Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (Review)
INITIATING COMBAT MODE! 2007 marked the 10th anniversary of Final Fantasy VII, and SquareEnix - the merger of original developers Squaresoft and their biggest rival Enix - being fully aware of the acclaim and regard the seventh entry in the series is held in, decided to mark the occasion with Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, the title given to a series of new games and animated movies...

No watersports or ball games for these girls (Review)
Review Grand Jury Prize-nominated Sundance darling How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer, a low-budget character study which looks like it’s been funded with couch change and promises of dish washing a go-go, is not a film to fly into looking for a stirring plot or copious entertainment. Neither is it a film full of comedy gold or even general amusement, despite ranking Ugly Betty’s...

The Straight to Video Fate of Bobby Z (Review)
The Content I don’t like Paul Walker. Nothing against the bloke - I’m sure he’s a lovely guy - but as an actor (air quotes), he’s terrible. Watching Paul Walker attempt to turn in a performance (air quotes) is like watching droplets of condensation slowly roll down your bathroom window. It’s Keanu Reeves without the knowing sense of irony. Yet, for some reason, I normally find the films he...

24-lite for the ADHD Generation (Review)
The Content If it hadn’t been cast out of the television lexicon for being a dirty term that conjured images of schmaltzy Danielle Steele epics and trashy Stephen King dramas, The Kill Point would be called a miniseries. But because no-one makes miniseries anymore, it’s just a series - albeit one that begins and concludes in the space of eight regulation length 40-minute episodes. In the...

Review of Target: Harry (Review)
Target: Harry? Anything to do with British royalty in Afghanistan? Nope. This is an ultra low-budget Roger Corman spy flick from the late-sixties, starring Vic Morrow and a rather young and dishy Charlotte Rampling. Vic who? Morrow. Also known as Jennifer Jason Leigh's dad. He made his name in 60s squaddie show 'Combat!' and, sadly, was killed in one of Hollywood's most tragic on-set...

Review of Chapter 27 (Review)
Introduction It must be my lucky week, because I get not one, but two critically derided films placed in my lap for review. Following on the heels of Richard Kelly`s `Southland Tales`, `Chapter 27` is the highly controversial, somewhat sympathetic, examination of Mark David Chapman (played by Jared Leto), the man who murdered John Lennon, set during the three days he spent in New York prior to...

Review of Southland Tales (Review)
Introduction `Southland Tales`, if you didn`t know, is director Richard Kelly`s follow-up to the critically acclaimed `Donnie Darko`. It`s also the film Richard Roeper (of Ebert and Roeper) called "two hours and twenty-four minutes of abstract crap". Which would certainly make for an interesting, not to mention brave, tagline. Kelly originally brought a longer cut of his futuristic satire to...

Review of Razor Eaters (Review)
Introduction Oz`s Shannon Young, the director of `Razor Eaters`, made his first foray into amateur moviemaking with one James Wan in 2000. And while Wan would go on to bigger and better things - namely directing `Saw` just four years later, Young has still to shift out of the no-budget, guerilla filmmaking style. Set in and around Melbourne and based on a real life gang of urban terrorists...

Review of Nitro (Review)
Introduction You might think we`re ungrateful when we have a moan about receiving DVD screeners instead of actual retail copies, and I suppose we are; we don`t want them. We don`t want them because our job is to review DVDs, not films. If we simply had to review the material or content, our lives would certainly be easier - we`d write half as many words and wouldn`t have to constantly jog our...

Review of Which Way Is Up? (Review)
Introduction `Which Way Is Up?`, despite the fact you`ve probably never heard of it, is not an early Richard Pryor film. In actuality, it was released the year after 1976 box-office smash `Silver Streak`, in which Pryor finally made his mark on movie audiences after establishing himself as the founder of modern black stand-up, his routines frequently hinging on race relations, drugs and street...

