Beginning as an eye-popping cavalcade of dismemberment, cannibalism and pigs gorging on human offal, this quickly turns into an occasionally amusing attack on the critics of director Lucio Fulci's work, with Fulci himself starring as a horror director wondering whether extended exposure to fake gore has turned him psycho-killer. Demented.
In January 2002, Brian Wilson and a nine-piece band, including The Wondermints and Carl Wilson-alike Jeffrey Foskett, performed The Beach Boys' 1966 album Pet Sounds in its entirety, and in sequence, over six nights at London's Royal Festival Hall. And now the best of those concerts have been remixed and remastered in 5.1 surround sound. This means you can now own the original LP in mono and stereo, the Pet Sounds Sessions box set, the Pet Sounds Live CD from 2002, and the Pet Sounds Live DVD!
As boxing movies go, it's not exactly Raging Bull. As Elvis movies go, it's not exactly King Creole either (though Michael Casablanca Curtiz directed both). Even so, Presley's 10th movie is no turkey, aided by some half-decent tunes and solid support from a youngish Charles Bronson.
William Friedkin's thriller casts Benicio Del Toro as a Special Forces killing machine running amok and Tommy Lee Jones as the man who trained him and now has to bring him in. Hokum, basically, but the knife fights are the best since David Carradine and James Remar went at each other with some gusto in The Long Riders.
DIRECTED BY Ridley Scott
STARRING Sigourney Weaver, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto, Hatry Dean Stanton
Opened October 31, Cert 15, 115 mins
Scott's franchise-launching 1979 future-shocker is one of those rare, pure, primal films that works as both highbrow modern myth and trouser-soiling midnight movie.
Howard Hawks' last western stars John Wayne and Jorge Rivero as former Civil War enemies who unite to battle a corrupt sheriff and a land-grabbing crook, aided by medicine show gal Jennifer O'Neill. It's a minor work, but likeable—the Duke's on fine form, Leigh Brackett's dialogue is snappy and there's a nice cameo by the reliably eccentric Jack Elam.
A film of two halves and dual tones, director Ang Lee extrapolates from Stan Lee's original Marvel comic book Hulk both the dark angst of scientist Bruce Banner and the fluorescent fury of the eponymous monster. So, depending on your taste, you'll either prefer the hi-tech CGI set-pieces, or the low-rent monochrome drama of Nick Nolte and Eric Bana hamming/Hamlet-ing it up as the id-unleashing father and son.
