The Reaping (2007)

I should have paid more attention to Rotten Tomatoes, whose summary of the professional critics, with a lowly 7% 'fresh' rating, gives a pretty clear warning that this clichéd, seriously sub-par horror film is a bit of a stinker.

Somehow I got distracted by the slightly more optimistic public rating of 56% over at imdb, and the rather good box office figures, which make it clear that someone, somewhere has made good money. But make no mistake, this is a great steaming turd of a movie - it's enough to make a grown man cry, and not in a good way!

It could all have been so different. After all, the premise isn't too bad: A cynical scholar Katherine Winter (Hilary Swank), is asked to investigate what appears to be a re-occurrence of the ten Biblical plagues that are infesting a small town. The town is called - wait for it! - Haven (could there be a clue in there, d'ya think?! If you're wondering where the missing 'e' went, my guess is that it was given to whoever decided to fund this nonsense, just before he was asked to sign on the dotted line!)

As the story unfolds we get some of Winter's back-story. It turns out that she used to be married to a priest, and was herself ordained. However, while working abroad in a desert village, her young daughter was brutally killed by superstitious locals who believed the girl to be the cause of a severe, over long drought.

Having turned away from the Church, she now specialises in debunking miracles, giving talks on her experiences. At one such talk she is approached by 'Doug' (David Morrisey) who asks her to help with a series of Biblical plagues that are occurring in Haven. Her first inclination is to turn down the request, until she learns that Haven residents blame a girl the same age as her now-dead daughter for the problems, and are threatening to kill her to end the run of bad luck.

With the love interest established fairly early on (Doug is single, his wife having died of cancer some years earlier), the introduction of a third character - best friend 'Ben' (Idris Elba) - isn't exactly subtle. As the token 'black' character one wonders why the film-makers didn't have him first appear with a big sign 'Guess who's gonna get killed first?!' hanging over his head. Yup, the basics of plot really are THAT clichéd and signalled well in advance, draining the film of any possible thrills or scares it might possibly be able to deliver.

Plagues should have proven to be an interesting, and rather novel, basis for an Omen-like horror story of science vs voodoo, but this promising premise is thrown away in a shoddy piece of writing that has to resort to sudden, loud bangs to generate ANY kind of scare.

One might forgive the appalling dialogue, poor narrative structure and weak special effects if there were any sort of credible characterisation here, but alas there's none, and the only scary thing about this 'horror' movie is that it's actually managed to get made (and apparently turn a profit).

Although the biggest culprit in this excuse-for-a-movie is the writing, the casting hasn't helped either. Swank uses her 'girl next door' Jennifer Garner-type charm to good effect at every conceivable opportunity, and Idris Elba gives a similarly naturalistic performance. But they both struggle to cope with a leading man (Morissey) who seems to have had a charisma bypass just before shooting started. And it's thanks to the appalling script, that even Swank finds herself having to make sudden complete switches in rationality and leaps of faith that make her character less believable than the flimsiest of cartoon caricatures.

In short, the film is a bit of a mess from start to finish!

As for the HD-DVD presentation... Let's get the good stuff out the way first. The sound is excellent. Every thud, moan and creek is beautifully presented without swamping out the main vocal track as happens so often with horror films. There's a better surround sound presence than you'd get with Dolby Digital 5.1 on a standard DVD.

Unfortunately, the sound is all this disc has going for it. Despite being a very recent film the picture is disappointing throughout. The noise on the dark scenes is amongst the worst I've seen, and even bright outdoor scenes are soft and lack colour and depth. There's nothing here you'd get over and above a standard DVD, and even the copious outdoor foliage looks dull and lifeless when compared with other HD-DVD offerings.

If the film's bad and the picture quality's bad, the extra's, unfortunately, aren't much better. Yet again we get a single 20-minute 'Making of' disguised as five separate extra's to fool casual browsers reading the sealed package's list of goodies into thinking they're getting a bargain. It goes without saying that even these meagre extra's are presented in standard, rather than high, definition.

A 14 minute documentary Science of the 10 Plagues is the meatiest extra, but has nothing to do with the film itself, other than the fact it discusses the original Egyptian 10 plagues from the Bible which are the backbone to the story told in the film.

We are then into two 5-minute features The Characters and A Place Called Haven which are thinly disguised excuses to just replay excerpts from the trailer rather than give any real insight into the film-making process.

Another feature, The Seventh Plague - Those Creepy Bugs, checks in at under 2 minutes, and is simply on-set home movie footage of a cast member bragging about getting close to the bugs. Finally, a 3-minute Scary Story, written and read by the film's youngest actor, AnnaSophia Robb, is the sort of 'I had a bad dream and then woke up and then the dream became real' infantile doggerel that kids of 5 or 6 would be ashamed to own up to. The fact that this narrated story is accompanied by 'film student' footage of vaguely appropriate images, segued into footage of the actress/story writer herself trying to look moody does nothing to rescue the thing.

At £17.99 (it's an over-priced combo with the HD-DVD on one side, and a Region 1 standard DVD version on the other) this is an HD-DVD you can afford to miss out on, even if you're a fan of B-movie horror. This is possibly worth seeing if you're a fan of Hilary Swank or it's a free rental, but otherwise it's one to avoid.

Where are the new reviews?

A three month contract in Ireland means I don't have access to my home theatre system or indeed the time to publish the full reviews this blog was set up to carry. However occasional "mini reviews" are appearing over on my personal blog in the meantime.

Normal service will hopefully be resumed in late September 2007 when fuller reviews will be published here to tie in with the launch of the new Shiny Discs web site.

The Holiday (2006)

The launch of titles on HD-DVD in the UK has been pretty pathetic, and it's only the strong batch of US releases on what is a region-free format that have kept HD-DVD alive. Typically all we've had officially released in the UK are some of the more mediocre US releases, selling at grossly inflated prices months after they've been available from import companies at a far cheaper price. It's small wonder that Blu-Ray sales are outnumbering HD-DVD by a factor of several to one with the release strategy the film companies 'supporting' HD-DVD have adopted for the format.

