Surprisingly, the underrated British director Val Guest has recently been represented by a flurry of Blu-ray releases, two of which highlight some of his finest work while the third makes available one of his lesser known minor films of the ’50s.
Studio Ghibli’s Isao Takahata creates a masterpiece in his final feature, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, while Hiroyuki Okiura seems a worthy successor to the studio’s achievements with A Letter to Momo; less successful is Ari Folman’s live action/animation hybrid Robin Wright at The Congress.
Despite the dominance of computer animation these days, there are qualities in hand-made animation, whether drawn or stop-motion, which offer a richer, more aesthetically pleasing viewer experience, as evidenced by a random selection of new and classic releases.
In their Blu-ray set of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s first six features, the BFI provide a superb introduction to novelist and filmmaker’s radical and frequently controversial work which combines high art with lowly genre tropes in illuminating and surprisingly entertaining ways.
An opportunity to meet my favourite film critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum, turned out to be a rich evening of films from around the world.
Watching horror, like watching war films, is a way to experience fear without actually being vulnerable. Vicarious thrills allow us to indulge emotions which, in real situations, would be very unpleasant. We always have the guarantee of personal survival, the threats contained within structured narratives which, traditionally, provided us with a way back to normality.
More releases from Arrow range from the reality based and historical horror of Deranged and Mark of the Devil to the flawed black comedy of The ‘Burbs.
Arrow Video has quickly become one of my favourite sources for both genre and “art” films, with impressive editions of a wide range of titles; most recently I’ve been immersing myself in some of their horror releases.
There’s no connection between the cute CG bear in Paddington and the likable stoner detective in Inherent Vice, other than the fact they are at the centre of two of the most entertaining movies to be released recently.
Recent Blu-rays from Twilight Time are as eclectic as ever. A couple of mainstream Hollywood classics; an oddball excursion into pulp by one of the great Hollywood directors; and a devastating animated fable by a Japanese-American filmmaker based on a very English graphic novel.