THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957)

The Seventh Seal (1957) Certificate: PG. Running time: 192 minutes

IN TRIBUTE to the acclaimed Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman, who died recently, Tartan Films has reissued his most celebrated film on DVD. This fiftieth anniversary Collector’s Edition has also been issued in the new Blu-ray high definition format for those with deeper pockets.
Besides the film, the DVD is packaged with an English language audio track, new subtitles, an original trailer and some behind-the-scenes footage from the film’s set. Film historian Ian Christie has recorded a commentary over the silent footage shedding some light on Bergman’s methods and technique. Fascinating stuff! There’s also a bonus short film, Karin’s Face based on his mother.
So what about the film itself, then? I have to confess never to having seen it until receiving this DVD.
Set during the Black Death, in 14th Century Sweden, a knight back from the crusades (Max von Sydow) comes face-to-face with a hooded man who identifies himself as Death (Bengt Ekerot). He had escaped death several times on his travels and discovers that Death has been stalking him. This is by no means a laugh a minute but there is some surprising humour in it, especially in the role of a travelling band of actors and their relationships with the residents of a village they are passing through - especially one very attractive young woman, the blacksmith’s wife.
This is a very thoughtful film, looking at issues of life and death in an atmosphere of plague and suffering. Was the plague a visitation of God on a sinful people as put about by a hellfire and brimstone friar surrounded by flagellating pilgrims? How do people deal with their fate? Do they accept it? Do they turn on others? Is their faith deepened or lost? The same sort of varying reaction is seen today in the face of terrorism or today’s modern equivalent of hellfire and damnation: ‘global warming’ and ‘climate change’. This is deep stuff, but not as depressing as it sounds. It certainly deserves a second or third viewing although I confess to having watched the English dubbed version rather than the subtitled Swedish original. The new Collector’s Edition DVD was released on December 3rd 2007. RRP £19.99 (Blu-ray £29.99)

Apocalypto

Apocalypto 139 min

Language: Maya

Certificate: 18

Director: Mel Gibson

AFTER the wildly successful The Passion of the Christ I was interested to see if the maverick actor and director Mel Gibson could do it again. Like the Passion, this film is made in an obscure language with English subtitles. Not everyone has the patience to deal with subtitles, so it's a bit of a gamble. Subtitled foreign language films have more of the flavour of art house cinemas like QFT rather than the Movie House at Yorkgate. However, the path was cleared for subtitled films in mainstream cinema theatres by the wild success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero and The House of Flying Daggers.

Gibson has made a terrific tension-filled, rip-roaring chase film. There's lots of blood and gore set to a high-adrenaline musical score. It starts off quietly enough with a small hunting party out to provide food for their little village in the forest. They catch a tapir and have a lot of fun at the expense of one of their number, Blunted, who seems unable to father children. It's the typical piss-taking male bonding seen in any gathering of young males the world over. Even Flint Sky, the older leader gets in the act by offering Blunted some herbs to rub on 'down below' to help his little problem. They turn out to be chillies.

The party is disturbed by a group of strangers passing through their forest who tell fearful tales of having to flee destruction wrought on them by vicious marauders. They say nothing of this to the villagers when they return with the tapir, but their village becomes the next victim of a sneak night attack.

Jaguar Paw, one of the young hunters, manages to hide his young heavily pregnant wife and son before he is captured and dragged through the jungle with many others to a stone-built town. To his horror, he finds that he and his people are to be sacrificed to bring good harvests back to the Mayan society.

Without revealing plot details, Jaguar Paw, is determined to get back to his village and to rescue his wife and family from her perilous hiding place. Equally, a small band of his captors are determined to stop him. The jungle chase scenes are edge-of-the-seat heart-stoppingly awesome. The audience really roots for Jaguar Paw as he dodges wild animals and tries to even the odds in his wild flight to freedom.

Gibson has triumphed with an unknown cast in an unknown tongue. Don't miss it!

Double Indemnity

Double indemnity

Running time: 107 minutes
Colour: Black and White
Certificate: PG

Double Indemnity has a reputation as one of the best-loved classic films of all time. This verdict is well-deserved as the movie sets a cracking pace. I had always associated Barbara Stanwyck as the matriarch in the classic television series, The Big Valley. Some older readers may remember this.

The screenplay for Double Indemnity was written by Director Billy Wilder in collaboration with the great Raymond Chandler who created the private eye, Philip Marlowe.

The story opens in flashback as dying insurance agent Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) crashes into his office, picks up a dictaphone and tells his story in flashback to a colleague who investigates insurance scams.

Neff is a mess. How did he get this way? While out selling insurance policies he met an extremely attractive young woman, Phyllis Dietrichson, (Barbara Stanwyck) who feels trapped in her marriage to her boorish husband, (Tom Powers). The ultimate femme fatale, Phyllis asks how she could work an insurance scam to murder her husband and collect the insurance.

