The Grandmaster (2013)

Posted on December 7, 2015 by badblokebob

aka Yi dai zong shi

As a Western viewer, if you know anything about Ip Man beyond “he’s the chap who trained Bruce Lee”, it’s probably thanks to the pair of eponymous biopics starring Donnie Yen (soon to become a trilogy). Heck, if you know that much there’s a fair chance it’s due to those films. This take on the man, directed and co-written by Wong Kar Wai and starring Tony Leung as Ip, is tonally very different.

Some of the facts remain the same, naturally: Ip is a master of Wing Chung in Foshan, China, until the Japanese occupation ruins everyone’s lives. Post-war, he moves to Hong Kong and sets up a school there. Concurrently, there’s something about being the grandmaster of martial arts in all of China, or somesuch. When the previous incumbent is murdered by his disciple, the old man’s daughter, Gong Er (Ziyi Zhang), has revenge in mind.

The Grandmaster is very much more an arthouse version of the story than the Ip Mans’ accessible action-movie stylistics, with elliptical storytelling and a carefully-measured pace, even in the action sequences. I’ve seen at least one review criticise Wong for leaning too heavily into ‘genre’ pictures — I guess that critic doesn’t actually watch too many genre pictures, because a good number of genre fans criticise this for being too arty. It is more “arty” than “genre”, even given its inclusion of numerous fantastic fight scenes. The duels are stunning, though pure adrenaline-junkie viewers seem to find even those a disappointment. Well, they’re wrong.

It helps that it’s gorgeously shot. Ultra-crisp blue-black rain-soaked night time duels; rich golden hues in pre-occupation Foshan; cold bright-white snowy landscapes; a train platform fight that’s almost sepia-like. Between the photography and the ever-excellent action choreography of Yuen Woo-ping (The Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Kill Bill, et al), the film is immensely satisfying on a visual level.

One factor that may — or, as we will see, may not — have an effect on how the film fares beyond the purely visual is that there are at least three different cuts: a 130-minute original cut, a 122-minute international cut, and the 108-minute version released in the US by the Weinsten Company. “Ah,” you might think, “yet another Weinstein hack job.” Well, Wong himself says otherwise:

As a filmmaker, let me say that the luxury of creating a new cut for U.S. audiences was the opportunity to reshape it into something different than what I began with — a chance one doesn’t always get as a director and an undertaking much more meaningful than simply making something shorter or longer. The original version of The Grandmaster is about 2 hours, 10 minutes. Why not 2 hours, 9 minutes or 2 hours, 11 minutes? To me, the structure of a movie is like a clock or a prized watch — it’s about precision and perfect balance.

We always knew that we wanted to have a U.S. version that was a bit tighter and that helped clarify the complex historical context of this particular era in Chinese history, focusing further on the journeys of Ip Man and Gong Er. While the previous version was more chronological, adding narration and captions to explain certain plot points gave us the freedom to bring more life to moments in the characters’ stories. I also aimed to enhance the audience’s understanding of the challenges faced between North and South, especially during the Japanese invasion.

Well, the narration and explanatory title cards are at times useful, but at others feel heavy-handed. I guess that’s the result of them being added retroactively as an explanatory device — if Wong had felt that information needed to be in the film throughout production, I’m sure it could’ve been better integrated into the storytelling.

However you look at it, the other Ip Man films are undoubtedly more palatable to a mainstream audience. Does that mean they’re worse? No. Better? Not necessarily. But I don’t think The Grandmaster is all it could’ve been. It seems to run out of story and lose its way as it gets towards the end. The focus shifts entirely to Gong Er, and it feels less clear what it’s meant to about as a whole film. It becomes a movie of great moments, and maybe even scenes, but an unsatisfying whole. But oh, the images…

This review is part of the 100 Films Advent Calendar 2015. Read more here.

L’Atalante (1934)

Posted on December 1, 2015 by badblokebob

2015 #138
Jean Vigo | 85 mins | DVD | 1.33:1 | France / French | PG

The only feature-length work of director Jean Vigo (though Zéro de conduite just qualifies for AMPAS’s definition of feature-length, being 41 minutes) before he died tragically young at 29, L’Atalante has been acclaimed as one of the greatest films ever made.

