DVD Reviews at Planet Urban

The winner of 2008’s Best Feature Documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side looks at procedures (see: torture methods) used by the US forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. The story is framed by the death of innocent Afghan cab driver Dilawar, who was taken into custody at the...   [more]

Screenwriter John August (The Corpse Bride, Go, Big Fish) makes his directorial debut in The Nines, a tryptic of short films starring Ryan Reynolds (yes, he of Van Wilder fame) as three different but interconnected characters. The first instalment in The Nines begins with actor Gary (Reynolds) going on...   [more]

The first series of this quality British comedy-drama left viewers on the edge of their seats with one of the main characters, the cocky Tony Stonem (Nicholas Hoult), being hit front on by a bus (or was it a truck? It was something big anyways, yes, a bus). Of...   [more]

Seth Green and co. have been spending most of their time of late playing with Star Wars dolls. Well that there is a damn good job – and one with results that even the great George Lucas has approved of, so much so they’ve made 30 minutes of pure Star Wars...   [more]

Do you miss power ranger-esque special effects? Do you crave outrageous Japanese monsters and their insatiable need to explode upon destruction? If so, and you haven't watched Dororo yet, chances are you're as unsatisfied with your film viewing acumen as I am unsatisfied with using big words in reviews which...   [more]

Alkaholiks certainly are a group that every individual who has both a love for quality Hip Hop and partying must know of. The dudes (Tash, J-Ro and DJ E-Swift) dropped their first album in 1993 and went on strong, gathering a heavy fan base and carrying a load...   [more]

From two of the writers of Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Frisky Dingo takes a satirical swipe at super villains and heroes, over-hyped infotainment show hosts, racism and white people who think they are black. The skull-headed Killface (voiced by one of the abovementioned writers, Adam Reed) plans to...   [more]

And now for a brief history of anime … GOT YA! Like I have the time. Disgaea is in the adventure-comedy vein of such great anime series as Ranma ½ (also available from Madman) and Sailor Moon. The gist is this: a ditzy, naive angel in training (Flonne)...   [more]

English band Joy Division did produce urban music. No, if you want to be a purist they are not hip-hop, rap or R&B but their music was informed by (and later helped shape) a city that was (please note I said WAS) stark, ugly, grey, post industrial and factory-plagued. That...   [more]

The inimitable cast of Futurama returns in the second feature-length animated film, The Beast with a Billion Backs. Once again the outstanding dry humour surfaces, with throwbacks, spoofs and parodies of famous science fiction elements, as well as pop-culture; but this second film begins to show the strain of 3-4...   [more]

Adult Swim is such an awesome production company! If you haven’t caught their amazing array of animated series, including Harvey Birdman, then you’re missing out! Their first live-action series is The Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! Yep, weird title…yep, weird show…yep, pure genius. Focusing on the two...   [more]

In New Getter Robo we are retold the story of Prof. Saotome and his Getter-Ray powered robots. This series is a revamp of Getter Robo, a series from the 70s which had a big enough fan base to warrant sequels and spin offs. The robots and Getter team were re-designed...   [more]

An Austrian take on I Know What You Did Last Summer, Dead In 3 Days (meaning within three days, not on the third day everyone dies, like I’d expected) is pretty much your stock standard teen horror that lacks any semblance of imagination whatsoever. Jam-packed with all those horror...   [more]

The Man Who Souled The World tells the story of how some fairly average and broke skater dude (Steve Rocco) took an anarchic DIY punk attitude to the skateboarding business and became an unbelievable success, bringing skateboarding to all new levels of coolness. From nothing, a single person, as if...   [more]

The 'Eastern Eye' series is so fantastic. It brings us the very best of lesser-seen Asian movies, that certainly would have little chance of local cinematic release. And so we come to Tell Me Something. A grimy cop thriller of the first order. Much like Se7en and The Bone Collector before it,...   [more]

Cashing in on the current media interest in parkour – the art of motion that uses walls, and other things usually considered as obstacles as a means of getting from one place to another – District B13 stars the movement’s creator David Belle as Leïto and stunt coordinator...   [more]

For those who remember and cherish those late night re-runs of classic Hong Kong styled gangster cinema, A Dirty Carnival does a great job of showing just how much East Asian film has grown and changed. Although Korean in origin, the roots of this film possesses unmistakably Hong Kong...   [more]

This short film follows the journey of Ike Ajayi, an African lawyer who fulfills his mother’s dying wish that he leave their volatile Nigerian homeland to immigrate to ‘God’s Own Country’, the USA. Upon arrival in New York, Ajayi (newcomer Dauda Momodou), finds the realisation of the American dream...   [more]

Q: What happens when you mix the directing abilities of a star of Gallipoli and the acting abilities of a son of a national icon? A: The Bet Directed by Mark Lee and starring Matthew Newton, The Bet is a fast-paced corporate thriller that packs quite a punch. Newton...   [more]

The Mancunian band that became Joy Division formed their first incarnation, Warsaw, after a Sex Pistols gig in the mid-seventies. As Joy Division they achieved underground status within the indie/post punk scene. Since then, their status has risen to that of legend, somewhere near the heady heights of New...   [more]