Richard Fleischer's Violent Saturday Joining Masters Of Cinema Family This April

Eureka! Entertainment have announced the release of VIOLENT SATURDAY, a key but overlooked 1950s criss-crossed heist tale which influenced Kubrick’s The Killing and Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. Directed by Richard Fleischer (The Boston Strangler and 10 Rillington Place) this first ever home video release will include new special features, including an interview with fan William Friedkin (The French Connection, To Live and Die in LA).

VIOLENT SATURDAY will be released in a stunning blu-ray presentation as part of a Dual Format (Blu-ray & DVD) edition on 21 April 2014.



A coolly riveting crime saga from director Richard Fleischer (The Boston Strangler, Soylent Green), Violent Saturday tells a brutal noir tale against blazing, sun-drenched Arizona landscapes.

Three criminals arrive in the small mining town of Bradenville, planning on robbing its only bank. But as they start scouting the area and gathering the information they need, the lives of others in the town threaten to get mixed up in their scheme, in a tangle that could lead to disastrous consequences.

Featuring the iconic Victor Mature and Lee Marvin, and with Ernest Borgnine in one of his most unforgettable roles, Violent Saturday is a fascinating gem of Hollywood storytelling, complete with memorably vicious and idiosyncratic details, brilliant performances, and stunning Cinemascope

imagery.

Violent Saturday is based on a novel by William L. Heath.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

- Stunning high-definition master, with 4.0 and 2.0 soundtracks, on both Blu-ray and DVD
- A new video examination of the making of the film by Nicolas Saada
- A video appreciation by director William Friedkin

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DVD Review - Short Term 12

Genre:
Drama
Distributor:
Verve Pictures
Rating:15
DVD/BD Release Date:
10th March 2014 (UK)
Director:
Destin Cretton
Cast:
Brie Larson, Frantz Turner, John Gallagher Jr.
Buy:Short Term 12 [DVD] / Short Term 12 [Blu-ray]
Win Short Term 12 on Blu-ray: enter here
Short Term 12, for the most part, is an emotionally devastating drama that sensitively observes the lives of the residents and staff at a foster-care facility for at-risk kids. With an unsentimental eye, the director, Destin Cretton, creates scene after scene of believable situations that leave an indelible mark. Take, for example, the scene in which Jayden, the newest kid at the facility, throws the most harrowing of tantrums after her father doesn’t show up to take her home for the weekend, or the sequence in which she reads a fable she wrote about an octopus and a shark to her care worker Grace, revealing her abusive upbringing through an heartbreaking allegory.

The trouble is that as memorable as scenes like the ones I’ve described are, Cretton’s film is too often formulaic and predictable to be fully convincing. The rightfully lauded scenes of unsentimental observation are therefore occasionally undermined by the conventionality of the narrative, allowing for some sentimentality to creep in and overwhelm parts of the story. This is most apparent in the paralleling of Jayden’s traumatic story with the childhood of Grace, the films main protagonist. By creating similarities between the two characters’ upbringings, Jayden’s story becomes marginalised and is seen more as a contrivance to further Grace’s story arc.

The film is bookended by scenes in which Grace and her co-workers are sitting outside their titular workplace sharing informative anecdotes that neatly wrap up the story. This, coupled with the recurring motif of Grace arriving at work each morning driving her bicycle into the same static shot of the foster-care facility, leaves us with the notion that the cycle of care they provide is continuous and that for institutes like Short Term 12 there will always be at-risk kids in need of guidance. This is a rather poignant and fitting note for the film to end on. Though the film often frustrates, it is hard not to be moved by its story.

★★★☆☆

Shane James