Blu-ray Review - Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

Genre:
Drama, Film Noir
Distributor:
Arrow Academy
Rating: PG
BD Release Date:
30th March 2015 (UK)
Aspect Ratio:
16:9 - 1.66:1
Run Time:
96 minutes
Director:
Alexander Mackendrick
Cast:
Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, Susan Harrison
Buy:Sweet Smell of Success [Blu-ray]

“Don't do anything I wouldn't do! That gives you a lot of leeway...” sums up the world in which you are in in The Sweet Smell of Success. It’s a world of pure amorality to the extreme; very few characters ever on screen are as crooked as Burt Lancaster’s J.J Hunsecker and Tony Curtis’ Sidney Falco. The film remains, nearly 60 years after it’s release, one of the most cynical of all noirs and shows the dark underbelly and dog- eat- dog nature of America.

Sidney is a press agent and hasn’t been able to get Hunsecker to write about any of his clients because of his failure to break-up the relationship between Hunsucker’s sister and her jazz musician boyfriend. Sidney becomes increasingly desperate to pay the favour for his chance of fortune, going to depraved lengths. As with most noirs, and especially noirs at the tail end of the classic era, it all ends horribly wrong for everyone involved.

The film comes alive when you have the two powerhouse performances from Lancaster and Curtis on screen. I’ve never been a big fan of Tony Curtis; Some like it Hot is a fun farce albeit an overrated one (Billy Wilder did much better films) and I have always liked Spartacus. He has a nervous energy in The Sweet Smell of Success that works and adds charm to this character that is full of neurosis. Burt Lancaster just destroys every second he is on screen in very possibly his most impressive performance in a career of many. He speaks with such venom and is just so physically imposing it just leaps out of the screen. It’s no wonder that Lancaster came out of the circus.

The legendary cinematographer, John Wong Howe is responsible for the on-location cinematography that is some of the first I know of that really shows the speed and energy of New York City. The director, Alexander Mackendrick, was full of anxieties during the shoot, with the busy streets of New York just adding to it, which is reflected in the finished product. Mackendrick said on the subject, "We started shooting in Times Square at rush hour, and we had high-powered actors and a camera crane and police help and all the rest of it, but we didn’t have any script. We knew where we were going vaguely, but that’s all".

The Sweet Smell of Success remains one of the visceral films to come out of the golden era of film noir. It perfectly captures the depravity that big-city journalism will stoop down to if need be, and the two leads are still exciting to watch over 50 years since it’s release. The film also became a musical at one point, which is just bizarre. Despite being an initial flop it is now rightfully considered as one of the true classics of post-war American Cinema. Arrow’s release includes a documentary on Alexander Mackendrick along with an appreciation and commentary by Philip Kemp who wrote a book on Mackendrick.

★★★★★
Ian Schultz

GFF 2015 Review - Wyrmwood (2015)

Genre:
Horror, Comedy
Distributor:
StudioCanal UK
Screened:
2015 Glasgow Film Festival,
Film4 Frightfest Glasgow
BD Release Date:
11th May 2015 (UK)
Director:
Kiah Roache-Turner
Cast:
Jay Gallagher, Bianca Bradey, Leon Burchill Yure Covich, Luke McKenzie,Berynn Schwerdt
Buy:Wyrmwood: Road Of The Dead [Blu-ray] [2015]
Wyrmwood, the stunning debut feature from Kiah Roache-Turner is an impressive foray into the world of schlocky hand-made horror by a group of filmmakers dedicated to the ideals of Indy cinema. And it totally works.

Barry (Jay Gallagher) is a loving husband and father, thrown into hell after a meteor shower brings the dead back to life. After his sister (Bianca Bradley) is kidnapped by gas-mask wearing soldiers, Barry heads out on a rescue mission with a group of apocalypse survivors.

The story itself isn’t anything new, it’s the tried and tested formula applied to most zombie films, and it works fine. Wyrmwood’s real flair lies in its execution; the comedy of the writing, the intimate nature of the project (the film took 4 years to film; the crew could only convene at weekends), and the skill with which the story is filmed.

Wyrmwood doesn’t look like trash and it doesn’t want to. A great sense of motion, intuitive camera work, and a demented kind of energy definitely don’t get in the way of this handmade extravaganza. Sure its low-low budget horror, but this is a film with a flawless sense of exactly what it is and how to make it happen without looking like shit. Too often a film with a low budget looks like a film with a low budget, but Roache-Turner injects such energy and insanity into his script that the film could never be accused of being lazy, inept, or dull.

Dialogue is surprisingly sparky and the acting is solid, which isn’t exactly something to write home about, but it’s vaguely impressive considering the calibre of most films released in the wake of the zombie exploitation craze. Gallagher makes a great and oddly iconic looking hero; barely skipping a beat between the quiet domestic and apocalyptic punk landscapes of Barry’s life. But that’s not to say the drama is missing, there’s plenty of gruelling and heartfelt zombie concepts at work here. Special mention goes to the trauma of driving miles with your zombified daughter screaming in the back of the car.

