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Review Warner Home Video / Supernatural - The Complete Third Season
Actors & Directors
  • Jensen Ackles
  • Jared Padalecki
Release date: 2008-08-25
Run time: 700 min.
RRP: £30.99
Price: £17.98

Review Supernatural - The Complete Third Season / Warner Home Video:

Three seasons into Supernatural and brothers Sam and Dean Winchester are still attracting trouble. For the pair have a talent for battling the kind of spirits and creatures that are best kept locked away in nightmares-and it's fair to say their journey has taken its toll on them. As we join them in the third season of Supernatural, their travels and adventures take in a mixture of increasingly intriguing threats and foes. Among the highlights is a man who has become trapped within his own mind, the day that Sam continually has to live over and over again (Groundhog Day style) and a sinister threat to Dean that underpins much of the series. Not forgetting a Christmas episode with a bit of a different feel to it than your usual festive special. While the series was shortened a little due to the writers' strike that was ongoing in America while it was being made, the sixteen episodes in this Supernatural boxset nonetheless offer ample entertainment. Cleverly weaving together action, comedy and horror, it builds and improves on the second season, and while it may rush things a little come the finale, it's still a terrific and underrated programme. Here's looking forward to season four. [+]
-Jon Foster.

Review Lions Gate Home Entertainment / Saw 4 - Extreme Edition [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • Tobin Bell
  • Darren Lynn Bousman
Release date: 2008-03-03
Run time: 89 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £6.98

Review Saw 4 - Extreme Edition [2007] / Lions Gate Home Entertainment:

Now we've arrived at Saw 4, it's fair to suggest that most will be familiar with the conventions of the franchise. The dastardly, and really quite sick, Jigsaw (played, as usual, by Tobin Bell) has once again been devising a series of testing, intricate traps to test his human subjects, and naturally when these go off, there's a fair slice of the film's budget set aside for the requisite blood and gore. If you weren't already aware, Saw films are absolutely not for the squeamish. The twist with Saw 4 is that it digs into the backstory of Jigsaw, although it's fair to say that it soon becomes a platform to layer on some more deadly traps. Mixing in flashbacks and present day events, the formula is ultimately well worn and well obeyed. Surprises are in short supply, even if there is the odd jump from time to time. There is a law of diminishing returns with Saw 4, however, and as the franchise matures the tricks because less impressive and the blood and guts quotient increases to compensate. Furthermore, director Darren Lynn Bousman occasionally goes overboard with his flash cuts, proving a distraction from the carefully constructed scenarios that were the trademark of the original. Still, criticisms aside, Saw 4 is here to do a job, and it has little qualms about getting on with it. Firmly made in the `more of the same' mould of sequels, it's compact, grisly and absolutely not the last film in the series. [+]
It might not be ambitious, but you can't deny it's not good at its job. -Jon Foster.

Review Icon Home Entertainment / 30 Days Of Night - Special Edition 2 DVD set with 48-page Graphic Novel & Slipcase [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • Joel Tobeck
  • David Slade
  • Manu Bennett
  • Melissa George
  • Danny Huston
  • Josh Hartnett
Release date: 2008-04-14
Run time: 109 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £5.98

Review 30 Days Of Night - Special Edition 2 DVD set with 48-page Graphic Novel & Slipcase [2007] / Icon Home Entertainment:

The problem with vampires is that, usually, they can't go out in daylight. That means that, however menacing they might be after sunset, when morning rolls around again, the heroes can just dig 'em up and stick a stake in them. 30 Days of Night sidesteps the whole daylight problem by setting its story in Barrow, Alaska, a town which is so far north that during the winter, the sun doesn't rise for a month at a stretch. It's such a perfect setting for vampires that it's almost shocking no-one's thought of it before now. 30 Days of Night has another trick up its sleeve, too. Its vampires aren't gothic hedonists who enjoy their claret out of jewelled goblets. Nope, these are vicious, nasty, brutal creatures who'd snap your neck as soon as look at you. They look terrifying, all misshapen foreheads and far too many teeth, and the creepy shrieking noise they make only makes it worse; they seem entirely inhuman. Barrow's isolated, blizzard-stricken location makes for a literally chilling atmosphere even before the monsters show up. The plot loses its way towards the end, and the inevitable triumph of the heroes stretches logic to its limits, but the setting is original enough to make up for that. [+]
30 Days of Night isn't a film you'll forget in a hurry. -Catherine Haskins.

Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / Dragon Wars [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • Hyung Rae Shim
  • Craig Robinson
  • Jason Behr
  • Robert Foster
  • Amanda Brooks
  • Elizabeth Pena
Release date: 2008-05-19
Run time: 86 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £6.65

Review Dragon Wars [2007] / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:

Stunning computer-generated special effects are the main selling point of Dragon Wars, a Korean-made fantasy about ancient monsters wreaking havoc in modern Los Angeles. The complex plot, based on legend, pits an evil serpent and its demonic army against a young woman (Amanda Brooks) who is the reincarnation of a young woman imbued with the heaven-sent power to transform the creature into an all-powerful dragon. Jason Behr (The Grudge) is the reporter who discovers that he too is a reincarnated warrior bound to prevent Brooks and her power from falling into the wrong hands. The elaborate premise isn't helped by the script, which delivers absurd dialogue and situations with child-like naivete. Thankfully, the presence of Robert Forster (as another reincarnated hero) and solid actors like Elizabeth Pena, Craig Robinson and Chris Mulkey, help smooth over the frequent moments of unintentional humour. But this won't matter much to fantasy fans and (especially) younger viewers, who will tune in for the film's riot of special effects. Director Shim Hyung-rae and his talented team offer scene after scene of exceptional CGI creations, most notably an aerial dogfight between helicopters and winged lizards in the skies above downtown L. A. , and a climactic battle which makes good on the title's promise. The DVD includes a making-of featurette which outlines Shim's four-year struggle to complete the project, as well as storyboard galleries and an animatics display. [+]
- Paul Gaita.

Actors & Directors
  • Rose McGowan
  • Michael Biehn
  • Freddy Rodriguez
  • Robert Rodriguez
Release date: 2008-03-10
Run time: 101 min.
RRP: £17.99
Price: £5.13

Review Planet Terror [2007] / Robert Rodriguez:

The lower-profile half of the Grindhouse double bill that flopped at the US box office in early 2007, Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror comes with lesser expectations. However, don't let that fool you: this is a fun, pacey zombie film, that displays less self-indulgence than Tarantino's Death Proof, and doesn't skimp in the entertainment stakes either. The plot is thin and quickly covered, but basically amounts to the release of a gas that creates lots of zombies. Stuck in the midst of the zombies is a small bunch of people who try and fight them off (among, er, other things). It doesn't, fortunately, take long for Planet Terror to set all this up, and the stage is soon set for what we all paid our money for. Action. Violence. Characters of ill-repute. And, heck, a bit more action too. Thus, Rodriguez delivers his tribute to the grindhouse movies he's clearly inspired by, and Planet Terror proves to be a fine piece of work. [+]
With fast, exciting action sequences, leg-less Rose McGowan turning in sterling work in front of the camera, and stylish work behind it from Rodriguez, the film gels well. Its director has perhaps bettered it himself with From Dusk Til Dawn, but that doesn't mean that there's not plenty to enjoy here. Taken either with its double-bill partner or as a standalone dish, Planet Terror is well worth your time. -Jon Foster.

Review Paramount Home Entertainment / 1408 - Director's Cut Edition [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • John Cusack
  • Tony Shalhoub
  • Jasmine Anthony
  • Samuel L. Jackson
  • Mary McCormack
  • Mikael Hafstrom
Release date: 2007-12-26
Run time: 108 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £5.95

Review 1408 - Director's Cut Edition [2007] / Paramount Home Entertainment:

Conclusive proof both that one man can power a horror film, and also that John Cusack is one of the most believable actors of his generation, 1408 is an entertaining and surprisingly effective Stephen King adaptation, albeit one that runs out of steam by the final reel. The premise finds Cusack's character as an author of paranormal books, even though he doesn't believe in such things himself. However, when researching his latest work, he checks into the mysterious room 1408 at The Dolphin Hotel in New York, managed by Samuel L Jackson in an effective cameo. But room 1408 is a room where nobody has lasted more than an hour in it, and thus Cusack considers it the perfect location for some book research. It's in the build up of its premise where 1408 is very much at its strongest. Cusack is a compelling guide through the story, and the film delivers some effective chills and jumps as the tension ratchets up. Into the final act and this control is relaxed, and as a result some of the potential is wasted, but you're still hard-pushed to feel short-changed as the credits role. For 1408 proves to be both an effective little horror film, and one of the best Stephen King adaptations in many, many years. -Simon Brew.

