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Out on 27 July and 3 August
Ben Stiller is a documentarian who discovers reality bites. The slinkiest vampire story emerges from Bad City. The Divergent franchise is back, kicking and screaming. Yes, heres this fortnights new DVD and Blu-Ray releases. Click on for our reviews of While Were Young, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Stalag 17, Killing Zoe, The Divergent Series: Insurgent, The Clouds Of Sils Maria, Flutter, White God, Miss Meadows, Shopping, Listen Up Philip and Man With A Movie Camera. For the best movie reviews, subscribe to Total Film.
WHILE WERE YOUNG
In the best scene of Greenberg, Noah Baumbachs best film to date, Ben Stillers 40-year-old failed musician joins a group of twentysomethings doing drugs at a house party. Cool for a moment, he promptly loses his shit and eventually ends up being anything but. Baumbachs latest is an entire movie spun from this scene, telling of two married middle-agers, Josh and Cornelia (Stiller and Naomi Watts), who begin to hang with a hipster couple, Jamie and Darby (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried). But these new best friends are not forever, and Joshs insecurities and jealousies rise to the surface as he begins to suspect theres rather more to the excitable, affable Jamie than meets the eye. Mixing cute sight gags (Watts flailing wildly in a hip-hop workout class, Stiller wearing a cocked trilby indoors) with acute generational observations (the oldies play with their digital toys in an effort to stay relevant, while the hip youngsters favour ironic classic technology like typewriters, vinyl and VHS), Baumbachs seventh feature plays like plugged-in Woody Allen a comparison firmed up by the writer-directors sideswipes at a marriage in stasis and his decision to make Josh a self-absorbed documentary filmmaker riddled with neuroses. Jamie is also directing a doc, and the menfolks pontificating on the nature of truth in their chosen art form rather hijacks the latter stages of the movie, relegating the women especially poor Darby, who makes ice cream to the periphery of the picture. Yet Stiller is at his bitter best here, Driver dominates the screen, and Baumbach has a knack for bottling disillusionment. The film certainly deserves better treatment than it gets in the extras theyre limited to a scant five featurettes, each running a minute or two, with director and cast talking about how great it was to work with each other, and how talented everyone is. EXTRAS: > Featurettes Director: Noah Baumbach Starring: Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver, Amanda Seyfried DVD, BD, BD3D, Digital HD release: 27 July 2015 Jamie Graham
A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT
Shot in just 24 days, Ana Lily Amirpours Iranian vampire-western sees The Girl (Sheila Vand), a chador-cloaked vampire, prowl the streets of Bad City in search of blood and love. Low on plot and high on atmosphere, it evokes Lynch and Jarmusch in its nightmarish visuals, but the heady mix of Middle Eastern hip-hop, western pop and plaintive guitar twangs give it a blood-rush energy and melancholy ache that are all its own. Rarely has existential boredom been so horrifying and romantic. EXTRAS: > Making Of Featurette > Deleted scenes > Graphic novel (BD) Director: Ana Lily Amirpour Starring: Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Marshall Manesh DVD, BD, Digital HD release: 27 July 2015 Jamie Graham
THE DIVERGENT SERIES: INSURGENT
Recognisably beefier and better-budgeted than its predecessor, the second tranche of this all-Faction YA dystopian drama makes some judicious tweaks to the original recipe. Proving less faithful to the book series, director Robert Shwentke brings a splash of Red, his 2010 actioner, to leaven the teen romance. The movies winding rebels-on-the-run plot plays strongest when Shailene Woodleys guilt-ridden heroine Tris squares off against Kate Winslets tyrannical brainiac. Indeed, whether ass-kicking or breast-beating, Woodleys performance has a conviction that adds an extra dimension. EXTRAS: > Commentary > Featurettes > Gallery Director: Robert Schwentke Starring: Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Jai Courtney, Octavia Spencer, Miles Teller, Kate Winslet DVD, BD, BD3D, Digital HD release: 3 August 2015 Kate Stables
STALAG 17
Billy Wilder needed a hit after Ace In The Hole flopped, but he didnt play soft for it. Taken as a brash snapshot of male group dynamics, an allegory for capitalism or a McCarthyism metaphor, this PoW pic has his imprint all over it. After their Sunset Blvd. success, Wilder cast William Holden well as a US airman whose free-market cynicism stokes fellow prisoners suspicions: is he the Nazis stoolie? Barbed-wire comic dialogue keeps the paranoid tension sharp, right up to a classically Wilderian sucker-punch climax and yes, it was a hit. Detailed extras. EXTRAS: > Intro > Commentary > Features Director: Billy Wilder Starring: William Holden, Don Taylor, Otto Preminger BD release: 27 July 2015 Kevin Harley
KILLING ZOE
A mismatched team of drug-crazed opportunists raid the only bank in Paris that stays open on Bastille Day in a Roger Avary opus that gorges on blood and bullets. Tarantinos fingerprints are all over the results (he and Lawrence Bender exec produced) though his wit is absent; ditto restraint in a film that riffs on prostitution, AIDS and Franco-American relations en route to an extended Dog Day Afternoon-style heist gone wrong. Eric Stoltz and Julie Delpy are a safecracker and clerk caught up in the chaos in a film whose excesses, once lurid, now seem rather quaint. EXTRAS: > Galleries > Trailer Director: Roger Avary Starring: Eric Stoltz, Julie Delpy, Jean-Hughes Anglade BD release: 3 August 2015 Neil Smith
