New DVDs: Monday 28 April 2008

There is plenty to get through this week so I’ll just quickly mention that the disappointing His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass, the utterly irredeemable Halloween: Director’s Cut (extra rape apparently) and the DVD of the Week winning 70’s style police drama We Own The Night are reviewed elsewhere on CinemaScream before moving on to Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution.  This espionage drama has raised a few eyebrows simply for being a film about sex and desire etc that shows sex and desire etc - but beyond all the fuss this is a good film by a good director.

4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days is a critically acclaimed, Palme d’Or winning Romanian drama about illegal abortions during the Ceausescu regime - which sounds about as much fun as actually being there and yet the reviews seem to be universally great as the film apparently works as a piece of pure cinema and not just the ‘issues’ movie that it could have been in less confident hands.

To lighten the mood a bit we have Waitress and I’m a Cyborg; two very different but equally quirky love stories.  Now I realise that the word ‘quirky’ can be a turn off but these two films prove that it can work wonders when done right.  The former is the story of pie obsessed waitress (the cooking not eating variety) who gets pregnant whilst having an affair with her doctor.  It is an odd film but well worth checking out for the excellent cast (incl. Firefly’s Nathan Fillion) and upbeat philosophy.  I’m A Cyborg is the latest barrel of weirdness from Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) and centres on a girl who believes herself to be a cyborg (hence the title) and the schizophrenic who befriends her.  Like the director’s previous titles this is stuff that you are either into or not and if you are into it, as I am, then you are in for a treat.

Linking this week’s new releases to re-releases is Sleuth, a film about which it is polite to say as little as possible so as not to ruin it for those that have not yet had the pleasure.  I haven’t yet seen the new Michael Caine / Jude Law version (released this week) but I can tell you that the Laurence Olivier / Michael Caine version (re-released this week) is a cracking piece of work and so I am half intrigued to see what screenwriter Harold Pinter and director Kenneth Branagh have done with it and half dreading the presence of Jude Law (a great British actor cursed with never having made a truly classic film - also see Richard Burton).

This week’s other re-releases include the beautiful Lancelot du Lac and a special edition of the very special Assault On Precinct 13, but the best one surely has to be the Sergei Eisenstein: Vol 2 - Historical Epics boxset.  This collection of the soviet director’s best works (i.e Alexander Nevsky, Ivan The Terrible and Ivan The Terrible Part 2: The Boyars Plot) shows a master film-maker at the top of his game - if you like film then you are duty bound to watch these and cower in their towering intellect and audacity.

Finally, there is the documentary Zizek.  If you do not know who Slavoj Zizek is, find a copy of The Pervert’s Guide To Cinema (clips can be seen here) and you will be smitten enough to check out this documentary.