DVD Rental

Harry Brown is a cracking British thriller which pits the legendary Sir Michael Caine against a gang of drug dealers on a south-east London estate.

Caine plays the titular Brown, an ex-Royal Marine who is spending his twilight years making regular visits to his dying wife’s hospital bed and playing chess in the pub with his only friend Leonard.

Leonard reveals his constant harassment by local youths, and he is starting to show signs of cracking. A local underpass serves as a gathering point for the dealers. It also acts as a shortcut to the hospital but Harry refuses to take it, fearing for his life.

In one moving scene, after having taken the long way round to the hospital, Harry finds that his wife has already been removed from her bed; succumbing to her illness before he arrived.

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Triangle is a psychological horror brought to our screens by Christopher Smith. Smith has not been particularly diverse with his cinematic offerings; he was behind budget horror Brit-flick Creep, and the gruesome Danny Dyer vehicle Severance. We enjoyed Creep, and found Severance good for a one-off watch and so were hoping for at least the same the third time round.

Triangle tells the tale of Jess (Melissa George), a single mother who reluctantly joins her friend Greg for a leisurely day of sailing, or at least that was the plan.

Greg’s friends clearly think Jess is a little peculiar; she shows up looking like she’s been dragged backwards through a bush and then slapped with a fish. Whilst her co-sailors are upbeat and ready to enjoy some fun in the sun, but Jess seems unable to get into the party mood.

An unfortunate encounter with a freak electrical storm dashes their boat to pieces. Conveniently the Aeolus, a passing ocean liner, happens to be in the vicinity, allowing the crew to clamber aboard to safety. Save for a mysterious bag-headed figure spotted on the deck before the group boarded, the ship appears to be completely deserted.

Things take another turn for the weird when Jess discovers her lost keys on one of the ship’s floors and starts experiencing some rather strong feelings of deja vu…

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Any film that receives a 10 minute standing ovation after its premiere has probably got something a bit special.

The Hurt Locker was greeted with this extraordinary response when it was screened, for the very first time, at the Venice Film Festival. Producers were hoping to find a US distributor; they got a lot more than that, with The Hurt Locker vying for no less than nine of those little gold statues that personify supreme achievement (and more often than not trigger a spike in sales).

The Hurt Locker tells the story of three soldiers in Iraq who are part of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit, the guys who handle IEDs - improvised explosive devices.

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Pandorum can best be described as the box-office bomb that is actually a satisfying sci-fi horror treat. If you have been fortunate enough to catch the remake of 3:10 To Yuma, you may recall Russell Crowe’s right-hand man, played by the excellent Ben Foster. Foster continues his good form in Pandorum, a freaky horror combining The Descent and Event Horizon to immensely satisfying effect.

Foster plays the astronaut Bower, accompanied by the ever-reliable Dennis Quaid as Payton. The two confused space-dwellers wake up from a long sleep aboard the ship Elysium with no knowledge of their mission, and no recollection of any prior events. There are no signs of any crew, and power to the vessel appears to be lost. The ship itself offers nothing but a mysterious, sporadic, hellish rumble; a sound akin to some kind of otherworldly monster in great distress.

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Directed and adapted by Caroline Link from Stephanie Zweig’s autobiographical novel of the same name, Nowhere in Africa tells the story of a well-to-do German Jewish family who flee the Nazis by going to live and work on a farm in rural Kenya.

A successful lawyer in his former life, Walter Redlich (Merab Ninidze) throws himself into his new role as farm manager, which involves much toil for little pay. Courteous and friendly, he quickly gains the locals’ respect. Not so his beautiful, snobbish wife Jettel (Juliane Köhler), who makes no effort to hide her contempt for Kenya and its backward ways. She treats the farm cook, Owuor (Sidede Onyulo), like a servant when he sees himself as a professional, and insults him by asking him to carry water, a job reserved for women in his tribe.

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Sandra Bullock plays boss-from-hell Margaret Tate, the ferocious senior editor at a New York publishing company, who terrorises her colleagues, sacks her employees on a whim and will go to any measure to secure an Oprah interview for one of her colleagues. But there’s one stumbling block to her success. She’s Canadian, and having neglected to sign some immigration papers, finds herself on the brink of deportation.

