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.
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.
Hideo Nakata, Japan's master of suspense and unease, knocks one out of the park again with this follow-up to his Ring cycle. A neurotic single mother discovers a ghostly rising damp problem in the apartment block she moves in to with her little girl. Gradually, her sanity begins to ebb away. A squelchy study in female hysteria and maternal anxiety, yes, but also a good, old-fashioned spook flick.
OPENS NOVEMBER 14, CERT 15, 102 MINS
Ann (Sarah Polley) is 23 and works as a night cleaner. She lives in a trailer home in her mother's backyard, along with two young daughters and an unemployed husband. She also, it turns out, has inoperable cancer, and a matter of months to live. And while on paper that might sound like Terms Of Endearment on a budget, this beautifully judged Canadian picture (produced by Pedro and Agustin Almodóvar) couldn't be further from the mawkishness of a Hollywood weepy.
What lifts the film is the powerful, dignified performance from Polley.
Dark, hugely inventive '93 animation from Tim Burton, possibly much too spooky for kids (or probably not, the sick little psychos). The Pumpkin King of Halloween tries to co-opt Christmas; the voices of Catherine O'Hara, Pee-Wee Herman and other disreputable types ooh and aah. Dazzling, macabre and faintly mad, an Oscar nominee for visual effects.
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!
