TRUE GRIT Excellent stuff from the Coen Brothers with Jeff Bridges in fine form as Rooster Cogburn, a worse for wear U.S. Marshall who is persuaded by 14-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) to track down her father's killer. This is a visual feast and I'm glad I managed to get to the cinema to see it on the big screen. Hailee Steinfeld has been highly praised for her performance, and rightly so. Not to be missed.
SAVAGE STREETS The BBFC kindly waived the film's previous cuts and Arrow's release of this vigilante "classic" is beautifully presented. There's the double sided cover (the alternative is a little more sedate than the one pictured), a poster-sized version of the cover picture and a booklet written by
Kier-la Janisse (the author of
A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi) about the film and others in the female vigilante genre. A ton of bonus material is on the DVD including interviews with Linda Blair and Linnea Quigley, and three audio commentaries. The U.S.-released special edition is out of print, but the bonus material featured on Arrow's release is largely the same. That U.S. release will set you back a pretty penny, but this release is region-free and should serve as a good substitute albeit on a single-disc. The film follows a female gang, The Satins, who are out for a good time. They take a car belonging to a gang of testosterone-charged lunkheads on a joyride. The lads don't take kindly to this and in an act of revenge, they brutally rape the most vulnerable Satin, the innocent and deaf Heather (Linnea Quigley), leaving her almost beaten to death. Now, Heather's sister, Brenda (Linda Blair), is out for vengeance . . . A film very much of its 1980s time,
Savage Streets is pretty silly stuff, but I do like a vigilante film and I like this one very much.
