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  Directed by
  Starring
  Specs
  • Widescreen 1.85:1
  • 16:9 Enhanced
  Languages
  • English: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
  • German: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
  • Catalan: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
  Subtitles
    English, German, Hebrew, Czech, Greek, Polish, Hungarian, Dutch, Arabic, Turkish, Icelandic, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Hindi, Bulgarian
  Extras
  • 7 Deleted scenes
  • Theatrical trailer
  • Audio commentary
  • 5 Cast/crew biographies
  • Isolated music score
  • 36 Photo gallery
  • 1 Music video
  • Behind the scenes footage

Groove

Sony Pictures Classics/Sony Pictures Home Entertainment . R4 . COLOR . 80 mins . MA15+ . PAL

  Feature
Contract

With the mini-influx of movies about or centred around the rave party scene in recent years, it’s not surprising that many were a little bit cynical about the arrival of Groove. Conceived back in 1998 but not reaching cinema screens until last year, this debut feature for director/editor Greg Harrison was beaten to the box office by the likes of Go and Human Traffic, and so has been inevitably compared directly to those higher-budget films, often unfavourably. But Harrison’s film - made independently on a shoestring budget in San Francisco and then given audio polish and distribution by Sony Pictures - is easily the best of the bangin’ bunch, simply by virtue of its honesty and subtlety.

Telling the story of one night amongst many - a night that sees the staging of an underground rave in a disused San Francisco warehouse - Groove is a character-based film that lets the audience make up their own minds about the larger aspects of its characters’ lives. Aside from the basics of where they live and how they come to be at the party, we know very little about these people - and that makes perfect sense in this context. After all, a visitor to a rave would neither know nor care about the backgrounds of most of the people they run across on the night, as long as they share the common bond that’s quite literally created by the party - and, of course, the various recreational drugs that take them to a point where inhibitions are lost without the slightest hint of aggression. There may be some small conflicts between the characters here, but they’re resolved without a single punch being thrown, and usually with the music and the experience as an aid to the reconciliation.

In character terms, Groove primarily tells the story of first-timer David (Hamish Linklater) and seasoned rave customer Leyla (Lola Glaudini, who many may recognise from NYPD Blue). Layla is known to everyone thanks to her widely emailed requests for a ride to the party, while David, talked into going by a friend, isn’t sure he even belongs there. The two soon meet during the heady stages of David’s first experiment with acid, and it becomes apparent during the night that the two have more in common than either of them would have thought.

Ironically, this exact same story could easily have been told in the ‘60s, though then our setting would have been an outdoor music festival. The same “peace, love and respect” philosophy so nostalgically remembered by the Woodstock generation is also the overriding philosophy here, but now the music is performed by genius turntable manipulators rather than bearded guitarists, and the action takes place all night rather than all day. Much of the miscellanea of this scene is the same - psychedelic iconography and clothing included.

The film never condescends to its audience, and voices neither approval nor disapproval of the drug culture portrayed. This in itself is refreshing, and both sides of the experience are illustrated without melodrama or sensationalism, allowing the viewer to make up their own mind if they so desire. In this film, after all, the drugs are only one of the ingredients that propel the story. That hasn’t, though, stopped the Australian censor from slapping Groove with an MA rating, solely for “drug use”.

Harrison’s script is low-key and unpretentious, and never presumes that the viewer is familiar with the rave scene or its culture. Resisting MTV-style camera moves in favour of mood setting through the music, the lighting (both at the rave and outside it), his own inspired editing and the supporting characters, he has crafted an intelligent, unassuming and ultimately positive film which is there as much to paint a broad picture as it is to tell a specific story. The concise 80-minute running time ensures that Groove never wears out its welcome or gets bogged down in irrelevant detail - there’s just enough colour and humour here to serve the essentially simple story perfectly well. One memorable moment that many would be able to relate to comes with a throwaway line early in proceedings: “You know,” says one of the characters, “if you get past the Tickle-Me-Elmo backpacks and big fluffy clown pants, some of these girls would be pretty hot…” Observation is everything with a film of this type, and Harrison knows his material well.

An immensely enjoyable, well-directed and well-acted film about one night in one of the past decade’s most important cultural movements, Groove is highly recommended.

  Video
Contract

Groove was shot on an extremely low budget, and as a result the negatives aren’t always in pristine shape - there are the occasional flecks and scratches visible, and the low-budget cameras and lenses used mean that this film’s not going to look as crisp and lavish on DVD as the latest product from the big studios. But given all that, Groove comes up superbly on DVD, which is the ideal format for a film set almost entirely at night. Many of the shots here - particularly those set in dark streets outside of the rave party and in the party’s chill-out room - are very dark - but this was the intention of the director, as he points out in his audio commentary.