Review of Elemental Gelade: Vol. 6 (Review)
Introduction The beauty of a reviewing gig, as I quickly came to appreciate, is that you find yourself presented with an opportunity to tackle material you ordinarily wouldn`t touch. Stuff that would ordinarily require that old purchaser`s punt, taking a gamble on whether you`re wasting your money or not. Despite being an anime buff since the days of my friend and I raiding his older brother`s...

Review of 45 (Review)
Introduction Looking at the artwork for Gary Lennon`s directorial debut `.45`, you can`t blame a guy for thinking it`s going to be rubbish. Milla Jovovich, taking top billing, wearing a skirt that`d make your mother blush and holding the gun of the title in a not at all obvious homage to Luc Besson`s `Nikita`, it reeks of trash. And bear in mind, if Paul W.S Anderson couldn`t do anything...

Review of Blood Ties: The Complete First Season (Review)
Introduction Canadian television is horribly undervalued as an export. There are a lot of high-quality shows coming out of the land of Mounties, bacon and William Shatner, but they don`t get the attention outside of their homeland that many of them deserve. Partly down to big name broadcasters forgoing their rights for more marketable stuff (much of it made-for-export in Canada), homegrown greats...

Review of Speed Grapher: Vol. 6 (Review)
Introduction "And so, the end is near (here), and so I face the final curtain (volume)." `Speed Grapher`, the show that gripped me with a simple trailer back in.. erm... sometime back that way, comes to a close with the sixth and final volume, episodes 21-24. Normally when you get to the end of something you`ve been with for so long, you get an empty feeling in your stomach; like watching `The...

Review of Reign Over Me (Review)
Introduction I would imagine that, as a filmmaker, it`s tasking enough to find the requisite balance between comedy and drama, or humour and pathos, when creating a `dramedy`. But that labour must surely increase ten-fold when the foundation for the story relies heavily on familiar events its entire audience can relate to, if not on a personal level, than in a human, altruistic fashion. `Reign...

Review of Thir13en Ghosts (Review)
Introduction William Castle was a B-movie director, his long career in low-budget horror spanning four decades, but he`s best known for the marketing gimmicks that accompanied several of his films in the 1950s and 60s. From free medical insurance in the cinema foyer to pay out in the event of being scared to death during showings of 1958`s `Macabre`, to buzzers underneath seats designed to elicit...

Review of Ghost Rider - Extended Cut (Review)
Introduction Comic book movies have such a tumultuous history that -- aside from the established franchises that have proved to work well -- I don`t think anyone really cares about them anymore. At least not in the same way they did when you couldn`t move for palpable anticipation over the next one. The minor success of the excellent `Blade` kickstarted a trend back in the late 90s and opened a...

Review of Paprika (Review)
Introduction There really aren`t that many superstar icons in the anime industry. Sure, there are famous animation and production studios, and certainly some well known voice actors, but unlike your Kurosawa or your Ozu in film, or your Miyamoto and Kojima in video games, there aren`t that many household names synonymous with their own brand of product. But in some respects, that makes those...

Review of Vacancy (Review)
Introduction I`ll admit I`m not the most cinema-savvy guy, with my general idea of what`s on at the movies coming by word of mouth or seeing the odd TV spot, but upon catching the ad for the `Vacancy` DVD on the box, I was convinced it was a direct-to-video film being released to capitalise on the box office release of John Cusack`s `1408`, both of which involving traveller lodgings and a spot of...

Review of Gun X Sword: Vol. 6 - Lost Prayers (Review)
Introduction Almost at the finish line, but not quite. Volume six of `Gun X Sword` is the penultimate volume of the show`s release, containing episodes 21 through 23. Uh-huh, it`s shortchange time again, where instead of adding an extra episode and bumping the count up to five for a couple of volumes to balance the 26-episode run over six discs, we get a pair of volumes with a measly three...

