New DVD releases: March 2014

Reviews of the latest DVD and Blu-ray releases, plus box sets and movie downloads
Steve Morrissey28 March 2014

Released on Mon Mar 31

Klown
(Arrow, cert 18, DVD)

This funny and very un-PC comedy about two guys on a “tour de pussy” with a 12-year-old boy shows the Danes can produce more than just Borgen and bacon.

Wake in Fright
(Eureka, cert 18, Blu-ray/DVD)

The rediscovered 1970 Australian classic about a prissy schoolteacher on a scary initiation into ocker masculinity really is as good as people say – The Wicker Man with sunshine.

Powder Room
(Universal, cert 15, DVD)

Sheridan Smith, Kate Nash and Jaime Winstone stars in this frank and funny (and a tiny bit stagey) drama set in a nightclub’s women’s loo – sex and drugs and toilet roll.

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

A miscast Chloe Grace Moretz is the tormented teen discovering she has telekinetic powers in a good-looking, well-paced, fairly pointless remake of De Palma’s 1976 shocker.

How to Survive a Plague
(Network, cert E, DVD)

How 1980s gay Americans organised, fought the system (and each other) and forced a reluctant establishment to deliver better Aids drugs. A worthy-sounding but uplifting documentary.

Dom Hemingway
(Lionsgate, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)

The 90s are back with this geezer-com featuring another misguided lairy hardman turn by Jude Law, though Richard E Grant’s withering Withnail performance does almost save the day.

Frozen
(Disney, cert U, Blu-ray/DVD/Download)

The comedy snowman and the 3D animation are the best things about this “Disney Princess” makeover of the Snow Queen. The songs are in the foghorn Broadway style and are dire.

Box Sets

Worricker
(Universal, cert 15, DVD)

David Hare’s trilogy has great lines, unexpected names (Christopher Walken, Winona Ryder) and stars Bill Nighy as the best and certainly most languid British TV spy since Smiley.

Stella Series 1-3
(2entertain, cert 15, DVD)

Reassuringly normal Ruth Jones has gone from friend to “the only gay in the village” to Gavin and Stacey and now three series of this eccentric, comforting comedy drama.

Ealing Studios Collection Volume 1
(StudioCanal, cert U, Blu-ray)

Blu-ray remasters for three Ealing classics – Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lavender Hill Mob and The Man in the White Suit – all starring Alec Guinness, all looking as good as new.

Released on Mon Mar 24

Jeune et Jolie
(Lionsgate, cert 18, Blu-ray/DVD)

François Ozon’s drama about a French schoolgirl’s double life as a hooker pits the power of young female flesh against ideals of romantic love. Saucy but cerebral.

Fire in the Blood
(Network, cert E, DVD)

How Big Pharma stopped cheap Aids drugs from going to Africa, how Africa got them anyway, and why that will never happen again. A powerful, fascinating, worrying documentary.

Philomena
(Pathe, cert 12, Blu-ray/DVD/digital)

Cynical journo Steve Coogan and Irish old dear Judi Dench go searching for her child, given away by nuns decades before. Mismatched buddies were rarely so genial.

The Missing Picture
(New Wave, cert E, Blu-ray/DVD)

A remarkable documentary about what the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia, with thousands of clay figures standing in for what archive footage cannot show.

Saving Mr Banks
(Disney, cert 12, Blu-ray/DVD)

A comedy drama about the making of Mary Poppins. Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson are supercalifragi… etc when they’re on screen together. If only it were more.

Diana
(E One, cert 12, Blu-ray/DVD)

Naomi Watts plays Princess Diana as a giddy saint with a titanium core in a biopic unwilling to go beyond the headlines – or possibly it’s been lawyered to death.

Don Jon
(Warner, cert 18, Blu-ray/DVD/digital)

Hitherto cool Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s drama (he wrote, directs, stars) about a porn-loving playa struggling with a real human relationship (Scarlett Johansson) is cliched, dull and nasty.

Box Sets

David Attenborough’s Natural Curiosities Box Set
(2entertain, cert E, DVD)

Wondrous curiosities from nature – naked mole rats oblivious to pain, the narwhal’s horn, seahorses changing gender, the frozen frog coming back to life in warm water. Amazing.

Moone Boy Series 1&2
(2entertain, cert 15, DVD)

The IT Crowd’s Chris O’Dowd’s surreal comedy based on his own Irish childhood has genius moments – often musical – and must be the best Irish comedy since Father Ted.

Line of Duty Series 1&2
(Acorn, cert 15, DVD)

Dirty cops investigating dirty deeds – a top cast (Lennie James, Keeley Hawes, Martin Compston) polish Jed Mercurio’s brilliant script in a contender for best British TV for years.

Released on Mon Mar 17

Parkland
(Koch, cert 15, digital)

Touching and unusual, this drama about the hospital where the dying JFK is brought stars Zac Efron and Paul Giamatti, but Casualty with big names it is not.

The Counsellor
(Fox, cert 18, Blu-ray/DVD/digital)

Ridley Scott directed it, Cormac McCarthy wrote it and everyone hated it, but this is a great exercise in thriller minimalism, Fassbender, Pitt, Cruz, Bardem decorating it lushly.

Blue is the Warmest Colour
(Artificial Eye, cert 18, Blu-ray/DVD)

Look beyond the lashings of lesbian sex and this controversial film is a sweet drama about the emotional education of a young woman (an amazing Adèle Exarchopoulos).

Escape Plan
(E One, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)

Two giant redwoods – Schwarzenegger and Stallone – take joint billing in an overcomplicated prison-break drama that’s about two decades too late, though not without its tiny pleasures.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
(Lionsgate, cert 12, Blu-ray/DVD/digital)

Continuing in typical “one damn thing after another” young-adult style Hunger Games 2 sees arrow-loosing J-Law and co up to more gladiatorial adventures. Efficient, nothing more.