It wasn’t always thus. It was not well received at first, leading to a tumultuous release history. Previews were so poor that the distributor cut 20 minutes and released it as Le chaland qui passe, the title of a popular song at the time, which was of course added to the soundtrack. It translates as The Passing Barge, which is a very apt moniker, at least. Nonetheless, it was still a commercial failure. In 1940 it was partially restored, and after World War 2 its reputation began to be rehabilitated by critics, including becoming a favourite of the French New Wave directors. It was more thoroughly restored in 1990, and then again in 2001, bringing the film as close to its original form as possible.

Personally, my view hews closer to the original reception. Reportedly a French distributor called it “a confused, incoherent, wilfully absurd, long, dull, commercially worthless film,” while critics called it “amateurish, self-indulgent and morbid.” OK, maybe it’s not that bad, but there are nuggets of truth in there.

It boils down to a relationship drama, about a couple so in love that they married in haste and now must learn how to live together and reaffirm their love in a new context. That story is told with some asides to barge life that seem (at least to me, on a first viewing) wholly unrelated, but in themselves are frequently more entertaining, thanks primarily to the performance of Michel Simon as the barge’s older first mate.

The romance is told in a way many describe as “poetic”, which seems to me to be something of a euphemism for “obliquely”. There are certainly poetic shots or sequences, like Jean’s dive where he sees a vision of Juliette, but the actual narrative is more social realist — low-key, and not spelt out or expounded upon for our benefit.

At one time, L’Atalante must have been visionary, groundbreaking, and revelatory to both critics and other filmmakers. Over eight decades on, however, whatever was then new has been subsumed by filmmaking in general; it has become familiar, or been better employed by filmmakers who were finessing rather than experimenting. L’Atalante may well be a significant work in the history of film, and for that reason may once have been considered one of the greats (and still is by some), but for me, now, it doesn’t have enough merit as a work in its own right.

L’Atalante was viewed as part of my What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…? 2015 project, which you can read more about here.

This review is part of the 100 Films Advent Calendar 2015. Read more here.

Force Majeure (2014)

Posted on December 1, 2015 by badblokebob

aka Turist

During a near-miss on a skiing holiday, a dad abandons his wife and kids. Cue days of passive-aggressive familial angst.

At its best, writer-director Ruben Östlund’s YouTube-inspired film (seriously — look at IMDb’s trivia) is a droll dark comedy. Told in wisely-deployed long takes that benefit the cast, there’s also gorgeous photography and a dramatic score courtesy of Vivaldi’s Summer.

Other times, it’s too languorous and arthouse-y for my taste. Compare Rotten Tomatoes to viewer opinions elsewhere and you see a fissure in opinion Maybe removing some longueurs would’ve made it something regular viewers could enjoy as much as critics.

Force Majeure is available on Netflix UK as of last Sunday.

This drabble review is part of the 100 Films Advent Calendar 2015. Read more here.

Parabellum (2015)

Posted on October 16, 2015 by badblokebob

2015 #150
Lukas Valenta Rinner | 75 mins | streaming | 2.35:1 | Argentina, Austria & Uruguay / Spanish

Screened at the London Film Festival earlier this month, then made available on MUBI in the UK (where you can, if you want, watch it until midnight on 11th November), the latter lured me in by describing it as “a meticulous and immersive portrait of the end of the world, where the apocalypse is out of frame. Who said sci-fi required big budgets? Clever, and chilling.” Intrigued? Don’t be.

Parabellum (which apparently translates as “Congratulation”, though that doesn’t seem to mean anything here) is the kind of movie where nothing much happens. Well, things do happen, but co-writer/director Lukas Valenta Rinner has chosen to tell the story in such a way that it feels like nothing happens. A bunch of people gather at a remote survivalist training camp in Argentina, where they’re taught things like camouflage, hand-to-hand combat, and shooting. We don’t see them talk to each other; we only see snippets of their lessons; no one explains why they’re there, what’s going on in the wider world to have inspired them to come, or anything else.

After over half an hour of this, we see what appears to be a comet, but may be a missile or something, fall in the background of a shot. Is this the end of the world, then? Suddenly, the instructors don’t seem to be around anymore, and half-a-dozen of the trainees set off by boat to… well, I’m not sure what their goal is, but they break into someone’s house and kill him, and later they migrate to a bigger boat and continue travelling; and then one of them commits suicide, and eventually the guy we’ve ‘followed’ from the start sets off in a small boat towards a distant city, where numerous comet-missiles are raining down non-stop.

