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The film: I finished Kazuo Ishiguro's novel NEVER LET ME GO somewhere in the region of 48 hours before watching the movie adaptation. This is admittedly not always a good idea, as it means the source material is so fresh...

Posted at 1:04 PM in BD Impressions

The film: I previously reviewed the 2010 remake of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE in a fair amount of detail back in January. Rather than repeat myself here, therefore, I'll simply direct you to that review, which also considers how...

Posted at 5:38 PM in BD Impressions

The film: And now it's time for episode #436 of "Michael catches up with a significant movie he's never seen before"... Well actually, I did see the final 20 minutes of THELMA & LOUISE on TV years ago, but knowing...

Posted at 10:05 PM in BD Impressions

The film: Disney went through a period of making some very meandering, largely inconsequential films with minimal plotting, and ALICE IN WONDERLAND is probably both the best and most obvious example of this trend. It uses the same "It was...

Posted at 9:42 PM in BD Impressions

The film: I purposefully avoided writing this post until after the release of Movie Matters Episode 5, because otherwise it would have been blatantly obvious what my personal number one film of 2010 was. That film is indeed THE SOCIAL...

Posted at 2:55 PM in BD Impressions

The film: How do you describe AMER? You might as well ask "how do you describe the indescribable?" AMER is a loving tribute to the Italian "gialli" of the 1970s, but at the same time it is not a giallo....

Posted at 1:21 PM in BD Impressions

...or just plain BEAN, as the on-screen title has it. The film: Well, it's no masterpiece, but I rewatch it every now and then and I don't get tired of it. It certainly helps if you enjoy the MR. BEAN...

Posted at 5:17 PM in BD Impressions

The film: To the surprise of absolutely no-one at all, this fourth instalment in the RESIDENT EVIL series is mind-bogglingly stupid, filled with inane plot contrivances, one-dimensional throwaway characters, dodgy acting and less than convincing visual effects. That doesn't stop...

Posted at 5:10 PM in BD Impressions

It's a little-known fact that this is not actually the first ever high definition release of Dario Argento's masterpiece DEEP RED (a.k.a. PROFONDO ROSSO). While Arrow Video can justifiably lay claim to having produced the world's first Blu-ray Disc release,...

Posted at 3:56 PM in BD Impressions / Blu-ray

The film: Time for me to get my hard hat on and prepare for a barrage of dissenting viewpoints: I didn't like INCEPTION. No, I can't say I'm entirely surprised, given my reactions to the other Christopher Nolan films I've...

Posted at 3:30 PM in BD Impressions

The film: Despite its unashamedly derivative nature and a largely pointless romantic subplot, I really enjoyed WHIP IT, Drew Barrymore's directorial debut. With Ellen Page in the lead role and Fox Searchlight as the studio behind it, it's tempting to...

Posted at 6:44 PM in BD Impressions

The film: David Cronenberg is a director whose work I have to be in the right frame of mind to enjoy. I find his films to be very cold and misanthropic, and while I sometimes suspect that Sturgeon's Law applies...

Posted at 4:06 PM in BD Impressions

The Film: HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON is the best DreamWorks animated feature I've seen to date... which would put it a notch or two below the worst of Pixar's output. In my opinion, whereas even Pixar's lesser movies have...

Posted at 4:40 PM in BD Impressions

The film: Released in 1985 after almost a decade since the last Asterix film (legal issues, naturally), ASTÉRIX ET LA SURPRISE DE CÉSAR (Asterix and Ceasar's Surprise, released in English as ASTERIX VS. CAESAR) is the first of three films...

Posted at 12:50 PM in BD Impressions

I turned down the opportunity to see SPLICE during the Glasgow FrightFest at the GFT back in February - a decision I now regret, as this turned out to be a pleasant surprise for me and by far the most...

Posted at 1:16 AM in BD Impressions

Hold on a minute... THIS one is considered the red-headed stepchild of the ALIEN series? Granted, after the jumbled mess of ALIEN 3 it wouldn't take much to create a more coherent film, but I actually found myself enjoying ALIEN:...

Posted at 4:10 PM in BD Impressions

One of those cases where the tortuous production history is a lot more interesting than the resultant film. ALIEN 3 is, to put it bluntly, a mess, and a lot of the time it's not even an entertaining mess. Taking...

Posted at 2:08 PM in BD Impressions

As we all know, there's an immense amount of back and forth over whether ALIEN or ALIENS is the better film. Having seen both for the first time recently, for me there's no contest: ALIEN by a country mile. Although...

Posted at 2:19 PM in BD Impressions

See my previous post for my thoughts on GIALLO after my most recent viewing of the film. Image quality: When I first saw GIALLO, at the Edinburgh International Film Festival last June, I wasn't impressed by the presentation at all,...

Posted at 9:50 PM in BD Impressions

It's always nice when you finally get round to watching a film widely considered to be a classic and it completely lives up to the hype. It doesn't really happen all that often for me, probably owing to my somewhat...

Posted at 1:11 PM in BD Impressions

I can honestly say I had no idea this BD had been released until it was pointed out to me by Neil over at Dark Discussion... which is a bit unusual, because I'm normally one of the first off the...

Posted at 5:01 PM in BD Impressions / Blu-ray

The final instalment in Baz Luhrmann's "Red Curtain" trilogy - which are unconnected in terms of narrative and characters but share the same technique of blending old-time song and dance with a more modern sensibility - MOULIN ROUGE! takes this...

Posted at 4:11 PM in BD Impressions

The first time I saw William Friedkin's THE EXORCIST was in March 2001, when it got its first ever airing on UK TV (two years after the British Board of Film Censors finally saw fit to unban it). To be...

Posted at 10:39 PM in BD Impressions

There are those who hate Baz Luhrmann's bawdy take on ROMEO AND JULIET. I'm not one of them. I can fully understand why people would react unfavourably to the idea of transposing Shakespeare's dialogue into a relentlessly contemporary setting, but...

Posted at 8:43 PM in BD Impressions

I don't know how to rate this disc. I honestly don't. I'm sure just about everyone reading this is already aware of the controversy surrounding this disc. To put it simply, it's dark. REALLY dark. So dark that during night...

Posted at 9:10 PM in BD Impressions