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Ballistic—Ecks Vs. Sever

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Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu play secret agents who start out on opposite sides, then realise they should be allies. The script and plot barely make it out of the first dimension, the stunts are contrived and irritating and one can only assume the stars were blackmailed into taking part. A strong contender for worst movie of the year.

Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu play secret agents who start out on opposite sides, then realise they should be allies. The script and plot barely make it out of the first dimension, the stunts are contrived and irritating and one can only assume the stars were blackmailed into taking part. A strong contender for worst movie of the year.

Way Of The Dragon—Platinum Edition

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Pristine restoration of Bruce Lee's only movie as star, director, writer and producer, released to mark the 30th anniversary of his death. He's a country boy come to the city, in this case Rome, where he must kung-fu kick the collective badass of gangsters trying to take over a Chinese restaurant. Not Lee's best, but it does have nunchakus and that great, no-frills fight with a hairy Chuck Norris in the Colosseum.

Pristine restoration of Bruce Lee’s only movie as star, director, writer and producer, released to mark the 30th anniversary of his death. He’s a country boy come to the city, in this case Rome, where he must kung-fu kick the collective badass of gangsters trying to take over a Chinese restaurant. Not Lee’s best, but it does have nunchakus and that great, no-frills fight with a hairy Chuck Norris in the Colosseum.

Kiss Me Deadly

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Robert Aldrich's blazing adaptation of Mickey Spillane's gut-wrenching nuclear age potboiler turns a well-worn genre on its head and retains its power to shock almost 50 years after it was made. Ralph Meeker yells his way through this movie as the quintessential Mike Hammer: loud, boorish, sexist, bullying and gleefully violent. Watch out for the back-to-front titles and apocalyptic climax. Truly the greatest private-eye movie ever made.

Robert Aldrich’s blazing adaptation of Mickey Spillane’s gut-wrenching nuclear age potboiler turns a well-worn genre on its head and retains its power to shock almost 50 years after it was made. Ralph Meeker yells his way through this movie as the quintessential Mike Hammer: loud, boorish, sexist, bullying and gleefully violent. Watch out for the back-to-front titles and apocalyptic climax. Truly the greatest private-eye movie ever made.

Nashville Dreams

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Since it was made in 1975, James Szalapski's documentary about the set of young country songwriters who in the early '70s turned their back on mainstream Nashville has assumed classic status?largely, you imagine, because it has been so rarely seen. I saw it in 1976, at a press screening to which about four other people turned up?country music of any description back then utterly unfashionable. I was fascinated by it, though, since it offered a rare, early glimpse of performers I had lately been listening to a lot, principal among them Guy. Clark and the great Townes Van Zandt. What seemed odd about the film then and seems even odder now, however, is its complete lack of context and explanation?something that will surely baffle anyone coming to it without prior knowledge of the people in it, especially since most of them are even less well known today than they were 30 years ago. Whatever its narrative failings, the film is still worth five stars if only for the footage of Clark, Van Zandt, a very young Steve Earle and a fabulous sequence in the pool room of old geezer's hangout The Wigwam Tavern that looks like something from a David Lynch movie.

Since it was made in 1975, James Szalapski’s documentary about the set of young country songwriters who in the early ’70s turned their back on mainstream Nashville has assumed classic status?largely, you imagine, because it has been so rarely seen. I saw it in 1976, at a press screening to which about four other people turned up?country music of any description back then utterly unfashionable. I was fascinated by it, though, since it offered a rare, early glimpse of performers I had lately been listening to a lot, principal among them Guy. Clark and the great Townes Van Zandt.

What seemed odd about the film then and seems even odder now, however, is its complete lack of context and explanation?something that will surely baffle anyone coming to it without prior knowledge of the people in it, especially since most of them are even less well known today than they were 30 years ago.

Whatever its narrative failings, the film is still worth five stars if only for the footage of Clark, Van Zandt, a very young Steve Earle and a fabulous sequence in the pool room of old geezer’s hangout The Wigwam Tavern that looks like something from a David Lynch movie.

Joni Mitchell—Woman Of Heart And Mind

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It doesn't matter whether you're a fan. This study of Mitchell is a model of musical biography in DVD form. Over two hours we get her life story in perfectly matched words, music and images. The interviews with Mitchell are candid, the recollections from the likes of James Taylor, David Crosby and Graham Nash are fascinating, and the musical excerpts, which cover her entire career, are luminous.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a fan. This study of Mitchell is a model of musical biography in DVD form. Over two hours we get her life story in perfectly matched words, music and images. The interviews with Mitchell are candid, the recollections from the likes of James Taylor, David Crosby and Graham Nash are fascinating, and the musical excerpts, which cover her entire career, are luminous.

