Anyway, my first cut is complete and ready to view HERE.

Directed by Pete Travis; screenplay by Berry Levy; starring Dennis Quaid, William Hurt, Forest Whitaker, Matthew Fox, Edgar Ramirez, Bruce McGill, Sigourney Weaver
Dennis Quaid has always been an actor I’ve admired. His emotion is right their in his face – in the jagged contours of rugged skin and eyes that can look straight through you. Since he lost the pretty-boy shine of his 1979 underappreciated classic Breaking Away, and a little later the rightly unappreciated Jaws 3, he’s been one of Hollywood’s most dependable assets. However, often the films themselves haven’t stood up to his understated stature. Indeed, if it wasn’t for his output in 2000 (Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic and Gregory Hoblit’s Back To The Future-like Frequency) many wouldn’t even know who he is. It’s a shame then, given high expectations from an energetic trailer and promise shown previously by director Pete Travis, that Vantage Point has to shelved under Patriotic Pap with all the other vacuous Hollywood actioners of the past few years.

Essentially, Vantage Point fails because it negates to recognise the inherent criticism of its narrative is also a criticism of itself. We are presented different viewpoints of the same event – beginning, not arbitrarily in a newsroom – evidentially showing that perspective can really affect opinion and knowledge of an event. That in itself isn’t particularly profound, but in terms of the media (especially the U.S networks such as Fox), it’s something worthy of investigation. However, director Pete Travis quickly forgets his opening ten minutes, finding more satisfaction in glossing over a clichéd and particularly convoluted plot with flashbacks to different characters. That’s where we find the route of the problem. Vantage Point may be unique for the first half-hour (it’ll suck you in with its quick pace and fast-editing) but the narrative extravagance wears off. You take the film at a stripped-down, bare-bones level, and it becomes an overblown movie, that is at times confusing and frequently makes little sense.

The plot concerns the American president’s visit to Spain for a public meeting regarding world terrorism. Unfortunately, or should that be ironically, the president gets shot twice from a sniper secreted in one of the nearby buildings. An explosion is heard and then another huge blast destroys the podium where the president was addressing the crowd. The initial pandemonium after the shooting is turned into utter devastation. We see this same sequence played out from several viewpoints – the GNN news team and their cameras (with Sigourney Weaver in charge), the secret agent guarding the president (Dennis Quaid), an onlooker and his video camera (Forest Whitaker), a Spanish police office (Eduardo Noriega), eventually getting to the president himself (William Hurt).

I didn’t have a problem with the repeated narrative but I did have issue with the way it was used. The first half hour is tense and exciting but ultimately unfulfilling. Travis hardly gives us a political thriller with any bite, so the next best thing would be at least a critical evaluation of the all-too powerful U.S. media. Maybe how their anchored news based on bias, political and commercial agendas affects mass audience, told through Hollywood action and suspense. But no, we get red-herrings, the usual patriotism, and the same kind mass audience manipulation seen in the likes of Fox news. When the film reverts back to the beginning for the fourth time you can’t help but will something else to happen, and although each character’s view gives us something new, it’s insignificant. That’s because the film’s biggest twist (twist being far too kind a word) is held back until halfway through when we shift further back in time to the president’s viewpoint.

In terms of twists – yes, it takes you by surprise – but it doesn’t treat the audience with any respect. If you’re going to show different viewpoints starting with your basic U.S. news network team with all their cameras and a reporter complaining of censorship, you’re setting precedence for the rest of the film. That being, given all the perspectives of an event, only then can you formulate a true meaning from it. Getting one perspective may be clouded in judgement, coloured by prejudice, and so on. The film doesn’t simply offer us all angles and allow us to generate opinion, it provides us information in a specific way, allowing plot details to come out and therefore placing the audience in the events as the director wants you to see and hear them. Okay, so aside from the manipulative hand of the director (it’s a film, we expect to go from A to B to C, from the first act to the second to the third), Travis holds back on the perhaps the most important perspective of all - that being the president himself. What we find out essentially – without giving it away – is that, yet again, human life can be easily discarded as long as someone stands in the way of a bullet heading the president’s way. This precarious tone didn’t sit right with me but it certainly wasn’t the only thing from the president’s viewpoint that failed. What you learn in literature is that red-herrings are fun but you shouldn’t hide something from the audience that the characters already know. I’d forgive this if (because we as an audience are inherently sided with the ‘good-guys’ we wouldn’t know what the ‘bad-guys’ know) the film didn’t use this as the most important aspect of the plot and indeed, the whole set-up for the film’s finale. However, it does, and therefore it’s one of the films major downfalls.