THE CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA
Twilights Kristen Stewart won the French equivalent of an Oscar for her role in Olivier Assayas film, playing a PA whose main task is massaging the ego of Juliette Binoches fragile ageing actress. Their All About Eve dynamic suits a story very much about the young supplanting the old, something that hits Binoches character head-on when shes asked to play the senior part in the stage two-hander that made her name many moons ago. What follows is often as pretentious as the movies title; the leads, though, ensure it remains sufficiently compelling. EXTRAS: > Interview Director: Olivier Assayas Starring: Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart DVD, BD, Digital HD release: 27 July 2015 Neil Smith
MISS MEADOWS
Like Snow White possessed by Charles Bronson, Katie Holmes Miss Meadows splits her time between teaching nippers, saving toads, blowing miscreants away and scrubbing arterial spray off her dress in Karen Leigh Hopkins vigilante comedy-drama. She isnt the only mixed satchel here. John Waters knew he had to embrace bad taste head-on in Serial Mom, but Hopkins lack of satirical courage confuses her pitch somewhat. As she strains to redeem Meadows with a gloopy romance, a pop-Freud backstory and a twist involving a real scumbag, only Holmes engagingly off-piste performance emerges unscathed. Otherwise, its a miss. EXTRAS: > None Director: Karen Leigh Hopkins Starring: Katie Holmes, James Badge Dale, Callan Mulvey DVD, VOD release: 27 July 2015 Kevin Harley
LISTEN UP PHILIP
Obsessed with his own genius, brilliant novelist Philip Friedman (Jason Schwartzman) assails almost everyone he encounters with self-aggrandising putdowns especially his soon-to-beex girlfriend Ashley (Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men). Only veteran novelist Ike Zimmerman (Jonathan Pryce) is spared his venom and, seeing Friedman as his younger counterpart, invites him to his upstate home for the summer. In his third film, Alex Ross Perry skilfully skewers the pretensions of the New York literary scene. Lavish extras. EXTRAS: > Commentary > Making Of > Featurettes > Deleted scenes Director: Alex Ross Perry Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Elisabeth Moss, Jonathan Pryce Dual format release: 27 July 2015 Philip Kemp
MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA
Crowned by Sight & Sound as cinemas greatest documentary, Dziga Vertovs self-referential odyssey of Soviet life is justly acclaimed. This exemplary Blu-ray combines a sparkling restoration with an invaluable primer on Vertovs career, from playful dry run One-Sixth Of The Globe to stirring but stilted follow-up Three Songs Of Lenin. The additional films reinforce how remarkable MWAMC really is for invention and insight. Further context comes from a booklet featuring TFs own Philip Kemp. EXTRAS: > Commentary > Bonus films > Essay booklet Director: Dziga Vertov Starring: Mikhail Kaufman DVD release: 27 July 2015 Simon Kinnear
FLUTTER
Some people will do anything for a bet; such folk make for easy victims in this blackly comic cautionary tale about gambling addiction. John (Joe Anderson) and his mates (including Luke Evans) are greyhound-racing fans whose lives spiral out of control when a mysterious bookie (Anna Anissimova) offers them increasingly outlandish and demeaning bets. True, their actions are irrational enough to almost defy plausibility. But that only serves to enhance the satirical bite, as director Giles Borg mauls the gambling worlds warped logic and superficial glamour. EXTRAS: > None Director: Giles Borg Starring: Joe Anderson, Anna Anissimova, Billy Zane DVD release: 3 August 2015 Stephen Puddicombe
WHITE GOD
A mo-capped Andy Serkis couldnt have given a better turn than the dog in Kornl Mundruczs Hungarian fable. Its Planet Of The Apes with jowl drool as a dad dumps his daughter Lilis (Zsfia Psotta, very good) hound Hagen, whos adopted and abused by gambling scum. Two parallel journeys keep the plot tight-leashed: Lili hunts for Hagen; Hagen plots a doggy revolution. The potentially barking result actually works, often magnificently, because Mundruzc anchors the build-up in tough reality (harrowing hound abuse, growing pains) and resonant metaphors (mutt-aphors?) about societys underdogs. Careful, oppressors: they wont always play fetch. EXTRAS: > Making Of > Deleted scenes Director: Kornl Mundrucz Starring: Zsfia Psotta, Sndor Zstr DVD, Digital HD release: 3 August 2015 Kevin Harley
SHOPPING
Before Alien VS Predator, Resident Evil and Mortal Kombat, Paul W.S. Anderson made his debut with a GTA actioner that arguably still stands as his best film. It proved even more of a landmark for its star Jude law: the then-22-year-olds wired performance launched his whole career, and its the movie where he met future wife Sadie Frost. Law, Frost and Seans Pertwee and Bean tear around grungy London streets in stolen cars, smashing up shops for shits and giggles, giving Anderson ample scope to test-drive the 90s music-vid vibe hes been honing ever since. EXTRAS: > Interviews > B-roll footage Director: Paul W. S. Anderson Starring: Jude Law, Sadie Frost DVD, BD release: 27 July 2015 Paul Bradshaw
