Doctor Who: The Underwater Menace: DVD Review

Doctor Who: The Underwater Menace: DVD Review

Rating: G
Released by BBC and Roadshow Home Ent

So, here it is then, the very final classic series Doctor Who DVD Release.

Well, until they find more missing episodes that is.

This release from Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor years sees the Doctor taking on a mad professor who's hell-bent on raising Atlantis from the seas.

Given that the two stories before this are of the new Doctor, The Underwater Menace is the first real look at Mr Troughton's cosmic hobo and even though half of it's missing and replaced with telesnaps, it still provides a tale worth diving into.

If you know 60s Doctor Who, you know what to expect - a raft of great ideas with some wobbly execution, but The Underwater Menace proves to be a serial that's worth diving into the waters of home viewing for - and is essential for collectors of Who alike.

Love: Blu Ray Review

Love: Blu Ray Review

Rating: R18
Released by GDE

The most provocative title this year actually ends up being the one that's perhaps the tamest when weighed up against expectation.

Cinema's enfant terrible Gaspar Noe (Enter the Void, Irreversible) has filed a chamber piece for the festival scene, riddled with pornography and ruminations on relationships.

It's the cautionary story of American film-maker Murray (Karl Glusman) who ends up in Paris and in a passionate relationship with Electra (Aomi Muyock) - but that's not where the story begins; it takes up on New Year's Day with Murray waking up with another girl Omi and his baby.

As he gets up, he gets a call from Electra's mother, telling him she's not heard from her daughter in a while and worrying. This sets Murray off in a spiral of memory and regret which we're party to.

Love 3D is a polarising experience, but it's actually a triumph of atmosphere over substance, of insecurities and regrets over a road less travelled.

Sure, there's plenty of love-making on show (some of it which is literally in your face thanks to the 3D element) and Noe is clearly trying to push buttons given the number of scenes and frequency in which he injects them into the admittedly slight narrative. But Noe's claimed that he's looking at what love does to people and how they experience it and that the sex is an integral part of it. No doubt some will dispute that, and there's certainly a feeling that these scenes lose any kind of perverse appeal by being so prevalent.


However, when Noe moves away from this side of things, there are parts of the narrative which work and others which don't. The reflections and ruminations on the relationship as Murray prowls his flat feeling trapped make him a difficult and selfish protagonist to care about - and certainly, his behaviour to Electra and other women reinforce that idea; is Noe commenting on the behaviour of men or Murray in particular? It's hard to tell because no commentary is forthcoming and no judgement is either. But in showing Murray with Electra, Noe does a wondrous job of collecting the fervour and fever of young love, though sadly not in enough scenes, preferring to show their indulging in carnal desires as a profession of this - again, making it difficult to really grasp onto either as perfect partners.

Ultimately, Love 3D is no Irreversible; there's maybe one singular moment when you feel like Noe's gone as far as he can in reaching his cinematic climax, but the scorn of the prior films feels softened with this latest. It's not for everyone's tastes and there are times when you wish Noe had smoothed off some of the edges and created more than just atmosphere - but perhaps we get the love story our society reflects these days. 

Spring: DVD Review

Spring: DVD Review

Rating: R16
Released by Madman Home Ent

Spring may have one of the most generic titles, but don't let that put you off this - going into this one blind without the benefit of the blurb served me brilliantly giving me a genuine "What was that?" moment that jolted me out of the viewing malaise that I feared was setting in.

Lou Taylor Pucci is drifter Evan whose life is upended by the death of his mother. Heading into a tailspin and realising he's about to self-destruct, Evan heads to Bologna on a whim. Attaching himself to a couple of holiday makers, he divorces himself from their stereotypical holidaymakers abroad boorishness and falls in with the mysterious Louise (an enigmatic and intoxicating Nadia Hilker).

A romance begins between the pair, but along the way, not all is as it appears...and chemistry proves to be a double edged-sword

With the idyll of Bologna in the background and the relatively languid pace of writer-directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead settled in, the whiplash moment of this Before Sunrise style romance comes at just the right moment, fuelling a fire that's hard to quell before the tricky denouement tries to seal the deal.