Perhaps the most telling reason why Vantage Point cannot be considered anything more than a letdown is the ending. Simply, the finale is too far-fetched. The audience is asked to suspend its disbelief for a film that has prided itself on documentary realism (Travis’ trademark handheld camerawork) and a sort of honest depiction of terrible, possibly real life events. First off, we have to accept that Dennis Quaid’s car can withstand a side-on crash and still manage to travel at speeds in pursuit of his target. We then have to accept that our culprit (I’m going to issue a spoiler warning right here, which will be in effect until the end of the paragraph!), having gone to all the trouble to set the whole assassination up (clearly proving he has little regard for human life), will swerve to miss a little girl standing in the road thus turning his own car over and thwarting his plans. In addition, Quaid’s car just so happens to crash fifty yards away, and in the midst of several smashed vehicles, he heads right for Bad Guy Number 1’s, opens the door and low and behold, case solved.

I think Pete Travis’ film’s ability to masquerade as something more than it really is, is the cause of my distaste. After all, as a piece of Hollywood fluff, it doesn’t do a lot wrong. It’s very quickly paced, doesn’t outstay its welcome with a running time around ninety minutes, and features some great character actors. Although I didn’t feel Forest Whitaker excelled, he’s still a wonderful talent, and there’s some lovely moments between him and a little girl before and after the shooting and explosions take place. Said Taghmaoui is also strong in his role but he doesn’t quite hit the sadistic unease of his Iraqi soldier in Three Kings, and that chilling speech about Michael Jackson’s face. Stand-out, as mentioned, has to be Dennis Quaid who’s like an old west gunslinger that has hung up his boots but come out of retirement for one last showdown. In the right role, which he definitely is here, all the lines on his face speak a thousand words and a hundred stories. In support, Sigourney Weaver plays the controlled TV news director who loses her rag when all hell breaks loose, but it’s a shame she isn’t more prominent.

Vantage Point is like cinematic plastic surgery. Essentially, director Pete Travis has given a face-lift to the convoluted, unoriginal Hollywood action film we’ve seen a hundred times, yet, forgot to patch up the cracks. It’s a calculated film with a cold message that will ultimately leave you unfulfilled.

Rating: 2 out of 5

© Copyright Daniel Stephens 2008

I’ve been very critical of director Dennis Dugan over the last few years. Who could blame me? He gave the world the awful Saving Silverman and followed it up with the spiteful racial slurs of National Security (a film that embodied bad taste). So, with trepidation I began to watch his 2006 film The Benchwarmers with little in the way of expectation. What I learned was with a good script and some energetic performances, Dugan can turn out a decent movie. In fact, this is the best film he’s made since Happy Gilmore.

The film concerns grown-up ‘nerds’ Gus (Scheider), Richie (Spade), and Clark (Heder) who, after witnessing a helpless kid getting bullied by the little league baseball team, decide to form the ‘Benchwarmers’. With the help of billionaire Mel (Lovitz) they start a baseball competition in order to beat the little league teams who won’t let the weirdos, geeks, and computer nerds play ball.

Essentially, and the main reason the film is so delightfully entertaining, is that it’s basically about adults beating the hell out of scrawny little teenagers. There’s a fabulous moment when Richie gets his first hit. Remembering the jibes the chubby, young catcher had given him, he rounds third base and decides, instead of going easy on the twelve year old, he’ll jump in the air and fly, feet first, straight into his head mask. The child, dazed and obviously confused, hits the floor semi-unconscious. Talk about pulling no punches. There’s a great undercurrent to the humour in that it utilises childish sarcasm and silly physical comedy in a way that mocks the stereotypes inherent in young culture. The film accepts that children can be very cruel to both other children and adults due to their less-informed and polarized, pop-culture dominated view on the world, and basically mocks them for it. It’s refreshing to see a film that sheds the innocence of childhood, and The Benchwarmers certainly reminds of that other cynical baseball movie The Bad News Bears with Walter Mathau.