Who’s Been Talking?—Johnny Thunders In Concert

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Recorded during a series of gigs in Japan with his band The Oddballs two weeks before he died of a heroin overdose in April 1991, Who's Been Talking offers a voyeuristic insight into the twilight world of Thunders. Gaunt and deathly pale, the wonder is how he played at all, for he'd been immediately hospitalised on arrival in the country. He summons a chaotic-narcotic energy during a set of more than 20 songs. But there's a ghoulish irony to hearing him sing "Sad Vacation", his Sid Vicious tribute.

Recorded during a series of gigs in Japan with his band The Oddballs two weeks before he died of a heroin overdose in April 1991, Who’s Been Talking offers a voyeuristic insight into the twilight world of Thunders. Gaunt and deathly pale, the wonder is how he played at all, for he’d been immediately hospitalised on arrival in the country. He summons a chaotic-narcotic energy during a set of more than 20 songs. But there’s a ghoulish irony to hearing him sing “Sad Vacation”, his Sid Vicious tribute.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds—God Is In The House

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A booted and suited Cave looks disarmingly like a door-to-door evangelist in this live French show from 2001. The intensity of his earlier work has of late been tempered by a more pensive, hymn-like calm and it's the latter which is to the fore in a set that concentrates on the No More Shall We Part album. Yet it's older material such as "The Mercy Seat" and "Saint Huck" which provide most of the highlights.

A booted and suited Cave looks disarmingly like a door-to-door evangelist in this live French show from 2001. The intensity of his earlier work has of late been tempered by a more pensive, hymn-like calm and it’s the latter which is to the fore in a set that concentrates on the No More Shall We Part album. Yet it’s older material such as “The Mercy Seat” and “Saint Huck” which provide most of the highlights.

The Banger Sisters

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Susan Sarandon and Goldie Hawn ham it up energetically in this surprisingly perceptive, punchy comedy about where groupies go when younger rock chicks muscle them out. Hawn wants to keep headbanging in leather, Sarandon's primly settled in beige, Geoffrey Rush is a celibate writer caught in Goldie's slipstream. No more syrupy than Almost Famous.

Susan Sarandon and Goldie Hawn ham it up energetically in this surprisingly perceptive, punchy comedy about where groupies go when younger rock chicks muscle them out. Hawn wants to keep headbanging in leather, Sarandon’s primly settled in beige, Geoffrey Rush is a celibate writer caught in Goldie’s slipstream. No more syrupy than Almost Famous.

Orlando

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Sally Potter's supremely vivid take on Virginia Woolf's tale of a 400-year search for love and freedom. Tilda Swinton switches centuries and sex with enormous serenity, while Quentin Crisp proves an inspired Virgin Queen A visual feast with few equals.

Sally Potter’s supremely vivid take on Virginia Woolf’s tale of a 400-year search for love and freedom. Tilda Swinton switches centuries and sex with enormous serenity, while Quentin Crisp proves an inspired Virgin Queen A visual feast with few equals.

State Of Grace

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Rattle & Hum director Phil Joanou escaped the U2 camp to direct this uneven saga of Irish mobsters on the loose in early-'90s New York. Sean Penn makes for a reasonably authentic Oirish lead and Gary Oldman blows the roof off as an unwashed homicidal loon, but this sporadically brilliant flick belongs to Ed Harris. His incandescent performance as malevolent mob boss Frankie Flannery will stick in your head weeks after the credits roll.

Rattle & Hum director Phil Joanou escaped the U2 camp to direct this uneven saga of Irish mobsters on the loose in early-’90s New York. Sean Penn makes for a reasonably authentic Oirish lead and Gary Oldman blows the roof off as an unwashed homicidal loon, but this sporadically brilliant flick belongs to Ed Harris. His incandescent performance as malevolent mob boss Frankie Flannery will stick in your head weeks after the credits roll.

Chicago

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So it's a musical, it won many Oscars, and it's got Catherine Zeta-Jones in it. But that doesn't mean it sucks! Anything that's influenced by Bob Fosse is bound to have a dark undercurrent, and this crowd-pleasing tale of man-murdering molls and the common craving for publicity is witty and slick. R...