Review Pathe / The Cottage [2008]
Actors & Directors
  • Steve O'Donnell
  • Jennifer Ellison
  • Andy Serkis
  • Reece Shearsmith
  • Paul Andrew Williams
Release date: 2008-07-14
Run time: 88 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £9.99

Review The Cottage [2008] / Pathe:


Review Optimum Home Entertainment / Pan's Labyrinth [Blu-ray] [2006]
Actors & Directors
  • Ivana Baquero
  • Ariadna Gil
  • Doug Jones
  • Guillermo del Toro
  • Maribel Verdú
  • Sergi López
Release date: 2007-11-19
Run time: 120 min.
RRP: £24.99
Price: £15.87

Review Pan's Labyrinth [Blu-ray] [2006] / Optimum Home Entertainment:

Inspired by the Brothers Grimm, Jorge Luis Borges, and Guillermo del Toro's own unlimited imagination, Pan's Labyrinth is a fairytale for adults. Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) may only be 12, but the worlds she inhabits, both above and below ground, are dark as anything del Toro has conjured. Set in rural Spain, circa 1944, Ofelia and her widowed mother, Carmen (Ariadna Gil, Belle Epoque), have just moved into an abandoned mill with Carmen's new husband, Captain Vidal (Sergi López, With a Friend like Harry). Carmen is pregnant with his son. Other than her sickly mother and kindly housekeeper Mercedes (Maribel Verdú, Y Tu Mamá También), the dreamy Ofelia is on her own. Vidal, an exceedingly cruel man, couldn't be bothered. He has informers to torture. Ofelia soon finds that an entire universe exists below the mill. Her guide is the persuasive Faun (Doug Jones, Mimic). As her mother grows weaker, Ofelia spends more and more time in the satyr's labyrinth. [+]
He offers to help her out of her predicament if she'll complete three treacherous tasks. Ofelia is willing to try, but does this alternate reality really exist or is it all in her head? Del Toro leaves that up to the viewer to decide in a beautiful, yet brutal twin to The Devil's Backbone, which was also haunted by the ghost of Franco. Though it lacks the humour of Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth represents Guillermo Del Toro at the top of his considerable game. -Kathleen C. Fennessy.

Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / Resident Evil 3: Extinction [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • Spencer Locke
  • Milla Jovovich
  • Russell Mulcahy
  • Oded Fehr
  • Paul Anderson
  • Robert Kulzer
Release date: 2008-02-18
Run time: 90 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £4.98

Review Resident Evil 3: Extinction [2007] / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:

Movies based on computer games generally aren't well respected, but just because they aren't high art doesn't mean they can't be highly enjoyable. The only catch is that you need to be a fan of computer games to appreciate them. Resident Evil: Extinction is the third movie in the massively popular Resident Evil franchise, and it's probably the best one yet. Between Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Extinction, the zombie-creating T-virus has spread far beyond the doomed Raccoon City; now the human race is almost extinct (hence the title). When a convoy of survivors meets up with the genetically-altered Alice, the shadowy Umbrella Corporation does everything in its power to take them down and reclaim her; but Alice isn't giving up without a fight. Resident Evil: Extinction is part zombie movie, and part post-apocalyptic survival yarn. The big set pieces use CGI that doesn't look anything like reality, but does look very much like a computer game, which is possibly intentional-since this is a sequel to an adaptation, Resident Evil: Extinction does tend to assume a built-in audience which is already familiar with the various quirks of the franchise. If you're a fan of the games, you'll enjoy the various references to game characters and events; if not, you might feel a bit left out. [+]
It's not the best entry point to the franchise if you're a complete newcomer, but if you've seen the other films, it's a hell of a lot of fun. - Sarah Dobbs.

Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Cloverfield [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • Lizzy Caplan
  • Matt Reeves
  • Jessica Lucas
  • Mike Vogel
  • Odette Yustman
  • Michael Stahl-david
Release date: 2008-06-09
Run time: 81 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £10.80

Review Cloverfield [2007] / Paramount Home Entertainment:

One of the first things a viewer notices about Cloverfield is that it doesn't play by ordinary storytelling rules, making this intriguing horror film as much a novelty as an event. Told from the vertiginous point-of-view of a camcorder-wielding group of friends, Cloverfield begins like a television soap opera about young Manhattanites coping with changes in their personal lives. Rob (Michael Stahl-David) is leaving New York to take an executive job at a company in Japan. At his goodbye party in a crowded loft, Rob's brother Jason (Mike Vogel) hands a camcorder to best friend Hud (T. J. Miller), who proceeds to tape the proceedings over old footage of Rob's ex-girlfriend, Beth (Odette Yustman)-images shot during happy times in their ex-relationship. Naturally, Beth shows up at the party with a new beau, bumming Rob out completely. Just before one's eyes glaze over from all this heartbreaking stuff (captured by Hud, who's something of a doofus, in laughably shaky camerawork), the unexpected happens: New York is suddenly under attack from a Godzilla-like monster stomping through midtown and destroying everything and everybody in sight. Rob and company hit the streets, but rather than run with other evacuees, they head toward the center of the storm so that Rob can rescue an injured Beth. There are casualties along the way, but the journey into fear is fascinating and immediate if emotionally remote-a consequence of seeing these proceedings through the singular, subjective perspective of a camcorder and of a story that intentionally leaves major questions unanswered: Who or what is this monster? Where did it come from? The lack of a backstory, and spare views of the marauding creature, are clever ways by producer J. [+]
J. Abrams and director Matt Reeves to keep an audience focused exclusively on what's on the screen. But it also makes Cloverfield curiously uninvolving. Ultimately, Cloverfield, with its spectacular effects brilliantly woven into a home-video look, is a celebration of infinite possibilities in this age of accessible, digital media. -Tom Keogh.

Review Optimum Home Entertainment / The Orphanage [Blu-ray] [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • Fernando Cayo
  • Juan Antonio Bayona
  • Belen Rueda
  • Geraldine Chaplin
Release date: 2008-07-21
Run time: 102 min.
RRP: £24.99
Price: £14.52

Review The Orphanage [Blu-ray] [2007] / Optimum Home Entertainment:

Backed by Guillermo del Toro and yet made by a surprisingly inexperienced group of film makers (especially considering the end result), The Orphanage is a chilling, tense supernatural thriller that could certainly teach more established directors a thing or two about how to send shivers down the spine. It tells the story of a woman, Laura, returning to the orphanage where she was raised as a child. Her plans are to look after sick children there, but it doesn't take long for things to go awry. Without giving too much away, visions from her past and a threat to her own family are the starting points for a complex and quite haunting thriller, that stays in the mind long after the credits have rolled. A film that works on more than one level, The Orphanage really is some piece of work. Juan Antonia Bayona, behind the camera, generates an incredibly atmospheric mood that underpins the film, and wisely takes time to put pieces in place. He's aided by a terrific cast, and an unsettling screenplay that layers in an uneasy horror that's as anti-Hollywood as it comes. The result of all of this is one of the scariest films of recent times, and yet something that still manages to be that little bit more, that sticks in your mind for some time afterwards. Make no mistake, The Orphanage really is something different, and all the better for it. -Jon Foster.

Review Warner Home Video / Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street [Blu-ray] [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • Johnny Depp
  • Sacha Baron Cohen
  • Helena Bonham-Carter
  • Timothy Spall
  • Tim Burton
  • Alan Rickman
Release date: 2008-05-19
Run time: 112 min.
RRP: £27.99
Price: £14.75

Review Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street [Blu-ray] [2007] / Warner Home Video:

