THE DEER HUNTER SPECIAL EDITION (18)
Director: Michael Cimino, 1978
Stars: Robert De Niro, John Savage, Christopher Walken
Out to buy on DVD
UNLIKE SUBSEQUENT combat-heavy efforts, Cimino’s beautifully photographed Vietnam War epic focuses on a group of Polish-American steelworkers in Pennsylvania. They toil in the furnaces, stalk stags in the mountains and raucously celebrate the marriage of Steve (Savage).
The briefer detours to the battlefields of South-East Asia are more controversial. The director was accused of racism in his depiction of the Viet Cong, and the fervent sadists who force Mike (De Niro) and Nick (Walken) into a round of Russian Roulette are certainly one-dimensional.
Still, there is no denying the potency of the scene as a symbol for the randomness of death in wartime, and as a tragic echo of Nick’s “one shot” hunting philosophy. And real dramatic fruit is borne in the final reel, when the severity of the friends’ physical and mental scars becomes apparent.
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Unfortunately Cimino’s career, too, was destined for decline. The film’s five Oscars secured him a blank cheque for Heaven’s Gate — the most infamous disaster in movie history.
DVD Extras: Commentary, interviews, trailer, gallery
Ed Potton (Rating: 4/5)
MORVERN CALLAR (15)
Director: Lynne Ramsay, 2002
Stars: Samantha Morton, Kathleen McDermott, Dan Cadan
Out to rent on video and DVD
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IT IS Christmas Eve in a small town near Glasgow and Morvern Callar (Morton, above) is stroking the body of her dead lover. There is a suicide note and money in his bank account. On a whim she buys herself and her best friend (McDermott) a holiday to Spain and a black comedy about denial lurches into a dusty road trip. But the director keeps the audience guessing. Who exactly is Morvern Callar?
DVD Extras: None
JC (Rating: 4/5)
ADAPTATION (15)
Director: Spike Jonze, 2002
Stars: Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep
Out to buy on video and DVD
CHARLIE KAUFMAN (Cage) is a scriptwriter who is penning a screenplay from a novel by a respected author (Streep). But he is tortured by writer’s block, while his twin brother, Donald (Cage again), effortlessly taps out a bad thriller and ends up the toast of the town. Jonze and the “real” writer of this movie (yes, Charlie Kaufman) manage to turn a weird piece of (literary) navel-gazing into a splendid comedy of bad manners.
DVD Extras: None
James Christopher (Rating: 4/5)
THE SHOOTIST (PG)
Director: Don Siegel, 1976
Stars: John Wayne, James Stewart, Lauren Bacall
Out to buy on video and DVD
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THE DUKE’s final film, in which he plays an aged gunfighter dying of cancer, is full of poignant autobiographical echoes. Wayne was, of course, dying of cancer himself during the shoot, and had already lost a lung. Siegel stages some fine gun battles, but essentially The Shootist is an elegiac redemption fable featuring a starry cast and a great last performance by Wayne.
DVD Extras: Interviews, trailer
SD (Rating: 3/5)
BLUE CRUSH (12)
Director: John Stockwell, 2002
Stars: Kate Bosworth, Michelle Rodriguez, Matthew Davis
Out to buy on video and DVD
ANNE MARIE (Bosworth) has dreams of winning the local ladies’ surf competition, but she is up against some of the sternest lesbian athletes to have graced the Pacific. She is emotionally torn by the sudden interest of an American football player (Davis). And will she ever break free of debt, her hotel maid job, her little sister, her cramped squat, her absent mother? Enough crises.
DVD Extras: None
JC (Rating: 2/5)
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CHICAGO (15)
Director: Rob Marshall, 2002
Stars: Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere
Out to buy on video and DVD
CORRUPTION IS big business in the roaring Twenties and Zeta-Jones and Zellweger provide plenty of it with their double-barrel act of sex and sleaze. What makes this more than a film of a great stage show is the way that the action spills seamlessly from the stage sets into real life. Magic.
DVD Extras: Commentary, behind the scenes special
JC (Rating: 4/5)
THE RING (15)
Director: Gore Verbinski, 2002
Stars: Naomi Watts, David Dorfman
Out to rent on video and DVD
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THIS AMERICAN remake of the cult Japanese horror is satisfyingly chilly. Rachel (Watts), a reporter researching the deaths of some students, stumbles upon a coincidence. The victims have all watched a short, grainy videotape with nightmarish images and died seven days later. Her odyssey to a remote farmstead is littered with strange landscapes that prove as unnerving as the psychological twists.
DVD Extras: None
JC (Rating: 3/5)
THE TUXEDO (12A)
Director: Kevin Donovan, 2002
Stars: Jackie Chan, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jason Isaacs
Out to buy on video and DVD
A NEW YORK cab driver, Jimmy (Chan), is recruited to chauffeur for a 007-style spy, Clark Devlin (Isaacs). When Devlin is injured, Jimmy sets out to avenge his employer alongside a beautiful agent (Hewitt). In recent projects Chan has been paired with a comedy co-star. Here Hewitt is simply subjected to a succession of sexist gags.
DVD Extras: Deleted scenes, out-takes, bloopers, trailer
David Willoughby (Rating: 1/5)
FEMME FATALE (15)
Director: Brian De Palma, 2002
Stars: Antonio Banderas, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Peter Coyote
Out to buy on video and DVD
REBECCA ROMIJN-STAMOS takes centre stage for De Palma, one of cinema’s slickest stylists. After pulling off an audacious jewellery robbery with a twist, Laure Ash vanishes and reinvents herself as a respectable married woman. But Banderas’s paparazzo unwittingly unmasks her and the claws are out for a slippery, sensual thriller.
DVD Extras: Featurettes, montage, trailer
EP (Rating: 3/5)