The Usual Suspects (1995)

Director Bryan Singer's and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie's classic Oscar winning (for original screenplay and for Kevin Spacey as best supporting actor) 1995 neo-noir gets a 4K restoration limited edition UHD and Blu-ray release from Arrow Films.

After a massacre on a cargo ship leaves 27 men dead and one Hungarian burns victim in intensive care, FBI man Jack Baer (Giancarlo Esposito) investigates the case while customs officer Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) interviews the one survivor capable of walking and talking, con artist Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey). 

As Baer gets to the bottom of what happened on the ship and who was responsible, Kint tells Kujan how he and four others were recruited by enigmatic crime boss Keyser Söze, whom they had all apparently and unwittingly previously stolen from, to stop a drug deal from taking place. But as more facts are uncovered it becomes apparent that Kint may not be the most reliable narrator of events.

A clever script that's given equally clever direction, THE USUAL SUSPECTS tells the viewer all they need to know to provoke nagging questions at the back of their own minds as events unfold. The denouement is extremely satisfying, not least because rather than saying 'fooled you' to the audience it instead confirms that all along they were right to be suspicious. Thirty years later it remains extremely effective and I have no intention of spoiling it here.

Arrow's 4K restoration looks splendid, and there are 5.1 and 3.0 sound potions. As far as it's possible to tell, extras on the disc are all archival. These include two commentary tracks (one from composer / editor John Ottman,  the other from Singer and McQuarrie), interviews with DP Newton Thomas Sigel (16 minutes), and John Ottman (18 minutes), a two part making of (51 minutes in total), a piece on Keyser Soze with cast interviews (18 minutes), the 1995 Cannes premiere (4 minutes), Polygram's EPK (Electronic Press Kit - 6 minutes), 10 minutes of deleted scenes introduced by John Ottman, a seven minute gag reel, three minutes of interview out-takes, trailers and a TV spot.

Arrow's limited edition UHD also comes with a booklet featuring new writing by Barry Forshaw, a double-sided fold out poster, and a reversible sleeve with original and newly commissioned art.

THE USUAL SUSPECTS is out on limited edition 4KUHD and Blu-ray from Arrow Films on Monday 6th January 2025

Rampo Noir (2005)

"Great Author. Great Shame About the Film"

Arrow Films are releasing 2005's RAMPO NOIR on Blu-ray. It's an anthology film by four different Japanese directors that purports to ‘adapt’ (and I use that term loosely but not as loosely as the people who made the film) four stories by the Japanese writer Edogawa Rampo (a play on 'Edgar Allan Poe' - his real name was Taro Hirai). Rampo became famous in his homeland for his detective novels, but many of his short stories contained controversial elements of what were termed 'ero guro nansesu' or eroticism, grotesquerie and the nonsensical. His tales of cruelty and psychological horror haven’t been translated into English much, although there is a nice little paperback from Tuttle publishing that includes the classic tales ‘The Hell of Mirrors’ and ‘The Caterpillar’, both of which have both been filmed here.

We start with the very brief 'Mars' Canal', which is essentially plotless and features a naked man wrestling with a naked woman who might be his reflection that he saw in a lake. There's some fascination with lighting and skin texture here but in terms of narrative there's very little of substance.

An emphasis on imagery (plentiful) over storytelling (mediocre at best) and pacing (terrible) is present in the second story which adapts the mirror tale, and adds to its bare bones source a plot about women being discovered with their faces burned off. It turns out they all have hand mirrors made by one particular man, who ends up inside the mirrored sphere of the original piece. Despite attempts to make a police procedural out of it, this is far too slow and far too in love with its own visual style to hold the attention.

After that we get ‘The Caterpillar’ one of the most outrageous of Rampo's stories as well as being one of the cruellest and most despairing. The story of a war hero who comes home without his arms and legs only to be tortured by his wife was banned by the Japanese government out of concerns it would affect their war effort, and it could have formed the basis for a painful, tragic meditation on loss and desire. Instead once again we get something that is far more concerned with imagery than narrative which, especially coming after the similarly dirge-like previous segment makes for testing viewing indeed. Finally comes 'Crawling Bugs', a story whose execution is confusing rather than ambiguous and the denouement silly rather than horrific.

I'm being more vitriolic than usual here because I'm a big fan of Rampo's stories and it would be awful if RAMPO NOIR was to put off new prospective readers. Here his stories have been hijacked by filmmakers who have seemed determined to turn some excellent pieces of short fiction into relentlessly dull and self-indulgent cinema, and that's a great shame.

Extras include a new commentary track from Jasper Sharp and Alexander Zahlten, a 76 minute making of from 2006, 15 minutes of footage from the Japanese premiere with the directors on stage, an image gallery, and a stack of new interviews.

The new interviews include Mars Canal director Suguru Takeuchi (14 minutes), Caterpillar director Hisayasu Soto (25 minutes), Crawling Bugs director Atsushi Kaneku (14 minutes), Caterpillar cinematographer Akiko Ashizawa (16 minutes), and Mirror Hell cinematography advisor Masao Nakabori (25 minutes) and actress Yumi Yoshiyaki (14 minutes). There are also image galleries for each story. The disc also comes with a reversible sleeve and an illustrated booklet with new writing on the film.

RAMPO NOIR is out on Blu-ray from Arrow Films on Monday 6th January 2025

Rippy (2024)

Director Ryan Coonan's RIPPY, about a zombie kangaroo on the rampage in a small and remote Australian town, is getting a Digital and DVD release from Altitude Films.

Now, you're probably thinking that with that sort of subject matter you might just be in for something laugh a minute, perhaps even a spoof of not just creature features but Australian exploitation cinema as a whole.

But no. Sadly, RIPPY isn't like that at all.

RIPPY is played dead (sorry) serious throughout, so much so that you get the feeling the movie started off as a sober subject about a killer animal run wild, and then someone had the bright idea in post-production that it would be much improved if the threat was, instead, a CGI zombie kangaroo.

That would certainly explain why we don't see the creature for a lot of the running time, except in occasional brief close ups. Instead we get the story of small town sheriff Maddie (Tess Haubrich) who is approached one morning by slightly mad Schmitty (Michael Biehn who, it must be said, still has it) who is convinced he shot a creature on his property that then refused to die. 

Meanwhile bodies are starting to pile up, with post mortem findings (some nice gore effects here) suggesting the bodies were bitten and torn rather than injured with a weapon. It's not long before an expedition into the wilderness is mounted, with the inevitable showdown taking place once we're back in town.

RIPPY boasts some gorgeous locations and the acting is absolutely fine. However it could do with quite a bit more monster action and rather fewer lengthy dialogue sequences. Still, at just over 80 minutes it makes for brief undemanding entertainment that could easily have ended up as a Frightfest midnight movie. Here's the trailer:

RIPPY is out from Altitude Films on Digital on Monday 30th December 2024 and DVD on Monday 13th January 2025