So when we get an HD-DVD day-and-date release with the standard definition DVD release it's time to sit up and take notice, even if the genre (romantic comedy) is hardly one that's going to benefit from the increased resolution the format gives (unless you count more visible evidence that Cameron Diaz is getting older as a benefit!) and seems an odd choice to have made as a result.

Rom-coms are not known for their subtlety, or believability, but The Holiday takes the levels of ridiculousness to new depths. In the world of The Holiday a junior journalist can afford a chocolate box thatched cottage in the countryside (and happily commute to London each day), editors in Hollywood can afford Beverly Hills mansions with every conceivable gimmick installed, Jude Law can't get a date, snow will fall on Christmas Day despite there having been a blazing hot sun on Christmas Eve, a retired Hollywood writer can have a well-attended awards event held exclusively for him at just hours notice over the Christmas vacation, Kate Winslet can happily fall for chubby, double-chinned Jack Black, and... well you get the drift! This is fairy tale nonsense for those fantasists who still believe in the tooth fairy and Father Christmas!

The basic premise of the film is that 'a change of address can change your life'!Iris (Kate Winslet) is a junior journalist at The Telegraph in London. She's been wasting years of her life infatuated with senior journalist Jasper (Rufus Sewell), a cartoon character sleaze-ball, who sleeps with her when convenient, but shocks her by announcing at the staff Christmas party that he has become engaged to another co-worker.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, the ball-busting workaholic Amanda (Cameron Diaz) finds her live-in musician boyfriend has been sleeping around while she's been putting all her efforts into building up her career as an editor of trailers for big Hollywood movies. After ditching the boyfriend she decides she needs a break to get away and nurse her wounds, and just happens to do so at the same time that Iris is looking for somewhere to go for Christmas. So the two women swap homes and (of course!) find true love on the other side of the Atlantic from the one they've been inhabiting all their lives.

In the crazy fantasy world that is The Holiday Iris has a widowed, unfeasibly good-looking brother (Jude Law with two impossibly cute daughters who just happens to stumble in on Amanda on her first miserable day in her holiday cottage. I think you can guess where this is going to go!

Back in Los Angeles Iris makes friends with a film composer (Jack Black) who just happens to get dumped by his girlfriend around the time Iris is getting ready to return to London. I wonder how that will affect their friendship! (Not!)

It seems somehow appropriate that this film should be released over Easter, because it induces exactly the same sickly nauseous feelings you get when you've eaten too many Easter eggs. I know rom-coms are meant to be light, fluffy 'feel good' films but The Holiday is saccharine-sweet 'comedy' featuring ridiculously honourable characters and pantomime villain ex-boyfriends that take the genres to new lows in any kind of believability. You not only need to turn your brain off before diving into this film, but ideally should have had it removed too.

If you're looking for the direction to improve a squirmingly awful script you're on a sticky wicket too. This is a film that believes having two women sending each other endless emails, reading them out word for word as they appear on screen, and doing this for minutes at a time, can pass as 'entertainment'. Even when the script tries to introduce a few genuine gags (the Hollywood trailer voice-over criticising her behaviour that Amanda hears, and the spoof trailer for a brain-dead Hollywood blockbuster have potential) the director throws away the opportunity to get a few good belly-laughs by repeating the rather weak joke far too often. Subtle, this isn't, and the director seems to have forgotten the most important rule of any rom-com: NEVER have your film run for more than 90 minutes. This 'epic' clocks in at well over 2 hours!

The film does have a few redeeming features: the picture quality is excellend, and it has an excellent main cast.

Kate Winslet is never less than charming, so much so that one ALMOST falls for the situation her character finds herself in. Cameron Diaz is fine at playing her usual manic 'cooky blonde' self. Jude Law doesn't have to do much except look pretty, but the real surprise is Jack Black who, arguably for the first time in his life, tones his performance down so that one doesn't get the impression he's doing a tiresome stand-up comic routine that's been shoe-horned inappropriately into the film. If only all this were enough. Admittedly the film looks good, but with a budget of $85 million (sheesh! For a rom-com??!!!!) it damned well should!

If the film is disappointing, and overly predictable, so are the extra's: there aren't any! Not one! Not even so much as a short five minute Making of featurette. I'd go into a rant about rip-off false advertising for what the HD-DVD format was going to give us, but having sat through two hours of the film, I really didn't feel I could face any more, and the lack of any additional material is actually a distinct advantage, earning the DVD an extra point from me!

If 'chick flicks' are your thing then this might be worth a rental. But for the vast majority of us this is a time-waster of a movie with no depth, no personality, no value and absolutely no basis in any kind of reality. My advice is to avoid it and look for something else!

The Good Shepherd (2007)

Robert de Niro's second film (as director), The Good Shepherd is still in British cinema's, even as it gets an HD-DVD release State-side. Unfortunately it's one of those nasty, rather expensive combo-releases where the standard DVD, but Region 1 only, features on the reverse side. Fortunately the high definition side, unlike the rival Blu-Ray format, is region free and with Universal being the only film company that are exclusive to HD-DVD, long-suffering HD-DVD fans at last have something to feel good about with this 'exclusive' release, albeit at the rather inflated 'combo' import price.

Whether sales of this title will be strong remains to be seen. Recent negative reviews for the theatrical release are still likely to be fresh in potential purchasers minds. The film is directed by a man that many critics have (rather foolishly!) called 'this generation's finest actor', so why did so few critics appear to like the film? With a cast list to die for this should surely count as a 'must see'?

The Good Shepherd tells the story of the CIA, as seen through the eyes of Edwin Wilson (Matt Damon) over a period of more than twenty years. We follow Wilson's induction into the mysterious 'Skull and Bones' secret society, his work in England during the War for the Office of Strategic Services (the OSS, the precursor to the CIA), the formation of the CIA itself and conclude with the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion that was intended to topple Fidel Castro in Cuba.

