Blu-ray

Moulin Rouge! is the pinnacle of Baz Luhrmann’s cinema of excess. Described by the filmmaker himself as ‘belonging to a cinematic vernacular where you are essentially heightening the cinematic experience’, this bold, brash and electrifying attempt at re-creating the movie musical for a modern audience offers little original in the way of narrative. But the way it is designed, staged and filmed, not to mention the inventive use of pop songs throughout, makes it a film like nothing you’ve ever seen before – and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Confession time: Before getting started on this review, I had never seen Meir Zarchi's notorious 1978 rape-revenge shocker I Spit on Your Grave. Despite being a child of the 'video nasty', having spent the latter part of the '80s and early '90s building up an extensive VHS library packed with titles like Nekromantik, Cannibal Ferox and Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, for some reason I had never actually bothered with the film that - for many - was synonymous with this controversy-baiting collection of movies.

The Pacific is a companion piece to the earlier Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks produced Band of Brothers. As its name indicates, this ten-part miniseries shifts its gaze from Europe to the war in the Pacific, and this time the narrative(s) follows three marines and their various experiences rather than a single company of soldiers. 

Quite simply, Raimi's return to the genre that spawned his career is a much needed breath-of-fresh-air for the increasingly self-referential, po-faced and torture-obsessed American horror genre. It's not the most original film - the story about a young woman with only days to live after being cursed treads much of the same ground as MR James' Casting the Runes (and the excellent 1957 adaptation Night of the Demon) - but that really doesn't matter a jot, as writer-director Sam Raimi delivers a fast-paced and playful chiller that's entirely focused on making its audience jump. In other words; exactly the kind of silly ghoulish treat Hollywood seemed to have given up on.

Having started out with hit-and-miss remakes of William Castle flicks like House on Haunted Hill and Thir13en Ghosts, genre specialists Dark Castle Entertainment finally ventured into the uncharted world of original horror stories with this tale of a spooky ship haunting the Bering Sea. I say original, but while it's not actually a remake, this tepid scare film blows all of the good will it's bravura opening sequence generates by then proceeding to run a gauntlet of second-hand plot points and gore gags that any true genre fan will have tired of decades ago.

With the remake currently stinking up multiplexes on both sides of the Atlantic, it's no surprise that Warner Home Video has seen fit to bring the original Fame to Blu-ray this week.

Picking up where Sharpe's Challenge left off, this 2008 outing finds Sharpe and his colleague Harper on the way back to Madras. Coming to the aid of an East India Company baggage train the soldiers soon find themselves caught up in a very familiar plot involving nasty soldiers and opium smuggling.