Cult British filmmaker Ben Wheatley’s previous film, Sightseers, turned a Brummie couple’s caravan tour into a murder spree. A Field in England is even more bizarre.
A surreal black-and-white horror story set during the English Civil War, the film finds a trio of battlefield deserters (including The League of Gentlemen’s Reece Shearsmith) falling into the clutches of a sinister alchemist (Wheatley regular Michael Smiley), who forces them to aid him in his search for buried treasure.
It gets stranger and stranger. The men play tug of war against a seemingly occult force; Shearsmith’s timid protagonist eats magic mushrooms and trips out; people die and come back to life. Then there are the moments when the characters freeze in tableaux-like poses.
At times, the film’s spell breaks, leaving the actors looking like a bunch of Sealed Knot re-enactors going bonkers in a field. For the most part, though, Wheatley – aided by customary cinematographer Laurie Rose and writer-partner Amy Jump – creates a powerfully unnerving mood that taps into dark, deep and very weird currents of English folk myth and mystery.
Marking a first for UK film distribution, A Field In England will be available simultaneously in cinemas, on Film4, VOD, and on DVD and Blu-ray, all on 5th July 2013.
Find out more on the film’s official site.
THE STORY
In 1920s London, during a normal hectic day on the Underground, mild mannered Northern Line porter Bill (Brian Aherne) falls for shop worker Nell (Elissa Landi). But their newfound love is threatened when brutish power station worker Burt (Cyril McLaglen) also sets his sights on Nell.
With the aide of his besotted ex squeeze Kate (Norah Baring), Burt hatches a plan to discredit Bill in Nell’s eyes, which climaxes in a furious chase through the London Underground and across the rooftops of the Lots Road power station.
THE LOWDOWN
If you sniff at the idea of watching a silent movie, then sniff no more as director Anthony Asquith’s tale of love, jealousy and murder is one of the most exciting examples of vintage British cinema you will ever see.
Aged just 26 at the time, Asquith (the son of former British Prime Minister, HH Asquith) gives Alfred Hitchcock a run for his money in the suspense stakes (Hitch had hit the big time in 1927 with The Lodger) with his tight direction, thrilling scenario and sophisticated editing skills, that owe a big debt to German Expressionism and the Russian avant-garde.
For audiences today, this romantic thriller wonderfully evokes 1920s London and the lives of the commuters of city’s iconic transportation system, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year. Thanks to the BFI National Archive’s superb restoration and Neil Brand’s effective orchestral score, Asquith’s masterly love letter to the Tube looks and sounds as fresh as ever. This is one silent movie you won’t sniff at.
THE DISC
The BFI Dual Format release (comprising DVD and Blu-ray) is presented with Neil Brand’s score performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and includes an alternative score by Chris Watson. The five shorts included on the release featuring footage of Asquith as a child in 1909, scenes of Piccadilly Circus and Hyde Park Corner from 1930, a 1948 film about the expansion of the Central Line beyond Stratford, and a 1958 documentary about the Tube’s nightshift workers.
Out today (17 June) on DVD from Fabulous Films and Fremantle Media is Jim Jarmusch’s rip-snorting 1997 rockumentary YEAR OF THE HORSE about Neil Young and Crazy Horse, featuring killer versions of Like a Hurricane, Tonight’s the Night and Chief Crazy Horse, filmed during live performances in Europe and the US during their 1996 tour. With archives ‘stolen’ from Bernard Shakey’s film Muddy Track, Jarmusch’s documentary also includes exclusive interviews and rehearsal footage filmed between 1976 and 1986.
To celebrate the DVD release, we have three copies up for grabs. To be in the draw, all you need to do is answer the following question correctly by filling out the form below.
Q: Who directed the 1997 documentary Year of the Horse?
• Quentin Tarantino
• Christopher Guest
• Jim Jarmusch
• Jonathan Demme
No sooner has Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens cast off Cousin Matthew’s tweeds than he’s back on screen as a stiff-upper-lipped toff. And if this wasn’t typecasting enough, in Summer in February he’s playing another thoroughly decent chap who is yearning after a flighty young woman.
His character is land agent and former army captain Gilbert Evans and the woman, played by Emily Browning, is aspiring artist Florence Carter Wood, newly arrived in the bohemian artists’ colony at Lamorna in Cornwall in 1911.
Gilbert is soon smitten with the newcomer, but before he can overcome his emotional reticence and pop the question (Bah! That stiff upper lip, again), his friend, raffish artist Alfred Munnings (Dominic Cooper), also steps in to woo her.