So it’s a musical, it won many Oscars, and it’s got Catherine Zeta-Jones in it. But that doesn’t mean it sucks! Anything that’s influenced by Bob Fosse is bound to have a dark undercurrent, and this crowd-pleasing tale of man-murdering molls and the common craving for publicity is witty and slick. Ren

Jesus Of Montreal

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Written and directed by the perennially underrated French-Canadian Denys Arcand, this engrossing 1989 fable sees Lothaire Bluteau as an actor playing Jesus who's caught up in conflict with the church. His problems begin to echo those of the Biblical Christ. Oscar-nominated, the dry, ironic style gives it a wry resonance more effective than any breast-beating.

Written and directed by the perennially underrated French-Canadian Denys Arcand, this engrossing 1989 fable sees Lothaire Bluteau as an actor playing Jesus who’s caught up in conflict with the church. His problems begin to echo those of the Biblical Christ. Oscar-nominated, the dry, ironic style gives it a wry resonance more effective than any breast-beating.

Near Dark

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"The night has its price," mysterious blonde Jenny Wright tells Adrian Pasdar's hapless Oklahoma farm boy before giving him a love bite and dragging him off on the road with her Mansonesque 'family' of white-trash serial-killer vampires?headed by a fantastic, dead-eyed Lance Henriksen. Kathryn Bigelow's genre-bending mix of horror, western and Southern gothic drags blood sucking into the modern world. One of the best horror movies of the last 20 years.

“The night has its price,” mysterious blonde Jenny Wright tells Adrian Pasdar’s hapless Oklahoma farm boy before giving him a love bite and dragging him off on the road with her Mansonesque ‘family’ of white-trash serial-killer vampires?headed by a fantastic, dead-eyed Lance Henriksen. Kathryn Bigelow’s genre-bending mix of horror, western and Southern gothic drags blood sucking into the modern world. One of the best horror movies of the last 20 years.

The Killer Elite

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Handsome widescreen digital transfer for one of Sam Peckinpah's most underestimated films, 1975's angrily prescient satire on corporate America, whose ultra-cool surface belies the roiling fury at its bleak and bitter heart. James Caan and Robert Duvall are cynical operatives for a San Francisco-based intelligence agency, doing jobs too dirty even for the CIA. Early on, Caan is crippled by gunfire in a bloody double-cross and 'retired' from the company. At which point, The Killer Elite becomes a meditation on familiar Peckinpah themes of loyalty, betrayal and revenge. Following Caan's long rehabilitation, the film's second half features a series of brilliantly filmed and edited set-pieces, including a Chinatown shoot-out, a dockyard face-off and a grand climax aboard a mothballed battleship in the US Navy's graveyard fleet in North Bay, where Caan and grizzled sidekicks Burt Young and Bo Hopkins take on a small army of ninja assassins.

Handsome widescreen digital transfer for one of Sam Peckinpah’s most underestimated films, 1975’s angrily prescient satire on corporate America, whose ultra-cool surface belies the roiling fury at its bleak and bitter heart. James Caan and Robert Duvall are cynical operatives for a San Francisco-based intelligence agency, doing jobs too dirty even for the CIA. Early on, Caan is crippled by gunfire in a bloody double-cross and ‘retired’ from the company. At which point, The Killer Elite becomes a meditation on familiar Peckinpah themes of loyalty, betrayal and revenge.

Following Caan’s long rehabilitation, the film’s second half features a series of brilliantly filmed and edited set-pieces, including a Chinatown shoot-out, a dockyard face-off and a grand climax aboard a mothballed battleship in the US Navy’s graveyard fleet in North Bay, where Caan and grizzled sidekicks Burt Young and Bo Hopkins take on a small army of ninja assassins.

Bad Lieutenant

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Abel Ferrara's excoriating study of how a man wallowing in his own filth at rock bottom finds the way to salvation. In an utterly naked performance as the corrupt, drug-addled, self-loathing New York cop unwillingly turned around by the rape of a nun, a desperately committed Harvey Keitel goes all the way. Then keeps going.

Abel Ferrara’s excoriating study of how a man wallowing in his own filth at rock bottom finds the way to salvation. In an utterly naked performance as the corrupt, drug-addled, self-loathing New York cop unwillingly turned around by the rape of a nun, a desperately committed Harvey Keitel goes all the way. Then keeps going.

