Britgeek here.
Another day, another bitesize review round-up of the latest DVD and Blu-ray releases to land in the UK. From super-smart monkeys to killer trolls, there's plenty of variety in this edition.
PROJECT NIM (DVD)
Film-maker James Marsh won an Academy Award for his 2008 documentary MAN ON WIRE and now he's in the running for another golden man with PROJECT NIM, recently shortlisted for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar. He faces stiff competition in the category, but the film has more than a fighting chance of going all the way. It tells the moving and unexpectedly dark story of Nim Chimpsky, a two-week old chimpanzee taken from his mother to be the centre of a research experiment that would span several years. The hypothesis of Project Nim? To study the development of linguistic abilities in a chimp raised by a family like a human son, brother and friend.
It's a fascinating documentary, one which combines talking heads with remarkable footage dating all the way back to the very beginning of the experiment in 1973. Seeing Nim use sign language to let his carers know when he wanted to play or eat a banana is nothing short of incredible. Carers and homes are what he had many of over his life and it's their perspectives – sometimes wildly different – that more often than not cast a grim shadow over the life he was forced to live almost from birth. Few seem to have had Nim's best interests at heart, especially for an animal that near enough began life wearing diapers. The potential for sexual attraction between humans and chimps is even touched upon, and yet it is an animal that Nim is rarely referred to as.
This is a story that was surely the inspiration for last summer's surprisingly good RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. Now that's a heck of a double feature.
Extras: Making Nim; Bob's Journey: primatologist Bob Ingersoll speaks of his time with director Marsh and the making of the film; an audio commentary with Marsh; and a photo gallery.
COLOMBIANA (DVD)
Available now on DVD and Blu-ray
By now, esteemed French film-maker Luc Besson must be one of the most prolific producers working in Hollywood today, and he shows no signs of hopping out of the action pool of which he clearly loves. After being creatively involved in productions led by the likes of Jason Statham in the TRANSPORTER trilogy, Liam Neeson in TAKEN and, of course, Jean Reno in the outstanding LEON, Besson has seemingly channelled his LA FEMME NIKITA roots by writing and producing a vehicle for a sexy female action hero in the form of Zoe Saldana.
In COLOMBIANA, she takes the role of Cataleya, a young woman hell-bent on extracting revenge on the man who, when she was just a child, ordered the murder of her parents before her very eyes. Hardened by her horrific experience and trained as a stone-cold killer by an old family friend, Cataleya's plan is to kill all of her nemesis' associates one-by-one until she finds – and silences – the man she's looking for.
It's unfortunate, then, that Besson is unable to live up to his previous successes in the assassin department. In fact, it's hard to even call COLOMBIANA a passable action movie. Cataleya's back story, which opens the film, is intriguing, yet almost as soon as our focus switches from orphaned Cat to killer Cat, the film begins to fall apart, and we're left with a gap that spans more than a decade without much of an explanation. She's more than 20 kills into her quest for vengeance, yet how she fared over her years training to become the precise, expert female assassin she is 20 minutes into the film is unexplained.
It's not just the lack of character development that drags COLOMBIANA down from being an entertaining, bullet-ridden romp to a forgettable 108 minutes. The action sequences are made lifeless by editing that is best described as chaotic, and not in a way that is exciting or tense. Fist fights are cut so fast that you can barely make out who's hitting who; shots are put together like ill-fitting pieces to a jigsaw puzzle. A cracking early scene set at a prison shows off Cataleya at her most articulate and inventive, but the rest of the movie fails to come together.
Extras: A making-of feature and the trailer.
TROLL HUNTER (Blu-ray)
Available now on Blu-ray and DVD
Scandinavia's most preeminent shred of folklore has once again found its way to the movies. Those ugly, slimy – and rather pesky – giants known as trolls have essentially been blacklisted from the silver screen ever since that film from 1990 (yes, that is a TROLL 2 reference), but now they're back and wreaking more havoc than ever in found footage monster comedy, TROLL HUNTER.
It's goodbye Nilbog and hello to the rolling hills of Norway as a group of university students making a documentary on a local bear hunter get far more than they bargained for when he reveals the true nature of his prey. Bears look positively cute and cuddly in comparison to the titanic trolls he has been tasked to hunt by the Norwegian government in a top secret operation. As the teenagers come face-to-face with the creatures they long thought were mythical, cameras at the ready, what started out as an innocent nature doco quickly becomes a fight for survival, and a funny one at that.
TROLL HUNTER is by no means hilarious, but the way it plays with the mythology and mixes in its own breed of quirk is clever to say the least. One of the most impressive elements of the film, however, is its scope. For a found footage movie featuring towering CG trolls, there's actually something quite spectacular about seeing the creatures. What sprung to my mind about the film is JURASSIC PARK by way of Gareth Edwards' MONSTERS, and that can only be a good thing.
Extras: Five deleted scenes; two improvised scenes; bloopers; three extended scenes; visual effects featurettes; a behind the scenes feature; photo gallery; trailer; and another behind the scenes look at the film courtesy of HDNet.
