Brotherhood Of The Wolf

Mani For Your Thoughts

Brotherhood Of The Wolf
aka Le pacte des loups
France 2001
Directed by Christophe Gans
Studio Canal Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: If you’ve not seen this one before, it contains spoilers. So if you’re not familiar with it, I would advise you don’t read this at all and go acquaint yourself with this amazing movie instead.

It’s been a long time since I last saw Brotherhood Of The Wolf and got reminded just how great a director Christophe Gans is. I first saw the movie back in 2001 at... I think a few places but I’m pretty sure one of those was the cinema known today as the Curzon Soho (I don’t remember if it was called that back then). I absolutely raved about how good it was then and I can’t believe that, to this day, it’s still not that well known a film over here in the UK (although I’m sure it did pretty good business for a French movie in the US at the time and certainly brought Gans some attention). And the cut at the cinema back then was significantly shorter. I remember I had to track down a North American release on DVD (I think it was a three disc edition) which was the only way I could get to see the extended directors cut, several months down the line from the cinema release.

And now, I’m happy to say, that a relatively recent UK release of that extended edition has arrived on Blu Ray in the UK and so I’m very happy to be reacquainted with the film which made such an impression on me 24 years ago. The events of the film are ‘inspired’ by the 1764 to 1767 killings by a creature known as the Beast of Gévaudan... many of the characters are versions of real life people (not Mani, I’ll get to him soon). But of course, this film is not a portrait of historical accuracy... it’s escapist entertainment and it couples exciting action with wonderful period detail, great cinematography and some remarkable acting talent. The film starts off with one of the principal characters about to be pulled out of his rich aristocrat’s home and nobbled by the mob during the Reign Of Terror period of the French Revolution. Before he goes out to meet his executioners, he writes down the ‘true story’ of the Beast of Gévaudan some decades before... and the film is the back story of when he met the two main protagonists of the film...

There’s Grégoire de Fronsac, an expert in flora and fauna who has been sent by the king to find and kill the beast which has the area in a grip of terror, played by Samuel Le Bihan. With him is his Mohawk Indian sidekick Mani, played by Mark Dacascos. It doesn’t take many minutes in the movie before you find out that Mani is an expert at some kind of athletic kung fu like martial art... in a wonderful early battle taking place in the rain and mud as the two arrive in the area at night and rescue two figures (who will have later import) from being beaten up by soldiers. Originally this fight scene also included Fronsac but it was edited down so that his own kung fu powers would be held back from the audience and brought into play when he, to quote a popular movie, goes on a roaring rampage of revenge after the death of Mani, later on in the last act of the movie.

And it’s a great tale as Fronsac meets several key characters played by the likes of Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci. Bellucci plays an interesting character in this, entering the narrative about half way through, she plays the ‘star attraction’ in the local brothel and it’s only revealed later on to both Fronsac and the audience that it’s also her cover and she’s pretty much a lethal agent of the secret service. With her steel tipped, deadly hand fan and her restorative potions, I like to think of her as the head of Q branch from the Bond movies... or this film’s equivalent. And then there’’s an older lady who looked very familiar to me in this (once again) who I still couldn’t place so, I looked her up and, yeah, it’s Édith Scob, who regular readers here may best remember for her iconic, masked role in Eyes Without A Face.

The film itself is solid action entertainment with a masterful blend of cinematography, design and editing. Gans chooses to slow down some of the action and even slow and then pause certain sequences to enhance mini moments at certain points. This was early days for ‘ramping up and down’ in cinema at the time and it hadn’t worn out its welcome yet. This film uses the technique sparingly and to good effect (unlike some others, over time). It also has some nice moments such as the camera moving up Monica Bellucci’s naked body then merging into the following shot, with the topography of her flesh such as her breasts transforming into a moving camera shot of valleys and forest. It’s nicely done stuff.

Additionally, Gans uses a nice colour palette throughout... mostly employing a lot (and I mean a lot) of blue in everything and then occasionally stabbing against it with a shot of a another colour or using a shifting colour palette to give a sense of different settings.

There’s also a kind of retro spaghetti western feel to some of the fight scenes... or rather, some of the preludes to some of the fight scenes. Gans and his cinematographer like to pick on little details and cut into them (such as rain and water splashing in slow motion) but there’s also a sense of time slowing down and building, just like Sergio Leone might do as a prelude to a moment of violence. And Joseph LoDuca’s thrilling score certainly reflects this accent on occasion with what sounds like a Spanish guitar in places. I may be wrong on the instrument used for those scenes (what do I know about music?) but... either way, it has the same effect of heightening the tension before the explosive, physical release.

And it’s good stuff all round when it comes to Brotherhood Of The Wolf. This is still, to my mind, one of the ten best historical action movies ever made and it certainly shows off the artistry of the director to full effect. This is one that I’ll continue to gravitate back to over the course of my life for sure. The Studio Canal (not my favourite company) Blu Ray has a second disc of extras, most of which I think were on the old North American DVD release including some hefty deleted scenes. I’ll get to those again at some point but, yeah, if you’re still reading this and you’ve not seen this one (and you love cinema)... this is one of those movies that show you just what it’s all about in no uncertain terms.

The ReZort

Hi-Di-Die

The ReZort
Directed by Steve Barker
UK/Spain/Belgium 2015
88 Films

Warning: A spoiler towards the end of this one.

The ReZort is yet another film I picked up on DVD for free at FrightFest a number of years ago but, it’s also one of the better of the freebies I’ve received from them. Like the majority of films made around a zombie outbreak, this one seems pretty low budget (unless you’re getting into something like World War Z) but, it’s quite a solid one and has a great premise.

This one opens up with some ‘found footage’ of a TV crew which is incorporated into a news bulletin and, for a while I thought this would be the format overall... but it’s just for this prologue to the story, to explain the world of the movie. Which is this... there was a big zombie outbreak, a la George Romero, and everyone on Earth was at war with the undead. The humans won and are slowly recovering their mental health and social interactions post ‘holocaust’ but, out of that, when a business woman discovered an island full of zombies, she turned it into a holiday resort. Basically a kind of Westworld but where people pay exorbitant fees to have a holiday blowing away the undead in a completely safe environment. There’s also a charity which has tents full of refugees in the same neighbourhood. However, the news team rushes to get a closer look at the Island because something has gone wrong and the ‘Brimstone Protocol’ has been triggered, which means the resort wil be obliterated by bombs to stop any zombie infection escaping within the next twelve hours. What went wrong?

Then, after the title card, we go into normal 3rd person viewpoint camerawork, with graceful, smooth movements in contrast to the cold opening. We cut to 10 days earlier and meet one of the main leads, the apocalypse haunted Melanie (played by Jessica De Gouw) and her boyfriend Lewis (played by Martin McCann). Melanie is haunted by whatever experiences she had in the pandemic and so she buys tickets for her and her ex-military boyfriend to get a cathartic release shooting zombies on the island. Then we get a beautiful shot of the company’s speedboat from above, cutting through the ocean and dropping off Melanie, Lewis and assorted other guests at the island. Including a shady character called Sadie (played by Elen Rhys) and a natural leader (and excellent shot) called Archer (played by Dougray Scott).

The guests party and then are taken out for their first kills, one group of many doing exactly the same thing on the island, where zombies are chained to moving targets in a walkthrough compound, for example, or shot at in great numbers from a safe distance (and, of course, if you don’t hit them in the head, they’re completely reuseable over and over as targets). However, the night before they go out for their first time, Sadie, who turns out to be an ‘undead rights activist’ sneaks in behind the scenes, hacks the security and swipes some files with all the statistics of the island, not realising that she has been set up and she is also downloading a nasty virus in the process. A virus which, inevitably, takes hold when everyone is out on their hunting parties. Very quickly, all the zombies get loose, eat most of management and go on the rampage. The aforementioned Brimstone Protocol is unleashed and the dwindling survivors have to try and make their way to safety before the island is bombed.