The Cuban failure highlights the fact that there appears to be a mole inside Wilson's department, and this sub-plot forms the main backbone of the film. Wilson struggles to find the mole and prove that he is not the guilty party, while also trying to ascertain the meaning of a blurry video-tape sent to him by his Russian counterpart 'Ulysses' that may or may not have some bearing on the matter.

There's a lot to cover, and based on the running time of 2 hours 40 minutes, the film appears to have been allowed the time it needs. The film is a complicated one to tell since it involves numerous tales of treachery, double-crossing and double-double-crossing. As if that weren't complex enough there's the added complication of continually shifting timelines as the story in told in non-linear fashion.

There are two separate, and oft-times conflicting, plot-lines here: the history of the birth of the CIA, as told through Wilson's personal history and involvement with the organisation; and the story of the mole investigation which takes place alongside his attempts to discover the meaning of the video-tape. With sub-plots mashed up and timelines constantly shifting as the film jumps from one story strand to another, things get very confusing very quickly. A missed whispered sentence can mean the difference between having a clear understanding of the intricate, interwoven plot versus being totally flummoxed as to what is really happening and how one event relates to another. I suspect that your enjoyment or dislike of the film will rest entirely on your ability or inability to keep up and pay attention to every line spoken throughout the constantly twisting timelines and sub-plots. I guess it's not hard to see why so many critics dismissed the film as 'over-long' or 'poorly directed'.

I think those critics pointing the finger of blame at De Niro have missed the point - the fault lies not with the direction (which is excellent), but partly with the rather-convoluted script - which, I admit, I'd find hard to put together any other way - and mainly with the fact that the central figure of Wilson, used to tell the tale, is not anyone the audience can readily identify with. Wilson is on screen throughout almost the entire running time of the film, and although his portrayal represents an incredible performance on the part of Matt Damon, it's just not a performance that the audience are likely to empathise with.

This is a complex tale, even without all its time jumps. At the risk of sounding condescending, the problem is there are just too many different characters and intrigues going on for the average viewer to be able to keep up, even given the deft performances and direction used here. Since this is a spy story told mostly about men who sit behind desks and have little-to-no personal lives, it's not hard not to see why modern audiences, more used to endless eye candy or touchy-feely rom-coms, might find the film somewhat hard to digest!

The attempt to breathe life into the script by showing so much of Wilson's private life should have worked, but fails here because he is such a buttoned-down caricature of a man that his personal life just isn't that interesting. This is in spite of the fact that it includes suicide, an indiscrete affair, resentful family members and ultimate treachery. Clearly there's something wrong when even having a wife as beautiful as Angeline Jolie can't make Wilson appear more interesting. He may make a great CIA employee, but as a human being he is really, really boring. And that doesn't make for a gripping or involving film experience.

That beind said, I thought the film was beautifully executed. Direction and cinematography are excellent - there's a strong sense of style and consistency, without the direction ever being too showy or distracting. The score from Bruce Fowler and Marcelo Zarvos heightens the mood and subtlety of the piece, instead of distracting from it. And the performances are uniformly excellent.

The cast are a film-maker's dream. The big name leads of Matt Damon and Angeline Jolie are both excellent, but the real surprise is the number of big-hitters that impress even when given just minor roles. William Hurt, Michael Gambon, John Sessions, Billy Crudup and John Turturro all deliver note-perfect performances. Ironically enough it's only the director's own performance, and perhaps that of Alec Baldwin too, which hit a slightly sour note. Both De Niro and Baldwin come across as playing roles we've seen them play too many times before. Reading the cast list there are even a couple of strong actors I failed to spot (Timothy Hutton and Joe Pesci), so I guess a second viewing might be necessary. A special mention for two actors I've not seen before who deliver incredible performances. Oleg Stefan is delightfully charming but creepy as the Russian operative 'Ulysees'; and Tammy Blanchard playing Wilson's first girlfriend - a deaf beauty called Laura - lights up the screen every time she appears.

The film is shot mainly using cold blues, greens and greys that help enhance the mood of the piece, without resorting to the sort of de-saturated look that has annoyed me on so many other recent releases. The transfer to HD-DVD is good, without being stunning enough to highlight as reference quality. The picture is often soft and, if I'm honest, there's little here that impresses over and above what would be available on the best standard DVD release (assuming the title gets a high quality standard Region 2 DVD release later this year).

Extra's are a mixture of the good and the bad. 'The good' is sixteen minutes of deleted scenes that are presented in fully finished form ie high-definition, with music and effects all up to the standard of the main feature. They add depth to some of the characters and sub-plots that have had to be rushed through in order to get the running time of the main feature down to 2 hours and 40 minutes. 'The bad' is the U-Control feature. This probably sounds treacherous coming from a supporter of the 'rival' to the Blu-Ray format, given how 'picture in picture' is proving to be a silver bullet in HD-DVDs claims for superiority (more on this in my personal blog 'Wednesday Wibble' next week), but one has to ask 'What on earth were Universal thinking?' in using this feature on this release.

U-Control is a feature that allows you to view a subsidiary 'feature' using a 'picture in picture' feature which, at the moment, Blu-Ray doesn't support. The idea is that when you switch the feature on an icon pops up whenever there is something of interest you might want to watch while the main film is still playing. In the case of The Good Shepherd what this means is that the usual Making of featurette is missing. Or rather it's spread across the whole duration of the film in a ridiculous postage-stamp sized window that can only be watched while the main feature is playing. If you want to hear Robert de Niro or any of the other film-makers talking about the film it's all here, but you have to spend two hours 40 minutes waiting for various bits of it to pop up at reduced size. How is this any kind of advantage over standard DVD? I know we live in a world dominated by the decisions of an MTV-raised generation that has the attention span of a newt, but this is a gimmick too far. It makes an interesting feature - a behind the scenes 'Making of' - absolutely useless. The only consolation the viewer has is that the standard DVD purchaser doesn't get this 'HD-DVD -exclusive' featurette at all.

The Good Shepherd was a film I enjoyed, albeit a fundamentally flawed film that will not be to everyone's taste. It's certainly worth a rental if you can spare the time, and possibly a purchase if you need to revisit it to catch the subtleties you are likely to miss on a single viewing.