Practical gore is probably the fastest way to my heart, so Wyrmwood gets bonus points for appeasing the gods of hard work, manual labour, and disgraceful DIY. Saying that, the film’s most zany trick comes hand in hand with some ill-fitting digital effects. Wyrmwood’s zombies exhale an odd flammable gas that our heroes hijack to power their truck. It’s daft, but in a film where government scientists dance to KC and the Sunshine band in zombie autopsy rooms, you can’t let daftness get in the way of viewing this hilarious totally impressive horror adventure.

Director Kiah Roache-Turner is an innovative talent to look out for if his debut feature is anything to go by, Wyrmwood is fantastic and genre fans will adore its lack of sanity and band of zany characters. <

★★★★
Scott Clark

Blu-ray Review - Rosselini: The War Trilogy

Genre:
War, Drama
Distributor:
BFI
BD Release Date:
6th April 2015
Rating:15
Director:
Roberto Rossellini
Cast:
Anna Magnani, Federico Fellini, Aldo Fabrizi, Carmela Sazio, Gar Moore, Edmund Moeschke, Ernst Pittschau, Ingetraud Hinze
Buy: Rossellini: The War Trilogy - [Blu-ray]
Wes Anderson once said, “There are only two kinds of filmmakers, Rossellini's and Fellinis"  and Wes is certainly of the Fellini kind. Rossellini is most associated with the Italian neorealism of the 40s and 50s (Fellini made a few but he had a different calling) which incorporated humanist stories about working class people for the most part. BFI has compiled a new Blu-Ray boxset of his most celebrated War Trilogy that consists of Rome, Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero and also thrown in is L’Amour.

Rome, Open City was not the first neorealist film but was certainly the first one to be widely seen across the globe. It was made directly after the liberation of Rome from the fascists and it’s a startling achievement. The whole film is a snapshot of the struggles the resistance against the Nazis faced, in the horrid conditions they lived in. Fellini, along with Sergio Amidei, wrote the script and they declared the film to be “the history of the Roman people under Nazi occupation”. Originally Rossellini wanted to make a documentary but Fellini convinced him otherwise.

It still packs a punch 70 years later; it’s brutal at times. The interrogation scenes in the last 20 minutes are insanely grim at moments. The film has an extremely cynical take on everything, which considering everything that transpired before they made it, is understandable - the film ends with an execution after all. The film is a bitter and angry piece of political cinema, which really needs to be seen even if it’s simplistic, because the Italians are portrayed as “the good guys” and the Germans as “the bad guys”, and we know they were really allies. It also won the most prestigious award in film, The Palme D’Or.

The weakest of the 3 films in the War Trilogy is by far Paisan. It’s an anthology film of 6 individual stories about the war and I’ve never been a fan of anthology films or short films in general, with obviously some exceptions. All of the stories are around 20 minutes long (the film is a little over 2 hours) and none of them really have the time to truly develop their characters, so you quickly lose interest with some of the stories. It’s still a good film and is considered by many as Rossellini’s crowning achievement, but it simply didn’t work for me at times.

Germany Year Zero, for my money, is the masterpiece of the three (even though Rome, Open City comes very close) and sadly seems to be neglected in favourite of the other two films. One of my favourite sub-genres are films about childhood during wartime, and this fits perfectly into that. Unlike the other two films, it’s set in a post-war Germany and it’s about a 13 year old boy, Edmund Kohler, who has to try to make ends meet doing small jobs to help his family survive.

When Germany Year Zero came out critics in Italy and Germany despised the film, it used studios and near-projection which in the so-called rules of neorealism was sacrilege. It’s pessimistic to it’s core, the Germany Rossellini portrays is devastatingly damaged, corruption runs rampant. Edmund gets involved with former schoolteacher Herr Henning, and it’s implied he is a paedophile and still a local Nazi who is only letting him sell stuff to help his family for sexual favours. The French critic Andre Bazin also disliked the film, but Charles Chaplin (a man often misunderstood in his time) called it "the most beautiful Italian film".

It is one of the finest films I’ve ever seen on the loss of innocence, it’s up there with such masterpieces as Come and See and Empire of the Sun. It has one of the most shocking endings of any film and paves the way for the French New Wave and especially Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. It still seems to be a divisive film for fans of Italian neorealism, but along with Bicycle Thieves is the best to come out of the movement.

The final film included is not a war film but a film he made at the same time as Germany Year Zero called L’Amour. It’s an anthology film that consists of 2 short films around 40 minutes each. The first one is a one-act play by Jean Cocteau, which is about a woman trying to salvage a relationship over the phone. It’s extremely claustrophobic and stagey, but has a powerhouse performance by Rossellini’s frequent muse and lover Anna Magnani who also appears in the other segment.

