Neil Mitchell

In Review: Slice and Dice: The Slasher Film Forever on DVD

by Neil Mitchell 29 May 2013

British author, film critic, producer and director Calum Waddell’s latest offering is Slice and Dice: The Slasher Film Forever, a celebratory documentary charting the history of one of horror cinema’s more enduring subgenres.

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In Review: Bait on DVD

by Neil Mitchell 13 May 2013

Aside from the odd Free Willy or Finding Nemo, most aquatic based life forms in movies are out to do us harm. From It Came From Beneath the Sea to Jaws, and from Piranha to Deep Rising, civilisation has come under attack from, and humans have become lunch for, all manner of destructively ravenous beasts.

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In Review: Dead End Drive-In on DVD

by Neil Mitchell 6 May 2013

The name Brian Trenchard-Smith will forever be associated with the Ozploitation movies of the Australian New Wave. The English born producer, writer, sometime actor and director of such diverse fare as The Man From Hong Kong (1975), Stunt Rock (1978), Turkey Shoot (1982) and BMX Bandits (1983), sees his 1986 effort, Dead End Drive-In, get [...]

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In Review: Billy Liar on DVD

by Neil Mitchell 8 April 2013

John Schlesinger’s adaptation of Keith Waterhouse’s 1959 novel Billy Liar celebrates its fiftieth birthday this year, commemorated by a 50 th anniversary Blu-ray/DVD release by StudioCanal.

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In Review: TranSylvania on DVD

by Neil Mitchell 20 February 2013

While I have long since been aware of the career of Tony Gatlif actually watching one of his films had previously eluded me. The French-Algerian polymath of Romani descent, who counts directing, composing, acting, producing and screenwriting as strings on his bow, has been making films for close to forty years. Revolving around Romany culture [...]

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In Review: Nowhere To Go on DVD

by Neil Mitchell 30 January 2013

Though the name Ealing Studios will always be synonymous with the Ealing Comedies, it’s pertinent to remember that those enduring satires on Britishness, stretching from Hue & Cry in 1947 to Barnacle Bill in 1956, amounted to only a fraction of the studios’ total output. War films (such as Alberto Cavalcanti’s Went the Day Well? [...]

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Films that time forgot: Wake in Fright

by Neil Mitchell 6 June 2012

As many of you may still be filling in the blanks after a somewhat inebriated Jubilee celebration it seems the perfect excuse to revisit Australian classic Wake in Fright (1971): the tale of one man’s lost weekend. Over a decade before Canadian film-maker Ted Kotcheff made First Blood (1982) he directed Wake in Fright ,(aka [...]

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