Happy Feet (2006)

With the advent of DVD and big screen TVs cinema attendance figures are falling, but one film genre remains buoyant - the one aimed at kids.

CGI 'toons are the name of the game these days and although expensive to produce, the profits are so huge it seems everyone's jumping on the band wagon. It's unusual for kiddie-oriented fare to deliver less than 300 million dollars at the box office, particularly if released around school holiday time. Add in a few well-known 'voices' from the Hollywood A-list, and a few adult-oriented jokes and you're guaranteed a winner, regardless of the quality of the script or the CGI, as the abysmal A Shark's Tale proved.

CGI 'toons are a God-send for lazy film companies who want to make bucketloads of cash, with box office sales just being the tip of the iceberg where profits are concerned. Tie-in merchandising is a sure-fire seller, and kids love to watch and re-watch their favourite 'toons over and over again on DVD. A successful 'toon delivers a triple-whammy, as those parents who took the family to see the film at a cinema then buy the DVD and stuffed toys and games too. All-in-all it's a wonder anybody bothers to take risks by making films that aren't 'toons these days!

Happy Feet is yet another in the 'cute animal' series of CGI films that have hit the multiplexes this year. Fortunately it's written to a higher standard than most of this fare is, and although it can get a little preachy at times, especially in its final five minutes, there's enough here to keep the most jaded parent amused. The film probably deserves an extra star just for the innovation of NOT having a series of fart jokes in it!

CGI films generally look superb on DVD, but on HD-DVD they really shine and Happy Feet is no exception - this is a stunning looking disc, and a great advert for high definition (whether you're talking the HD-DVD disc reviewed here, or the Blu-Ray version that's also available).

Mumble, voiced by Elijah Wood, is an Emperor Penguin who's a little different from the other penguins in the colony. This may or may not be down to his father accidentally dropping him while his mother was away foraging for food. In this story Emperor Penguins are generally born with a talent for singing, and the ability to compose and deliver a unique song that reflects their personality and helps attract a mate. Mumble, because of his 'disability' can't sing. He does however have a talent for tap-dancing, which the other penguins, and the Scottish Presbyterian leaders of the community in particular, find decidedly odd, if not downright abnormal.

Shunned and rejected Mumble makes friends with a group of foreign-sounding penguins, the 'Adelie Amigos', all seemingly voiced by Robin Williams, with outrageous foreign accents who love his tap-dancing in a way that his own breed can't. Mumble takes it upon himself to try and meet 'the aliens' who appear to have abducted the all-knowing Rockhopper penguin (again voiced by Williams) and who, he feels, may have some answers as to why the ice is melting and his own breed are struggling to survive.

The CGI work is stunning, but there were times when I found the directorial style rather irritating. Too often the point of view is from ground level, so that the characters are nearly always towering over the camera and looking down. I can only assume this was a deliberate move as it's done so often, but I'm not sure why. The aim should be to involve the audience, but this tends to alienate the feeling of participation or reality: penguins are not known for being tall creatures! That issue aside some of the scenes are breath-taking, almost life-like, and appear to be almost 3-dimensional in quality thanks to the clarity of high-definition. For most of its running time the film is breath-taking and internally consistent, and it's only in the last five to ten minutes that things start to fall apart.

In the final section of the film, where the ecological sub-text suddenly gets ramped up a number of notches, real-life humans are added into what has been completely computer-generated imagery up to that point. Since humans have already been depicted in CGI this comes across as a rather hokey effect to emphasise the importance of the 'green' message. With everything that's gone before, the effect is not dissimilar from someone who's been driving a car down a straight road for 90 minutes suddenly deciding for no apparent reason to swing a hard left! The overall impression, increased by not just the change in tone, but the visual representations used, is of an ending that's been tagged on from a completely different film, and for no apparent reason!

I also found the use of 'modern' pop songs irritating to the extreme. What happened to having songwriters actually write NEW songs for such films, instead of presenting us with hackneyed karaoke cover versions of 'popular' songs? There are a few word changes to acknowledge the fact the original song has been transplanted into a story, but the choice of songs doesn't seem particularly relevant to the story. Nor are the different songs consistent in style. One can only assume the decision was made based on needing to sell some obscure compilation album where the tracks available were negotiated at a bargain price, rather than their relevance to the plot.

Where the film does impress is in the casting. Of course if, like me, you find Robin Williams over-the-top performances more irritating than amusing, you may beg to differ, particularly since he's over-used here, voicing several characters instead of just one. But at least there is a script (of sorts)with a limited number of lines stopping him from completely taking over proceedings. Plus it's a relief we don't actually have to watch him.

Elijah Wood is perfectly cast as Mumble in a role that was tailor-made for him. Hugh Jackman shows with this film, as he does with Flushed Away (officially out on DVD tomorrow, when I'll be reviewing it), that he has a real talent for voice acting in the role of Memphis. Nicole Kidman turns in a surprisingly apt performance (I've never really been a fan of hers) as Norma Jean, and Hugo Weaving demonstrates (yet again) what a terrifically versatile actor he is, in the role of Noah the Elder.

Despite the inclusion of the song Let's Talk About Sex (WHOSE idea was that??!!!), this is a very family-friendly movie, targeted mainly at a young age group. Unfortunately the same can't be said for the two 'new' scenes (actually deleted scenes) included as extra's on the 'Special Features' menu. One of these introduces the late Steve Irwin, voicing a bird who encounters Mumble on his travels and calls him a 'wanker'! Lord knows what they were thinking when they recorded that, let alone included it on a DVD that will no doubt be played by toddlers around the land!

While there's plenty of interest in the main feature for those adults happy to re-kindle their inner child, there are none of the usual adult 'in' jokes that usually dominate such fare. This may be a curse of a blessing, depending on your viewpoint of whether such deliberate tactics to maximise the potential audience generally work in favour of the film as a whole, or have the opposite effect.