Empire State
(Lionsgate, cert 15, DVD/Blu-ray/digital)

There’s a definite “you talking to me” Scorsese vibe in this underwritten but good-looking 1980s-set heist movie starring Dwayne Johnson, Liam Hemsworth and Michael Angarano.

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
(StudioCanal, cert PG, Blu-ray)

Keanu and the other guy travel through history in the 25th anniversary Blu-ray of the film that was midwife to our current era of excellent dudish awesomeness.

Box Sets

Salamander
(Arrow, cert 15, DVD)

This Belgian heist/murder/cop series moves too slowly to lift it into the realms of the Scandi-thriller. Still, it’s a useful methadone if you’re going Borgen/The Bridge cold turkey.

The Invaders: The Believers Box
(Paramount, cert PG, DVD)

All 43 episodes of the 1960s sci-fi series that went off in the opposite direction from Star Trek – tapping Cold War angst for weekly UFO-invasion paranoia.

Call the Midwife Series 1-3
(2entertain, cert 12, DVD)

Sunday’s tentpole show when it’s on, CTM manages to put a reassuringly cheery gloss on the most upsetting subjects – electroconvulsive therapy just a couple of weeks ago.

Released on Mon Mar 10

In Fear
(StudioCanal, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)

A couple driving to a festival get lost in the increasingly hostile Irish countryside. Jeremy Lovering’s two-hander is a brilliant exercise in mood, tension and creepiness.

The Butler
(EV, cert 12, Blu-ray/DVD)

Forest Whitaker is the butler to eight US presidents (Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan!) in this stately welding of heritage film-making to the fight for black civil rights.

Short Term 12
(Verve, cert 12, Blu-ray/DVD)

The cool, talented and comin’-atcha Brie Larson plays the tough-loving worker in a kids home in this sweet, petite beautifully played drama aiming for truth not fireworks.

Drinking Buddies
(Sony, cert 15, DVD)

An indie-ish sort-of romance that sees Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson as co-workers in a brewery trying not to let sex ruin a beautiful friendship. Slow… but it gets there.

Motorway
(Arrow, cert 15, DVD)

Hong Kong cop actioner like they used to make – synth-drum soundtrack, blue gels on the lights, Lethal Weapon plot – but the driving is stupendous, it really is.

Ender's Game
(E One, cert 12, Blu-ray/DVD)

Harrison Ford and Ben Kingsley take a back seat to Asa Butterfield as the priggish kid saving humanity from giant alien ants. Please let it not be part one of a series.

Mouchette
(Artificial Eye, cert 15, Blu-ray)

Robert Bresson’s most easily digested film, the 1967 monochrome classic about a young girl hemmed in at every side. Now beautifully restored, it’s a cinephile must-have.

Box Sets

Outnumbered Series 1-5
(2entertain, cert 12, DVD)

The TV sitcom that started out cute – didn’t that little girl say the most adorable things – before it started the slow morph into My Family, the way of all BBC comedy.

Jacques Tati Essential
(StudioCanal, cert PG, Blu-ray)

“Tati began where we finished,” said Buster Keaton. This collection of the French comedian’s six films show him as the link between the silents and Benny Hill. Or Miranda.

Death in Paradise Series 3
(2 entertain, cert 12, DVD)

Ben Miller has left and Kris Marshall has taken over as the pasty British copper finding that the Caribbean is reassuringly awash with English country-house murders.

Released on Mon Mar 3

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

In 3D and every other conceivable format and delivery system, the best sci-fi movie for decades sees Sandra Bullock lost in space for 90 minutes of breath-stopping lean-forward entertainment.

The Patience Stone
(Axiom, cert 15, DVD)

Deceptively simple, deeply cunning, a drama about a young Afghani woman's monologue confessions to her comatose husband that's not the easy ideological ride it at first appears to be.

Dead of Night
(StudioCanal, cert PG, Blu-ray/DVD)

A creepy and totally seminal compendium horror film made by Ealing Studios in 1945, with Michael Redgrave as a ventriloquist being possessed by his dummy.

For Those in Peril
(Soda, cert 18, DVD)

Big star in waiting George MacKay is the Scottish lad convinced he's a Jonah after the loss at sea of an entire fishing crew. Intense subject, unusual poetic treatment.

The English Teacher
(Kaleidoscope, cert 15, DVD)

The English teacher is Julianne Moore, putting on a play written by a former pupil with confidence issues. Similarly excellent Greg Kinnear and Lily Collins round out this almost-good almost-farce.

Devil in the Woods
(Kaleidoscope, cert 15, DVD)

Attacking its material as if it had invented the genre, this “horror in the woods” item sees True Blood’s Stephen Moyer going through the entire encyclopaedia of eye-rolling.

The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia
(Lionsgate, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)

It's not even set in Connecticut and has no connection whatsoever to the original, but this sequel to 2009's "who's spooking my family" original has atmosphere to spare.

Box Sets

The Americans: Season 1
(Fox, cert 15, DVD)

The series about Soviet agents deep undercover in Reagan’s America (cue Phil Collins) isn't "the new Homeland" but it is thrilling, preposterous and, crucially, each episode stands alone.

Parks and Recreation Season 1-4
(Fabulous, cert 15, DVD)

It took four years to get to the UK (season seven has just been announced in the US) but this slow-burn US comedy made Amy Poehler a star, and with complete justification.

This Is Spinal Tap 30th anniversary
(StudioCanal, cert 15, Blu-ray)

Triple-disc, Blu-ray steelbook, all-the-way-to-11 packaging for one of the funniest films of all time, now 30 years old. That fact is going to make a lot of people feel very old.

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