That’s the whole movie, more or less. I haven’t spoiled it for you because you’re not going to watch it because why would you? There is no discernible story or meaning; there is no characterisation; there is nothing but imagery and snippets of moments that signify nothing. It is a movie that has deliberately left out any explanations. Apparently the director has said it’s all a criticism of global capitalism, or something. Even with that extra-filmic information, it’s still difficult to ascertain much meaning. This isn’t realism — this isn’t avoiding “hello, person who is my brother” dialogue — this is obtuseness for obtuseness’ sake.

Alfred Hitchcock once said that “movies are real life with the boring parts cut out.” Valenta Rinner’s movie is the opposite of this in every respect: it isn’t real life, which is fine, but he only left the boring parts in, which isn’t.

Parabellum is, as noted, part of MUBI’s UK selection until midnight on 11th November.

It featured on my list of The Five Worst Films I Saw in 2015, which can be read in full here.

Supermen of Malegaon (2008)

Posted on October 14, 2015 by badblokebob

2015 #149
Faiza Ahmad Khan | 66 mins | streaming | 16:9 | Singapore, Japan, South Korea & India / Urdu & Hindi

In the impoverished Indian town of Malegaon, everyone either works on the power looms and is paid a pittance, or is unemployed and so has even less; apart from the women, who are squirrelled away out of sight at home. The population is 75% Muslim, the remainder Hindu, and that leads to tension. Outside of work, there is nothing to do for entertainment… except go to the movies. And Malegaon loves the movies.

A number of years ago, one movie lover and video parlour owner, Sheikh Nasir, decided to make his own film. He remade the beloved Indian classic Sholay, but with its setting relocated to Malegaon, and turned it into a kind of spoof. It was recorded on video, edited VCR to VCR, by someone who had learnt filmmaking only by watching films themselves and seeing the behind-the-scenes outtakes on the credits of Jackie Chan movies. He didn’t even realise a film crew consisted of more than one person. Yet Malegaon ke Sholay was a local hit, and so Nasir decided to produce more. All of his films are spoof remakes of popular Bollywood and Hollywood productions, but set in Malegaon and engaging with local issues. They’re something of craze, so much so the people have a nickname for it: Mollywood.

Supermen of Malegaon is the making-of story of Nasir’s most ambitious production to date. Having seen the use of greenscreen in one of those behind-the-scenes outtakes, he realised he could use the process to make a special effects movie — specifically, to make Superman fly to Malegaon. This documentary follows the trials and tribulations of Nasir and his band of hobby filmmakers through their film’s writing, planning, and its sometimes troubled shoot, until it’s completed. In the process, we meet some genuine characters, learn something of the unique lifestyle of Malegaon itself, and maybe even learn something about ourselves too.

The latter is the kind of claim liable to have your everyman viewer thinking, “yeah, right.” It’s a huge, horrid cliché for films to preach about following your dreams, or of finding something life enhancing through simple pleasures even when living in hardship; and generally movies that shove such ideals down our throats are gratingly earnest and/or sentimentally vacuous. Supermen of Malegaon is neither. There is no forcing here — insightful observations spring forth unassumingly; life lessons build up gradually and naturally. This is a film that doesn’t labour a point; doesn’t try to force some heartwarming message on you; but there’s every chance it will, almost incidentally, make you believe in the power of movies.

Even if it doesn’t, the situation in ‘Mollywood’ is an interesting one. This is a cottage industry: everyone involved has day jobs, funding the movies out of their own pocket, or by borrowing cash, or with favours, or by selling in-film adverts to local businesses — yes, that’s right, product placement, not that anyone involved would know that term. Women from Malegaon cannot appear in or work on the films due to local attitudes, so actresses are hired from nearby villages; the screenplay is written and shooting schedule arranged so that the actress only needs to be involved for the minimum number of days, to save money. Bicycles and motorbikes are used to create tracking shots; the director gets a piggyback for a high angle, or is raised and lowered on the arm of a cart to create a crane shot. The ingenuity and inventiveness of these literally-self-taught moviemakers is astonishing.

It really matters to them, too. As one young extra observes, people are keen to do anything they can to be involved, because being in a Mollywood movie buys you street cred in Malegaon. These things are that popular.