The extra's on the disc are, unfortunately, a bit thin. There's no real Making of,cast interviews or even snippets of the celebrities who voice the characters at work, as has become the norm on DVDs of this sort of film. There are a couple of 'new' scenes that were deleted from the film, but both are short and add little value or real excitement, the way a genuinely new 'mini-feature' usually does.

The main addition is a rather tedious Take a Private Dance Lesson featurette where Savion Glover explains the choreography performed by the penguins and demonstrates the tap-dancing sequences - dull as dishwater for adults, let alone children with a short attention span. The package is rounded out with a couple of short music videos, together with an old Warner Brothers cartoon I Love to Singa, presumably included because it has a similar 'odd one out' theme to Happy Feet. There's nothing here to get very excited about, and certainly no real usage has been made of the much-touted HD-DVD features like the U-Control in-picture feature that the tentpole releases have implemented.

If you've got kids then Happy Feet has to be a purchase rather than rental. This is one that is likely to get played over and over again. Even if you haven't got kids, if you're looking for a high definition showcase disc, this is as close to perfection as it gets, with some breath-takingly sharp hi-resolution scenes. Happy Feet is rather flawed in several respects, but it has a good heart and is a little gem of an HD-DVD nevertheless. Recommended!

The Getaway (1972)

The Getaway is the second Steve McQueen classic to get an HD-DVD release from Warner Brothers, released day-and-date with Bullitt, which I reviewed on Saturday. Unfortunately it's by far the weakest of the two releases.

Age hasn't been kind to the film, which may well have seemed innovative and daring when originally released, but now just seems dull. Very dull! Insomniac-curingly dull! Numerous dead-ends which add nothing to the plot, and seem to be there just to pad the film out to a ridiculous running time, are one part of the problem.

McQueen's co-star is another!

As the film opens McQueen is doing time, but up for parole for good behaviour. He loses his parole case and tells his wife she needs to visit a crime boss friend to get him out before he goes mad.

Weeks later McQueen is released, his parole decision having suddenly and miraculously been reversed. He is finally reunited with his girlfriend, but finds he owes a big favour to the crime boss his wife visited. He has to rob a bank to repay his debt, although it later transpires his wife may already have paid a huge price for his release regardless. A very silly sub-plot involves a double-crossing colleague, that McQueen has to 'kill' when his own life is threatened, foolishly not bothering to check he's done the job properly. The supposedly seriously injured gangster manages to kidnap a bored, married couple and their vehicle, and the trio pursue McQueen and his wife across the country.

As if that weren't stupid enought, the ditzy wife of the couple falls for the overweight crook, pretty much abandoning her husband to endless mockery and humiliation, and becoming some sort of comedic gangster's moll.

There's also an unnecessary detour involving a part-time crook stealing McQueen's ill-gotten money, which he subsequently retrieves, before we get to the climax of the movie, which involves lots of guns and violence in a hotel shoot-out. This shoot-out is pretty much director Sam Peckinpah on auto-pilot, but it all arrives too late in the film to rescue it. The film runs at just over two hours, but by the time we get to the interesting stuff it feels like it's been running for four!

Steve McQueen is fine, playing his usual 'cool' sardonic persona, but he's not given enough to do, and unfortunately every time the film feels like it's about to get a lift his real life squeeze, Ali McGraw arrives on the scene to kill it stone dead. The woman has all the stage presence of a plank of wood, and every time she opens her mouth you can feel the temperature drop a few degrees. Some reviewers have talked about the on-screen chemistry of her and McQueen - presumably they're talking the sort of chemistry that involves mixing two warm chemicals together to create frozen crystals!

The transfer to HD-DVD is pretty good, but not what one could call 'top tier'. There are random flecks and scratches, particularly in the first reel of the film, and grain is evident throughout. It's not quite as bad as Bullitt, but it's not much better than a good standard DVD release either.

Extra's wise, the disc has also had most of its thunder stolen by Bullitt, with no high-definition features included this time round, and no need for an excellent documentary on the film's star because that's already been done on the Bullitt release. As a result the extra's are almost exclusively about the original composer, Jerry Fielding, which seems an odd choice given that he was 'let go' from the film and his score for the film was never used.

A virtual commentary lasting about 11 minutes screens the first reel of the film with interview excerpts from McQueen, McGraw and Peckinpah laid over the top. Quite entertaining, but the pictures projected have little to do with what the commentators are actually saying, making the featurette title something of a misnomer.

There is a good commentary track by a group of film historians, including Peckinpah's biographer, and they give some background detail about the fall-out between McQueen and the film's original composer Jerry Fielding, which is also covered in excruciating detail in a long feature Jerry Fielding, Sam Peckinpah and The Getaway. This is actually a very long 'at home' interview with Fielding's widow and one of her close friends who just happens to have been a former companion of Peckinpah's, intercut with similar interview footage with Fielding's daughter. Whilst it gives some insight into the workings of Hollywood, and the monstrous ego's of McQueen, Peckinpah and Fielding, it's the sort of interview that only Fielding obsessives and close friends and family are likely to find riveting.

Fielding's soundtrack is also included as an alternative soundtrack to the fourth reel of the film, with the whole score also being made available as an audio feature. Completists will no doubt love it.

The low price means that this is probably worth checking out if you're a fan of one of the Hollywood greats, but I'd advise a rental before purchase. For me the main film is too fundamentally flawed to be of any real interest, and were it not for its main star the film would have undoubtedly been consigned to the dustbins of film history, in spite of its high profile director. I found the film hard work, mainly because of McGraw's appalling acting, and felt that the quality of the source material really didn't warrant a high definition transfer. All-in-all, a miss, despite the generous extra's.

Bullitt (1968)

Recently, I've begun to question my assumption that a DVD viewing at home is always better than the average cinema trip, an assumption built up after years of miserable experiences in rip-off London cinema's.

Even with a top-notch plasma display, a THX sound system that places you in the middle of the action, a sterling DVD transfer, and comfortable, interruption-free viewing there are the odd occasions - admittedly not many - when a cinema viewing can offer an experience that just isn't possible at home, a fact I was reminded of watching Bullitt on high-definition DVD last weekend.