Based on a true love-triangle drama that played out before the First World War, Summer in February is very pretty to look at but hardly groundbreaking, just like the paintings of the Newlyn School artists whose work provides the film’s backdrop. (Munnings, a fierce anti-Modernist, said he’d give Picasso a kick up the arse if he saw him in the street.)
Stevens and Cooper are hardly stretched by their roles, and it’s Browning who gives the film’s most vivid performance as the troubled object of the men’s affections. Unfortunately, when Florence throws herself into a series of headstrong acts, Jonathan Smith’s script (adapted from his own novel, itself inspired by Evans’ diaries) fails to flesh out her motivations convincingly.
Elsewhere, the screenplay too often resorts to cliché (’I don’t want a cad living on my land’), but the lavish period detail and classy cast will appeal to lovers of cosy costume drama, even if the film will look more at home as Sunday night viewing on TV.
In cinemas from Friday 14th June.
To activate the sound in the trailer: hold your cursor over the screen to reveal the control panel and click on the volume control in the bottom right-hand corner.
Joss Whedon’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing is quite literally a home movie – Whedon shot the film at his Santa Monica house in just 12 days with a bunch of actor-friends (a repertory company largely drawn from his TV series Angel and Firefly), putting to good use a break he was contractually obliged to take following completion of principal photography on The Avengers.
If this makes the movie sound like a Hollywood gazillionaire’s embarrassing vanity project, think again: filmed in lustrous black and white, Whedon’s Much Ado is an elegant and intelligent, hugely entertaining modern-day version of the play. The setting may be contemporary, the action taking place in California rather than the Sicily of the original, but the language and the story remain resolutely faithful to Shakespeare.
The plot goes like this. Home from the wars, the dashing Benedick (Alexis Denisof) resumes his love-hate relationship with the sharp-tongued Beatrice (Amy Acker), while his impetuous friend Claudio (Clark Gregg) woos the fair and innocent Hero (Jillian Morgese). But a conniving villain is plotting to destroy their happiness…
One or two slight missteps aside, Whedon handles all this with graceful panache. Then again, perhaps it shouldn’t be such a surprise that he’s so in tune with the play. After all, as they bicker and banter their way through the battle of the sexes and into falling in love, Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Benedick laid down the template for those sparring rom-com lovers that Hollywood loves so much.
It’s clear, though, that Whedon loves Shakespeare and has a real feel for the Bard’s language. So do his cast. Denisof and Acker spark together wonderfully, their exchanges bristling with wit. It’s a shame Whedon opens the film with a flashback of showing them in bed together before the action begins, a jarring shot that undercuts the sexual tension that crackles between the pair as they strive to deny their mutual love. This glimpse of modern-day sexual manners also makes it harder for us to accept the vehemence with which the callow Claudio rejects Hero for supposed infidelity.
Yet despite these minor flaws, Whedon’s Much Ado is a joy. And who knew that Shakespeare’s wince-inducing clowns Constable Dogberry and his sidekick Verges, played here by Nathan Fillion and Tom Lenk as a pair of bumbling LAPD types, could be so funny?
In cinemas from Friday 14th June.
To activate the sound in the trailer: hold your cursor over the screen to reveal the control panel and click on the volume control in the bottom right-hand corner.
The Horror Show is a new UK-based VOD service, launching today, giving horror fans the chance to stream and download the latest releases, as well as classic and cult titles.
Currently available to view are titles like the critically acclaimed Excision, the restored classic Who Can Kill A Child?, and festival favourite Dead Hooker in a Trunk. There’s also a host of indie fare – many of which are getting their first ever screenings outside of film festivals like the UK’s FrightFest.
The new VoD service is also working with film-makers to secure exclusive screening rights, starting with the paranormal chiller The Casebook of Eddie Brewer (which I haven’t seen as yet) and a collection of 10 shorts, including Paul Davis’ serial killer black comedy Him Indoors, starring Reece Shearsmith.
The shorts are priced at 10p a shot (that’s two hours of horror for just 99p), while the films start at £1.99. There’s also no contract, so you can just use the service as you would iTunes.
Given that it deals with a spectacularly dysfunctional family, writer-director Josh Boone’s romantic comedy-drama Stuck in Love is surprisingly warm-hearted and cosy.
The characters really are messed up, though. Greg Kinnear’s blocked writer, Bill Borgens, still pines for ex-wife Erica (Jennifer Connelly) and haunts her home at night, hoping to find evidence that her current marriage is falling apart.
His precocious 19-year-old daughter, Samantha (Lily Collins), already a published author, won’t forgive mom and has adopted a pose of hard-bitten cynicism when it comes to her own love life, much to the dismay of eager suitor Lou (Logan Lerman).
Son Rusty (Nat Wolff), squirming on the fence as he tries to keep both parents happy, meanwhile falls for troubled classmate Kate (Liano Liberato).