ARENA (Blu-ray)
Available now on Blu-ray and DVD
Samuel L. Jackson gives perhaps the least earth-shattering performance of his entire career in ARENA, a film that's ultimately even worse than his phoned-in role as the villain. I haven't the faintest idea what he was thinking agreeing to such a movie.
As you may have gathered from the title, the film concerns gladiatorial combat, yet in a modern setting. The new internet craze is a website by the name of Death Games, which streams live footage of men fighting to the death in a themed environment. Many viewers question its authenticity, but we know right from the start that it's as real as an axe to the head as an ex-marine (Kellan Lutz) is kidnapped and forced to compete in the grisly tournament.
Trying its hardest to insert some kind of trite social commentary about the information age into its by-the-numbers plot, the only thing ARENA excels at is mercilessly chewing up and spitting out a couple of name actors who falter beneath the weight of a truly horrendous script.
Extras: None.
ARIETTY (Blu-ray)
Available now on Blu-ray, DVD and Blu-ray Double Play
Long time animator Hiromasa Yonebayashi makes his directorial debut in Studio Ghibli's adaptation of the universe created by Mary Norton in her THE BORROWERS novels. The story concerns the title character, Arrietty, and her parents. They're just like any other family, except they stand no bigger than a leaf and live in a cosy crib the size of a doll's house hidden within a wardrobe.
Borrowers in name and nature, Arrietty and her family live off of supplies pinched from the life-size house where they've taken up residence. They wait for nightfall before emerging from their own tiny house and stage elaborate heists, grabbing everything from sugar cubes to sword-like needles, all while being as quiet as mice to ensure the humans aren't alerted to their presence. Little do they know, a young boy may already know of their existence.
Seeing just how these little people live and get by in a world where, to them at least, a garden is the size of a great forest, is a great deal of fun. And that's just it: the joy is plentiful in ARRIETTY. It's a film that reminds you just how much human goodness cinema can harbour. It isn't as heart-warming as SPIRITED AWAY, nor as visually striking as NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND, but it is a gorgeously animated feast for the eyes and a highly enjoyable experience for the mind.
Extras: Storyboards; original Japanese trailers and TV spots; Arrietty's Song – promotional video; and interviews with writer/producer Hayao Miyazaki, director Yonebayashi, and the English voice cast: Tom Holland, Geraldine McEwan, Saoirse Ronan, Mark Strong and Olivia Colman.
THE LEGEND OF BRUCE LEE (DVD)
Available now on DVD and Blu-ray
I always strive to get through a film even if it's not enjoyable. I'm somewhat of a completest in that regard, especially when it comes to films I'm reviewing. In my two-and-a-half years of being a critic, I've written reviews of some 600 films and have only ever switched off two before the end, one of them being the biopic THE LEGEND OF BRUCE LEE, executive produced by Shannon Lee, the daughter of Bruce.
Editing down television series into feature-length films is nothing new. It's a process that is more often than not flawed, but I've never seen it executed quite so painfully as in THE LEGEND OF BRUCE LEE. Whereas most series re-edited for TV are short, this film is the result of no less than 50 episodes originally broadcast in China in 2008 chopped down to a mere three hours. I lasted one.
Similar to 1993's DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY, the film is liberal with the truth. For instance, the muscle tear Lee sustained during a workout that put him in the hospital for months becomes a post-fight assault that leaves him confined to a wheelchair, although, unlike the aforementioned biopic, Lee is rammed in the back with a length of wood rather than kicked.
Evidently, THE LEGEND OF BRUCE LEE didn't have much money thrown at it. It looks like a bare bones production and all sound, including dialogue, is dubbed in. Of course, money doesn't necessarily mean a dip in quality, especially when it comes to storytelling, but the film's first hour shows the inability to do just that. Quite simply, it's unwatchable.
Extras: None
THE HUNTERS (DVD)
Available on DVD on January 23
In THE HUNTERS, a newbie detective must fight his way out of an isolated fort and through a group of gun-brandishing killers who escape from their mundane lives by taking trips to the woods and hunting. Their prey? Their fellow man.
Shot on the cheap in France and Luxembourg, it's never clear just where THE HUNTERS is set, but judging by the atrocious attempts at American accents by most of the cast, there is a lead or two. Location aside, clarity is one of the film's biggest problems. It's incomprehensible. Never mind the marketing that suggests this thrill-less thriller is a horror movie; the way the story unravels is confusing, which is a shame as the plot itself is actually fairly interesting in a way that harkens back to HOSTEL: PART II and the American businessmen storyline. What story there is in THE HUNTERS is strangled by the frequent lack of focus, and even when you think it's back on track, the ham-fisted performances and dire script kill most interest in the proceedings.
This is a perfect example of an intriguing idea – as simple as it is – utterly ruined by poor execution.
Extras: A making-of feature.
Until next time.
TTFN.
Follow me on Twitter!