There are some - admittedly not many - film moments that INSIST on being screened at a size that totally dominates eye vision, and no matter how close you sit to your plasma or LCD TV, it's hard to replicate the required effect at home. My trip to see Sunshine earlier this week, together with recent screenings of 300 and Superman Returns in 3D are examples of such films, where even the high-definition disc versions viewed on the best home systems can't compare with a good projection at a prestigious cinema. To my surprise, Bullitt proved to be another. The car chase that's the climax of this film had me almost feeling sick (but in a good way) back in the 70's shown on a colossal screen that made you feel you were there in the car with McQueen. But on HD-DVD, even sat close-up, it barely raised an eyebrow and one feels more like a viewer than the passenger that the director originally intended.

Not that Bullitt is the sort of film you'd rush off to your local emporium to see these days. When originally released it set the bar for many a subsequent cop thriller, but viewed from a distance of forty years, it seems dated, confusingly plotted and poorly paced. And, it has to be said, rather dull! In fact the only reason the film is still talked about and referred to rather reverentially is down to what is arguably the career-best performance of its star, Steve McQueen. Well maybe not just that - the live action car chase around the hilly streets of San Francisco is rightly the stuff of cinematic legend, and still holds up well today, even with all the CGI trickery and nonsense that directors now have at their command to fashion something better.

The car chase is the reason the film exists at all. McQueen, a keen racer in real life, could pick and choose his films with ease, and had little interest in playing the part of a cop, worried that the negative reputation the police had at the time might rub off on him. It was the car chase at the end that interested him, and he wanted to make it real and to make it the best ever shown on screen. Such was McQueen's power in Hollywood at the time that it was him that effectively hired director Peter Yates, who had filmed the best chase sequence McQueen had seen up to that time in his film Robbery, rather than the other way round, as is usually the case.

Robert Vaughn plays the rather slimy politician who hires Bullitt to protect a key witness for the prosecution in a Mafia case, a case that he feels will help promote his profile and career. Vaughn is excellent, despite admitting in one of the disc's extra's that he didn't understand the script and only did it for the money, perhaps too excellent. Later plans to move into the real world of politics were thwarted because too many people associated the actor with the role he plays here, and I guess if there's a lesson to be learnt from Bullitt it's don't do anything 'just for the money'.

The witness premise is just an excuse to set up a sting that involves Bullit's colleague and the witness being fatally shot at a supposedly secret location, with the bulk of the film being devoted to Bullitt's attempt to find the killers based on the tiniest, and most confusing, of clues available at the crime scene.

McQueen often spoke about 'not being an actor. I'm a re-actor' (while subsequently arguing vehemently that he was a better actor than Paul Newman - go figure!), and his re-acting is at its best here. The word 'charisma' was invented to describe performances like this, and McQueen plays 'effortlessly cool' as if born to it. The role suits him perfectly. Unfortunately the same can't be said of the script - which is confusing - and the direction which in its attempt at a 'documentary' style seems leaden and dull by modern standards. Make no mistake, this is a 'flop' of a film that's only saved from oblivion by a charismatic star at his peak, and a car chase scene that still delivers (although nowhere near as well as it did at the cinema)

Unfortunately as a demonstration of the advantages of High Definition over standard DVD, the disc fails too. The opening scenes in particular are so soft and muddy they look more like they were sourced from a VHS tape than any kind of digital state of the art media. Things improve in outdoor scenes shot in daylight, but there are minor signs of wear and tear on the master print that show this has not been a top-tier digital restoration from Warner Brothers, which perhaps explains the low price.

The extra's are, in many ways, better than the main feature, and the reason why this HD-DVD gets a four star rating rather than the two and a half stars the main feature deserves. The commentary by director Peter Yates, while frustrating at times because of his late years (the word 'doddery' best describes his often-faltering speech), gives real insight that other commentary makers could learn from. There's also a featurette made around the time the film was originally released, intended primarily for marketing purposes. But it's two stand-out feature-length (over 90 minutes each) documentaries that really make this an HD-DVD well worth viewing or considering for purchase.

For fans of Bullitt the stand-out documentary is a 90 minute one about McQueen himself, called The Essence of Cool, featuring most of his nearest and dearest, together with vintage interviews the actor gave himself over the years. At its core is a film-by-film analysis of his career, but it covers pretty much everything about the man: his hobbies, his obsessions, his women and his cancer.

The final extra, and the only one shot in full 1080p high definition, is The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing which has nothing to do with Bullitt itself, but everything to do with films made over the last hundred years. Clocking in at 1 hour 40 minutes, this documentary covers everything from editing of the early silent films of the 1900's right up to recent blockbusters like The Matrix trilogy. There's lots of film extrcts and lots of famous talking heads (mainly actors and directors). It's well worth viewing, even if you normally ignore the extra's on a disc!

I'll take other reviewers at their word when they say the HD-DVD version of Bullitt is the best picture quality version available today. For me it's hard to see how it offers anything over a standard DVD transfer, with its murky, over-soft look for most of its duration. For the main feature this has to be a rental rather than a purchase, even if it does represent the king of cinematic cool giving one of his best performances. But the low price and superb added value of the two excellent documentaries tip this over into a purchase for me. Even if you disliked the original film, the HD-DVD is well worth a look for the features alone, and at an import price of just £12.99, post and packing included, it's a bit of a steal!

Babel (2006)

If there was an overall loser at this year's American Academy Awards, it has to be Babel. Nominated for 'Best Film', 'Best Director', 'Best Supporting Actress' and 'Best Editing' the film came away with only a 'Best Music Score' oscar to show for all its efforts, despite having a story that would appear to have been specially crafted to appeal to the average Academy voter.

For many critics in Britain, that slavish devotion to traditionally popular Oscar themes, was the film's biggest weakness, resulting in several savage reviews dismissing the film for its formulaic, 'pretentious' storyline, slow pacing and apparently interminable, self-indulgent running time. Indeed, the backlash was such that the film seemed to go from hero to zero within minutes of its nominations for the Academy Awards being announced.