Infatuated by Phyllis's charms, Neff proposes a scheme that makes it look as if the crutch-bound Mr Dietrichson fell or jumped off a moving train. All seems to be going well, but the investigator Barton Keyes (Edward G Robinson) is suspicious. He feels in his bones that something about the grieving widow's claim is not right. This has to be one of the best roles of Robinson's career. He is like a terrier who won't let go. When he sees something that doesn't seem right, he worries away at it until he gets to the solution.

There's not a lot of action in the modern sense in Double Indemnity yet there are no boring lulls.either. Instead, the tension builds up gradually through the magnificent performances from Stanwyck, MacMurray and Robinson. Will they get away with it? What went wrong? It's powerful stuff?

This classic is now available to a whole new audience on DVD. It's a perfect example of the film noir genre.

Mickybo & Me

Mickybo & Me (2004)

Certificate 15

Directed by Terry Loane

Starring Adrian Dunbar Ciaran Hinds Gina McKee Susan Lynch Julie Waters, John Jo McNeill and Niall Wright

Mickybo & Me brings back a lot of memories for me. It’s a bittersweet comedy set in a divided Belfast in 1970, just as the troubles were starting to get underway. The opening shots show a shop exploding into the middle of a city street as Johnjo and his mum go to buy a pair of shoes. Part of the fun for me is identifying where in the city the different scenes were shot.

Oblivious to the disintegrating society around them two bright youngsters from each side of the rapidly widening sectarian divide in the city meet and become firm friends in the face of a gang of older boys led by Mickybo’s archenemy, a bully he calls ‘Fartface’. Mickybo (Niall Wright) fascinates Johnjo (Niall Wright) who is quite unlike anyone he has ever met. Mickybo is cheeky but loveable – he’s definitely the leader - brash, self-assured and confident.

After blagging their way into a local cinema to watch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the boys become obsessed by the lives of Butch and Sundance and decide to run away to Australia, living as outlaws on the way. A scene in which Mickybo ‘robs’ a small town banks branch while Johnjo waits outside on a getaway bike is priceless. And a scene where the boys, like their heroes Butch and Sundance, are chased by security guards and gardai (across the border in ‘Australia’) is terrific.

Sadly the reality of Seventies Belfast hits the boys hard in a shocking twist to the storyline just as they return from life on the run. Powerful stuff!

The Adventures of Robin Hood

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

Directed by: Michael Curtiz; William Keighley

Writers:Norman Reilly Raine; Seton I. Miller (original screenplay)

WATCHING a DVD of The Adventures of Robin Hood is a revelation. It's incredible to think that this restored classic was released as long ago as 1938 - nearly seventy years ago!

One reason why it has stayed the course and still appears regularly on television is that it was made in colour - Technicolor. Many younger people today just have no patience to watch black and white films. This is a big mistake as they then miss out on many of the terrific classic movies I have featured in this series of classic reviews.

As virtually all films today are made in colour, it is hard for a modern audience to imagine the impact of a full-colour film on an audience in 1938. The colours are rich and natural looking, especially in outdoor settings. Its fresh new look and vivid colours then must have blown the cinema-going public away back then. It's no wonder that it took three Oscars that year, for art direction, original score and film editing.

Errol Flynn was made for swashbuckling and it shows in this marvellous movie. Flynn looks like he enjoyed every minute as the outlawed Robin of Locklsey takes on the tyrannical Prince John and his lackeys, the Sheriff of Nottingham and Sir Guy of Gisbourne. Oddly enough, James Cagney was originally cast in the role of Robin Hood. Cagney had a big row with Warner Brothers and walked off the set. Enter Tasmanian-born Flynn, who had impressed the directors with his role in the pirate movie, Captain Blood.

The story is well known. A Saxon nobleman, Robin of Locksley, opposes the rule of the Norman usurper, Prince John who has terrorised and taxed the whole countryside and treated the Saxons very badly. Claud Rains makes a scheming Prince John and Basil Rathbone excels as the evil Guy of Gisbourne while the Sheriff of Nottingham (Melville Cooper) brings some comic relief to the production. There’s also great character acting from the merry men and Marian’s nurse.

The on-screen chemistry between Robin and the lovely Maid Marian as his love interest was given a boost by a real-life relationship between Flynn and DeHavilland. This film has it all: good versus evil, Normans versus Saxons, the True King versus the Usurper, the rivalry between Robin and Gisbourne for Marian's affections, comic moments, sword-fighting and archery. The final fight between Gisbourne and Robin set the standard for on-screen duelling for decades to come. The sets are sumptuous and - as you'd expect - extremely colourful.

This is a fun, thrilling classic that all the family can enjoy. Warner Brothers have gone to a lot of trouble with their DVD release. The first disc is taken from a restored print of the movie. The quality is superb. The second disc gives the history of Technicolor and its use in film making. There's also a background story to the making of The Adventures of Robin Hood, Robin Hood through the ages, some vintage cartoons bloopers and out takes. It's good for at least another seventy years!