With almost everyone on screen trading snappy one-liners and literary references with aplomb, you’d think the quirkiness and self-absorption on display would-be off-putting, but Boone’s warmth towards his characters and the cast’s appealing performances draw you into their lives and make you hope they’ll all pull through.
In cinemas from Friday 14th June.
To activate the sound in the trailer: hold your cursor over the screen to reveal the control panel and click on the volume control in the bottom right-hand corner.
Squeezing into Superman’s tights following his spell in doublet and hose on The Tudors, Henry Cavill cuts a brooding figure for much of comic-book movie reboot Man of Steel.
And with Watchman director Zack Snyder at the helm and Christopher ‘Dark Knight’ Nolan co-producing and co-devising the story, it’s no surprise that the mood should be dark and serious. If you’re hankering after the playful innocence of Christopher Reeve’s Superman films, you’ll definitely be disappointed.
A brother under the cape to Christian Bale’s Batman, Cavill’s Superman is another of those superheroes who are wracked by existential angst. And given Snyder and Nolan’s sober take on the tale, it’s no wonder he has issues.
Exiled to Earth as a baby from his dying home planet Krypton, the future Superman grows up amid the cornfields of Kansas. Yet it’s far from an idyllic boyhood, notwithstanding the love of adoptive parents Jonathan and Martha Kent (Kevin Costner, Diane Lane). The young Clark Kent, né Kal-El, finds his super-senses a torment and must keep his super-powers under wraps for fear of persecution.
No wonder, then, that when we first encounter Cavill’s Clark, he’s a bearded outcast living on the fringes of society, ready for instant flight should his compulsion to intervene in moments of jeopardy draw attention. At least, that’s the case until Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane gets on his trail – and with Amy Adams playing Lois as a savvy Pulitzer Prize-winner there’s going to be no opportunity for any of the flirtatious dual-identity byplay that was such an enjoyable feature of the earlier films.
Besides, the planet is in peril. Genoicidal Kryptonian renegade General Zod (Michael Shannon) has turned up in a spaceship, threatening Earth with destruction unless its leaders hand over the secret extraterrestrial refugee living in their midst – the cue, sadly, for a series of those prolonged slugfests between near-indestructible foes that are a regrettable feature of the superhero genre.
As comic-book adventures go, Man of Steel is far too solemn and self-important to deliver a true sense of wonder, but it’s by no means a total flop.
Surprisingly, the acting is one of its stronger suits. Russell Crowe displays suitable nobility and gravitas (and a posh English accent) as Superman’s father, Jor-El. Costner and Lane are even better as Clark’s all-American adoptive parents.
Indeed, when Lane’s Martha comforts the young Clark after his newly discovered X-ray vision causes him to freak out, the moment is heart-meltingly tender; later on, Costner supplies an even more touching moment in the midst of whirling tornado.
As for Cavill, even if he rarely gets the chance to lighten up, he looks entirely at ease in the role, whether as ripped, rugged outcast or as supremely noble saviour, which makes his lack of rapport with Adams’ Lois even more of a shame. Fortunately, when Superman takes to the skies, the movie soars. It lands with a thud, though, when Zod and his cohorts touch down.
In cinemas from Friday 14th June.
To activate the sound in the trailer: hold your cursor over the screen to reveal the control panel and click on the volume control in the bottom right-hand corner.
It’s been home to Peter Cushing’s Baron in The Curse of Frankenstein, Boris Karloff’s secretive horticulturist in Die Monster Die, and Lon Chaney’s Satanist in Witchcraft. It’s witnessed Frankie Howerd being stalked by an axe-wielding Ray Milland in The House in Nightmare Park (read Pete’s review here), caused Stephanie Beacham to have nightmares in And Now the Screaming Starts, and seen Donald Pleasance conducting strange experiments on Doctor Who’s Tom Baker in The Mutations. It’s also housed lesbian bloodsuckers (Vampyres), evil gardeners (The Night Digger) and all manner of Riff Raff from 1975’s Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Welcome to Oakley Court. Situated on the River Thames in Windsor, Berkshire, London, this Victorian Gothic mansion was built in 1859 for Sir Richard Hall Say, the High Sheriff of Berkshire, and changed hands a few times until 1919, when it was purchased by Ernest Olivier (who lived in the house until his death in 1965).
When Bray Studios (which was used by Hammer Films) moved next door in 1955, Oakley Court became a most convenient setting for a host of films over the next two decades. Today, Oakley Court is a popular hotel hosting year-round events (our Pete visited it over the last May Bank holiday), and doesn’t shy away from its horror heritage. Here’s a list of the films that have been made there. How many do you remember?
