DVD & VOD

News that Hayao Miyazaki’s decision to retire back in 2014 may have been a tad premature, and that as of earlier this year he was back working with Studio Ghibli – possibly on a feature-length version of his new short film, Boro The Caterpillar – was doubtless enough to get even the most apathetic anime fan prancing around the living room like a bounding Totoro on a moonlit night. However, one can’t help but be concerned that this return of...

By Wyndham Hacket Pain @WyndhamHP In the last couple of years, almost as a reaction to the overproduced and sickly Twilight franchise, there have been a number of vampire films that have reimagined the genre in a more realistic and creative way. With Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lover’s Left Alive and the more recent A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night the real potential of vampire tales has really been shown. Made on a low budget with relatively unknown actors, it...

By Linda Marric In Whitney Can I Be Me, renowned British documentarian Nick Broomfield lift the lid on the life of one of the most famous pop stars of our time, and does his best to discover the secret behind her untimely demise at the age of 48. Broomfield uses extensive “never seen before” footage and numerous interviews with those closest to the singer to tell a truly distressing story of how the once squeaky clean princess of black pop,...

You wish to hear a tale that’s as old as time itself? How about the saga of a film studio desperate to recapture the magic? We’ve seen Sleeping Beauty from the perspective of the antagonist; had Mowgli’s adventures in the jungle painstakingly retold to us with photo-real clarity; and found ourselves faced with Tim Burton’s warped vision of Wonderland… Never mind finding out if an angelic heroine will be strong enough to break the evil spell placed on a conceited...

By Wyndham Hacket Pain It is easy to get caught up in the annual awards coverage and forget that entries are films, and not just news stories. Articles surrounding Hidden Figures have placed a large emphasis on its diverse cast and how it is somehow an antidote to the failings of last year’s nominations. All this attention seems rather unfair, as it ignores the merits and qualities that are on display in this film. Set in 1960s Virginia, where racism...

by Leslie Byron Pitt Brutal from the outset, and leaner than bison meat, Brendan Muldowney’s Pilgrimage may not hold the same relentlessness as Neil Marshall’s historic chase feature Centurion (2010), but it’s a film which holds scenes of a latent potency when it breaks free of it’s relaying of the plot. It doesn’t break the mould in any real way but is the type of fringe piece which could get a lot of traction with an audience, if it had...

By Linda Marric 20th Century Women sees the return of Beginners (2010) director Mike Mills in one of the most ambitiously stylish and quirky pieces of filmmaking of recent years. Being no stranger to technical wizardry from his years in the music video industry, Mills offers his audience an exhilarating mishmash of authentic 1970s nostalgia mixed with dream-like sequences and real-life footage, with a killer soundtrack to boot. Set in California during the summer of 1979, 20th Century Women charters...

There was a moment of brief dismay during this year’s Oscar ceremony, when it suddenly looked as if a brutish form of populism would once again break our optimism. For many, the awards were already a foregone conclusion, the early momentum swinging, as expected, towards Damien Chazelle’s delightful La La Land & Barry Jenkins’ compelling Moonlight. So when Mel Gibson’s barbarous wartime blockbuster Hacksaw Ridge earned a surprise win for Best Editing, it momentarily planted a thought that – despite...

Comedian Demetri Martin once said that “if you put on flip flops, you’re saying: ‘Hope I don’t get chased today’.” Growing up in Oakland, where just taking a wrong turn in a bad neighbourhood could lead to a beating, or worse, Brandon (Jahking Guillory), a spindly & sensitive soul in his mid-teens, lives an impoverished existence where the girls ignore him and even his two best friends, Albert and Rico (Christopher Jordan Wallace & Christopher Meyer), pick on him. On...