Both the young leads are mesmerising, gelling wonderfully together, capturing the frailty of lives which have been battered and yet engendering a hope eternal in love; but while the film's ultimate reveal may be polarising, I, for one, appreciated it on another level because of how my expectations were subverted. Granted. I wasn't fully on board with the film's raison d'etre, but I was swept away with how it played out. It's best not to read too much about Spring before going in, and afterwards, you'll understand why I was coy about this romance and why it's so much more than its awful title suggests.

Extras: Behind the scenes, alternate ending, deleted scenes

The Gallows: DVD Review

The Gallows: DVD Review

Rating M
Released by Roadshow Home Ent

The play's the thing in this found footage horror set in a small town school 20 years after a tragedy hit.

During the performance of a Crucible-like play called The Gallows, Charlie, one of the students was accidentally hanged - and now in honour of that anniversary, the play's being put on again. But on the eve of the show, three students from the current production creep into the hall to wreak havoc - however, it looks like a spirit haunting the building has other plans.

To say The Gallows is a feeble attempt at the horror genre is to undersell it.

Some utterly terrible acting from the main cast doesn't help matters; the worst offender being Reese Mishler whose array of acting seems to consist only looking horrified and wide-eyed when things go bump in the night as the phantoms of the opera play up.

But it's the way the story unfolds though its brief 81 minute run time and its characters that really make this revenge tale fall short of what it could do.

The teens are prone to dumb actions, shouting and fumbling around in the dark rather than ever using any of their sensibilities to help them get through. And to make matters worse, the high school stereotypes are something from the 80s with it divided up into jocks and nerds...

The found footage doesn't quite work either with lots of darkness, distortion and convenient lapses of logic dropped in thoughout - inevitably perhaps the directors and writers were using the low battery of the cameras to help provoke some dread, but when they fire up seconds later without any changes, it's clear they're making the rules up as they go along. (Plus, don't even get me started with the way it chops and changes - for a so-called found footage film, the spooky spirit sure does have a way with editing tools).

It's a shame because the premise is one to be mined - there's a neat twist in the middle that comes out of nowhere, and the idea of MacBeth level of superstition striking fear when people mention Charlie's name on stage is a clever updating of the worries actors have.

Things bang, shut and slam closed with the ferocity that you'd expect, but it all feels so piecemeal and uneventfully exciting, that even 81 minutes seems too long - The Gallows clearly wanted to launch a new boogeyman onto the scene with Hangman Charlie, but this sub-parBlair Witch wannabe should have been strung up before it even got started.

Rating:

American Horror Story: Freak Show: Blu Ray Review

American Horror Story: Freak Show: Blu Ray Review

Rating: R18
Released by Universal Home Ent

Released in time for Hallowe'en and also with the arrival of American Horror Story: Hotel, the fourth in Ryan Murphy's anthology series boasts one of the series' best nightmares.

Set in a Florida hamlet, and following the escapades of a travelling troupe of curiosities in the year 1952, this carny-set tale has a canny way of getting under your skin in its early episodes, before the mid-season slump hits and the season limps to a weak ending.

Tapping into the fears of clowns and the fears of what freaks you out that's different, the story of the performers and their lives is a great tableau and portrait of the horrors that men do. First up a smiling clown, who kills people and abducts others (aka Twisty the clown) is one of the greatest most unsettling creatures the series has given us since Rubberman of Season 1.

But as ever, there's tragedy lurking under the horror of all of these stories and the push for survival in a world that doesn't want them remains as pertinent a tale now as it ever did in 1950s America. Paranoia and mistrust blend together with a curiosities hunter who's trying to kill the freaks off and sell them for money, while hiding his own secrets.

With Sarah Paulson as a two-headed freak and Jessica Lange as the carny's leader fighting to stay relevant, there's much set up for rivalry and division. As the melodrama is ramped up to OTT, the series forgets its simple frightening MO and loses its effect and somewhat of its appeal in the second half of its execution.