The Sony DVD Center’s encoding here is flawless - quite an achievement, too, given the amount of extras included on this fully-loaded single-layer disc (the packaging and disc label incorrectly state this is a dual-layer disc). While Groove must have been a difficult MPEG encoding prospect thanks to the myriad strobes, lasers and unusual blocks of near-solid colour used in the film, Sony have done a magnificent job, and there’s absolutely nothing to complain about in this department.

  Audio
Contract

Audio, needless to say, is as important to this film as the visuals are, if not more so. And this Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track serves the movie well, with the rave party scenes in particular placing the viewer right in the midst of the action, the surround channels accurately recreating the room’s ambience, reverb and echo while the music pumps out of the main speakers at a suitably feisty level.

Dialogue is crisp and clear at all times, and effects are realistically directionally placed; this is a solid sound mix that really enhances the experience of watching Groove, mixed at Skywalker Sound’s state-of-the-art facility near San Francisco.

  Extras
Contract

Single-layer the disc may be, but Columbia Tristar have provided a nicely rounded set of extra features that genuinely enhance the viewer’s appreciation of the movie. In order of menu appearance:

Trailer: Sony Pictures’ short ‘n’ sweet summary of a film that’s really hard to summarise; they go for the flashing-lights-and-big-music angle, and represent Groove as well as could be expected with a two-minute trailer. Unusually, this one gives very little of the plot away.

Featurette - Camera Tests: A selection of some of the pre-production tests done for the high-speed camerawork used for the extreme slow-motion shots at the film’s climax, with director Harrison on the audio track explaining both how it was done and why it was so difficult on a low budget.

Featurette - Auditions: Some selected audition tapes, shot on an NTSC camcorder during the casting stages of the film. This footage is available with or without explanatory commentary by Harrison.

Behind The Scenes Featurette: No, not another one of those dreadful EPK-style publicity blurbs, but instead about six minutes of b-roll on-set video footage shot during the film’s production, with Harrison narrating and illustrating. Though all too brief, this is an enlightening and often revealing look at how - and where - Groove was made.

Music Video - Heaven Scent by Bedrock: DJ John Digweed’s studio outfit Bedrock provides the soundtrack for the film’s climactic scene, and this is the full-frame music video for it, heavily featuring shots from the movie. Of fairly low video quality (but obviously produced on a tiny budget), the big complaint here is common to all music videos this review has seen to date on Columbia Tristar DVDs worldwide - namely, the audio level is way, way too low. Considering the soundtrack of the film itself is at an appropriately high audio level, this is disappointing, and easily rectified in authoring. Still, a nice inclusion given the track’s importance in the film.

Photo Gallery: 36 colour stills both from on-set photography and publicity shots, all presented at a decently viewable size (which, believe it or not, is a rare thing!)

Isolated Music Score: Yet another isolated music track, and as always a very welcome inclusion. Presented in Dolby Digital 5.1, this features the various bits of music used throughout the film, mixed identically to the way they are on the main soundtrack but presented at a slightly higher audio level. This is a particularly nice extra given the extremely musical nature of the movie.

Deleted Scenes: Seven brief scenes removed from the film by the director during editing, all of them presented letterboxed - but not 16:9 enhanced - and with fairly decent video quality, though marred by videotape noise. All seven scenes are individually selectable, and an explanatory commentary for each one by director Harrison is selectable if needed.

Talent Profiles: Five brief bios of the director and four of the ensemble cast. Once again, this is one of the only areas in which CTS DVDs disappoint, particularly with films featuring largely unknown actors - it’d be nice to have a more comprehensive profiles section. As it is, how odd not to have access to a bio of lead actor Hamish Linklater...

Audio Commentary: Director/editor/producer Greg Harrison, co-producer Danielle Renfrew and cinematographer Matthew Irving are obviously proud of their film, and are very keen to share the details and stories of its creation with their audience on this commentary track, which is hugely informative, very entertaining and illustrates beyond doubt the struggle of the low-budget filmmaker. This one’s well worth taking the time to listen to.

Dolby Digital “City” Trailer: Aaaargh.

  Overall  
Contract

Well-made and well acted, often inspired and always fascinating, Groove is nothing like the film this reviewer expected it to be, and Columbia Tristar’s bonus-laden DVD presents the movie to perfection. A fresh, unsensational look at the underground rave scene and the people that inhabit it, Groove will not only appeal to those “in the know” but also to those who just want to sit down to see a good, solidly made film that’s refreshingly free of the hype and cliché usually injected by the Men In Suits. And of course with movies as well as with life, it’s the pleasant surprises that make life so much fun.


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      And I quote...
    "...it’s the pleasant surprises that make life so much fun"
    - Anthony Horan
      Review Equipment
    • DVD Rom:
          Pioneer 103(s)
    • MPEG Card:
          Creative Encore DXR2
    • TV:
          Panasonic - The One
    • Receiver:
          Sony STR-AV1020
    • Speakers:
          Klipsch Tangent 500
    • Surrounds:
          Jamo
    • Audio Cables:
          Standard RCA
    • Video Cables:
          Monster s-video
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