That’s the basic set up and the rest of the film follows Melanie, Lewis, Sadie, Archer and a few others as the usual stress dynamics play out while they are all trying to help each other get off the island. But it’s pretty entertaining and, while the low budget shows a little, perhaps, it’s extremely well executed and the zombies and the ‘shoot in the head and move on’ modus operandi of almost every post 60s zombie film is all nicely represented. There are the usual suspenseful, ‘sneaking around’ moments, coupled and punctuated with the usual ‘everybody run while we switch to hand held camera’ sequences and it’s all very nicely staged. It also makes the smart call and keeps it simple enough that it doesn’t go outside its original set up... apart from a nice revelation which, to be fair, I saw coming right from the start...

At some point in the film, the surviving few humans discover that the near unlimited supply of zombies in the resort are being topped up with deliberately infected numbers of the refugees, the charity being in on it for the profits also. But that’s a nice piece of satire and, although the film is already ten years old, it couldn’t be more relevant in the UK right now, where the recent coronavirus pandemic is fresh on everyone’s minds and you wonder if the current government might have also solved their ‘refugee crisis’ with a simlarly brutal tactic (which is possibly not far from the truth when you think of what the last government have been doing regard to Rwanda and so forth).

So that’s me done on The ReZort, I think. Except to say that the last minute appearance of a second human survivor from the island wasn’t something I was buying at all, considering the impossible odds he had when he sacrificed himself for one of the other characters. Still, I really enjoyed this one and it’s always nice to add another competently made romp of a zombie movie to the list. Definitely worth a look if zombies are your thing.

The Millionaires Express

Off The Rails

The Millionaires Express -
Extended International Cut
aka Foo gwai lip che
Hong Kong 1986
Directed by Sammo Kam-Bo Hung
Eureka Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray Zone B

The Millionaires Express is directed by and also starring legendary Hong Kong comedy/action actor/director/producer Sammo Hung. He’s not the reason I’m watching this one though... it’s also the third film to star Cynthia Rothrock. Well, I say star but in truth she plays a minor role and really only has about three scenes in it. But this includes a nice fight scene with Hung himself at the end... more on that in a little while.

Okay, so the film is set in the early 20th Century and it’s a very convoluted plot. It’s not completely hard to follow but it has absolutely loads of characters and at least five different sets of interested parties (including large numbers such as the mountain bandits who Rothrock is a part of) intersecting on the path of a train... the titular Millionaires Express... in order to steal a map held by three Japanese samurai, which leads the way to the Terracotta Warriors ‘resting place’. And it’s quite convoluted and has lots of things going on. For instance, in the first 15 minutes of the film, Sammo Hung falls into an army trap in the snowy wastelands, dances in drag, escapes by using stolen explosives but then finds himself recaptured by a bounty hunter, who he escapes from with the two fighting and forming a giant rolling snowball... all this just to set up the quality of the kind of ‘honourable rogue’ Hung’s character is and also to highlight the bounty hunter before he returns for the final third of the film.

And from then on, the twists and turns of the narrative continue in a convoluted manner and, because it’s also a comedy, there’s lots of farce and physical humour throughout too. Not always so broad that it almost defeats the main narrative... such as it does in films like The Inspector Wears Skirts, to a certain extent (review coming soon)... but enough that you never get bored with the film at any rate.

Every character (and we’re well into double figures in main characters here folks... it seems to me), has their own story and stake in the narrative objective and the director manages to explore them all while still keeping a certain amount of action going. The setting, although its obviously supposed to be taking place in China, also borrows the tropes of the Western genre... in fact, the film very much seems to be taking some of its influences from Italian Westerns of the mid to late 1960s, it seems to me (which in turn looked back at Japanese chanbera, some of which looked back at the US westerns anyway, to an extent).

It’s a fun ride and Sammo Kam-Bo Hung does come across as a likeable chap, as he tries to redeem himself and make more profits for the town where he once lived. To this end, he manages to blow up the rails and stop the train just at the edge of his town so the place can profit from the many passengers for the duration of this unscheduled stop. And it’s here where the last 20 minutes or so of action take place, as all the main interested parties take place in a battle royale, with the camera cutting between various protagonists and antagonists for a very well choreographed and satisfying end game.

It’s in this final battle where Hung and Cynthia Rothrock have their final show down but, after the former has shown the latter his superior fighting skills, he lets her go and its revealed in the dialogue that she was once one of his followers... I think. It’s actually a bit reminiscent of that scene in Yojimbo where Toshiro Mifune lets a young thug live and escape rather than snuff out the life of someone who should never have got mixed up with the wrong people in the first place (even Tarantino had a moment clearly influenced by that scene in the House Of Blue Leaves section of Kill Bill Vol. 1). But Rothrock, who was suffering from a leg injury at the time of filming, certainly gives as good as she gets in the fighting stakes and she comes off pretty well here.

And there are so many other actors in this who turn up in a lot of these Hong Kong action films and are recognisable from a lot of them. I don’t know their names but, heck, there are a lot of ‘known’ actors in this and the whole film has the kind of epic feel of a Sergio Leone epic, for sure... when it’s not trying to be too slapstick, it has to be said. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed The Millionaires Express and I’ll certainly try to give this one another watch sometime in the future.

Trust Your Market Place - 15th Anniversary Post

My 15th Anniversary Blog

Trust Your Market Place

Well that makes 15 years of the NUTS4R2 blog.

As regular readers will know, I don’t usually do an actual review on anniversary blogs or posts ending with a 00 number. So this time I thought I’d talk about something which really annoys me about the decisions, presumably economically minded decisions, in the world of the boutique media labels.

We’re in a golden age of physical media right now and collectors and modest film fans alike have never had it so good. And this isn’t an attack on the boutique labels and, as you’ll know from my recent 2700th post (right here), I love what these labels are doing, but, seriously, they need Paddington Bear to come along  and give some of them a long hard stare when it comes to releasing only partial series’ of films…

I was in Fopp records about 8 weeks ago when I saw that the 88 Films label had put out a Blu Ray of Erotic Ghost Story, which had somehow escaped my attention. I know nothing about the film but I’m always happy to learn about any cinematic history which involves supernatural shenanigans combined with naked, sexy ghost ladies. All well and good but, literally a week or two after I’d bought it, 88 Films announced a box set (already on the shelves now for a few weeks) of the Erotic Ghost Story Trilogy. What can I say? If I’m learning about sexy gals n’ ghosts then I really need to stretch that degree to a masters but… why the heck did they put out a single edition when a box set was in the works? To punish people who bought the single edition and make them double dip… again?

Similarly, let’s look at Arrow films (who are great but also do seem to be all about money for old rope these days)… I was fortunate enough to grab their box set of all four Psycho films pretty much the week it was released. Lucky me then because, literally a couple of weeks after, it was already unavailable and Arrow had reissued it as a Psycho Sequels box set, excluding the first movie. What the heck? Who would want that without the first film? And sticking with Arrow, they’re about to make me double dip with the ‘badly described because none of these films feature the same characters’ Sergio Leone Dollars Trilogy. But here’s the thing, instead of releasing it as a box set as you might imagine would be the best format to release these films, they’re stupidly releasing it as three single editions, one per month. I mean, what the heck? And don’t get me started on their missing film from their Coffin Joe box set... I mean, I’d almost rather they didn’t issue any of them if they’re going to have one missing.

Eureka Masters Of Cinema are another much respected label doing some bizarre ‘odds and ends’ releases too. I got hold of their Mr. Vampire release one year and, the very next year, they released a Mr. Vampire sequel set of the other ones closely (but still somewhat loosely) related to that movie. I’ll get to why I think they and 88 Films have been doing this stuff to us in a minute but… let me just reel off another couple of examples for you…

I’ve been saying to my friends (and anyone who will listen) that, with all these gazillions of Shaw Brothers releases seeing the light of day on Blu Ray these last few years, somebody should put out a box set of one of the jewels in their crown, the four Monkey movies based on the Chinese tome Journey To The West (best known over here in the UK from the Japanese TV show adaptation called Monkey, in the 1980s). It seems to me that a box set like this would be like a licence to print money. Monkey money. Well, the Australian label Impact has just released three Shaw Brothers movies into the wild, similarly themed but in single editions and… one of them is the first Monkey movie. I mean… what? Surely they must realise their target audience for these will be happy to pay out for all four in a nice slipcase? What the heck?

Let’s turn our attention to Severin Films now. Severin, for a while now, have been putting out huge boxed editions covering subjects like Al Adamson, Ray Dennis Steckler, Folk Horror, Black Emanuelle and even Psychotic Women. And for years now, I’ve been wondering why they or someone else hasn’t put a Russ Meyer box set out onto the market, which would surely sell well? And Severin would, of course, be the perfect fit for those films… except… a few months ago, Severin put out Meyer’s Vixens, SuperVixens and Beneath The Valley Of The UltraVixens as single editions… with a couple more single editions following a month or so after that. What’s going on? Surely they must know a box set would get even more bucks in for them?*

One last example before I carry on... Curzon cinemas have their own Blu Ray label that releases ‘comprehensive’ box sets covering directors (their words, not mine) and lovely things they are too. Why then do their box sets for Wim Wenders and Lars Von Trier both have at least one film missing? What’s the point of that then?

Okay then...here’s what I think is going on in some of these cases (or slipcases). Single editions before boxed versions such as Mr. Vampire, Erotic Ghost Story and The Monkey Goes West may well be testing the waters to see if anyone wants to buy them. But come on, trust your market place people! The kinds of customers who buy this stuff, even it’s a blind buy, known their movies and have done their research. They are as likely to splash out on a boxed edition as they are a single edition. And in the case of someone like me, less likely to buy the single editions. For example, I’ve never bought Blu Ray editions of The Exorcist or Trancers movies because I can’t find them all in the same boxed venue. I dont want to have to do the work tracking down different distributor’s versions around the world because legal can’t get all the films in one place. So deal me out, there are a gazillion other films already taking up my time and valuable shelf space.

And if it is a case of testing the financial waters on a release before repackaging it with the sequels... sure, some people will buy it but, there are just as likely going to be people who won’t because they’re optimistic a box set will be coming down the line at some future point. In which case, you’re just not getting an accurate reading on how well the full monty would do on the shopfloor (real or virtual).

So yeah, my message for my 15th Anniversary post is... please labels, trust your customers a little. We want the movies you’re putting out, for sure, but we want them all in one place, properly curated. Definitive editions are definitely the way to go with these things. Anything else just leads to customer frustration.

And for those of you who have been reading this blog over the years... thanks very much. Normal service will return again tomorrow.


* Since writing this last week, I’ve listened to one of their always excellent Severin Podcasts which explained that, due to their growing relationship with the rights holder and the rigid art direction and production of these coming from the estate, the Russ Meyer titles are not something they can get all the licences for, at present. So that lets them off the hook as far as those are concerned and let’s just be happy with what they managed to achieve.

In The Lost Lands

Go Ask Alys

In The Lost Lands
Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson
Germany/Canada/USA 2025
Constantin Film
UK Cinema release print

Warning: Some spoilers.

This film is better than I thought it would be. I quite like director Paul W. S. Anderson’s movies but I find him a bit hit and miss. He seems to produce, write and direct a lot of films starring his wife Milla Jovovich and here she stars as the main character, Gray Alys, in his adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s short story In The Lost Lands. I’m used to some of the invention found in Martin’s Wild Cards mosaic novels and you can find my reviews of some of the more recent tomes in that series in my book section of the index page of this blog. I haven’t read this one though so, I can’t tell how good of an adaptation it is. I would assume though, since it’s a short story, that it is at the very least an expansion of the original material.

Gray Alys is a witch (a real one with real magical powers) who has lived for hundreds of years after the world as we know it has been wiped out. Yeah, that’s right, it’s a post apocalyptic spin on the heroic fantasy genre. In this future, everyone on the planet lives in one city, ruled jointly by a vindictive and evil religion (presumably Christian or Catholic or, probably a blend of both) plus the true Overlord and his Queen (played by Amara Okereke). And of course, the church wants all the power and are trying to seem subservient to the ‘royalty’ while looking for opportunities to seize the throne.

But the queen wants something, so she goes to Alys (who has already escaped being hung by the lead enforcer of the church, played by Arly Jover, at the start of the movie) to hire her to bring her the power to become a shape shifting werewolf. So Alys hires a hunter and guide, played by one of this generation’s undersung actors, David Bautista... and they go into the lost lands (where the ruined tower blocks and power plants of the former civilisation still stand) to kill a fierce werewolf who lives in the wilderness, so Alys can steal his power with her supernatural ways, to bestow upon the queen. And, of course, the church enforcer is hot on their heels, adding to their opponents along with a bunch of demons and so on.

But nothing is quite as it seems and, as Gray Alys warns every customer who she agrees to help, there are always consequences to the desires of those who seek her out. Which leads to a very nice narrative twist near the end of the film that I actually didn’t see coming.

And it’s a pretty well crafted movie. Lovers of both Italian post-apocalyptic movies of the 1980s and various heroic fantasy movies will more than likely find this one to be quite a nice entry into those sub-genres. Jovovich, Bautista and their supporting cast are all absolutely brilliant in this, with the enforcer being a character you will quickly learn to hate. So you’ll be rooting for them through the whole movie but, yeah, it has many twists and turns and all of Alys’ customers are somewhat surprised as to where their requests lead them. 

And, typically for a film from this husband and wife directing/acting team, it’s filled full of action and with the odd nice idea thrown in to keep the ‘road movie’ quest narrative lively and never dull. There are a few silly bits thrown in for good measure too. For instance, when the two leads are fighting for their lives in and on the top of an old, moving cable car, a few religious villains have jumped onto the car before it makes its trip... this doesn’t stop them somehow having to fight around twenty of said villains who seem to keep springing from the roof or sides of the car. I guess this is the modern equivalent of... ‘don’t count the shots in those old Westerns where they’re using six shooters’... just go with the vast numbers and have some fun.

My one big problem with it, which is completely conjecture but I suspect I’m right... is that you can tell the film has had its conclusion altered to fit ‘happy ending’ Hollywood expectations. The ending is grim and ugly... and then suddenly freezes frame and cuts away to a more agreeable resolution for the two main characters. Using, if I’m not mistaken, footage of them culled from material shot for earlier scenes in the film. Which is a shame because, it’s a rubbish ending which allows for a sequel but feels like it betrays the story somewhat.

Other than this slight crimp, though, I thought In The Lost Lands was a fine film in its genre with stand out performances, surprisingly competent and understandable editing (albeit the constant adding of villains where they couldn’t be in that cable car scene), a nice gimmick of visually counting down the number of days to the full moon (Alys’ self imposed deadline to coincide with the shape shifter’s rota) and a nice score by ex-Tangerine Dream member Paul Haslinger which, surprise surprise, hasn’t been given a proper CD release at time of writing. But the film is nicely done so maybe add this one to your list.

Black Bag

Unauthorised Item
In The Bagging Area

Black Bag
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
USA 2025
Focus Features
UK Cinema release print

Warning: Very light spoilers.

Steven Soderbergh retired from directing in 2013. Since then he’s directed another 11 movies plus assorted TV shows and one can’t help but think that he’s more prolific now than before he made that statement. In fact, this is the second cinema release to be written by David Koepp and directed by Soderbergh this year and it’s only March (the first being Presence, released at the end of January and reviewed here).