For the most part though, American Horror Story: Freak Show is one of the anthology's best; its 13 episodes rivals the first season for shocks, but also delivers a story that while dripping with tragedy and tapestry, doesn't quite sustain its horrific thrust for fame and fortune and relevancy in a world that's ever changing.

Deadpool PS4 Review

Deadpool PS4 Review

Platform: PS4
Released by Activision

2016 is going to be the year of Deadpool.

The smart-assed merc with a mouth is going to be a new film next year and Ryan Reynolds' performance is already a viral sensation.

As for the game, which has already been out on PS3, it's a schizophrenic game that gets elements of the character perfectly on point.

Embracing the meta elements of the comic where Deadpool breaks through the fourth wall of the comic book panels, this Deadpool also addresses the player through the screen.

The game is a hack and slash with some cartoon silliness - Deadpool's trying to pitch a video game of his own but ends up inadvertently threatening the employees of a game studio and finding himself thrown into an adventure involving the X-Men as well.

Mocking the gaming conventions, Deadpool (and his love for chimichangas) the game is a somewhat mixed bag.

While the self-referential talking works well and captures the vibe of Deadpool the person and the comic, the gaming ends up being somewhat repetitive. Running around shooting people with quips is relatively fun for the first 10 minutes or so, but the gameplay becomes stale as you jump around, quipping, shooting and collecting.

Chaining together combos gives you the chance to build a power meter which can be unloaded into your enemies; you've also got the ability to teleport from place to place too, if fights are getting too tricky. Collecting XP points allows you to open up the store and buy new weapons and moves etc, so there is some point to the continual collecting which takes place within the game.

There's plenty to amuse the more puerile elements of Deadpool's fanbase and it is good to see that the transition to video game has kept the character completely intact. Unfortunately, the game's longevity doesn't quite match the character's and depending on how far you are willing to let that slide to be part of Deadpool's world will see how long you want to keep the wise-cracking merc with a mouth on your console.

Rating:

Ricki and The Flash: Blu Ray Review

Ricki and The Flash: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Sony Home Ent

Meryl Streep gets her ageing rock on with this fairly cliched family drama flick from the director ofThe Silence of The Lambs and from the writer of Juno, Diablo Cody.

Streep plays Ricki, the singer of a house band which plays a residence at a knock-down bar. Financially defeated and oblivious to the world around her, especially her estranged family, Ricki gets a call from her ex-husband Pete (Kevin Kline) to tell her that her daughter Julie (Streep's real-life daughter Gummer) is depressed following the end of her marriage.

So, against her best wishes, Ricki heads home to the family she's avoided for years and to the tensions she ran away from to become a Californian rocker.

Ricki and The Flash is exactly what you'd expect from a family kitchen sink drama of someone reuniting and reconnecting with those who used to be around them.

Looking like an older version ofFreaky Friday's Tess Colemancomplete with side plait and dark eye shadow, Streep personifies the old rocker and scatty human well in the early stages of the film before it lapses into the usual trite conventions of its genre and barely walks the tightrope between the family drama and romcom.

Against a soft-spoken and sardonic Kline as the dad, Gummer's spikiness and fragility is well-observed as the daughter on the edge, but like the rest of the supporting characters (particularly her two sons), she falls by the wayside for Streep's character.

One of the main problems is the relatively corny, yet occasionally honest, film simply becomes a thinly veiled facade for Streep to perform a series of soft rock covers with a band, rather than fuel and further the narrative, which becomes more and more sidelined. It's almost like Meryl Streep - The Concert Album.

Some insights into a woman who chooses her career over her family are thrown out during a moment of implosion on stage, but the final redemption and forgiveness are too easily gifted to those who need them in Ricki and The Flash.

While Streep remains a presence in this flick, Ricki and The Flash is more about the guilt trip, than the overall trip. Despite the presence of the usually insightful Cody, underwritten family characters detract from the earnestness and a meandering final third make it feel like more of a drag than it should be as it ambles towards its obvious conclusion.

Rating: