'Things I never Told You' (1996) - Isabel Coixet.

Gifted film-maker Isabel Coixet has crafted a rewardingly dark comedy of profound emotional resonance. The earthy performances feel vividly lifelike, wholly uncontrived. A compassionate, visually sublime film of rare insight and enormous sensitivity. While dealing bluntly with the multifaceted, deleterious effects of depression, Coixet's sardonic text has an edifying warmth and humanity not oft seen. And the rumours were true, Andrew McCarthy does have the most delectable behind! As though having been deliciously cloistered in some magnificently lucid dream, I genuinely didn't want 'Things I Never Told You' to end, this charming, elegiac indie masterpiece is eminently worthy of rediscovery. While frequently exploring the murkier interstices of the human soul, this engagingly intelligent drama is never trite or maudlin, but, mirroring its spellbinding star, Lili Taylor, it maintains an uncommonly forceful fascination! 

 

 

'Beyond The Law' (2019) – James Cullen Bressack.

This is the most bemusingly whispery, chair-bound, arm-foldy, cigar-chomping manifestation of Seagal that I have ever seen! While it would be more than fair to say Bressack's 'Beyond The Law' is just another generically gun-happy, pee'd off papa pugilist on a righteously vengeful blood-rampage B-actioner, Beyond The Law's Alpha saltiness was pleasurably sweetened by the luridly luscious, luxuriously long-legged lollipop Saxon Sharbino! But they really should have done a bit more with primo 80s head-knocker Patrick Kilpatrick, jus' sayin'. As a lapsed Seagallion I find much of his recent output fairly onerous, but this latest inert incarnation of an almost entirely sedentary Seagal is an unexpectedly appealing one!

With DMX appearing more awkward than usual, having stern, gravelly-voiced hunk Johnnny Messner make with all the brutal bone-breaking shizz was a solid move. With everyone in 'Beyond The law' being propah skeezey, pathos is pretty low, plus the Rizla-thin plot does little to disguise the overall lack of invention, and yet, in spite of all that negative energy, 'Beyond The Law' proved itself to be a pretty likeable, lunk-headed B-Actioner. Hey!! while 'Beyond The Law' sounds like a vintage Seagal movie, it felt more like an undercooked Frank Grillo! Even after all that facetious jibber-jabber, I'm still up for the sequel 'Beyond The Commode'...'They stole the wrong geezer's poopy potty!'...Hell!!! I'd even be up for the inevitable Seagal in an Iron Lung movie, 'someone wasted his family and he WILL take it lying down!' Did I already mention that sublime sex-siren Saxon Sharbino slinked saucily across the screen like a hypnotically hardbodied, blissfully bottomed boss? 

 

 

  

'The Octagon' (1980) – Eric Karson.

Action impresario, Eric Karson's still-scintillating, mercenary mashing martial arts sensation 'The Octagon' remains the jewel of any comprehensive 80s Ninja collection! Vintage VHS-era whup-ass doesn't get any gutsier, as the bellicose bare-chested beat-downs in 'The Octagon' make the catastrophic meltdown at Chernobyl look like a sloppy ice cream cone. Bringing his inimitable karate A Game, Chuck annihilates these sinisterly shadow-stalking assailants, his preternatural Ninja-baiting supremacy reaching a deadly apogee in the mesmerizingly macho martial arts maelstrom that concludes cult Ninja classic 'The Octagon' in such a thrilling, brutally brain concussing fashion! 

The monolithically moustachioed, heroically hirsute martial arts messiah, Chuck Norris is on ferociously fleet-fisted form as the black-clad, Ninja neutralizing hero, Scott James! Scott's savage sinews are titanium tough tendrils of terrorist trashing terror! His preternaturally powerful punches have the world-wasting impetus of an apocalyptic asteroid! And while it has been suggested that god fashioned the myriad marvels of the earth in 7 back-breaking days, sensei, Chuck Norris could readily manifest an ice age with one roundhouse kick! Chuck Norris famously karate chopped a full-grown Yeti into spaghetti! He's saltier than the Red Sea! Chuck still eats his man-sized breakfasts off a tectonic plate! He's the original Ninja-slayer, and, Eric Karson's 'The Octagon' remains an exhilaratingly tibia-trashing testament to the righteously reigning patriarch of pugilistic perfection's legendary status as the beloved bearded Baron of B-Movie bellicosity. And kudos to Anchor Bay for producing such a pristine-looking Blu-ray!

'The whys and wherefores don’t matter. You wanted a man for this mission, and now you’ve got one!'