And, like the aforementioned Presence, his latest opus Black Bag is absolutely brilliant. A startling and intense, emotionally claustrophobic thriller which seems to be an homage to the best of the cold war spy movies of the 1960s. I’ll give a couple of the references as I run through this review. .

The always interesting Michael Fassbender plays British intelligence agent (that’s spy to you and me) George Woodhouse, which is surely not a coincidental first name as a reference to George Smiley in a number of John LeCarre’s famous books (not to mention a character appearing in a number of movie adaptations of them). He is married to Kathryn St. Jean, a similarly high ranking spy who is played by the always amazing Cate Blanchett. Both are playing very muffled versions of themselves here, as two very cautious denizens of the global spy network. Both relying on the spy term ‘black bag’ as an area of their work lives which are off limits to talk about in their marriage, due to authorisation levels and ‘need to know’ status.

After hearing that one of five in his organisation is a traitor putting a huge number of lives at risk, with his wife being one of that list, George invites all the names to a dinner party at his and Kathryn’s home, with a little spiking of some of the ingredients, to loosen tongues and behaviour (a choice which leads to some more than inflammatory behaviour between the guests). These guests are played by Tom Burke, Marisa Abela, Regé-Jean Page and the always brilliant Naomie Harris.

As the seeds of suspicion grow, the emotionally aloof and icy George starts exploring the twists and turns of the plot which features a device which could kill untold millions of people, called Severus. This includes suspicion and shadow thrown onto the head of the department, played by Pierce Brosnan. Shenanigans ensue and lovers of non-Bond sixties spycraft movies of the mostly British variety will love this suspenseful and well written thriller.

Well directed too, with Soderbergh directing, shooting and editing (using his mother’s name as a pseudonym) an intriguing concoction of thriller and ‘will he or won’t he shoot first and ask questions later’ style tension, as George moves ever closer to the solution of the problem (once he’s figured out that at least two people have been set up, including himself).

And it’s a damn near perfect movie, it has to be said.

The pre-credits sequence, filmed in a number of locations in London in one take (or appearing to be at least but, I suspect, just well staged and rehearsed and done in one take, as George arrives at a location and wanders a few floors of a busy bar until being led out somewhere else) with the camera firmly following George from behind, with his face hidden for this sequence.

Then, as we go into the credits, we see another major influence of the film as George prepares the meal in a way reminiscent of Michael Caine’s breakout role of Harry Palmer in The IPCRESS File, the first of his three movies playing the nameless character from Len Deighton’s famous spy novels. George even wears the exact same type of NHS spectacles which were synonymous with the Harry Palmer personality throughout the entirety of this movie. Soderbergh just couldn’t resist wearing his influences on his celluloid-like sleeve here.

The actors are all incredible in this, with an actress I don’t know, Marisa Abela, being particularly stand out as a young recruit who is perhaps a little too sensitive for the brutal world of international espionage. And she plays perfectly in a film which is, to be fair, only using the genre trappings of the spy movie to explore the depths of deception, loyalty and trust inherent in relationships, especially those in the spy game where the ‘black bag’ manifestation can be seen as a fallback to cover a multitude of sins, such as hiding a sexual affair.

Indeed, this is further explored in a scene which crosscuts between multiple subjects in a polygraph test.* A sequence which has been done to death in so many movies by this point that it’s become a very obvious cliché but, luckily for the audience, is executed to perfection here and which even gives some of the characters a little more depth than they had before this scene.

The ruse of the ‘gun on the table’ game towards the end of the movie will not surprise many people in the audience as to the intent of such an item on an open table but in terms of the surface story revelations as to the identity of the traitor in the ranks, it may well come as a surprise. Just like an Italian giallo trying to remain inscrutable by throwing motives at every single member of the cast, the traitor in this one could be anyone... even George. So when the traitor is finally revealed, coupled with the fortification of one character deciding not to kill that person when they had the chance to earlier in the film, it is somewhat surprising but, by that point there’s not much at stake in terms of the ultimate identity of said treacherous individual. And the film has a nice little punchline in terms of the secretive personal motivations of other characters in the narrative.

So there you have it. Black Bag gives us a  brilliant set of performances in a well written and directed motion picture which includes a very nice score by David Holmes, sadly not available on a proper CD at time of writing. This one is a full-on recommendation from me, especially for those lovers of cold war thrillers from days gone by. 

*Fun fact: The original lie detector test was invented by Professor William Moulton Marston who created and wrote the Wonder Woman character for comics in the 1940s. It's also why she has a 'rope of truth'. For more information, see my review of Professor Marston And The Wonder Women right here.

The Gorge

 

Gorgeoumaflip*

The Gorge
Directed by Scott Derrickson
UK/USA 2025
Apple

Warning: All the spoilers.

The Gorge is a new film made specifically for a streaming TV channel… which is not my favourite way to view a new motion picture, for sure.

It stars Miles Teller as Levi, an ex-marine sniper, one of the top five in the world, who takes jobs on a freelance basis but doesn’t really care much for doing anything anymore. But he’s called in by, he assumes, his government to do a job briefed by a higher up, somewhat shady private contractor (played by Sigourney Weaver), after it’s established he has no loved ones or family ties. His job is to spend a year in one of two towers overlooking opposite sides of a gorge in an undisclosed location (which is never revealed but the film was shot in Scotland, I believe).

What he doesn’t know, but given the nature of the questions asked at his mini briefing the audience will surely rumble this five minutes before it happens, is that each previous agent being relieved after their year of guarding the gorge is shot dead and dumped in said valley by their pick up helicopter. And so Levi begins his one year tour of duty, knowing that an agent from ‘another side’ will be guarding the gorge from the opposite tower. Each can see each other through their binoculars but they are forbidden to communicate.

Manning the other tower is Lithuanian sniper assassin Drasa, played by one of my favourite modern actresses, Anya Taylor-Joy… who is even better at her job than Levi, it would seem. And, of course, over the year they bond through writing messages and playing chess etc through their binoculars, slowly falling in love. But they also have to defend themselves and each other when the ‘occupants’ of the valley try to get out of the gorge. And those occupants are pretty terrifying, presenting as kind of half decayed/half regrown vegetable textured soldiers (and horses) left over from the Second World War.

Of course, after a while, Levi finds a way of crossing the valley on a zip line so the two can ‘couple up’ but when he tries to return, he falls into the gorge and, naturally, Drasa parachutes in after him, armed to the teeth.

And in the gorge are what the very first guard in 1941 dubbed, The Hollow Men, named after the T. S. Eliot poem. And then, via a film canister marked up ‘God Forgive Us’ they find that the zombie creatures are fungal resurrections of soldiers resulting from experiments approved by the US, UK and Russian government, collaborating during the war. One which got out of hand when the viral agent used contaminated and engulfed the researchers too. So Levi and Drasa decide that this can’t go on, with private companies still trying to study and create these super soldiers… and so they try to stay alive long enough to destroy the gorge, despite Sigourney Weaver and a few goons arriving in a helicopter to kill them.

And, yeah, it’s a pretty nice film. The special effects work and designs of the undead soldiers and their equally sinister and vegetative environment is apparently based on the paintings of Zdzislaw Beksinski, who I’d not heard of before this but I think I need to check his work out now (he reminds me a little of my favourite artist H. R. Giger). They’re quite terrifying, it has to be said and pose a real, credible threat to the two main protagonists of the film.

So all that’s great and the acting is pretty solid as well which, to be fair, I would expect from those two leads. And things are eerily and propulsively supported by the score from the popular duo Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross… sadly not available on a proper CD at time of writing. All in all I think it’s a well put together film which would have been much better served by an initial cinema release. I do, however, have two slight criticisms, which I’ll get into now…

Firstly, it could do with some trimming. It’s a long film and I think it would have had much more impact if a few of the lengthy combat scenes towards the end of the picture were whittled down a little more.