The film has four main interlocking stories, each set at different locations around the world. At first the stories seem somewhat jumbled and unrelated, but as time moves on it becomes clear that there are common threads that link each of the stories together, although I'd admit that the late-breaking narrative element that attempts to link the Japanese segment of the story to the two segments set in Morocco is tenuous to say the least.

The theme of all four stories is that of devastating, life-changing unhappiness arising from what should be fairly insignificant events - unhappiness that's invariably been caused by a simple failure to communicate across cultural and language differences. It's the old biblical tale of the Tower of Babel that gives the film its title, and its central theme of a common humanity being separated by an inability to speak the same language.

The extremely vicious reviews dished out by some critics seem to be either a backlash against the whole post-9/11 naval gazing that has dominated the American media for the past few years, or perhaps are simple disappointment that the two big celebrities used to promote the film as if it were a big mainstream Hollywood blockbuster - Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchette - actually feature for very little of the running time of the film.

Neither reaction seems to me to be fair. The movie could certainly benefit from being cut down a little from its near two-and-a-half-hours running time, but overall it's a refreshingly different take on a common theme, and one that is beautifully shot and interpreted by an international ensemble filmed across several continents in several different languages.

Some of the coincidences may well be a little too contrived, and the Japanese segment in particular outstays its welcome at times, but in general the film is a thing of beauty, and has a heart and spontaneity which makes lazy labels like 'overly pretentious' extremely unfair. Babel won't be to everyone's tastes, and in many ways it's a 'difficult' film to sit through, but that doesn't make it a bad film!

Babel is the third, and apparently final, collaboration between director Alejandro González Iñárritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga, touted as the final part of a trilogy that includes Amores Perros and 21 Grammes. The acting is universally excellent, not just from the big names like the afore-mentioned Blanchette and Pitt, joined by Mexico's hottest young actor right now, Gael Garcia Bernal (The Motorcycle Diaries and The King), but also from the less well-known actors, including the oscar-nominated Ringo Kikuchi who makes a stunning debut with her first film acting performance.

The directorial style is mainly that of a documentary, with most of the shots being hand-held to give a certain authenticity, which works perfectly for the material presented here. Only one scene, set in an overly loud disco in Japan, felt fake and unreal, but this may have been the director's deliberate intention, given that the main character is on drugs for that segment of the film.

The transfer is stunning, with the film being in better condition than I remember from the official British premiere which took place as part of The London Film Festival late last year. Colours are realistic, without being saturated, and the picture is frequently pin-sharp - no mean achievement given the 'on the hoof' hand-held nature of a lot of the filming.

Sound too is well-presented without being too intrusive, and the award-winning sound-track adds beautifully to the overall atmosphere and sense of world culture that seems to be imbued into the very fabric of the film.

Alas, despite the high premium price, which is unusual given that this is (thankfully) not a 'combo' disk, there are no extra's at all other than a trailer.

This is a very poor show since supplementary material is undoubtedly available. Taschen books have produced a great big heavy tome on the film, and if they could find sufficient material there's no reason why the film makers couldn't. The disc reeks of being rush-released to maximise oscar coverage exposure, and an improved 'special edition' disc will undoubtedly be made available at some future date.

If you haven't got the patience to wait for that inevitable special edition, then this is a good film released on a disc that helps showcase the high definition format. But the high asking price and lack of any extra's mean that if you're not in a great rush to catch the main feature you're probably best advised to wait and see in what form the film resurfaces over the next 12-24 months.

Beerfest (2006)

Beerfest is not made for the likes of me - my guess is it's intended for the sort of loud, obnoxious 'young, dumb and full of cum' American that's depicted throughout this film.

Nevertheless it still comes as a surprise, and a huge disappointment, to see the likes of Donald Sutherland and Jurgen Prochnow reduced to having to perform cameos in such tosh. I hadn't realised these actors were so behind on paying their rent!

The film starts with the funeral, and a pre-recorded speech, from Donald Sutherland's character. He plays a German emigré whose ashes must be taken by his two surviving sons back to Germany during the big yearly beer drinking festival Oktoberfest.

While on their trip they stumble across a smaller Masonic Lodge -like, private 'Beerfest' festival, and, after being very publicly humiliated, are challenged to return a year later to save the family's honour and, perhaps, inherit the beer company that it will turn out is rightfully theirs anyway.

Much of the first act of the film is devoted to the two surviving sons and their search to find other team members who will help them defeat those nasty, stereotypical Germans. Not happy with turning a whole nation's population into over-the-top caricatures (a vile, lisping Herr Lipp from The League of Gentlemen - but without that character's jokes - is introduced here to up the comedy level) we get one politically incorrect set-up after another. Consistency of plot is thrown away endlessly, in the hope that if enough stereotypes and 'gross out' scenes are splattered across the screen somebody, somewhere might raise a chuckle. So one of the team is discovered as a male hooker, offering blow jobs to any male he spots, while his effeminate fellow-workers encourage him, only to suddenly turn full-blown heterosexual a few scenes later so that we can get endless 'accidentally making out with a very fat black woman when drunk' joke added into the mix as well. Calling the film puerile is an insult to the world puerile, and I don't know what's worse - the fact that the film got made and turned a profit, or the fact there are so many Americans over on imdb calling this 'one of the funniest films I've seen'. Has the mental age of the average film-goer in American really turned below five?!

Admittedly the cast do the best they can with the crap they've been given. But the fact that two of the biggest parts go to the two script-writers should alert you in advance as to how self-indulgent this whole exercise in bad taste is going to become.

If I had to sum the film up in one word I'd say 'lazy'. The characters are particularly lazily written, with the obligatory loud and obnoxious 'funny' fat guy, the geeky, sensitive intelligent guy, the... well you know the formula if you've been anywhere near a cinema in the last thirty years. Even with established character traits to draw on, all we get here from them are the obvious tit, knob and drunk sex gags.