Fumbling for a solution, Margaret has a brainwave: marry an American, and the coveted green card is hers for the taking. Since all the men she knows are far too scared of her to consider a romantic attachment, let alone matrimony, she blackmails her underling Andrew (Ryan Reynolds) into marrying her, and he in turn demands a promotion and the publication of his first novel.

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More serene than the films that shaped Wong Kar-Wai’s early career, such as Chungking Express and Ashes of Time, this is an exquisite paean to the agony of repressed emotions and unrequited love. In the Mood for Love forms the second part of a loose trilogy, together with Days of Being Wild, and 2046, released in 2004. Set in the straight laced society of 1960s Hong Kong, the film focuses on two neighbours whose friendship deepens when they suspect their respective partners of having an extra-marital affair.

His name is Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung). Hers is Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung). He is a journalist for one of the Hong Kong papers, she’s an executive assistant. Neither is wanting for money, as evinced by their elegant attire, but they frequently find themselves alone, despite living in a shared building where the neighbours play majong and gossip late into the night. Looking for company during the lonely evenings, the two of them meet for noodles at a local café. When they discover their partners are cheating on them, Mr Chow and Ms Su vow to keep their own friendship pure. Interestingly, Wong chooses to keep the cheating couple off screen. Their adultery is tawdry and commonplace, while the reticence of the two leads lends their growing love for each other a sort of quixotic nobility.

Christopher Doyle’s camerawork is breathtaking. Featuring the lush, saturated colour palette of film noir, each shot becomes a work of art. The camera acts as a voyeur, capturing scenes through doors, windows, swirling cigarette smoke and the heavy monsoon rains. (more…)

This sensitive drama from Anthony Fabian tells the remarkable true story of Sandra Laing, a black girl who was born to white Afrikaner parents in 1950’s South Africa. Due to a genetic throwback, Sandra’s hair is frizzier than that of her parents, and her skin darker. As her conservative father seeks to defend her mother from persistent accusations of infidelity, Sandra becomes embroiled in a series of legal battles to classify her race. Amazingly, The Laings’ campaign is successful and the dark-skinned Sarah is officially classified as white. She is legally entitled to attend a “white” school, sit in the “white” section in waiting rooms and dine in “white” restaurants. Her parents blankly ignore the stares from racist onlookers, and their policy of “reclassifying” their daughter appears to work, for a while.

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Departing from the horror films that made his name, director Kiyoshi Kurosawa tells the story of an unemployed salaryman in this intricate family melodrama.

The film centres around a traditional Japanese family whose lives are defined by routine and custom. When the father, Ryuhei (Teruyuki Kagawa), loses his well-paid job at a medical equipment company to cheaper Chinese workers, his pride prevents him from admitting this to his wife and children. Instead, suited and booted with briefcase in hand, he makes a pretence of leaving for the office each day, whiling away his hours at the local library and queuing for free food at the soup kitchen. His demure wife, Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi), soon guesses at the truth but, so as not to undermine her husband’s authority in the household, pretends not to know.

Although his children are not aware of his redundancy, the longer Ryuhei lives a lie, the less respect they have for his authority. In a spirit of rebellion his elder son Takashi (Yu Koyanagi) signs up for the US Army, while his younger son Kenji (Inowaki Kai) uses his school lunch money to pay for piano lessons, after Ryuhei point blank refuses to pay for them himself.

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Based on the epic novel by Jacques Chardonne, Les Destinées Sentimentales charts thirty years of French history through the eyes of two star-crossed lovers.

Set among the bourgeois protestant families of the Limoges region of France, Les Destinées follows the career of Jean Barnery (Charles Berling), the reluctant heir of a traditional porcelain business who must learn to steer his way through the frantic beginnings of the 20th century.

Barnery starts out as a minister in the small Protestant community of Barbazac, but after a scandalous divorce leaves his vocation and young daughter and embarks on a passionate romance with the orphaned Pauline (Emmanuelle Béart), a headstrong atheist whom he will later marry. The two wives are polar opposites, and tap into different areas of Barnery’s character. The first Mme Barnery, played by an icy Isabelle Huppert, exemplifies religious stricture; Pauline’s wide eyes and welcoming smile suggest a warm, open sexuality.

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