Direct to video
A psychological drama on the themes of voyeurism, power and corruption, Suite 16 (18) is the third feature from the Belgian director Dominique Deruddere, who made a very promising debut with the 1987 Crazy Love, an adaptation of several Charles Bukowski stories, and followed it with the rarely seen Wait Until, Spring, Bandini. Filmed in Cannes and at a studio in Nice, Suite 16 is based on a screenplay by the English writers, Charles Higson and Lise Mayer, and stars actors from England (Pete Postlethwaite) and the Netherlands (Antonie Kainerling).
Kamerling plays Chris, a cocaine snorting young hustler who preys on and robs older women; when one fights back and he appears to have killed her, Chris takes refuge in the vast hotel suite of Glover (Postlethwaite), an impotent and wheelchair bound man. Glover uses his wealth to seduce Chris into a Fauslian pact in which he persuades the opportunistic young man to act as his sexual surrogate, viewing his bedroom athletics on video in an adjacent room and constantly pushing him to new extremes.
Postlethwaite brings a sinister gravitas to the role of Glover while Kamerling's performance is wholly uninhibited. However, what develops as a tantalising, well acted psychodrama eventually suffers from its own repetitiveness and loses credibility with its denouement.
Cinema to video
One of the most pleasant surprises of last year's cinema releases, Clueless (15), written and directed by Amy Heckerling, takes Jane Austen's Emma and transposes it to present day Beverly Hills for a sparkling and very funny satire on teenage life among the privileged offspring of the area. It features the impressive Alicia Silverstone as 16 year old Cher who's rich and popular and who loves letting the world benefit by her expertise in all of life's important issues - like dating, fashion and looking good.
This movie is even more fun the second time around.
With To Die For (18), director Gus Van Sant comfortably edges into the mainstream without relinquishing his customary quirkiness for a highly entertaining, satirical comedy drama featuring a scintillating, eye popping performance from Nicole Kidman as a small town New Hampshire woman whose unlimited obsession with attaining television celebrity leads to murder. The cast also features Malt Dillon and Jaquin Phoenix.
Winner of the Golden Globe for best foreign language film, Farinelli: Il Castrato (15) is a sumptuous Belgian production directed by Gerard Coibiau. It is heavier on melodrama than on insight as it deals with a celebrated 18th century castrato singer (played by Stefano Dionisi) and his composer brother (Enrico lo Verso) who cashes in on his seductive nature. But the music and the singing provide compensation.
From Denmark, Ole Bornedal's auspicious feature debut, Nightwatch (18), is an imaginative and dark humoured horror thriller in which a young law, student takes a job as nightwatchman, at a morgue at a time a serial killer is stalking and killing prostitutes in Copenhagen. Bornedal piles on the tension with style and skill. The film is on widescreen and is also available for rental.
The first American film directed by Terence Davies, The Neon Bible (15) is based on a novel by John Kennedy Toole, but it is so suffused with the director's preoccupations, both thematic and stylistic, that it has Davies's signature on every painstakingly, achieved frame. That ensures a series of arresting images, but the movie positively reeks of deja vu as Davies again summons up such now familiar characters as an abusive father (Denis Leary), a brittle mother (Diana Scarwid), a sensitive boy (Jacob Tierney), and the only remotely fresh creation, the boy's flamboyant singer aunt (the marvellous Gena Rowlands).
Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Forest Whitaker and Alfred Molina head the under used cast in Roger Donaldson's Species (18), an over protracted science fiction thriller in which scientists have to destroy their own creation - a genetically engineered creature who can assume a variety of forms.
Sell through
Gems abound in the Sam Peckinpah Collection released by Warner Home Video, among them Peckinpah's masterpiece, The Wild Bunch ("director's cut"), along with Ride The High Country, The Ballad Of Cable Hogue, Pat Garrett And Baby The Kid, Bring me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia and The Killer Elite.
To celebrate the 21st anniversary of the enduring cult classic, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is released in widescreen. Some notable recent movies now available for retail include Zhang Yimou's Shanghai Triad, Milcho Manchevski's Before The Rain, Whit Stillman's Barcelona and Atom Egoyan's superb Exotica.
