.

Sold as a sex and car crash (and by implication action) movie, Crash is in reality something very different: intelligent, grown-up science fiction. The former description being an easy sell, especially with the added (ridiculous) controversy surrounding the film’s (eventual) UK release, the inevitable resultant popcorn sensation‑seeking mass audience was largely disappointed.

That said, for those viewers prepared to engage brain, deal with tough subject matter and go the distance, it’s a masterpiece. But if you’re someone to whom the concept of sex scene as narrative device sounds too much like hard work, you probably shouldn’t touch it.

On the other hand, admirers of director Cronenberg (The Brood, Scanners, Dead Ringers, eXistenZ) or novelist J.G.Ballard (Empire of the Sun) will appreciate the film’s uncompromising vision. Although Crash is not especially unnerving by Cronenberg standards, it’s extremely shocking by those of mainstream movies and has the potential to confuse or overwhelm an average audience.

While it brims with sex scenes, they’re not particularly arousing in tone being close to the emotionally cold experience of watching laboratory experiments.… Read the rest

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Dead Ringers

Director – David Cronenberg – 1988 – Canada – Cert. 18 – 116m

*****

Originally published in Samhain.

When David Cronenberg was in the UK to promote The Fly late in 1986, he talked about a project called Twins which concerned two identical twins who fall in love with the same woman. At the time, no-one thought he was serious.

Two years later, the film has appeared (under the appalling title Dead Ringers, since there was another Twins in production elsewhere). Cronenberg denies that the new film is science fiction or horror, or even fantasy. Yet (if one wants to play the auteur game) parallels can be drawn with certain of his earlier films.

Dead Ringers bears a great resemblance not so much to the commercial Cronenberg schlock oeuvre as to the art films of the late sixties from which he has in recent years dissociated himself on the grounds that they were not real movie movies; however, both Stereo (1969) and Crimes Of The Future (1970) were shot on University Campuses with bleak, modernist architecture – and the same setting forms the backdrop to several Cronenberg features, most notably Scanners. Such architecture is more prominent in Dead Ringers than in any previous Cronenberg commercial feature.… Read the rest