The second segment takes a more allegorical turn. The young Federico Fellini makes a rare appearance in front of screen as Saint Joseph who impregnates a crazy peasant (Anna Magnani) who he believes to be the Virgin Mary. It’s a fascinating short at the time and was condemned by “The National Legion of Decency” as being Anti-Catholic but it’s anything but.

BFI has compiled a package that is very impressive, as you would expect from them. Germany Year Zero is a total masterpiece and really needs to be seen to be believed, and despite some reservations, the other films are very good as well. The discs include a documentary on Rome, Open City and a visual essay on the trilogy by Tag Gallagher. The boxset includes a booklet with essays by Jonathan Rosenbaum, Gallagher and more.

Rome, Open City★★★★1/2
Paisan ★★★1/2
Germany Year Zero ★★★★★
L'Amore ★★★1/2

Ian Schultz

DVD Review - The ABCs of Death 2 (2014)

Genre:
Horror, Anthology
Distributor:
Monster Pictures
DVD Release Date:
30th March 2015 (UK)
Rating: 18
Directors:
Julian Gilbey, Erik Matti, E.L. Katz, Jen Soska,
+26 more
Cast:
Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska, Martina García, Béatrice Dalle, Ian Virgo
Buy:The Abcs Of Death 2 [Blu-ray]
The ABC’s of Death 2 is a far more accomplished and enjoyable anthology horror than its predecessor. My hopes had perhaps been too high for the first instalment, expecting the epic project (26 directors, 26 short films all instigated by a letter of the alphabet) to showcase the future of horror whilst simultaneously saving it. Well, The ABCs of Death 2 literally streaks past the first to deliver a whooping containment of disgraceful goodies courtesy of the most exciting people in the business.
                The nice thing about the ABCs is that it doesn’t seem to favour one director more than the other. The first instalment had problems with consistency mainly because some of the films were crazy longer than others, but here it seems everyone’s been given a max run-time. It just helps to keep the film moving and- more to the point- the less interesting ones won’t be on for long. But what an eclectic array of phantasmagorical delight and nightmarish titillation! The entries are a spectrum of horror if ever there was one. They go from grungy to sleek, gory to squeaky clean, it’s all impressive as an argument for horror’s flexibility. Sci-fi dystopia, folk tales, thrillers, slashers, creature features, character pieces, there’s a wealth of great material.

A is for Amateur (E.L. Katz- Cheap Thrills) and S is for Split (Juan Martinez Moreno-Lobos de Arga) go down the thriller route, tackling synth beat pulp and split-screen home invasion respectively. The Japanese entries are 2 of the best this time around with innovation overriding bamboozlement in both Hajimi Ohata’s O is for Ochlocracy and Soichi Umezawa’s Y is for Youth. Y is particularly impressive, the stunning stop-motion manifestations of a young girl’s rage prove a grotesque but entirely unique presentation for Umezawa’s debut.

Other animation ventures strike gold by pushing the boat out and having fun with the ideas of horror. If you haven’t checked out Robert Morgan’s animations then I urge you to do so; never before has the landscape of nightmares been so aptly manifested. His particular style is a haunting ode to Kafka and Cronenberg, a foul Wallace and Gromit that crawled up out of your subconscious, and in D is for Deloused he’s on tip-top nasty form. On the other hand, Bill Plimton’s H is for Head Games is effortlessly funny and just plain pleasing in its simplicity.

Rodney Ascher’s Q is for Questionnaire is strangely obvious considering the filmmaker’s exquisite deconstruction of The Shining and clear understanding of subtext. Even then it’s still entertaining to watch. The only really bad shorts are Todd Rohal’s P-P-P-P Scary! and Alejandro Bruques’(Juan of the Dead) E is for Equilibrium, though even E doesn’t infuriate as much as Rohal’s excruciating waste of a letter, which fails to get laughs from a hoakey exploitation of stuttering and Lynch.

The most impressive films are K is for Knell (Bruno Samper), a stark and haunting sci-fi tale with a plethora of terrific imagery, Robert Boocheck’s M for Masticate for shameless hilarious drugsploitation and Marvin Kren’s black and white treat R is for Roulette. Steven Kostanski (Manborg) delivers more dark retro fun in W for Wish and proves yet again that he is a particular and talented filmmaker. In the end, The ABCs of Death 2 leaves us on a higher note than the first, climaxing with Chris Nash’s Z is for Zygote and stealing the show as the most ideologically horrific, practically disgusting, film of the anthology.

                I could write a few hundred words on each film, but that would be pointless and to be honest I just wouldn’t want to ruin it for you. Even if you hated the first, give the second a go, it’s a consummate expression of horror in all its forms and a showcase of the most vibrant and enjoyable kind.