And yet it remains just a hobby… or it does for Nasir, anyway. He loves movies and so just wants to make them. He says that even if he was offered a job in Bollywood, he wouldn’t go. Not everyone shares his view: one of his relatives wants to make films as a career; Nasir is vocally against the idea — you can’t support a household doing this, he says. His films cost a pittance: at one point he tries to buy software to do the greenscreen and is quoted a price of $4,000, which he turns down because he could make four whole films for that much money. Even that little is scraped together. Mollywood moviemaking isn’t a money spinner, it’s a hobby. Still, one of the writers wants to make it as a proper writer; wants to go to Bombay and do it as his career. This has been his aim for 15 years, he says, and Bombay is no closer.

So there’s sadness here too, and controversy (to Western eyes, the position of women seems ludicrously unacceptable), and yet the ingenuity of these people, the endurance, the sheer love of cinema and the want to be involved, to not only recreate it but to forge something new, with their own enjoyment as the sole reward, is heartwarming, maybe even life enhancing. These are amateur filmmakers, working in their own backyard with a consumer video camera, who have greater integrity than all of Hollywood put together — and are still making movies, not falling to pieces and dying out, as Hollywood seems to think it would if it ever manned up.

In an interview, the director commented that “someone said after watching the film: ‘If you are about to give up on your dream, watch Supermen of Malegaon’.” I can believe that would work. A reviewer said that “if you don’t like it, then it can only mean that films were never really your thing in the first place.” A bold statement, but I’m inclined to agree. It’s an incredible, one-of-a-kind film; more powerful and life-affirming than it perhaps has any right to be. But then the filmmakers of Malegaon don’t really care about such things. They make movies because they want to, whether they ‘should’ or not; they make them better than you might expect; and it enriches their lives. Their story may do the same for you. In my opinion, it’s an essential film; a true must-see.

The UK TV premiere of Supermen of Malegaon is on Channel 4 tonight at 1:30am. It’s also available on YouTube.

It placed 4th on my list of The Ten Best Films I Saw For the First Time in 2015, which can be read in full here.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)

Posted on September 21, 2015 by badblokebob

The third (and, for 30 years, final) Mad Max movie sees the titular post-apocalyptic drifter (Mel Gibson) rock up at last-outpost-of-humanity Bartertown in search of his pilfered car and camels. Max finds himself dragged before the town’s ruler, Aunty (Tina Turner), who has a job for him: kill the mutinous overseer of the city’s power supply, Master Blaster. As payment, she’ll arrange for the return of his belongings. The only conditions are he can’t reveal Aunty has employed him, and he has to do it in a fair fight in the town’s arena of combative justice — the Thunderdome. And then the story goes beyond that, funnily enough.

Writer/director/creator George Miller hadn’t intended to make a third Mad Max film, but when he conceived a story about a man stumbling across a gang of kids in a post-apocalyptic world, someone suggested that man should be Max, and Beyond Thunderdome was born. That might explain why the end result feels a bit like two different movies stuck together: the very Mad Max-y first part in Bartertown awkwardly transitions into the society-of-kids segment, before the two clash for a Mad Max 2-emulating chase-through-the-desert climax. It might not make for the smoothest throughline — the movie almost stops and starts again — but at least it exposes us to a different facet of the series’ post-apocalyptic Australia.

Not everyone agrees; indeed, I hadn’t realised quite how poorly regarded Beyond Thunderdome was by many fans (though not critics, who generally liked it). Reading up, there are some genuine criticisms — like that stop-start plot, or the kids’ cod-babyspeak dialogue — but an awful lot of it boils down to childish “it’s a PG-13 and I wanted R-rated violence” reactions. Which is kinda ironic. I have to say, I didn’t even notice the change in level until I read those comments afterwards. The film still reaches a 15 certificate in the UK, so clearly it isn’t toned down that much. And the lack of visible blood doesn’t mean it lacks creativity: Roger Ebert described the Thunderdome duel as “the first really original movie idea about how to stage a fight since we got the first karate movies”, and he may well be right.

The changes do stretch beyond the level of violence, with a slightly slicker feel to the filmmaking. This is also viewed negatively, many attributing it to a reported influx of US funding that also led to the PG-13 and the casting of Tina Turner. Personally, I saw it more as part of Miller’s development as a filmmaker: Mad Max 2 is appreciably ‘slicker’ than Mad Max, after all. Some call Beyond Thunderdome “Indiana-Jones-ified”, though. I can see the similarities, but I didn’t find it so different from the previous Max film that it really bothered me.

And from a very personal, very 2015 point of view, Mad Max 2 has already earmarked itself a place on my year-end top ten, and if Fury Road lives up to the hype then it will surely prebook a slot too, so it’s probably for the best that Beyond Thunderdome isn’t quite up to that standard or my top ten would look a little bit weighted.