Review of Speed Grapher: Vol. 5 (Review)
Introduction Wow, we`re at volume 5 already? It seems like only yesterday I felt my blood pressure shoot up watching a trailer for `Speed Grapher` on the appropriate section of another MVM disc. It`s been a mostly smooth ride so far, but - and I`m beginning to feel like a stuck record here - it`s always been some way from fulfilling its potential. All the elements are there for a truly great...

Review of Gun X Sword: Vol. 5 - Tainted Innocence (Review)
Introduction After an imposed disruption to the regularly scheduled reviewing - thanks in part to the Reviewer Towers weekly express being derailed by a postal strike - I`d almost forgotten how disappointed I was by the previous volume of `GXS`, and more specifically, the dive in quality the show took after the identity of the show`s antagonist was revealed. While a decent couple of instalments...

Review of Samurai 7: Complete Box Set (Review)
Introduction Talent borrows, genius steals. A great quote most often credited to Oscar Wilde, and a fitting one to kick off this review, even if it`s hard to tell whether the pre or post comma statement applies in this particular case. The 26-episode `Samurai 7` is yet another re-imagining of Kurosawa`s legendary `Seven Samurai`, this time the story supplanted to the future, or rather, a queer...

Review of City of Violence, The: 2-Disc Collector`s Edition (Review)
Introduction If you`ve clicked through to this review of `The City of Violence` expecting the critical write-up of a Donal Macintyre-style expose on the seedy underbelly of Glasgow`s gangland or Nottingham`s gun culture you`re in the wrong place. Thankfully, the violence depicted in this DVD is entirely fictional. And a lot funnier. Presumably having overspent on the cast and crew budget, this...

Review of Speed Grapher: Vol. 4 (Review)
Introduction More `Speed Grapher` up for review this month. Volume four of Studio GONZO`s debauched adult animation marks the halfway point for the show, which, despite a lulling previous volume which took much of the lustre off of the ongoing mystery, is still a consistently enjoyable anime. It`s not high art, it isn`t particularly thought-provoking and it has a merciless interest in the...

Review of Zorro: Return to the Future (Review)
Introduction Without Zorro, there`d be no Batman! Look carefully enough, and you`ll see that DC`s Dark Knight owes a lot to Zorro, Johnston McCulley`s folkhero swordsman and alter ego of Spanish-California nobleman Don Diego de la Vega; the mask and cape, the nobility, the underground lair, the reliance on athleticism and cunning as opposed to preternatural strength or powers, and of course,...

Review of Kids in the Hall, The: Best Of (Review)
Introduction The Kids in the Hall were a five-strong Canadian comedy troupe (named after a famous Sid Caesar quote) who mixed Monty Python surrealism with Saturday Night Live energy, and targeted it at the hip, young audience of late eighties/early nineties Generation X through their eponymous sketch show. Perhaps most famous for the amount of skits the all-male group performed in drag, the show...

Review of Gun X Sword: Vol. 4 - Fallen Knights (Review)
Introduction It`s volume 4 time for `Gun X Sword` (easy on the `X`), so that pegs us about half-way through the run. It had been a fairly quality-consistent series, albeit with parts of the last volume being a mite on the disappointing side, but it made it up with a great exposition-heavy two-parter that served as a much needed break from endless mecha battling. This volume however, is a bit of a...

Review of Claude Chabrol Collection, The: Volume 2 (Review)
Introduction A veteran of the French New Wave, Claude Chabrol is a stalwart of the country`s industry, his career dating back to the late 1950s. He cut his teeth on dark, bleak films, and it`s a tradition he`s carried on to this day. This boxset from Arrow Films represents a second selection of Chabrol`s work, and it`s hard to see this lot as anything other than selections that simply weren`t...

Review of Typhoon: 2-Disc Special Edition (Review)
Introduction Thanks to a major boom in the South Korean economy during the 1990s, it`s now possible for this formerly fledgling industry to make films which rival Hollywood blockbusters in terms of production values. If you didn`t twig after looking at the cover and reading the synopsis, a cursory glance at the trailer reveals `Typhoon` is just that; another example of the industry getting its...