After years of rumours, it turns out that Tim Burton was the perfect visionary to film Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Stephen Sondheim's Broadway masterpiece, and the result is a macabre and moving musical movie as enthralling as anything Burton has ever done. The show's mix of gothic horror, Grand Guignol, very dark humor, and witty and beautiful music never was the stuff of traditional musical comedy, but it's a powerful work, and perhaps the richest of the late 20th century. In the movie, Burton's frequent collaborator, Johnny Depp, plays Todd, a wronged man whose lust for revenge drives him to murder (an 19th-century legend who has been traced to a real-life barber). Helena Bonham Carter, another Burton mainstay, is Mrs. Lovett, the barber's partner-in-unspeakable-crime. It's no surprise that Depp is an excellent choice to convey Todd's brooding intensity and volcanic rage, but he can also sing a score that is so challenging it has often played in opera houses (though not with the same style as the Broadway original, Len Cariou, and he occasionally lapses into pop style). Bonham Carter is small of voice and lacks the humour of the original Broadway Lovett, Angela Lansbury, but she sings on pitch, in rhythm, and in character at the same time, which is no small feat for a Sondheim show. Aficionados will regret the loss of certain musical passages-"The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" is just an instrumental overture and the chorus is gone altogether, among others, but the reassuring presence of orchestrator Jonathan Tunick and conductor Paul Gemignani ensures that the music feels right and sounds great. And the film's depiction of a Victorian London hellhole, with cinematography by Dariusz Wolski and costumes by Colleen Atwood, also looks and feels right. The excellent cast is filled out by Alan Rickman as the villainous Judge Turpin, Timothy Spall as his seedy Beadle, Sacha Baron Cohen as a rival barber, Jamie Campbell Bower as the young lover Anthony, Jayne Wisener as his object of affection, and Ed Sanders as the young Toby. [+]
For fans of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp who don't think they like musicals, Sweeney Todd should be a revelation (though not for the squeamish, as the gore is intense and completely appropriate). For fans of Broadway and Sondheim, it's hard to imagine getting a better adaptation than this. The fact that there's no newly composed Oscar-bait song sung by a Josh Groban-type over the end credits only makes it better. -David Horiuchi.

Review Warner Home Video / Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • Helena Bonham-Carter
  • Sacha Baron Cohen
  • Timothy Spall
  • Tim Burton
  • Johnny Depp
  • Alan Rickman
Release date: 2008-05-19
Run time: 111 min.
RRP: £23.99
Price: £12.74

Review Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street [2007] / Warner Home Video:

After years of rumours, it turns out that Tim Burton was the perfect visionary to film Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Stephen Sondheim's Broadway masterpiece, and the result is a macabre and moving musical movie as enthralling as anything Burton has ever done. The show's mix of gothic horror, Grand Guignol, very dark humor, and witty and beautiful music never was the stuff of traditional musical comedy, but it's a powerful work, and perhaps the richest of the late 20th century. In the movie, Burton's frequent collaborator, Johnny Depp, plays Todd, a wronged man whose lust for revenge drives him to murder (an 19th-century legend who has been traced to a real-life barber). Helena Bonham Carter, another Burton mainstay, is Mrs. Lovett, the barber's partner-in-unspeakable-crime. It's no surprise that Depp is an excellent choice to convey Todd's brooding intensity and volcanic rage, but he can also sing a score that is so challenging it has often played in opera houses (though not with the same style as the Broadway original, Len Cariou, and he occasionally lapses into pop style). Bonham Carter is small of voice and lacks the humour of the original Broadway Lovett, Angela Lansbury, but she sings on pitch, in rhythm, and in character at the same time, which is no small feat for a Sondheim show. Aficionados will regret the loss of certain musical passages-"The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" is just an instrumental overture and the chorus is gone altogether, among others, but the reassuring presence of orchestrator Jonathan Tunick and conductor Paul Gemignani ensures that the music feels right and sounds great. And the film's depiction of a Victorian London hellhole, with cinematography by Dariusz Wolski and costumes by Colleen Atwood, also looks and feels right. The excellent cast is filled out by Alan Rickman as the villainous Judge Turpin, Timothy Spall as his seedy Beadle, Sacha Baron Cohen as a rival barber, Jamie Campbell Bower as the young lover Anthony, Jayne Wisener as his object of affection, and Ed Sanders as the young Toby. [+]
For fans of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp who don't think they like musicals, Sweeney Todd should be a revelation (though not for the squeamish, as the gore is intense and completely appropriate). For fans of Broadway and Sondheim, it's hard to imagine getting a better adaptation than this. The fact that there's no newly composed Oscar-bait song sung by a Josh Groban-type over the end credits only makes it better. -David Horiuchi.

Review Warner Home Video / The Shining [1980]
Actors & Directors
  • Scatman Crothers
  • Stanley Kubrick
  • Jack Nicholson
  • Danny Lloyd
  • Barry Nelson
  • Shelley Duvall
Release date: 2001-09-10
Run time: 114 min.
RRP: £13.99
Price: £6.24

Review The Shining [1980] / Warner Home Video:

Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is less an adaptation of Stephen King's best-selling horror novel than a complete re-imagining of it from the inside out. In King's book, the Overlook Hotel is a haunted place that takes possession of its off-season caretaker and provokes him to murderous rage against his wife and young son. Kubrick's film is an existential Road Runner cartoon (his steadicam scurrying through the hotel's labyrinthine hallways), in which the cavernously empty spaces inside the Overlook Hotel mirror the emptiness in the soul of the blocked writer settled in for a long winter's hibernation. As many have pointed out, King's protagonist goes mad, but Kubrick's Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) is Looney Tunes from the moment we meet him-all arching eyebrows and mischievous grin. (Both Nicholson and Shelley Duvall reach new levels of hysteria in their performances, driven to extremes by the director's fanatical demand s for take after take after take. ) The Shining is terrifying-but not in the way fans of the novel might expect. When it was redone as a TV mini-series (reportedly because of King's dissatisfaction with the Kubrick film), the famous topiary-animal attack (which was deemed impossible to film in 1980) was there-but the deeper horror was lost. Kubrick's The Shining gets under your skin and chills your bones; it stays with you, inhabits you, haunts you. And there's no place to hide. [+]
-Jim Emerson, Amazon. com.

Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Stephen King's The Stand [1994]
Actors & Directors
  • Ray Walston
  • Mick Garris
  • Gary Sinise
  • Adam Storke
  • Molly Ringwald
  • Rob Lowe
Release date: 2007-10-15
Run time: 360 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £4.98

Review Stephen King's The Stand [1994] / Paramount Home Entertainment:

After a government-spawned "superflu" wipes out more than 90 per cent of the earth's population, the devastated survivors must decide whether to support or resist the advances of a mysterious stranger from way down South (heh-heh) who wishes to claim this new world order for himself. Although the six-hour length of The Stand makes it nigh-impossible to digest in one sitting, this well-paced adaptation of Stephen King's apocalyptic magnum opus ranks among the best adaptations of the author's work, with strong performances from Gary Sinise, Miguel Ferrer, and especially Jamey Sheridan as a good-old-boy version of Old Scratch. The opening scene, set to the strains of Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper," is one of the most chilling things ever shot for television. Director Mick Garris is no stranger to King's world, having also helmed Sleepwalkers, the recent television remake of The Shining, and the upcoming Desperation. -Andrew Wright.

Review Contender Entertainment Group / Rec [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • Paco Plaza
  • Jaume Balaguero
Release date: 2008-08-11
Run time: 75 min.
RRP: £17.99
Price: £9.98

Review Rec [2007] / Contender Entertainment Group:


Review 4Digital Media / Death Note - The Movie (2 Disc Limited Edition) [2006]
Actors & Directors
  • Asaka Seto
  • Shusuke Kaneko
  • Ken'ichi Matsuyama
  • Tatsuya Fujiwara
Release date: 2008-07-28
Run time: 126 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £11.98

Review Death Note - The Movie (2 Disc Limited Edition) [2006] / 4Digital Media:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Cloverfield (2 Disc Special Edition)
Actors & Directors
  • Mike Vogel
  • Odette Yustman
  • Jessica Lucas
  • Matt Reeves
  • Michael Stahl-David
  • Lizzy Caplan
Release date: 2008-06-09
RRP: £22.99
Price: £15.55

Review Cloverfield (2 Disc Special Edition) / Paramount Home Entertainment:

One of the first things a viewer notices about Cloverfield is that it doesn't play by ordinary storytelling rules, making this intriguing horror film as much a novelty as an event. Told from the vertiginous point-of-view of a camcorder-wielding group of friends, Cloverfield begins like a television soap opera about young Manhattanites coping with changes in their personal lives. Rob (Michael Stahl-David) is leaving New York to take an executive job at a company in Japan. At his goodbye party in a crowded loft, Rob's brother Jason (Mike Vogel) hands a camcorder to best friend Hud (T. J. Miller), who proceeds to tape the proceedings over old footage of Rob's ex-girlfriend, Beth (Odette Yustman)-images shot during happy times in their ex-relationship. Naturally, Beth shows up at the party with a new beau, bumming Rob out completely. Just before one's eyes glaze over from all this heartbreaking stuff (captured by Hud, who's something of a doofus, in laughably shaky camerawork), the unexpected happens: New York is suddenly under attack from a Godzilla-like monster stomping through midtown and destroying everything and everybody in sight. Rob and company hit the streets, but rather than run with other evacuees, they head toward the center of the storm so that Rob can rescue an injured Beth. There are casualties along the way, but the journey into fear is fascinating and immediate if emotionally remote-a consequence of seeing these proceedings through the singular, subjective perspective of a camcorder and of a story that intentionally leaves major questions unanswered: Who or what is this monster? Where did it come from? The lack of a backstory, and spare views of the marauding creature, are clever ways by producer J. [+]
J. Abrams and director Matt Reeves to keep an audience focused exclusively on what's on the screen. But it also makes Cloverfield curiously uninvolving. Ultimately, Cloverfield, with its spectacular effects brilliantly woven into a home-video look, is a celebration of infinite possibilities in this age of accessible, digital media. -Tom Keogh.