The film also seems to be made by a group of people either, continuously high on something or, thanks to the catering crew, given a diet consisting of far too much sugar during production. You can only applaud the introduction of baseball legend Reggie Jackson with an old photo depicting a young Reggie with a huge afro, or Jon Lovitz’s mechanical butler who delivers any sandwich your heart desires from its plastic belly. You’ve also got to love the billionaire’s home which is decked out with Star Wars figures, and made to look like the dinner hall from the Starship Enterprise. When Lovitz turns up in Kit from Knightrider you know the film is celebrating the sort of nerd-culture that makes some unfortunate children the target for spiteful bullies.

You’ve also got to give the film credit for the performances, especially Jon Heder (from Napoleon Dynamite fame) who is basically a twelve year old in a twenty year old body. He is the highlight of the movie with some wonderfully sardonic asides. Amongst many excellent moments there’s a great scene when Heder, whose favourite meal is macaroni, asks what steroids are, and gets the reply that it makes your ‘Pee Pee’ smaller. Heder suddenly has a revelation and says, ‘there must be steroids in macaroni!’.

The Benchwarmers is a delightful comedy that, while the kids laugh at the insane nature of it all, adults will be chuckling in the background thinking they can finally get their own back on the pesky little tearaways. Dugan allows the film to get preachy towards the end but it moves along at quite pace, clocking in at under eighty minutes, so hardly outstays its welcome. It’s refreshing, crazy at times, cynical throughout, and sweet when it needs to be, but above all else, it’s one funny movie.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Death Sentence TRAILER: CLICK HERE

It you want to see a movie that so perfectly encapsulates deux ex machina look no further than James Wan’s Death Sentence. It’s an unoriginal piece of filmmaking that hinges on one of the biggest horror clichés in the book. It’s a shame because director Wan definitely has an eye for action and suspense. Indeed, Death Sentence (about a man driven to revenge after his son is murdered and his family terrorised by a urban gang) might be messy but it’s taut and intriguing when Wan concentrates on his action sequences. It isn’t surprising since this is the writer-director who brought us the brilliant Saw. What is rather discouraging is the fact his blood-splattered revenge movie lacks Saw’s unique ability to stay one step ahead of the discerning horror fan and viewer. The grander scale of Death Sentence seems to limit the effectiveness of Wan’s directorial capabilities proving that bigger budgets and bigger stars hinder the talents of those once forced to utilize the ‘reigned-in’ limitations of low-budget independent cinema. When Wan attempts to be subtle in Death Sentence we find the film digress to colourless melodrama and soap-opera styling.

It’s also a shame that although the film does have a few twists they can’t help the fact it’s all in the wake of better cinematic excursions. As a take on I Spit On Your Grave, Death Sentence doesn’t have the political or socialistic undertones, while it doesn’t hold a candle to Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs. Wan is a long way from creating the characterisation and tone of something like Deliverance, while his film lacks the vitality and overpowering tension of Dead Man’s Shoes. The film also lacks a strong central performance largely because Bacon’s Hume isn’t as well-written as say William Foster who was so brilliantly embodied by Micheal Douglas in Falling Down. Yet, the film begs and borrows from the more assured hands that feed it, and there is no more damaging criticism than the obvious truth – we’ve seen much better many times before.

Perhaps Wan’s main point here is how a man (in this case Kevin Bacon’s Mike Hume) degenerates from a loving father to a bloodied, shaven-headed killer. This is without a doubt the film’s most interesting aspect but it’s also the most poorly handled. It goes back to the beginning of the movie when the murder of his son takes place. They stop for petrol at a filling station because, quite out of the blue, Hume runs out of the stuff just after picking up his son from a hockey match. Immediately, I switched off. I couldn’t believe the film hinged on the most over-used cliché in horror film and literature. This sets precedence the film never gets over. Hume’s degeneration is based solely on unbelievable, poorly executed plot points and fake aesthetics. Are we really to believe shaving your head makes you immune to pain and a marksman with a shotgun? The film’s worst scene comes when – after buying what can only be called ‘a shit-load of guns’ – Bacon uses a how-to manual to learn how to use, fire, load and reload the weapons. He clearly struggles as he drops bullets and can’t load them properly. Suddenly, seconds later, after shaving his head and turning a solemn, bemused facial expression into stone-faced anger, he’s John J. Rambo. It’s the worst way to use a montage sequence and Wan does it clearly believing his audience are pre-schoolers (a fatal mistake since such young children wouldn’t even be allowed into the theatre to watch the movie).