Undercover Brother

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Funnier than it has any right to be (and co-written by the Austin Powers chaps), this gives Eddie Griffin a chance to shine as a superhero who's "funky, sexy and proud to be black". A cross between Shaft and James Brown (who cameos), he'll save the world from The Man as long as it doesn't mess with his afro. Denise Richards distracts him as White She Devil. Get on up.

Funnier than it has any right to be (and co-written by the Austin Powers chaps), this gives Eddie Griffin a chance to shine as a superhero who’s “funky, sexy and proud to be black”. A cross between Shaft and James Brown (who cameos), he’ll save the world from The Man as long as it doesn’t mess with his afro. Denise Richards distracts him as White She Devil. Get on up.

Tape – Chelsea Walls

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Two Ethan Hawke films. In Richard Linklater's Tape, Hawke's a drop-out, returned to his home town to confront arty high-flier Robert Sean Leonard over old girlfriend Uma Thurman. Confined to Hawke's motel room, it's a pressure cooker. Hawke directs the digitally-shot Chelsea Walls, set in the timeless New York hangout. A good attempt at apeing the kind of meandering independent movie that appeared in the late '60s?but just as trying. Great cast of chums, though, notably Little Jimmy Scott (singing "Jealous Guy") and Kris Kristofferson (trying to be Hemingway).

Two Ethan Hawke films. In Richard Linklater’s Tape, Hawke’s a drop-out, returned to his home town to confront arty high-flier Robert Sean Leonard over old girlfriend Uma Thurman. Confined to Hawke’s motel room, it’s a pressure cooker.

Hawke directs the digitally-shot Chelsea Walls, set in the timeless New York hangout. A good attempt at apeing the kind of meandering independent movie that appeared in the late ’60s?but just as trying. Great cast of chums, though, notably Little Jimmy Scott (singing “Jealous Guy”) and Kris Kristofferson (trying to be Hemingway).

Solaris

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Shaving a hefty 75 minutes off Tarkovsky's original (and ponderous) 1972 sci-fi classic, director/writer/cinematographer/editor Steven Soderbergh delivers a tight, punchy fable about a crippled space station, a glowing planet, a terrified crew, a lonely psychiatrist (Clooney) and the memories of loss that bind them together. The moods here are both melancholic and thought provoking, while Soderbergh regular Cliff Martinez's lightly tintinnabulating score is utterly beguiling.

Shaving a hefty 75 minutes off Tarkovsky’s original (and ponderous) 1972 sci-fi classic, director/writer/cinematographer/editor Steven Soderbergh delivers a tight, punchy fable about a crippled space station, a glowing planet, a terrified crew, a lonely psychiatrist (Clooney) and the memories of loss that bind them together. The moods here are both melancholic and thought provoking, while Soderbergh regular Cliff Martinez’s lightly tintinnabulating score is utterly beguiling.

Bleeder

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Though opening with a rocking Trainspotting-style intro and plenty of Tarantino-type cult film buffery, Bleeder gradually morphs into a truly horrifying psychodrama. Kim Bodnia delivers a stunning performance as reluctant dad-to-be Leo whose frustration begins a cycle of sickening abuse and ingeniously cruel revenge on the grim and seedy streets of Denmark.

Though opening with a rocking Trainspotting-style intro and plenty of Tarantino-type cult film buffery, Bleeder gradually morphs into a truly horrifying psychodrama. Kim Bodnia delivers a stunning performance as reluctant dad-to-be Leo whose frustration begins a cycle of sickening abuse and ingeniously cruel revenge on the grim and seedy streets of Denmark.

City By The Sea

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Inexplicably coolly reviewed, this Michael Caton-Jones thriller boasts Robert De Niro's best performance in years. As a New York detective estranged from his son, he's distraught when his boy (James Franco) is prime suspect in a case he's breaking. Frances McDormand's excellent as Bob's girlfriend; Long island is a lost Atlantis. A fine film. DVD EXTRAS: Commentaries by writer and producer, Caton-Jones short Mark Of A Murderer.Rating Star

Inexplicably coolly reviewed, this Michael Caton-Jones thriller boasts Robert De Niro’s best performance in years. As a New York detective estranged from his son, he’s distraught when his boy (James Franco) is prime suspect in a case he’s breaking. Frances McDormand’s excellent as Bob’s girlfriend; Long island is a lost Atlantis. A fine film.

DVD EXTRAS: Commentaries by writer and producer, Caton-Jones short Mark Of A Murderer.Rating Star