Secondly, it’s full of terrible Hollywoodland clichés geared to making it all seem sunny and happy in its outcome. Two things in particular annoyed me. One is getting the human villain helicoptered out to the gorge so she can be brought to violent justice… I really could have done without that, to be honest. And similarly, the seemingly impossible happy ending ripped straight from The Bourne Identity remake is not the most credible, to be honest. I would have had a ‘wake up dreaming that happy ending as a mutated monster on a laboratory table’ kind of rug pull rather than the way it’s left here which, like I said, really does strain credibility.

But there you have it, these things happen and I don’t think they detract too much from a movie which, I’ll say it again, really should have been given a theatrical release rather than being relegated to a barely watched streaming channel. The Gorge is definitely worth a watch if you like sci-fi action thrillers with a dash of romance. Maybe give it a go sometime.

*Okay, that title was meant for one specific person who I know reads this blog. For everyone else, you can take Into The Valley Of Death as an alternate title.

Mickey 17

You’re So Fine
You Blow My Mind
Over 16 Times, Hey...

Mickey 17
Directed by Bong Joon Ho
South Korea/USA 2025
Warner Brothers
UK Cinema release print

Warning: Some spoilerage.

Okay... so I don’t mind a bit of Bong Joon Ho but I’ve only ever been totally blown away by him once and that was for his brilliant giant monster movie The Host. His new film, Mickey 17, is pretty much what I expected from him, to be honest (on the strength of the trailer) and I had a pretty good time with it while, not being too taken with it at the same time.

The premise is that, in the not too distant future, a failed buffoon of an American politician played by Mark Ruffallo, satirically playing him as a kind of amalgam of Trump and Musk (which is not a hard stretch to amalgamate the two, to be fair), accompanied by his wife (played by the ever reliable Toni Collette) and a huge starship full of colonists is off to found the colony of Nipple-heim on the planet of their choice. On board they take an expendable, who is a guy who can be reprinted from recycled rubbish and implanted with all his former memories... and his job is to be the ‘canary in the cage’ for the mission. If you can imagine a canary in a cage which is deliberately killed with agonising and sometimes slow death on purpose, to develop vaccines and so on, in the field.

The current Mickey is Mickey 17 and he’s played by an actor I’m not all that enamoured of, Robert Pattinson... although he does a great job here playing the title character (with a Jerry Lewis voice) and his copies, who all exhibit slightly different personalities. And we start off with him accidentally dropping into a perilous, non-survivable position, about to be eaten by creatures and being abandoned by his pal, played by Steven Yeun. From this point we flash back to get the back story as to why Mickey decided to volunteer to be an expendable in the first place, before we catch up to it again a short time later.

Meanwhile, the somewhat more over-confident (to the possible point of being almost psychotic) Mickey 18 has been 'printed'. However, Mickey 17 is instead saved by the native creatures and when he returns to the ship and to his girlfriend played by Naomi Ackie (who is more than happy to have two Mickeys to sleep with at the same time), he is now an illegal ‘multiple’.

And things get worse when the indigenous, slug/armadillo-like population are gathering to take revenge on a president who is allowing his wife to use their tails to make sauces for her cooking projects. It all gets quite gripping and suspenseful with each twist and turn and it certainly doesn’t get dull.

Pattinson and the cast are all good with some nice framing and editing going on. There are some nice ideas too, such as Mickey’s memories being backed up onto a brick etc and the 3D cloning printer jerking back and forth in the process of making a new Mickey (like a photocopier going back for another scan pass). And it is full of ideas, somewhat reminiscent of the kind of things Philip K. Dick would have been writing about in the 1950s and on to the end of his career for sure.

My biggest problem with the film is that, for all the ideas on show and explored throughout the fairly lengthy narrative, nothing really surprising ever happens. Even the somewhat benevolent nature of the alien life form on the planet is kinda telegraphed early on in the movie and so, to me at least, the film becomes more of an exercise in pulling the various narrative threads together into a sustained story without really coming off the rails. The film changes tonally on the drop of a dime, so to speak, weaving between moving drama and high comedy but, that stuff seems to fit okay together for the most part and... I dunno, it’s a good film but not a great one, is what I left the cinema thinking. I mean, I could let another ten or twenty years go by without ever visiting it again. That being said, I don’t know what it’s like as an adaptation of the book Mickey7 by Edward Ashton but it feels like it’s a novel I should definitely sit down and read at some point. Just to see how different it is and if the book is, maybe, more subtle than the big screen version.

And that’s me about done on Mickey 17, I think. It’s an okay film with some big concepts, great special effects and some nice acting choices. If you like science fiction (as opposed to just space opera) then you should have an okay time with it. An easy one to recommend but don’t expect anything much more than what it says on the tin, in this one.

The Rig Season 2

Oil Be Back

The Rig
Series 2
6 episodes Jan 2 2025
UK Wild Mercury Productions

I had a lot of good things to say about the first series of The Rig, not least of which came down to the excellent acting skills of the ensemble cast including stand out performances from the likes of Iain Glen, Emily Hampshire, Owen Teale and Martin Compston. I also said I was unsure why the series was left open ended on a cliff hanger of sorts and, considering the title of the show, after the giant tsunami is released, surely the only place the helicopters carrying the survivors could possibly go is to another rig. Which is, it turns out, exactly what happens.

This one is a bigger, luxury rig which can also move itself around if needed but the majority of the surviving ‘extras’ from the first show are taken back to civilisation after signing problematic gagging orders by the company that is trying to end ‘the ancestor’, as the Cthulhu-like presence beneath the sea has been dubbed in the first series.

The problem with this second series is that, asides from the acting, it doesn’t really have a lot further it can push forward on the science fiction/horror element of the show, it seems to me. So we have the two characters played by Owen Teale and Rochenda Sandall going back to the broken, post tidal wave UK to look for Sandall’s character’s wife while the main cast from the last one are playing survival games on the new rig. That is to say, the human villain, Coke (played by Mark Addy) is trying to stop the mysterious species beneath the ocean while the crew of the previous rig are trying to stop him.

Now, don’t get me wrong... it’s fast paced, very dramatic and never gets boring at all. A pretty entertaining package all around, I would say... but it’s nothing really new it’s showing us here from last time around. At least not enough, I would say, to justify a second series. Also, the creature itself, while not in the background, certainly takes a seat far from the action for the most of the six episodes. None of the Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers style shenanigans in this series and the element of threat seems almost gone. It’s brought in every now and again but this second go round is more about the politics and butting heads of the various human cast trying to stop each other before it’s too late. This includes famous actress Alice Krige coming in as one of the big bosses of the company running the rigs. And, her character goes through a similar arc to what the underused (in this second series) Iain Glenn had to go through in the first one... coming out on the right side before the end of the last episode while the ambiguity of the allegiances of the character are explored by all and sundry.

The music is somewhat off in this one, I thought... at least in that you can kind of hear the temp track coming through and bleeding into the original score. I would be completely unsurprised if bits of Philip Glass alongside the main theme from The Terminator were used to temporarily score the rough cut of this show with, as the music feels more than just a little reminiscent of these too in certain areas.

Having said all that, big shout out to an actress called Molly Vevers in this. She’s a secondary character and doesn’t get all that many scenes but she’s got huge screen presence in the bits and pieces she’s in and she should be getting more work, I think. For this reason alone, I’m kind of hoping the series gets renewed for a third season at some point soon... while the story can easily be finished here, there’s a weird, last shot coda which I’m not entirely sure about (okay... I admit I didn’t understand what’s going on there and kinda don’t care truth be told) but The Rig has a good cast so I hope it gets picked up again.

And I don’t have much more to say about this one, I’m afraid. It was much ado about nothing but I still enjoyed it for what it was so would certainly be a part of the audience for a third part, if it comes up.

The Last Showgirl

Off The Razzle

The Last Showgirl
Directed by Gia Coppola
USA 2024
Picturehouse Entertainment

Once again, one of the famous Coppola clan takes to directing. This is not Gia Coppola’s first movie but, it’s the first one I’ve personally heard of directed by her.