There is an attempt at some sort of story, which I suppose is some kind of blessing for those forced to sit through this stuff. And it has some kind of resolution, albeit with a 'traditional' ending that's been clearly signposted from the start. But it is such a lazy story it's hard to feel any kind of investment in it. When the writers are reduced to having Jurgen Prochnow appearing for no apparent reason in a cardboard submarine just so they can make references to his most famous film appearance (as the U-Boat captain in Das Boot), or having the finalé consist of participants drinking beer out of a glass boot (Das Boot - see what they did there? Laugh? I nearly bought a round!), you know desperation has set in. And, alas, the desperation is set in for most of the film's ridiculously long two hour running time.

The only reason this HD-DVD release gets more than a big fat zero is the quality of the transfer, and the fact that it's not just a vanilla release. The picture quality is excellent and worthy of the title 'High Definition' - you're not going to get this quality on a standard DVD, or indeed in many of Britain's cinematic emporiums. Rich, deep colour and pin-sharp quality for the most part show that at least the cinematographers, if not the writers and director, knew what they were doing.

Sound is pretty good too, given that this is a comedy film rather than an action movie. Crowd scenes in the beer drinking halls make good use of surround and place one right in the middle of the whole ghastly debacle, although it could be argued this is the last thing one wants given what's happening on screen.

The extra's are generous, but show that in real life the actors seem to be as debauched and immature as the characters they play. There are deleted scenes, 'Making of' featurettes and TWO commentary tracks, which seems over the top given the 'Size 0' qualities of the main feature, but I guess one shouldn't complain about companies doing more than just put out a 'vanilla' release. If you're wondering if the commentary tracks are any good, I couldn't possibly say. Two hours was too much time to waste watching the main feature, without wasting even more time hearing morons talking about it.

Needless to say this is NOT a recommended title. Not even for rental. Not even if they pay you to rent it. At least not unless you're mentally retarded or think that horse-faced blonde women having their clothes 'accidentally' ripped off is the height of sophisticated humour. Avoid!

Lucky # Slevin (2006)

There are a whole group of people out there who think that if a movie has a twist, the movie IS the twist, and therefore if you 'get' the twist before it's officially presented that makes what you've just seen a poor movie. You only have to listen to the carping criticisms of friends who guessed the twist in M. Night Shyamalan's Sixth Sense (we've all got them!) to 'know' this is true.

So it's a very brave writer or film-maker indeed who warns the audience right upfront they are about to be deceived.

In Lucky Number Slevin film-maker Paul McGuigan does just that by having his assassin character (Bruce Willis) explain 'The Kansas City Shuffle' - a term for achieving something through deception and misdirection by guiding your audience's eyes the wrong way.

Fortunately, as with Sixth Sense, the twist isn't the whole thing here, and even if you guess the ending (I didn't) you'll have a fun two hours waiting for it to arrive. Not that this will be to everyone's taste. The overtly visual gimmicky style (if you hated Crank this is pretty much more of the same), black humour and cartoon violence won't be to everyone's taste, and there are times (usually when 'Sir' Ben Kingsley is on screen as a Jewish gangster boss) that it errs the wrong side of pantomime. But for the most part it's an entertaining two hours that will have you constantly trying to guess what will happen next and, if my experience is typical, guessing it wrong!

Josh Hartnett plays the Slevin of the title, although the lucky part really doesn't seem very appropriate, given that when he returns from work early, after losing his job, he discovers his girlfriend making out with another guy. Deciding to go visit a friend in New York he becomes the victim of mistaken identity when two rival teams of gangsters decide it's time for that friend to pay his not inconsiderable gambling debts, or face the consequences.

A plucky, and outrageously flirtatious, neighbour (Lucy Liu) provides some romantic interest to the story, but this is mainly a gangster film featuring Morgan Freeman and the afore-mentioned Kingsley as two turf leaders at war with each other, with the unfortunate Slevin getting caught in the middle.

Personally, I don't think Hartnett has enough charisma to be a believable leading man, even when he does spend most of the film wearing nothing but a rather skimpy towel - even half-naked he does nothing for me, but apparently your mileage may vary! That being said, his character needs to be laconic and chilled, and he pretty much fills that bill, especially here where he is required to keep his head whilst all around are, sometimes literally, losing theirs.

Liu gives her most fun performance in years, even managing to convince she's younger than her previous roles would have lead us to believe, while Snipes and Willis do what they usually do - pretty much play themselves, although that works too within the context of this particular film. Stanley Tucci also appears, adding some class with his portrayal of a rude, obnoxious New York cop - a role rather different from his amiable, gay fashion expert in The Devil Wears Prada

The critics seem to have been less enamoured with the film than I was, with the 'appalling dialogue' being the most-oft quoted diss in reviews. Yes, the dialogue isn't very real world, far too clever and unrealistic for its own good at times, but then the same is true of the plotting, the action and even the cinematography. This is meant to be a cartoon of a movie, and on that level, for me the dialogue - like everything else here - worked.

There are times when the film struggles to decide whether it wants to be a 'comedy' or a real 'crime thriller', but manages to tread the thin line between the two genres rather successfully in my opinion. Some of the funniest lines aren't in the film, but in the deleted scenes section of this HD-DVD, but I think they show that the director completely understood when he risked crossing the line, cutting the scenes he needed to, despite there being plenty of laughs in them.

The picture quality on this HD-DVD transfer is excellent and ranks amongst the best I've seen on HD-DVD. The extra's are pretty generous too. The usual fluffy marketing featurettes are here with a 20 minute 'Making of' and a somewhat misnamed 'Intimate interview with Liu and Hartnett' (It's only intimate in the sense that Liu gushes so much about Hartnett the viewer can only come to the conclusion that they slept together while making the film and that Hartnett has since moved on!). But the deleted scenes are the standout, as are two commentary tracks, one with the Liu and Hartnett and the writer Jason Smilovic, the other with director Paul McGuigan.

I really enjoyed Lucky Number Slevin, and hopefully you will too. The cast are excellent, the direction never dull, and the plot is a real roller-coaster ride. It's not an oscar winning work of deep, meaningful angst, but it's a lot of fun, and as such recommended.