Out on October 30 and November 6
A cosmic wonder from anime genius Makoto Shinkai. A lesson in life and maths from Chris Evans.
Yes, here’s the new DVD and Blu-Ray releases coming out in the next two weeks. Click on for our reviews of Your Name, Bad Santa 2, Churchill, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Gifted, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Mummy, Dunkirk, and Kill, Baby… Kill!
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Your Name
For all its visual majesty and captivating, fairytale-like concept, this Japanese animation’s greatest accomplishment might be in its transition from gender-based body-swap comedy (complete with boob jokes) to sweeping cosmic romance.
Mitsuha and Taki are two teenage school kids unknown to each other, until they suddenly start alternating days in each other’s bodies. Initially communicating via notes, they eventually become playfully intertwined in each other’s lives, until each sets out to overcome the distance and practical circumstances that separate them.
Adapting from his own novel, writer-director Makoto Shinkai delivers a soaring metaphysical love story that’s universal in every sense of the word. Clearly a passion project, the film feels uniquely personal and conceptually epic simultaneously, hitting with wit and wonder, before shifting to devastating tension for an emotional climax.
As the film delivers a gut-punching twist, the brushstrokes continue to enchant, offering a soul-lifting gaze at a timeless story that encompasses young love, friendship and adventure as well as exploring ideas about relationships and destiny. In short, it’s a masterpiece.
Director: Makoto Shinkai; Starring: Ryûnosuke Kamiki, Mone Kamishiraishi, Ryô Narita; DVD, BD, Steelbook release: November 6, 2017
Bad Santa 2
Justifying fears over belated comedy sequels everywhere, this (anti-)festive follow-up proves so offensive it actually undoes some of the original’s goodwill. Thirteen years after Bad Santa, Billy Bob Thornton’s booze-addled Willie is convinced by former partner Marcus (Tony Cox) to steal from a charity as part of a job planned by Willie’s estranged mother (Kathy Bates).
Churchill
Focusing purely on the days leading up to the momentous event of D-Day in June 1944, this portrayal of the great British prime minister reveals a man battling his own inner war, fighting the memory of his mistakes and fearing a legacy of irrelevance and failure.
It’s a claustrophobic portrait of insecurity that doesn’t quite match Brian Cox’s booming presence as the iconic figure, as much as he clearly relishes shouting eloquently written dialogue – and one powerful, spine-tingling speech – with full thespian prowess.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Given the 4K treatment on its 40th birthday, Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi marvel gets a suitably celebratory Blu-ray package. Collected alongside extras from earlier discs, fresh material includes Spielberg’s own home-video footage, showing him on set.
Director: Steven Spielberg; Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, Teri Garr; BD release: October 9, 2017
Gifted
It might seem like another weepie of the week, but a touching script and a remarkable set of performances keep Gifted on the right side of schmaltz. Captain America himself Chris Evans plays a blue-collar Joe who struggles to keep custody of his maths genius niece (Mckenna Grace) after her evil English grandma (Lindsay Duncan) tries to steal her away to brainy school.
Kill, Baby… Kill!
Forget the lurid title – Mario Bava’s seminal masterpiece is not some grindhouse slasher but the shivery tale of a young girl haunting a 19th Century Carpathian village.
From bold primary colours to stunning in-camera effects to a bouncing ball foreshadowing terror (see Fellini’s ‘Toby Dammit’ segment of Spirits of the Dead, Kubrick’s The Shining and del Toro’s Crimson Peak), this eerie gothic chiller casts a long shadow… and that’s before you consider the ghost-girls of J-horror. Brrr.
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Splashy big-budget adventure nonsense, loosely based on the Jules Verne novel, with Edinburgh prof James Mason leading an ill-assorted bunch – including crooner Pat Boone, glamour element Arlene Dahl and a duck (no, really) – on a scientific subterranean expedition.
Toss in dinosaurs, earthquakes, underground oceans, Atlantis and some seriously naff dialogue, and you’ve got two hours-plus of gaudy-coloured widescreen hokum.
The Mummy
When Tom Cruise’s tomb raider is cursed by an Egyptian princess (Sofia Boutella), it attracts the attention of evil-hunting scientist Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe) – who, inevitably, has issues of his own. Universal’s first ‘Dark Universe’ reboot of its classic monsters is a garbled affair, and even as a standalone it’s weak.
Director Alex Kurtzman’s half-hearted horror iconography sits awkwardly with the kinetic needs of a stunt-heavy Cruise vehicle, and it lacks the (superior) 1999 version’s humour.
Dunkirk
In the wake of Christopher Nolan’s sensational World War 2 drama, which opened this summer, Leslie Norman’s earlier, black-and-white take on the events of Operation Dynamo gets a restoration. Dramatising how British Expeditionary Forces were evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk, it’s as involving and immersive as Nolan’s film in its way.
Switching perspectives between civilians (including Richard Attenborough’s factory owner) and soldiers (John Mills, leading a platoon of isolated and demoralised men), it’s surprisingly violent and hard-edged. Nolan, you suspect, took note.