As an action film it’s better than average – at times, taut and engaging. But as a piece of cinema that looks at one man’s destruction and the fall of patriarchal society, it’s soap-opera with Hollywood bells and whistles.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ Chris Wilton graces the screen in Woody Allen’s Match Point with the hideous manifestation of greed and self-loathing. At times it’s like watching the over-privileged, middle-classes spitting on poor-peasant viewers who happened, accidentally and clearly unfortunately, to sit within saliva-propelling distance. Yet, underneath the money and comfortable lifestyles, there’s a part of you who wants to be Chris Wilton. Here’s a guy, as distasteful as they come, who has it all, wants more and gets it, and avoids the consequences of his actions. Isn’t there something in that that we all want? It harks back to Allen’s interest in lust and infatuation – the fine line between it and love – and its relationship with good luck and bad luck. Someone can lust about having several sexual partners and the family life at home at the same time, but its destructiveness can define that line between what you really care about and what you simply obsess after through jealousy and greed-fueled self-fulfillment. But, isn’t the real thrill about this, and perhaps Allen’s point by the end: are you lucky enough to get away with it?

I’ve got to give Woody Allen credit for trying something outside his comfort zone – both theatrically and personally. Match Point sees the director play with genre convention and manufacture a few more plot surprises than we usually see from him, while filming the movie on-location in London, away from his native America and his cherished New York city. In retrospect, anybody new to the talented writer-director who brought the world the wonderful Manhattan and Annie Hall might not know just how diverse Allen’s work is. Indeed, anybody who remembers his musical Everyone Says I Love You, his slapstick heroics of Sleeper, or whimsical fantasy of The Purple Rose Of Cairo, might think Match Point is straight-forward drama. But, Allen’s London-based film is unique in its thematic direction. Here, unlike the others where after the first ten minutes the audience knew Allen’s basic tone, Match Point flicks a switch halfway through turning its neurotic flirtations and jealous-lusting into dark-drama hinged on one man’s basic need to be everything to everyone all the time.

I’d liken it to 2004’s Closer - both in terms of the London locale and themes of infatuation and obsession – but, just like Mike Nichol’s film, we’re provided characters so distasteful and self-absorbed it becomes difficult to sympathise with them. While Match Point throws its audience for a loop in the last twenty minutes, the second half of the film feels like a different movie. The first half is much too slowly paced (Allen’s English dialogue having its basis on stereotype doesn’t help), and while it comes together more in the final twenty minutes, you’re desperately trying to remember what happened in the hour you subconsciously switched off. The ending also feels contrived and it’s sudden jump in pace is distracting in comparison with the laboured, pedestrian first act.

Allen is restrained throughout and while his idea of neurotic self-loathing and a passion for those things seemingly beyond reach clearly comes from experience and deep-rooted empathy, his film lacks the love it needed to temper the outward lusting. Wilton’s sexual attraction to the beautiful Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson) is the hot and sweaty counterpoint to the cold and mechanical life he has with his wife. But, Allen doesn’t fully establish Wilton’s ability to love and this affects the impact of the finale.

Match Point is an interesting, if infuriating, Woody Allen film. Its uneven tone and humourless, unlikable characters make it one of his less assured efforts.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Talk about smoke and mirrors. Director Gary Sherman, he of Dead and Buried fame (or perhaps shame, depending on who you are speaking to), utilises this old magicians trick to, at least at first, great effect. Indeed, Poltergeist III begins with far too much going for it. Here is a film that is following in the footsteps of a poor sequel to a great horror movie. The original leading star names (Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams) have decided against reprising their roles, and it’s fighting a battle with all the other high profile horror sequels appearing in 1988 (Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood). Yet, surprisingly, Sherman manages to create an opening that is both intriguing and genuinely unsettling through, almost primarily, the use of mirrors, reflection, and depth of field photography. It’s a shame then, that around the halfway mark, what originality there was is thrown from the sixtieth floor window of the film’s main high-rise location, and Poltergeist III quickly, and I guess inevitably, becomes just another throwaway franchise filler.