The Last Showgirl is an interesting piece, starring Pamela Anderson as an ageing showgirl dancer for a casino in Las Vegas. Her friend, an ex-performer and cocktail waitress there, is a harridan of a woman with too much make-up and an irresponsible side to her, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, who also does remarkably wel here… although Pam is absolutely the star of this one, in what is possibly her best acting role she’s ever performed. Once again she is pigeon-holed a little into a dumb blonde kind of role but, in this case, one who has a lot of knowledge and interest in her art. But wrestling simultaneously with trying to repair an estranged relationship with her daughter (played by Billy Lourd), looking after some of the other showgirls (to an extent) and struggling, as always, to pay the bills.

Then, one day, their show runner, played by the always incredible David Bautista, breaks the news that the show, Razzle Dazzle, is being ditched after a 38 year run (Pam’s character has been working it there for almost that long) and they have only three weeks to go before their last show and, definitely in the case of Pam’s character Shelly, a future of probable unemployment.

The film starts off strongly with the intro to an audition that Shelly has to put herself through to try and get work, before the opening credits roll and then flashing back to just before the girls hear the news the show is closing and spending almost all of the movie catching up to that devastating audition. And it’s very good. All the actors are top notch including the aforementioned Pamela Anderson (and check out her recent Criterion Closet entry on YouTube if you have a mind to). And, yeah, everyone is just so good in this, somewhat low key set of incidents but, a special shout out to Bautista who really is one of his generation’s best actors. I first realised this in his performance opposite Jodie Foster in Hotel Artemis (reviewed here) and, yeah, what he does with his facial expressions and the way he reigns in his physical presence to make himself seem like a somewhat run down, awkward man is absolutely amazing… and he certainly plays well opposite the main lead.

The photography is great too, with a lot of the visual information in the centre of the shots being in deep focus with the periphery of the frame at the margins kind of blurring somewhat… I’ve seen this photography style used in films before (it’s probably got a very specific name) and it gives everything a nice texture and contrast. And the naturalistic acting styles of the various characters is matched with a constant moving camera, often with lots going in on the shots and the hubbub of the backstage world of the showgirl nicely picked up, pulling the audience in voyeuristically without breaking the spell once it’s got you. In this respect, it reminded me a little of the films of Robert Altman, with his overlapping dialogue and shots packed full of people before, in this case, pulling back to a safer distance and observing the odd character alone in their environment.

I liked some of the scoring by Andrew Wyatt too which, to my mind, sounded somewhat reminiscent of some music at a certain stage in the career of Philip Glass, which certainly doesn’t do the film any harm and underlines some of the melancholic moments without lapsing into full on melodrama (which is a neat support from the music on this one, for sure).

Perhaps my one criticism of the film might be that I felt, somewhat, like it didn’t give any real closure or sense of an ending. It felt like it needed a little more happening towards some kind of resolution… positive or negative… at the end but, surprisingly, a few hours after watching this one, I was plagued by nightmares featuring some of the characters from this film. I must have taken things in more than I thought I had here so, already this film is haunting me a little and I’m surprised it didnt get more of an Oscar nod at this year’s Academy Awards (not that I like awards ceremonies or anything to do with them, to be honest... but I'm glad Anora did well, it's well deserved, read my review of that one here).

So, yeah, The Last Showgirl is a slow moving, thoughtful film with great acting, beautiful cinematography and a somewhat, deliberately muffled style to it, I thought. I really liked this one and you might want to take a look at it, if you are of a certain mindset.

My 2700th Post - 31 Best Boutique Blu Ray labels

Blu-tique Fashion

My 2700th Post -
31 Best Boutique
Blu Ray labels

This listing, or something probably very much different to it, was originally due to have come to this blog a few years ago, as one in an occasional series of articles exploring the best boutique labels for DVD and Blu Ray. However, when I started researching it and trying to figure out who I wanted to include this time around, I came to the realisation that independent physical media labels are not just easily surviving in this so called age of the digital revolution... they’re thriving. This made it very difficult to properly do that article justice, I would have to include around 60 labels, many of them only a few years old.

It’s seems strange to me that the big companies like Warner Brothers, Disney, Universal, MGM and the like are releasing less and less product on physical media, preferring instead to capture the digital streaming market which, as fans of physical media know, is a very shaky proposition and, as more stuff gets deleted from the servers, I think people are realising their only salvation a lot of the time is in Blu Ray and UHD for the significant, near future.

So, yeah, that left me with a dilemma of who do I include when, half of these labels I don’t have any examples of myself. So the project stayed in limbo for a few years until now, a few weeks before this is to go live. I realised nobody is really going to do justice to it all... so I thought I’d just do a top ten labels list and leave it at that. And, of course, it quite quickly got to the point where ten seemed like a poultry amount as I tried to whittle it down to that small number. So, yeah, here we go then... here’s my look at my most essential 31 labels and, if you’re a buyer of physical media, you might find yourself pitching up in some interesting places if you read further.

Each label title has an embedded link taking you to their web site.

AGFA (American Genre Film Archive)
Okay, so to learn how AGFA started, you need to read the book Warped And Faded (reviewed here) which explains why this is a label devoted to rescuing, saving and restoring zero budget projects by people who can’t really afford to make movies... but do anyway. It’s a partner label of two of the other labels you’ll find on this list... Vinegar Syndrome in the US and 101 Films in the UK. So if you want to check out such trash as Godmonster Of India Flats (yeah, not watched it yet but it’s in the pile), the Lady Streetfighter collection, The Sword And The Claw or even the Wakaliwood Supa Action Volume 1 collection then, yeah, you know where to go.

Arrow Films (and Arrow USA and incorporating Arrow Academy)
What can one say about Arrow Films? Sometimes they get it wrong and repressed discs have to be distributed to their customers. Sometimes a release will sell out on pre-order. Sometimes they’ll miss a deadline or two. But with such heavy hitting box set releases as their three (to date) Shawscope collections delving into the abundant past of the Shaw Brothers action film catalogue (licensed to them by Celestial Pictures, naturally) and such cinematic confections as Yokai Monsters, Gamera, a definitive Bruce Lee at Golden Harvest box and J-Horror... not to mention various horror and giallo classics from the likes of Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, then you have to cut them some slack. Bottom line is, with releases as good as these, you can’t ignore them (much as you might like to on occasion).

BFI (British Film Institute)
I always used to think of both BFI and Eureka Masters Of Cinema as being a kind of UK equivalent to America’s great label, the Criterion Collection. Now, of course, there is also a much less prolific but equally high quality UK arm of Criterion too... but BFI has some great releases in their vaults. With titles such as the inaugural release of Scala!!!, four boxes of Essential Bergman movies, some epic Kurosawa classics and their impressive Flipside range of peculiarities, not to mention modern classics like Starve Acre… they’re a much more impressive label than you may at first realise.

Blue Underground
When the once great US DVD label Anchor Bay got kind of diminished and became pretty much a shadow of its former self, Blue Underground started up to, in my opinion, carry on what Anchor Bay used to do best. And they’re still, surprisingly, at it. Maybe not all of their output is headline grabbing stuff these days but with titles like the definitive restoration of Daughters Of Darkness, The New York Ripper and Argento and Martin’s Two Evil Eyes in their listings... they’re still an essential label, in my book.

Cauldron Films
Cauldron Films ship exclusively to Canada and North America but if you want to import them to someplace like the UK, you can generally pick them up at the excellent Diabolik.com web store. Without these people we wouldn’t have had such releases as Murder In A Blue World, Crimes Of The Black Cat and the amazing 1974: La posesión de Altair to explore.

