2010 DVD log : updated 11.Jan. (‘SPLINTER’ [2008])

BARFLY  
US 87 : Barbet Schroeder : 5/10 {12/28} : 100m : DVD, 1.Jan.
   Charles Bukowski was a great novelist, but only so-so as a scriptwriter. This, his sole produced screenplay, is a plodding, occasionally fanciful stab at loose autobiography, burdened by a mannered central performance from Mickey Rourke as a Los Angeles alcoholic whose rough exterior hides as sensitive soul. Bukowski's very lightly fictionalised roman-a-clef account of the picture's troubled production, Hollywood (in which a certain "Jean-Luc Modard" figures, hilariously) , is one of his best - read that instead. 2.1.10

BLUE SUNSHINE 
US 76 : Jeff Lieberman : 6/10 {17/28} : 95m : DVD, 5.Jan.
   The political/cultural subtexts of this lurid shocker are much more interesting than the clodhopping direction and the garbled paranoid-thriller plot, which involves the homicidal after-effects of some dodgy LSD. Those effects are (implausibly) delayed by a decade, meaning that the former acid-heads are now 'respectable' citizens. Sub-Cronenbergian high-jinks, with a thuddingly reactionary (anti-hippie but pro-disco) slant. Eeriest aspect nowadays is nerdy leading-man Zalman King's distractingly doppelganger-ish resemblance to a Sean Penn. 6.1.10

SPLINTER 
US 08 : Toby Wilkins : 6/10 {15/28} : 79m (video) : DVD, 9.Jan.
   Reasonably efficient little horror-picture plays like a junior cousin of Frank Darabont's The Mist. Instead of a sprawling supermarket, the setting is a gas-station shop; instead of a cast of dozens, there are only four speaking-parts of any note; and instead of myriad elaborate beasties, the threat is a single vicious (mutating / infectious) organism.
   The results are fairly claustrophobic and inventive – the limited budget mainly seems to have gone on the special effects, which range from the impressively unpleasant to the borderline-laughable (a scuttling, severed hand that's one of several hommages to the ickier works of John Carpenter.)
   The cast, including Bad Lieutenant – Port of Call scenestealer Shea Whigham (as a gun-toting Deep South no-good-nik), cope gamely enough: yet again, we have a redneck/underclass couple contrasting with a more educated duo of similar age. Initial frictions and hostilities give way to teamwork and new-found two-way respect in situations of increasingly dire extremis. Worth a look, but principally a calling-card for LA-based Brit feature-debutant director Wilkins. 11.1.10

Neil Young
January 2010

[all films seen in Sunderland (UK) unless otherwise stated; timings are from BBFC and refer to the theatrical version of the film, not the video/DVD, unless otherwise stated]

10 :  28  27
9 :    26  25  24
8 :    23  22  21
7 :    20  19  18
6 :    17  16  15
5 :    14  13  12
4 :    11  10  9
3 :    8   7   6
2 :    5   4   3
1 :    2   1