The film follows on from Poltergeist II as Carol-Anne (Heather O’Rourke) is sent to her Auntie’s in a bid to put the events of her recent past behind her. Almost immediately, she begins to have visions of Reverend Henry Kane, a dead priest whose grave was desecrated when Carol-Anne’s father began a housing project over it. At the special school Carol-Anne attends, her psychiatrist doesn’t believe her stories of evil supernatural beings, deciding that she has a gift for hypnotic suggestion. When one of his experiments goes wrong and he sees what Carol-Anne can see, Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein, the caring medium from the first two films) is alerted telepathically that the dead have once again awoken, and that they want Carol-Anne to lead them into the light.

Poltergeist III was a product of the horror franchise culture that plagued the genre throughout the late 1980s - lazy producers who wanted to make a quick buck through audience recognition of memorable characters, plot lines, and high-concept ideas. It is a shame because there’s a good film in here somewhere – there’s flashes of skill and craftsmanship, certainly in the first half hour – but it’s lost in poor scripting and a waste of acting talent.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Who directed the original Poltergeist? Read my article…

Rounders, a film about Poker culture and the people who are involved (directly and indirectly) with the highs and lows of the game, could be a definitive Hollywood expose on the game’s new-age popularity if it wasn’t let down by wayward characterizations and poor plotting.

Mike McDermott (Matt Damon) is a great player who lost all his money and quit the game. When his best friend Worm (Edward Norton) gets out of prison owing money to the wrong sorts of people, Mike is forced back into the game he loves but at the cost of putting both his friendship, and his relationship to girlfriend Jo (Gretchen Mol), on the line.

The film is blessed with good performances – certainly from Norton (as usual) and Damon – but also from the excellent supporting cast including John Malkovich, Martin Landau, and John Turturro. Director John Dahl, who has given us such enjoyable films as Joy Ride, also gets the poker action spot-on, not just providing us with Texas Hold ‘Em but other forms of the game too. For people not versed in the game’s rules, etiquette, and slang, he throws in a whistle stop lesson, seamlessly interspersed in the action so as to not lose part of the audience. Indeed, when Rounders is concentrating on the game, it’s a winning formula of tension and ballsy attitude built on smoke-filled, sweat-drenched bluffs and high stakes.

Yet, Dahl’s control of the supporting characters lets the film down with both Mike’s relationship to his long-term girlfriend and, more importantly, his friendship with Edward Norton’s Worm, allowed to drift into the ether with no sense of closure. In fact, Norton simply disappears with twenty minutes remaining, his character becoming simply a passing mention in the film’s closing moments.

Yet, Rounders, despite its flaws, is an enjoyable, fast-paced sports-drama that will entice new fans to the game and make established Poker players salivating for their next big win.

Rating: 3 out of 5

For me, short film is a fabulous form of cinema because it allows new filmmakers to hone their craft, and an audience to see film with all the frailties and raw beauty that cinema used to possess. Recently, I’ve been very impressed with the output of British-based Future Shorts (www.futureshorts.com). Unlike Propeller or Ronke, you don’t need Sky to see their films as they’re available via My Space (http://www.myspace.com/futureshorts) and their You Tube channel (www.youtube.com/futureshorts).

My favourite at the moment is Oedipus (Click Here) by self-acclaimed makers of ‘stupid comedy’ Rong, a UK-based group of cinema fanatics who won the BBC new filmmakers award in 2005. The warped but genuinely amusing tale begins with the title-card ‘The following featurette should not be viewed by anyone who has, or has had, a mother and/or father’. It proceeds to fit a left-of-centre modern day tale of masturbation into the ageless, but equally warped, psychology of Freud’s Oedipus complex. The film, made in 2004, features an rhyming narration that works particularly well, but it’s the perfect pace of the film that really sets it apart. It may be raw but Oedipus examples the virtues of short film with enthusiasm and obvious skill.

