DVD and Blu-ray releases

All the latest releases reviewed
p43 Film: Ill Manors (2012) starring Ed Skrein as Ed.
Steve Morrissey5 October 2012

Ill Manors

(Revolver, cert 18, Blu-ray/DVD)

Plan B/Ben Drew’s directorial debut is all about drugs – “because it’s always about drugs” he says – and it’s a fabulously ambitious, sporadically brilliant film structured like an album, each track detailing life on the streets in all its rank unromantic unpleasantness.

Rock of Ages

(Warner, cert 12, Blu-ray/DVD)


A full wheel of cheese slathered with 1980s power ballads, notionally starring a pair of Glee-faced adenoids but only really hitting the notes when the adults (Tom Cruise, Russell Brand, Alec Baldwin, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Paul Giamatti all fab) elbow them out of the way. A right old laugh.

Prometheus

(Fox, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)


Ridley Scott knits a talky new film from the old wool of his original Alien, and it’s a good fit for ice-cold Michael Fassbender and feisty Noomi Rapace. It’s enjoyable rather than essential – in space no one can hear you shrug.

Petty Romance

(Terracotta, cert 15, DVD)


This sweet, flyaway and rather funny South Korean romcom may tell the potentially raunchy “will they/won’t they” story of a sex columnist and an erotic cartoonist but in its heart it’s pure Doris Day.

In The Dark Half

(Verve, cert 15, DVD)


An excellent debut by talent-to-watch Alastair Siddons, a creepy chiller that manages to suggest that being 15, babysitting, bunking off school and death are all part of some very English pagan continuum.

Polisse

(Artificial Eye, cert 15, DVD)


An ensemble cop drama following a French child protection team into action which relies on edgy TV (The Wire, say) for its looks, editing, characterisation, the lot. How interesting that it won the Jury Prize at Cannes.


Ai Wei Wei: Never Sorry

(Artificial Eye, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)


This profile of China’s highest profile artist is much more about Ai’s political activism than his art and presents a likeable, brave soul leveraging celebrity status to counter the iniquities of life in totalitarian China.

Box Sets


Magical Mystery Tour

(EMI, cert E, DVD £29.99)


Remixed audio, remastered video, interviews with the director (Paul McCartney) and director of photography (Ringo Starr), a restoration of material that never made it to the final edit and there you have it, the Beatles’ 1967 “trip movie” whimsy.


Indiana Jones: The Complete Adventures

(Paramount, cert 12, Blu-ray £64.99)


A Blu-ray debut for the four whipcracking adventures starring Harrison Ford – all restored to 1080p image and 5.1 sound and with The Temple of Doom now presented in uncut glory.


Nighty Night Series 1&2

(2entertain, cert 18, DVD £15.99)


It’s now eight years since Julia Davis debuted her murderously funny comedy, about a woman trying to find a new love before her husband croaks of cancer, and nothing has been darker or more sickly funny since.

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