Nonetheless, I very much enjoyed Beyond Thunderdome. The Bartertown stuff works incredibly well, and a community of children who survived the apocalypse without an adult influence is also an interesting concept. It feels a bit like two Mad Max short stories that have been forced to coexist because neither was enough to sustain an entire feature, but at least neither part feels unduly padded, meaning the narrative keeps on rolling. It doesn’t hit the same heights as the exceptional Mad Max 2 — especially with a climax that invites a direct comparison, and is good but not as good — but, as a post-apocalyptic action-adventure movie in its own right, it’s a good film.

The fourth Mad Max movie, Fury Road, is released in the UK on digital platforms today, and on DVD and Blu-ray on October 5th.

Shivers (1975)

Posted on September 10, 2015 by badblokebob

2015 #116
David Cronenberg | 87 mins | TV | 4:3 | Canada / English | 18 / R

The first commercial (i.e. non-student) feature by horror maestro-to-be David Cronenberg, Shivers depicts the sexually-charged chaos that erupts after the spread of a man-made sexually-transmitted parasite in an isolated hyper-modern tower block.

The film contains all the requisite titillation of cheap schlock (nudity! gore!), but a handful of interesting, potential-laden ideas indicate the filmmaking promise that Cronenberg would later fulfil. Unfortunately, the execution here is hindered by dirt cheap production values and unfocused, undisciplined storytelling.

The most horrific part for fans is the mere mention of a sometimes-mooted remake, but I don’t think that would necessarily be a bad idea.

Scanners (1981)

Posted on August 30, 2015 by badblokebob

2015 #93
David Cronenberg | 103 mins | TV | 16:9 | Canada / English | 18 / R

If you’re versed in sci-fi/fantasy cinema, you’ve heard of Scanners even if you haven’t seen it: it’s the one with the (in)famous exploding head. That moment is distinctly less shocking for those of us coming to the film as a new viewer at this point: gore perpetuates genre cinema nowadays, so it’s less striking,* and the scene it’s in is quite obvious, so you know it’s coming. Fortunately, Scanners is so much more than one famous moment.

Social outcast Cameron (Steven Lack) can hear other people’s thoughts. When he’s apprehended by weapons firm ConSec, he discovers from scientist Dr Ruth (Patrick McGoohan) that he is far from alone. ConSec have been attempting to control these so-called scanners and weaponise them; one, Darryl Revok (Michael Ironside) has other ideas, and is waging a counter war. Ruth wants to enlist Cameron to stop Revok. So begins what I suppose you might call a sci-fi espionage thriller, as Cameron finds his way into the underground scanner community and Revok’s spies in ConSec learn of their plans…

Scanners seems to have a mixed level of appreciation within writer-director David Cronenberg’s CV — even going no further than Wikipedia, you can find review quotes that swing between calling it “an especially important masterwork” and a movie that “might have been a Grand Guignol treat [but is marred by] essential foolishness”. Whether it’s a masterwork or not I wouldn’t care to say, but as a rough-round-the-edges genre thriller, I found it mightily entertaining.

As our hero, Lack isn’t much cop. If you were being kind you could write his oddness off as a product of Cameron’s reclusive lifestyle, but I’m not sure that was a deliberate choice. There are worse performances in the history of genre cinema though, and it’s not like his emotional journey or something is the core of the film. As if to make up for it, McGoohan is of course excellent, acting everyone else off the screen, while Ironside makes for an excellent villain, naturally. Some say that the final psychic battle, between Lack and Ironside, is underwhelming, but I thought it was excellently realised, a tense and effective struggle. Such brilliant effects and sequences are scattered throughout the film.

I do like a good genre movie, and Scanners manages to mash together a couple of my favourites — primarily, science fiction and espionage/undercover mystery-thrillers — in a way that, unless I’m forgetting something, we’ve seen surprisingly rarely. It’s not quite “a Bond film with telekinetics”, but if it were, that’s perhaps the only way I’d’ve found it more enjoyable.

Scanners is on the Horror Channel tonight at 9pm, and again tomorrow night at 2:15am.

* Though, in isolation, bad enough that I changed my mind about using it as the header image for this review. ^

100 Films in a Year’s 1,000th film is…

Posted on August 17, 2015 by badblokebob

Basic maths tells us that, in theory, 100 films in a year should result in 1,000 films in a decade. Patently, this is not the case: after eight years, seven months and sixteen days of my self-imposed titular challenge, I have viewed my 1,000th film.