Criterion Collection (and the less prolific Criterion UK)
What can you say about Criterion? Source of the wonderful Criterion Closet episodes on YouTube and purveyors of the best in classic World Cinema since the days of Laser Disc and VHS. Including important selections from the likes of Fellini, Kurosawa, Tarkovsky, Bergman, Godard, Truffaut, Wenders, Ackerman... you name it and they’ve got all the giants. Admittedly they’re still very expensive compared to the majority of their competitors (you pay for the quality extras and restorations) but, over the last few years, some of the other UK and US labels have been matching their asking price and then some on occasion (I’m looking at you Second Run and Severin!) so, still a high quality ‘go to’ label and still with the power to surprise with some of their left of field releases, it seems to me (I never expected to own The Roaring Twenties on a decent home video format, for example). Plus they have some seriously refreshing cover artwork.

Cult Epics
If you know who people like Walerian Borowczyk, Tinto Brass, Just Jaekin and Radley Metzger are (no, don’t google them if you’re at work) then it’s nice to know this label is out there, faithfully restoring some of their classic works in a world where their particular style of cinematic excess hasn’t made a come back in the way that other genres and sub-genres have. Although, I suspect Arrow and 88 Films in the UK may start taking a crack at these at some point too, judging from some of their recent output.

Curzon
The famous chain of high brow London art cinemas have their own Blu Ray label too now. They have produced some nice box sets over the years which, while not always quite definitive (their Wim Wenders and Lar Von Trier sets have a film apiece missing, for example), are always a quality and much desired release. Such as their wonderful box dedicated to Kieslowski’s Three Colours Trilogy. Although I draw the line at a Peter Strickland set, to be honest.

Diskotek Media
This once great label was always more about Anime releases than anything else but they also have some quality product you can’t get anywhere else, including lovely Blu Ray versions of live action classics such as Uzumaki, Sex And Fury and Female Yakuza Tale... which still makes them an interesting label for sure.

88 Films
88 Films have always been a UK friend to Italian giallo movies and Italian horror films but they’re continuing to go from strength to strength. After they (and Eureka) cracked the Shaw brothers and Hong Kong action film markets in the UK (with Shout Factory in the USA and Arrow in the UK jumping onto that same band wagon) they are now releasing some pretty snazzily branded label collections devoted to Japanarchy, Nikkatsu Roman Porno, French Erotica, Hong Kong Category III titles and a beautifully branded tribute to the British Tigon Studios classics. What’s not to like?

Eureka Masters Of Cinema
This label has always had their finger on the pulse of quality film releases, embracing many of the classic silent films such as Pandora’s Box, Diary Of A Lost Girl, Nosferatu, The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis and, just recently, the sold out within a few days (glad I pre-ordered my copy) box set of Louis Feuillade’s French silent serials of Fantômas, Judex, Les Vampires and Tih-Minh. But they’ve also been releasing some essential Japanese samurai movies, not to mention some much loved Hong Kong action comedies of late. And where else would you find diverse titles such as Message From Space (Japanese Star Wars), Sam Fuller movies and the silent films of Laurel And Hardy all under one brand. They continue to do essential work within the boutique Blu Ray market.

Hammer
British stalwart Hammer Films are, like the title character in their Dracula films of the 1950s through to the 1970s, back from the dead. Their inaugural release from their back catalogue was unleashed just over a month ago with an outstanding, big box presentation of the great Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter... literally days before the actor who played him died. Not only is the packaging and extras (and wealth of accompanying printed materials) absolutely top notch but they’ve also printed various logos and quotes from the film in the sturdy cardboard packaging in which their product is sent through the post. Next up from them is a similar treatment of the classic Four Sided Triangle... which is a film I also love.

Imprint (Via Vision)
With the exchange rate on US currency, not to mention their postal charges, now officially having ‘gone through the roof’, it’s time to look at countries with much cheaper exchange rates and Australia is an especially good one because they have two really great boutique labels who are happy to send their products overseas too. Imprint particularly has my gratitude because the fourth volume in their ‘take it or leave it hodge podge’ Tales Of Adventure series of boxes features restorations of no less than seven Republic theatrical serials, comprising King of The Rocket Men, Flying Disc Man from Mars, The Invisible Monster, Radar Men From The Moon, Zombies of the Stratosphere, Mysterious Doctor Satan and Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe. Not only that but they’ve also started releasing some of the British TV shows of the 1960s and 1970s that the great Network label were releasing before they went bankrupt a few years ago in, by all accounts, some very nice editions.

Indicator (Powerhouse Films)
Wow. What a success story in the limited edition market British label Indicator have become in the nine years since they started up. With definitive boxes in numerous volumes dedicated to Ray Harryhausen, Hammer Horror, William Castle, Jean Rollin (the usual suspects admittedly but in such nice editions, some of which are uncut in the UK for the first time... don’t throw those old US editions away just yet, though), Mexploitation films and even early Columbia horror movies. A wealth of cinematic exploration just waiting for your retinas to join in the fun.

Kino Lorber
US label Kino Lorber has a really diverse mix of titles from all walks of cinema and in huge amounts, it has to be said. Now, the caveat emptor with Kino is that, in some cases, a cheaper and sometimes better version of their film can be gained in your own country… I mistakenly bought They Might Be Giants thinking it was the only version available, only to find out that Indicator had released a slightly better version on my home turf in the UK, for example. That being said, there’s a lot of stuff you just can’t, at time of writing, get anywhere else such as the trilogy of 1960s comedy/spoof versions of Fantômas, five of the OSS117 movies and two of the three Warner Oland Fu Manchu films. So with titles such as these, they’ve more than proven their essential status in the boutique Blu Ray world.

Mondo Macabro
Wow. Mondo Macabre continue to bring out the weird side of cinema, now in astonishing Blu Ray editions (although they’re usually quite expensive to import and tend to sell out and go out of print quickly, curse them). And with titles such as the Indonesian Warrior Trilogy, Café Flesh and Dr. Jekyll Meets The Wolfman, they continue to provide quality releases to connoisseurs of celluloid shenanigans.

Nucleus Films
Okay, so this British label doesn’t have a lot of publicity… so it’s easy to be in the situation where you suddenly see a title on the shelf at HMV or Fopp and had no idea that it had been released onto an unsuspecting public. Films like the unusual giallo Death Laid An Egg and other Eurosploitation fare such as Garden Of Torment, The Libertine and Jess Franco’s The Erotic Rites Of Frankenstein are among the titles they have on hand for the discerning enthusiast.

101 Films
UK label 101 Films are perhaps seen as nothing special with a true hodge podge of different titles, until you realise that there are a fair few gems in their catalogue such as Jack The Giant Killer, Spacehunter - Adventures In The Forbidden Zone and the Irwin Allen version of The Lost World. In recent years they’ve also become the British partner label for AGFA (see above) and I hope that’s going well for them because I somehow can’t see the British public getting behind many of the AGFA releases but, hey, it’s cheaper than importing certain titles.

Possible Films
Possible Films is owned and run by the great US independent film maker Hal Hartley and this is his way of taking back control of his own films and putting them out in the best possible editions (apart from No Such Thing, which I am assuming is being strangle-held by MGM and which definitely needs a Blu Ray version soonest). The downside is that the pricing is way beyond Criterion levels (my acid test for such things) but, if you want high quality releases from the greatest living American director… stuff like The Unbelievable Truth, Trust, Simple Men, The Girl From Monday etc… then you have to splash the cash.

Pulse Films
Pulse Films is a French label (although you can also get a few of their English friendly titles from Vinegar Syndrome and their new sister label Melusine) who specialise in movies of… an erotic nature (often hard core and uncut). They lionise some of the actresses in their films (and rightly so) with some nice supporting merchandise such as, in the case of the great Brigitte Lahaie and Marilyn Jess, beautifully designed hardback books detailing their careers. Also, depictions of their naked figures adorning skateboards (yeah, don’t ask, it’s a part of modern day culture that escapes me).

