DVD and Blu-Ray reviews

An archive of the blog’s reviews of DVD and Blu-Rays

Movies you should own

Movies you should own: The Andromeda Strain (1971)

26 March 2008 Natalia Romanova 19 Comments

I started “Movies You Should Buy” (now called “Movies You Should Own” because I belatedly realise it rhymes with Alex Cox’s old BBC2 film strand, Moviedrome) with The Satan Bug. Lovely “killer virus” movie that – probably the first. 

But there was a bigger and better “killer virus” film to come, one that marked the end of many of the trends The Satan Bug seemed to start – or at least coincide with.

The title of this movie, which you should definitely own, is now used by virus researchers whenever they want to put a name to their worst nightmare: a virus that they can’t cure but is utterly contagious and can kill anything in a frighteningly short space of time. 

It’s The Andromeda Strain (1971) and it’s probably the best, clever-stupid “killer virus” movie ever made.

Here’s the title sequence, complete with scary arse theme tune.

Continue reading “Movies you should own: The Andromeda Strain (1971)”
Movies you should own

Movies you should own: Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel & Laurence

8 March 2008 Natalia Romanova 11 Comments

From the 17th March, Film4 are going to have a new range of budget DVD titles. The RRP is £6.99 and the films being released are:

  • The Yards
  • My Beautiful Launderette
  • She’s All That
  • Bostonians
  • Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel & Laurence
  • Raining Stones
  • Another Country
  • Maurice
  • Monsoon Wedding
  • Life is Sweet
  • Sexy Beast
  • Bread and Roses
  • Dogma
  • Buffalo Soldiers
  • My Name is Joe
  • Riff Raff
  • Heat and Dust
  • Europeans
  • Blue Juice
  • Gangster No. 1

I’ve just checked Amazon and they’re listing them at £15.99 discounted to £11.99, so I’d advise buying them in shops while the initial discount campaign is running at least.

Anyway, since I’m very partial to Monica Potter, Rufus Sewell and Ray Winstone, and don’t mind Tom Hollander (shame about Joseph Fiennes though), I ordered up a nice review copy of Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel & Laurence as a sample of the range.

They sent me 10.

Continue reading “Movies you should own: Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel & Laurence”

US TV

Review: Battlestar Galactica – Razor

27 November 2007 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Cylon centurion

When Battlestar Galactica first arrived on our TV screens, it was a surprise. It took a really bad old show that for some reason we all fondly remembered from our childhoods and turned it into a really good show that took military authenticity and married it with misery, dystopia and authentic human relationships.

But as time went on, the clean, uncluttered hardness of BSG got a little dulled both by the weight of its own mythology and the occasional lapse into dramatic cliché. That’s not to say it was bad – it was still one of the best shows on TV. It was just up its own arse a little bit.

Razor, an almost direct-to-DVD movie that aired on the SciFi channel over the weekend, is a distillation of the good and the bad of BSG. On the one hand, it’s tense, well acted, gritty and has fantastic effects. On the other, it’s more than a little bit pretentious, suffers from a few hackneyed plot strands and has yet more heavyweight mythology bundled on top.

Continue reading “Review: Battlestar Galactica – Razor”

US TV

Review: Babylon 5 – The Lost Tales: Voices in the Dark

30 July 2007 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Babylon 5 - The Lost Tales

Available from Amazon.com

Once a time, Babylon 5 was the bee’s knees of sci-fi television. With a five-year arc full of surprises and effects entirely created using CGI for the first time, it was geared towards an adult audience from the outset. Even when Deep Space Nine upped its game, Babylon 5 still got the geek love.

Then things went wrong. Its five-year arc got compressed down to four years when it looked like the show wasn’t going to be renewed. Then the show got renewed and a fifth year had to be grafted on. That season wasn’t at all good and the love began to ebb away. The sequel show, Babylon 5: Crusade, got cancelled before the end of the first season and the follow-up pilot didn’t even get commissioned for a series.

Ten years on, it’s back as a straight-to-DVD movie, Voices in the Dark, which could be the first of many stories featuring the surviving members of the original cast. Can it recapture what it once had or has it finally had its day?

Continue reading “Review: Babylon 5 – The Lost Tales: Voices in the Dark”