Review Optimum Home Entertainment / Pan's Labyrinth [2006]
Actors & Directors
  • Guillermo del Toro
  • Doug Jones
  • Ariadna Gil
  • Maribel Verdú
  • Ivana Baquero
  • Sergi López
Release date: 2007-05-21
Run time: 119 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £4.49

Review Pan's Labyrinth [2006] / Optimum Home Entertainment:

Inspired by the Brothers Grimm, Jorge Luis Borges, and Guillermo del Toro's own unlimited imagination, Pan's Labyrinth is a fairytale for adults. Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) may only be 12, but the worlds she inhabits, both above and below ground, are dark as anything del Toro has conjured. Set in rural Spain, circa 1944, Ofelia and her widowed mother, Carmen (Ariadna Gil, Belle Epoque), have just moved into an abandoned mill with Carmen's new husband, Captain Vidal (Sergi López, With a Friend like Harry). Carmen is pregnant with his son. Other than her sickly mother and kindly housekeeper Mercedes (Maribel Verdú, Y Tu Mamá También), the dreamy Ofelia is on her own. Vidal, an exceedingly cruel man, couldn't be bothered. He has informers to torture. Ofelia soon finds that an entire universe exists below the mill. Her guide is the persuasive Faun (Doug Jones, Mimic). As her mother grows weaker, Ofelia spends more and more time in the satyr's labyrinth. [+]
He offers to help her out of her predicament if she'll complete three treacherous tasks. Ofelia is willing to try, but does this alternate reality really exist or is it all in her head? Del Toro leaves that up to the viewer to decide in a beautiful, yet brutal twin to The Devil's Backbone, which was also haunted by the ghost of Franco. Though it lacks the humour of Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth represents Guillermo Del Toro at the top of his considerable game. -Kathleen C. Fennessy.

Review Optimum Home Entertainment / The Orphanage [2007]
Actors & Directors
  • Fernando Cayo
  • Geraldine Chaplin
  • Juan Antonio Bayona
  • Belen Rueda
Release date: 2008-07-21
Run time: 102 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £10.75

Review The Orphanage [2007] / Optimum Home Entertainment:

Backed by Guillermo del Toro and yet made by a surprisingly inexperienced group of film makers (especially considering the end result), The Orphanage is a chilling, tense supernatural thriller that could certainly teach more established directors a thing or two about how to send shivers down the spine. It tells the story of a woman, Laura, returning to the orphanage where she was raised as a child. Her plans are to look after sick children there, but it doesn't take long for things to go awry. Without giving too much away, visions from her past and a threat to her own family are the starting points for a complex and quite haunting thriller, that stays in the mind long after the credits have rolled. A film that works on more than one level, The Orphanage really is some piece of work. Juan Antonia Bayona, behind the camera, generates an incredibly atmospheric mood that underpins the film, and wisely takes time to put pieces in place. He's aided by a terrific cast, and an unsettling screenplay that layers in an uneasy horror that's as anti-Hollywood as it comes. The result of all of this is one of the scariest films of recent times, and yet something that still manages to be that little bit more, that sticks in your mind for some time afterwards. Make no mistake, The Orphanage really is something different, and all the better for it. -Jon Foster.

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Supernatural - The Complete Third Season, Saw 4 - Extreme Edition [2007], 30 Days Of Night - Special Edition 2 DVD set with 48-page Graphic Novel & Slipcase [2007], Dragon Wars [2007], Planet Terror [2007], 1408 - Director's Cut Edition [2007], The Cottage [2008], Pan's Labyrinth [Blu-ray] [2006], Resident Evil 3: Extinction [2007], Cloverfield [2007], The Orphanage [Blu-ray] [2007], Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street [Blu-ray] [2007], Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street [2007], The Shining [1980], Stephen King's The Stand [1994], Rec [2007], Death Note - The Movie (2 Disc Limited Edition) [2006], Cloverfield (2 Disc Special Edition), Pan's Labyrinth [2006], The Orphanage [2007]

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