Radiance
British label Radiance has already cast a big shadow on the Blu Ray market here in the UK in just two years since its first releases. Beautifully handled, limited edition releases such as Black Tight Killers, Mario Bava’s sublime Planet Of The Vampires and a Daiei Gothic box set are among their many treasures. The downside is that the releases, especially the first wave limited edition versions, tend to sell out really quickly, sometimes just on pre-order, because so many people want them.

Second Run
Second Run are an often overlooked DVD and Blu Ray label based in the UK who specialise in World Cinema releases (especially Czechoslovakian it seems to me). A large and varied range of titles have been released by them such as the wonderful Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders, Morgiana and, of course, Daisies. There’s a whole lot of stuff I’ve never even heard of from this label and so, that gives them a special value to me as a lover of the occasional film to watch.

Second Sight
Second Sight films are known for ‘bells and whistles’ editions of film that have usually already been out on home video in some format but they have reissued definitive editions of films like The Blair Witch Project, Possessor, Inside (the original French version, naturally) and a very chunky box with many versions of Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead on it. Fair warning though, their editions are often very expensive, for some reason I’ve never been able to quite figure out (other than greed, maybe?).

Severin Films
Well, if I had to choose who is the best boutique label in the world right now it would be a tough call between this label and Vinegar Syndrome but, if pushed, I think Severin would just snag it. With essential box set editions such as The Sensual World Of Black Emanuelle, Al Adamson - The Masterpiece Collection (which reaffirmed my faith in film during the pandemic), the All The Haunts Be Ours boxes, the House Of Psychotic Women boxes, the Game Of Clones - Brucesploitation collections and some amazing stand alone releases such as Jodorosky’s Santa Sangre and Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos, this label just gets better every month (and causes my wallet severe and irreparable damage). They also have a wonderful, joyful podcast highlighting their upcoming releases when they’ve been announced and, of course, their Severin Cellar videos via YouTube.

Shameless Films
Shameless Films were a small British, yellow branded company specialising in Italian giallo, horror and exploitation films on DVD. Contrary to popular belief, they didn’t vanish overnight but are still with us, they’re just not that prolific as in days of old but have started getting maybe 5 or 6 great Blu Ray releases a year out (many of them upgraded versions of thier previous DVD titles). Don’t buy their UK editions of films like The New York Ripper and Cannibal Holocaust though… they’re still censored over here (no matter what language you couch that censorship in).

Shout Factory (including Scream Factory)
Shout Factory (and their sub label Scream Factory) have been around for years in the US, putting out a range of interesting products. Some of their recent and more interesting work being the various volumes of boxed collections of Shaw Brothers Classics and a wonderful steel-book edition of Battle Beyond The Stars bundled with an amazing action figure of Sybil Danning as Saint-Exmin the Valkyrie from that film. However, you might have to go the third party root for some of these great releases as they will only ship some of their titles to North America, directly. Which makes it a pain to get hold of certain editions.

Synapse
Yep, US label Synapse films are still going and they’re now releasing in the blu ray market too. And with titles like Radley Metzger’s S&M odyssey The Image (sorry, that’s BDSM to the kiddies these days) and some Dario Argento classics on their books… they’re still worth a look.

Third Window Films
Purveyors of cinema from the Far East (and I believe partnered/swallowed by Arrow during the pandemic), Third Window Films have some of the more unusual titles from places like Japan on their listings and they have a large number of them, too. Recent releases from them are Mermaid Legend, A Samurai In Time and the wonderful New Religion.

Treasured Films
Treasured Films have only been going for maybe just over a year but with films such as a definitive version of Mausoleum on their books, it won’t be long before they’re a much respected label, it seems to me. They also run a wonderful boutique Blu Ray shop in the UK, selling titles from many of the labels listed here, called Film Treasures (which you can find here). Be aware though, the prices don’t always come out as cheaper than ordering from the US so, do your research.

Umbrella
Umbrella is the other big Australian label and I’ve only got one of their releases to date, that being The Man From Hong Kong (which I hope to watch sooner or later) but, when they also include a CD of that film’s soundtrack, you know the label cares about the product they are putting out. I’ll be keeping my eye on this label, for sure.

Vinegar Syndrome (and Melusine)
Dedicated to rescuing exploitation and also films of a mainly adult nature (porn films from the 70s and 80s, okay?), Vinegar Syndrome are as prolific as their biggest rivals at Severin but they do manage to sometimes even release something complementary to what that label are putting out. For instance, one label did Blood For Dracula while the other issued Flesh For Frankenstein at more or less the same time. They’ve recently moved their straight porn films over to a sub-brand sister label called Melusine (who are also aligned with Pulse, see above) and they have put some essential releases out over the years but, as importantly, saved many films (that most other companies wouldn’t choose to touch) from extinction due to the state of celluloid degradation from which their company takes it’s name. From Curse Of The Devil and The Terrornauts to Michael Mann’s The Keep (finally) and their amazing series of Forgotten Gialli boxes, this company has something for everyone. 

One last honourable mention must go to Mubi but, trying to find a part of their website dedicated to their rich history of Blu Ray releases proved impossible for me so... just go in Fopp and have a look at their Mubi section, for sure.

From - Season 3

La La Land
From Hell

From - Season 3
MGM
Ten Episodes
October - December 2024

Just a very brief catch up and drop in on Season 3 of what is arguably one of the best and certainly among the strangest TV shows of contemporary times.

Picking up from the finale of last season of From (reviewed here), where the mother, Tabitha, played by Catalina Sandino Moreno, has managed to, seemingly, have escaped to the outside world (by being pushed out of a tower), she’s amazingly still out at the start of the episode and, escaping from hospital, she tracks down Victor’s dad. It turns out Victor’s mother invented the teleporting ‘bottle tree’ as an art exhibit. Meanwhile, her husband is getting phone calls in the village from his dead son. Other things happening are the character of Fatima, played by Peggy Ghafoori, who can’t get pregnant… is now somehow pregnant (but not with anything that can be picked up on a medical scanner). This equipment comes to the community via an ambulance because, when Victor’s dad crashes his car with himself and Tabitha in it, they are picked up by an ambulance with a police woman on board, because of a misunderstanding… and then they come to the log in the road and before you know it, Tabitha, Victor’s dad and the new lady cop character are back in the community again... but at night. And with Tabitha chained inside the ambulance and the night creatures on the prowl… the new arrivals are in the village but at much cost... at least to the paramedics and driver, who promptly get ripped apart.

And so on… it’s business as usual for From where, once again, each new episode brings us a fresh and baffling extra twist which just contributes to the overall, increasing darkness of the show… as if things couldn’t get any grimmer. Among other things happening is a sweet old lady who is accidentally murdered by one of the main characters, a ventriloquist’s dummy which you know is going to take on a life of its own by the time we get to the end of season 4 (which is currently being touted as arriving in 2026), a past knowledge of the place buried and slowly revealed over time in Tabitha’s memories,  a polaroid camera which takes its own pictures to communicate its desires and... the nicest most innocent character kidnapping Fatima and then himself getting tortured for information as to where he has hidden her.

Yeah, it’s still just getting darker and darker and… although I know for some people the constant need to get to the required amount of seasons means it’s dragging for them somewhat (I think someone I know is about to jump ship on it), I am still finding it quite fresh and entertaining. But yes, it needs to end sometime soon and, although the characters are constantly being given new ‘clues’ to work with, I can’t see any other real solution to this storyline other than the fact that everyone in the community is in Hell and this is their punishment. Nothing else really seems to fit for me… as much as that would obviously be a total let down by this point, of course.

So that’s a very short review and I’m done with Series 3 but, I am still looking forward to seeing where this is going, for sure. I wish modern TV shows didn’t keep waiting so long between seasons because, of course, by the time Season 4 comes out I will have forgotten everything and there are so many threads and characters to pull on in this one that it becomes hard to keep everything in your head. Still, Season 3 of From was entertaining stuff and it kept me on the edge of my seat, once again.