Paradise Lost (Turistas)

Paradise Lost
(released as Turistas in North America)

Directed by: John Stockwell
Written by: Michael Ross
93 minutes. Certificate: 18

PARADISE LOST sets out to be a tense thriller involving the fate of a diverse group of young English-speaking backpackers. Whether it succeeds is open to question.
A ramshackle local bus carrying local people and a handful of tourists comes to grief on a winding Cliffside road. The drive and passengers manage to get out before the bus tips over the edge and smashes to bits at the bottom of the cliff.
The backpackers (three Americans, two Britons and an Australian girl) find themselves stranded in a beautiful beachfront area awaiting the next bus – a “mere” three days away.
The Americans are ALEX (Josh Duhamel), his sister BEA (Olivia Wilde), and her best friend AMY (Beau Garrett). The two Brits are FINN (Desmond Askew) and LIAM (Max Brown). The Aussie is PRU (Melissa George), who is able to speak Portuguese..
They befriend one another and try to make the best out of a bad situation at a local beachside bar where they party the night away with a Swedish couple and the locals, especially a friendly young local boy named KIKO (Agles Steib).
On the morning after the night before they awake to discover the Swedes have gone and they’ve been robbed. Things turn ugly with the remaining locals. Kiko then turns up and offers to lead them to his uncle's house in the jungle where they can wait for the next bus. They begin a long, exhausting hike through the jungle with a welcome rest at an amazing swimming hole with caves where they swim and dive in the water. Kiko misjudges a dive and seriously injures himself. The panicking tourists carry the bleeding Kiko the rest of the way to the house to try and save his life.
Here they meet Uncle ZAMORA (Miguel Lunardi) and his band of heavily armed thugs. Zamora locks them up, and proceeds in a gruesome scene to harvest Amy’s liver and kidneys – while she’s still alive – for surgery. If they want to avoid the same fate the remaining tourists have to try to escape through the jungles and underwater caves with Zamora and his men in full pursuit…
This is a thoroughly unpleasant film: a mixture of titillating shots of attractive young girls and boys wearing not very much and close-ups of pain and suffering. The scene where the camera lingered in anatomical detail as Amy’s belly was cut open and her organs slowly removed was unnecessarily graphic and hard to defend.
The film’s ‘message’ was a bit skewed too – a strange mixture of sick liberal self-guilt and distrust of foreigners in poor countries. Hell, Tony Blair, George Bush and Australian PM John Howard are heartless exploitative bastards so sure maybe Amy deserved to have her organs cut from her living body. In Zamora’s words, “I'd take the hearts and even the skin from their lily-white asses if I could... but they don't travel well.” Yes, Amy came from a White English-speaking nation that exploits Brazil and other developing countries. It’s a bit rough on Amy to become in effect the sacrificial lamb for the Western world, but there you go, what do you expect flaunting your wealth and privilege travelling throughout South America while being White, Western, blonde and beautiful? Such provocation!
On the other hand, I can’t see Paradise Lost doing much for the Brazilian tourist board. Bus drivers are reckless to the point of suicidal or homicidal. Those seemingly friendly locals you dance the night away with are just lulling the unwary Gringos into a false sense of security before robbing them of their valuables and luring them into the hands of ruthless organ-harvesters.

North by Northwest

Alfred Hitchcock’s

North by Northwest

Certificate: PG Running time 131 minutes

Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense rarely made a dull film. One of the constant themes of his films was the reaction of ordinary people who fall victim to threatening circumstances. We see this in The Birds, The Man who Knew too much, Rear Window, Foreign Correspondent and most notably in this exciting comedy thriller, North by Northwest.

Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is the victim of mistaken identity. He’s really a shallow advertising executive under his mother’s thumb but he finds himself accosted by a group of burly thugs. They drive him to a magnificent mansion to meet the urbane Lester Townsend (James Mason at his oiliest) a foreign spy who believes him to be an FBI agent called George Kaplan.

Thornhill escapes from a murder bid made to look like an drink-driving car accident. He is unable to convince the police that he’s not a drunk telling lies to save his own skin. He goes to the United Nations building to confront Townsend, only to discover that the real Lester Townsend is not the man who tried to have him killed. Worse still, the real Townsend is stabbed to death in front of him. Thornhill picks up the bloody knife. He looks guilty. He goes on the run from the police and from the killers.

On a train he meets up with the glamorous Eve Kendall ( Eva Marie Saint) who at first helps him to escape from the police but whose true motives are open to question. This leads him to his famous encounter with a crop-duster and a spectacular dénouement on Mount Rushmore.

The story goes that Hitchcock deliberately kept the whole plot from the cast. He wanted them to seem totally bewildered and uncertain about what would happen next. Grant in particular carries the air of someone feeling ‘Oh my goodness, what’s happening to me?’ In this he is supported well by Eva Marie Saint as the mysterious blonde femme fatale and by James Mason in a scene-stealing role as the oily villain Philip Van Damm. A perfect plot from a perfect cast. This film still enthralls with its thrills, chases and humour. The widescreen Warner Brothers DVD release bundles in a 39 minute behind the scenes film of the making of the movie, together with an audio commentary by the screenwriter Ernest Lehman and a selection of trailers.