Certainly, for a more accomplished and less risqué piece of cinema look no further than Japanese film Right Place (Click Here). This comedy-drama looks at a Tokyo worker’s obsession with neatness and perfection. It features some stunning cinematography that perfectly encapsulates what the film tries to portray. The rigid, static camera shots and balanced frame set the film’s tone, a correctness that has to be maintained. Indeed, Right Place is cinematic art at its most inspiring, with superb use of sound and lighting, and a rhythmic flow to the editing.

Other very worthy films to look for are the brilliant animations from Yev Yilmaz (check out Procrastination: Click Here), Gokhan Okur’s Last Train Ride (Click Here), and the multi award-winning Heap Of Trouble (Click Here). Also, check out Pierre Olivier’s beautiful Can We Kiss (Click Here), a film set in a French café about a girl who wants to practice her audition lines with a complete stranger.

Links to my short films:

Sundown (2005) - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

Trouble With Mr. Goldman (2006)

Home (2006)

This Ball’s Life (2006)

Bad Dream (2002) 

Further Reading:
1. Short Film: A brief critical history

2. Short Film In The UK: Screen Yorkshire and the Independents

3. Short Film In The UK: Film Festivals and Competitions

4. Short Film In The UK: Technology and the Tiny Screen

5. Short Film In The UK: Availability, Audience, and the Future

6. ‘Okay, we’re done’: The story of my first short film

7. Short Film Take II: The Trouble With Mr. Goldman

8. Short Film In The UK: Recommended Links

It’s no secret the film came from a Spielberg idea – in fact, the genesis for Poltergeist came from the Oscar-winning director’s Night Skies project about a family terrorised in their home by an evil alien. This eventually became a story about a decent and loving creature from outer space - E.T: The Extraterrestrial - with Spielberg adapting the idea around a troublesome evil spirit instead, creating Poltergeist.

The problem that has always troubled me is how Poltergeist feels like a Spielberg movie – a Spielberg script, directed with a Spielberg mentality. It follows the same themes the director has probed his entire career – childhood, family, loss, the supernatural. The film is a far cry from Hooper’s low-budget shocker The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it isn’t as implicitly violent, it features far more special-effects (albeit, the film had a much bigger budget), and it has a much more mainstream, less documentary-inspired feel about it. It’s also, when you look at Tobe Hooper’s career post-The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the likes of such rubbish Invaders From Mars and The Mangler dominating his C.V., far too good to be Hooper film.

Aside from aesthetic evidence there has always been some ambiguity from people who worked on the set – the actors and the production staff – about who was running the show. Indeed, Spielberg produced so many films he didn’t direct yet Poltergeist is the only one where his role is unclear.

Of course, filmmaking is a collaborative effort, you only have to look at the eight minute end of movie credit sequences to know that. Yet, the imaginative and creative force behind a film has to come from the person directing it, and the ambiguity surrounding Poltergeist arises because Hooper’s creative force was either seriously diminished under Spielberg or rendered practically null and void.

Hooper and Spielberg had creative differences right off the bat and rarely did Hooper get his way. Dominque Dunne who played Anna Freeling in the movie said that she was directed by Spielberg and that in one scene he asked her to have a hickey on her neck. She argued against it but Spielberg got what he wanted. Dunne has also mentioned how it was Spielberg who comforted little Heather O’Rourke when she became frightened during scenes.

There is another story from the set that concerns Oliver Robins who, during the scene where the clown attacks him, it was Spielberg who told him to ‘keep going’ as he was so authentically acting. When Spielberg realised the actor was actually being strangulated by the puppet, he ran to Robins, saving his life.

But perhaps this only suggests Spielberg helped out with the young actors and added a few creative touches here and there, however, it only adds to the speculation. Why, for example, does the Turner Classic Movies documentary feature both Spielberg and Hooper on set yet no shots of Hooper actually doing any direction.

