BFI, retail Night and the City is the stand-out title here, a top-quality example of the genre with the unusual feature that the mean streets through which smalltime hustler Richard Widmark plies his trade are the still-familiar ones of postwar London. Like his lead character, Jules Dassin, whose direction is exhilarating, was on the run – from the McCarthy witchhunt in Hollywood. He’s best …
Anchor Bay, rental and retail Produced largely by the same team as the delightful Little Miss Sunshine, this is never as successful or as funny as that surprise hit, but does have the performances of Amy Adams and Emily Blunt to commend it. Not only are these strong and empathetic, but they are playing very much against type: the usually imperious Blunt is the family screw-up, while Adams, sunny …
Articifial Eye, retail, cert U More of a starter than a main course, Mid-August Lunch has the following plot: a middle-aged Italian caring for his mother, has three other elderly women to look after for a couple of days.
Doctor Who: Spearhead From Space | Robot & Frank | Arbitrage | Castle Freak | The Car Doctor Who: Spearhead From Space Jon Pertwee’s first outing as the Doctor – and the first time his adventures were shown in colour – is something of an oddity in the show’s long run. Due to industrial action in the BBC studios, this one was filmed largely on location and, unique for old Who, shot entirely on …
The prices plummeted this year, so Blu-ray players are likely to be under plenty of Christmas trees. Phelim O’Neill advises what to play on them BLOCKBUSTERS JJ Abrams’s rebooted Star Trek (Paramount) was not only the sole moment of unbridled fun in this year’s blockbuster season but the best, full bells and whistles Blu-ray issue, too.
The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus DVD & Blu-ray, Lionsgate It’s Heath Ledger’s final film. There, that’s got that out of the way.
This sees Peter Greenaway in his element, examining Rembrandt’s The Night Watch in loving detail Some of Peter Greenaway’s films leave me cold, but this sees the writer-director in his element, examining Rembrandt’s The Night Watch in loving detail, spinning a murder mystery around it and providing fantastic compositions of his own. It is also notable for the surprise casting of Martin Freeman …
District 9 DVD & Blu-ray, Sony With a price tag roughly one 10th that of Avatar’s, Neill Blomkamp’s debut is a film only a director with a love of the science-fiction genre. Like Star Wars or Terminator, it sucks up myriad influences and builds on them rather than simply rehashing. So you get flashes of Robocop, Alien Nation, The Fly, Quatermass, etc, but all given a smart updating and a South …