Film
Reviews
REVENGE THRILLER DEAD MAN’S SHOES
(18) 87min (Optimum Home Entertainment DVD retail) 0...
Shane Meadows makes a triumphant return to Our soreens With a startling piece of Vigilante Cinema. Paddy ConSidine stars. and also co-wrote. this tale of brotherly love (echonig John Steiribeck's Of Mice and Men), tragedy and revenge.
Ex Para Richard (COTTSldIDG) returns to his northern home town to set out on a four-day killing spree. exacting revenge for the horrific abuse Suffered by his mildly mentally disabled brother Anthony (played by first timer Toby Kebbell) at the hands of local lowlife.
What is set up as a simple revenge drama is morphed into a complex morality tale by Meadows' ability to cause us all to reflect on our own humanity. Leavened by comedic moments derived from the bumbling, dysfunctional criminal family and their reactions to their imminent demise. this is Meadows' most assured and singularly seamless film to date.
Extras include documentary /n Shane's Shoes and hilarious short ‘NOrthern Soul‘. also starring Kebbell. (Ruth Kerr)
GOTHIC MELODRAMA DRAGONWYCK (PG) 103min (Optimum Home Entertainment DVD retail) .0.
When Ernst Lubitsch
dropped out of the production in 1946. Joseph L Mankiewicz took the opportunity to make this his directing debut. an entertaining if not particularly original gothic melodrama from his own adaptation of the novel by Anya Seton. All the gothic trappings are here. from Gene Tierney's naive governess to Vincent Price's wealthy. old money employer to the dark seCret in the attic of the latter's cliff-top mansion.
It's a handsomely mounted production. with a Hollywood lot doubling for 19th century New England. complete with matt painting backdrops and overly elaborate sets and costumes. MankieWicz's years as a screenwriter and producer (he would go on to direct gothic romantic comedy The Ghost and Mrs Muir. also with Tierney) serve him well. although he takes his time getting to the dark subject matter. Once there. however, things becoming pleasing overwrought. thanks largely to a typically theatrical performance from Price. Minimal extras. (Miles Fielder)
EXISTENTIAL COMEDY I v HUCKABEES (15) 106min
(Fox Home Entertainment. DVD rental/retail) 0000 I
The latest addition to a number of imaginative. offbeat ‘comedies of ideas'. / O Huckabees is a magical (Charlie) Kaufman-esgue adventure from Jeff Baena and filmmaker David Three Kings O Russell. that somehow manages to blend slapstick, surrealism.
satle ding fOQ‘JV pro .oking philosorntta‘ corhn‘entar, c" post 9 1 1 corporate An‘erca '.‘./ltll a dizzying Cleverness.
A superb enseri‘ple cast including Dustin Hoffman. Llii'l, Tomlin. Jason Schwartzman. Jude Law — and a Surpnsmg career pinnacle fOr 'Mark,‘ Mark Wahlberg — holds together a complex story of enVironmental aCtIVists. eXIstential detectives. petroleum-
obsessesed firemen.
ivh ckabeés
smarmy department store executives and Shania Twain‘s dietary requirements on a bizarre search for meaning.
Baena and 0 Russell weave their anti-globalist ideology into the mirth with the hip. unapologetic intelligence of vintage Woody Allen. poking gentle fun at alternative therapies With the same light touch as the gleeful cartoon violence in the film's fantastical animated sequences. The net result is a screwball comedy with its heart in the right place. Were it not completely against the laudable ideology of the film, I’d urge you to patent that / O Huckabees T-shirt now. Good extras including cast interviews.
(Jools Stone)
DOCUMENTARY ADVENTURE
PROJECT GRIZZLY
(12) 72min
(Revolver Entertainment. DVD rental retail)
COO.
Peter Lynch‘s 1996 dOCUmentary feature admittedly charts humbler territOry than the recent crop of stateside didactic
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
MANCUNIAN MEMORIES CAROL MORLEY talks about her excellent feature documentary The
Alcohol Years, released for the first time on DVD.
‘I still would contend that The Alcohol Years becomes all about those people interviewed in it. I think that to sort of take that messiness of my mad, alcoholic, promiscuous life in Manchester in the 19803 and make people really interested in it, it has to be about more than just me. Like I’d go to festivals and people would see it and I'd get letters. People would come up to me in the toilet and tell me about their life stories and stuff, and you know, I really love that, that kind of recognition of people seeing their own lives in it. I knew then, it wasn’t just about me, it was
like making something that people could relate to.
‘There aren’t many films really where women explore their own promiscuity and the north west’s place in music in the 19803, because as you know, Manchester at that time was incredibly depressed and
male, macho in music and just about everything.
‘I thought 24 Hour Party People had a lot of energy and I thought that it was really good. But I did object to it; I did think that it had omitted women in the history. Yeah, I felt that on one hand there is no history of Manchester women, because to some extent they weren’t pushed and they didn’t go as far, and no decent fucking music came out of girl bands in that period really, but on the other hand the film didn’t really represent any women from the time at all. You just see the Happy Mondays’ Rowetta on the coach being a bit of a loud mouth, but that was it. I think that it is great that they are doing the Ian Curtis film especially if they base it on Debbie Curtis’ book, Touching From a Distance, which is a great book. (Interview by Paul Dale)
I The Alcohol Years (Fl/m First) is out now to buy on DVD (www. the-associates. co. uk)
documentaries (MOOre. Spurlock stand up) but still punches abOVe its weight in this compelling tragi-comic adventure. The subject is Canadian Troy Hurtubise. a self-taught inventor who. after an ursme close encounter. makes it his miSSion to build a suit capable of withstanding a grizzly bear attack. Despite the SCientific sincerity of his mission. his spirituality and obVious respect fOr bears. it‘s hard to take him seriously. particularly when
watching his gung ho Survivalism and Jackass-like stunts. But it's not all easy caricature. and empathy is reserved for Hurtubise in the film's anticlimactic denouement.
The film's masterstroke is undoubtedly its star's self-narration; Hurtubise is a fantastically charismatic storyteller and PrO/ect Grizzly ultimately succeeds in delivering what many a fictional HoHywood blockbuster strives fOr - a very human tale. at
turns hilariOus and poignant. of one man pursumg his unlikely dream in the face of inswmountable obstacles. Minimal extras. (JOOIS Stone)
ALL DVDS WERE WERE REVIEWED ON A SYSTEM SUPPLIED AND INSTALLED BY LOUD & CLEAR
50 THE LIST 14—28 Apr 2005