But most illuminating and perhaps the most definitive idea of who directed Poltergeist comes from Zelda Rubinstein who played Tangina in the movie. Rubinstein told Ain’t It Cool news: ‘I can tell you that Steven directed all six days I was there. I only worked six days on the film and Steven was there. Tobe set up the shots and Steven made the adjustments.’

Consider the fact that due to a contractual agreement with Universal Studios, Spielberg could not ‘direct’ another movie while preparing E.T: The Extraterrestrial. Spielberg’s vague but interesting comments point to the idea that Hooper wasn’t a force on the movie, as he says, ‘Tobe isn’t… a take-charge sort of guy. If a question was asked and an answer wasn’t immediately forthcoming, I’d jump in and say what we could do. Tobe would nod agreement, and that become the process of collaboration.’

The Director’s Guild of America even opened an investigation into whether the ‘directed by’ credit was valid, and the film’s co-producer Frank Marshall said, ‘the creative force of the movie was Steven. Tobe was the director and was on the set every day. But Steven did the design for every storyboard and he was on the set every day except for three days when he was in Hawaii with Lucas.’

Perhaps it doesn’t matter that because Spielberg couldn’t contractually direct another movie while E.T. was being prepped, he simply hired another director to stand in for the credit, and directed it anyway. Poltergeist is an excellent supernatural-horror film, so why all the fuss? Well, it’s one of those Hollywood controversies, the sort of story that gives the industry a mystique it loves to manipulate. After all, the Poltergeist set was haunted, and the actors were cursed…but that’s a whole other story.

Poltergeist 25th Anniversary Edition DVD is released on the 15th Oct.

I was with them for four months (actually five, but more on that later!) - using their £12.99 a month package which allows you to receive an unlimited amount of DVDs with two at home at any given time. For the final three months, I never once received a film I actually wanted.

At one point I received DVDs in the post, checked to see what they were, and sent them back immediately because I simply didn’t care to watch them. Part of the problem with renting films is that you have to watch them within a given time frame. Sometimes this can work out for the better, but the way online rental works - with your next DVDs sent out once you’ve returned your last ones - you only get your moneys worth if you power through around 4 films a week. Two things: 1) It’s hard to get through four films in a week when they aren’t ones you actually want; and 2) you are relying on Love Film to post out your DVDs promptly to beat Sunday’s lack of post.

Love Film pander to the needs of new customers leaving monthly subscribers out in the cold. For the first few weeks I received all the DVDs I wanted, promptly and in good condition. After my first month’s payment had been taken, I stopped receiving the films I wanted and only got films they force you to add to a wish list. Basically, if you don’t have twenty films on a list, they won’t send you a single film – or at least, I didn’t receive one when I struggled to list twenty. My problem with the list is that I only wanted brand new releases, perhaps two per week. I have a huge collection of DVDs at home, I wasn’t interested in catalogue titles. After a month, I’d run out of catalogue titles I wanted. When my list dwindled to less than the ‘recommended’ (actually read: necessary) twenty titles, nothing was sent out until I replenished the list, essentially, with films I didn’t want. I was left paying for a service I wasn’t getting.

Essentially, Love Film wants to be bigger than it can manage, at least at the present time, and I wouldn’t recommend using them as your online rental company. Their customer service is very poor, their inability to deliver on the customer’s need is even more damning, and they have a poor policy if you want to leave. I had to pay for another month of zero service because after ringing their customer service team (you have to phone them to cancel membership, you cannot do it online) I was told (a complete lie) that near the time of my next payment I could officially cancel my membership online. This was not the case. I called up on the day of my payment for the following month and because I had DVDs at home (they’d sent more out even though I’d notified them that I wanted to cancel my membership), I had to pay for another month. Terrible.

Rant Summary

Oh, the sacrifices we make for poor consumer services. Love Film’s enticing free trial is a waste of your time, your energy, and your money – don’t do it!

You won’t always get the DVDs you want, and their online system for telling you which titles may not be in stock/or there might be a long wait for, is flawed and most of time not working.

Their customer service is awful – don’t expect prompt email replies (or replies at all), don’t expect to receive the DVDs you think you should be getting (because they’ll send anything out after you’ve paid for your first month), and don’t expect it to be easy to cancel membership.