And it is Mark Cousin’s 15-hour documentary, The Story of Film: An Odyssey.

Normally I’d leave such an announcement for my monthly update, but the next one’s a fortnight away and this is a special occasion. Also, I wanted to take a moment to address a few issues this choice might kick up, which also pads out this otherwise rather slight post.*

Firstly, for anyone who might have forgotten/never bothered to read the ‘rules’ (I don’t blame you), this is my 1,000th official/counted/main list film. That only includes films I’d never seen before, or alternative cuts that are significantly modified from the version I’d previously seen. This is why there are over 1,000 reviews on this blog but I’ve only now reached #1000, because I’ve also reviewed every not-that-different alternate cut I’ve seen in that time, as well as covering a handful of other movies.

Secondly, you may well be thinking, “but that’s a TV series, you cheeky so-and-so!” Well, yes and no. It’s true that it premiered on UK TV, and so that’s the form most people will have experienced it in, whether when it aired on More4 here or on TCM in the US or on another local broadcaster. But, ever since the time of its UK debut it’s been screened at various film festivals around the world (look, several pieces of evidence), and it’s in this form that it’s presented on its DVD release: not as 15 episodic chunks, but as a 15-hours-and-15-minutes whole (which has to be split across five discs). So yes, it is a TV series; but also, it’s a film. And it’s enough of a film for me to count it.

(See also today’s archive repost, a piece I wrote in 2008 titled “What makes a film a film?”)

So there we have it: long before I reach a decade of this malarkey, I’m 1,000 films done. Well, I haven’t actually finished it yet (c’mon, it’s 15 hours! I’ve made a start), but my point near enough stands. Yay me!

The full countdown to #1000 can be revisited here.
The Story of Film: An Odyssey will be reviewed in due course.

* Do the explanations exist to fill out the post, or does the post exist as a home for the explanations? Deep thoughts, man. ^

Videodrome (1983)

Posted on August 7, 2015 by badblokebob

James Woods is the owner of a trash TV station who’ll do pretty much anything for ratings. His hunt for the next ‘big’ thing leads him to come across the signal for a channel that shows just one bizarre, disturbing programme. Obsessed with finding out the truth behind it, he gets suckered in to a conspiracy that blurs the line between reality and imagination.

To look at things ass-backwards, my first exposure to the work of writer-director David Cronenberg was his 1999 movie eXistenZ, a thriller about people in a virtual reality video-game where the line between what’s real-life and what’s the game gets blurred. It’s fair to say that both that and Videodrome play on similar ideas at times. Both are also ultra prescient, in their way: for eXistenZ, immersive virtual reality games are now starting to become reality, with the Oculus Rift ‘n’ all that (there endeth my knowledge of such things); for Videodrome, even though it’s 32 years old and the tech being depicted is similarly dated, its fears about the influence of the media and the changes it brings to society could’ve been shot yesterday.

These thought-provoking themes are in part conveyed through Cronenberg’s familiar stomping ground of body horror, with top-drawer prosthetics giving tangible visual life to nightmarish ideas. OK, they’re clearly rubber and silicone and plastic and whatever, but the fact they’re there on set, that they’re genuinely one with the actors, not painted over the top later by a computer, that they’re pliable and squidging for real… it’s much more effective, more unsettling, more horrific than computer effects have yet managed.

I guess for some people the “ew”-inducing effects are the primary delight of the film. These are the kind of people who complain about the UK version being cut. In truth, this is actually the originally-released R-rated version; the so-called Director’s Cut adds just over a minute. Having read about what’s added (all of a few seconds here and there), it sounds like no great shakes, to be honest. I’m all for releasing movies uncut and as intended by the director, but really, some people get too hung up on some of these details. (For what it’s worth, Arrow’s new UK Blu-ray is the longer cut.)

Trims or not, the movie’s themes remain intact. They gave me the sense that Cronenberg wasn’t entirely sure where to go with them — the film descends into a kind of dream logic, fumbling around for a way forward and coming to a somewhat inconclusive ending. That, too, is likely part of the charm for some people. I wasn’t wholly sold.

At worst, though, Videodrome is certainly an experience; one that, over three decades on, still has plenty to say about our consumption of and reliance on the media.

Videodrome is released as a limited edition dual-format Blu-ray by Arrow Video on Monday.

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