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Out on 7 March and 15 March
Maggie Smith hangs out in a van – and she might be a while. Ryan Reynolds and Ben Mendelsohn go for a gamble – and they also might be a while.
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THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN
A doe-eyed child watches as Santa Claus comes down the chimney. But then follows another St. Nick, and another – and three through the door – as a beautiful dream turns into a disquieting nightmare. So begins Delicatessen directors Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's second – and to date last – collaboration, The City Of Lost Children, a film as strange and stunning as a Salvador Salí exhibition.
Extras include behind-the-scenes footage (screen tests, kids' workshop) and a 26-minute Making Of. There's also a brief interview with Gaultier, and footage from his studio as the actresses playing Siamese twins try on three-legged trousers. "It's a little over the top," says one. Well, yes – but in a (very) good way.
EXTRAS: Commentary > Making Of > Interview
JAMES WHITE
We kick off with a blast of discordant noise as James White (Girls' Christopher Abbott) stumbles drunkenly through a disco-blaring nightclub and out into a New York morning. The camera tracks back with him, holding in tight close-up on his sweaty, bleary face, telling us that this is a guy wholly wrapped up in his own immature, irresponsible self.
THE LADY IN THE VAN
After stage and radio versions, Alan Bennett now adapts his memoir for the screen, with Alex Jennings playing Bennett and Maggie Smith, veteran of the two previous formats, again essaying Miss Shepherd, who parked her clapped-out van in the writer’s Camden driveway and stayed put for 15 years.
MISSISSIPPI GRIND
Filmmaking duo Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (Half Nelson, It's Kind Of A Funny Story) take a gamble on Ben Mendelsohn and Ryan Reynolds in a road movie that wallows deeply in the doldrums of addiction. As our leads take a do-or-die pilgrimage down the titular river and even further into the red, it's like watching the proverbial car crash in slow motion.
SUFFRAGETTE
Unbelievably, it took until 1928 for women to be able to vote in the UK, and the campaign was a hard-fought one, as Sarah Gavron's film makes searingly clear. Carey Mulligan shines as a laundry worker who gradually reaches a political awakening, while a host of other cracking British actresses flesh out the movement, including Helena Bonham Carter, Anne-Marie Duff, Romola Garai and the always-welcome Natalie Press.
VALENTINO
"What idiot made this?" was Ken Russell's own verdict on his sex-soaked biopic of silent cinema's first megastar, Rudolph Valentino. But for lovers of the director's extravagant style, age has improved both the stunning recreation of decadent '20s Hollywood and the story of Valentino's rise from tango gigolo to tortured screen idol.
SLEEPERS
Compared with Spotlight, Barry Levinson's exposé of institutionalised sexual abuse wallows deeper in the grim details but comes off feeling shallow – a tidy, glossy slice of period confessional that sets its uncomfortable paedophilia tale to a John Williams score.
What gives the film its weight is an exceptionally strong cast – with the heavyweight quintet of Kevin Bacon, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Brad Pitt and Minnie Driver filling out an ensemble that spans two generations in the awful lives of New York kids suffering prison, abuse and decades of injustice after a stupid prank goes wrong.
ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS
Following the operatic clashes of the Pandori brothers as they quit the rural South for sinful Milan, Luchino Visconti's gloriously overwrought epic is the three-hour embodiment of 'Go big or go home'. Neo-realism and violent melodrama combine masterfully for a fierce emotional intensity.
EXTRAS: Documentaries > Interviews > Newsreels > Booklet
THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER
"Money's my business, eating's my pleasure," leers Michael Gambon's restaurant-going gangster Albert Spica in Peter Greenaway's modern Jacobean revenge tragedy. But when he discovers trophy wife Helen Mirren's infidelity, will he make good on his threat to kill and eat her bookish lover?
AUTUMN ALMANAC
While this early film from Béla Tarr is considerably shorter than his arthouse epic Satantango (1994), it's no less challenging or arresting. Set entirely in one decrepit house, it follows the five occupants as they fight, fall in and out of love and give long, despairing monologues on their lives.
Director: Béla Tarr Starring: Hédi Temessy, Erika Bodnár, Miklós B. Székely DVD release: March 14, 2016
BEING JOHN MALKOVICH
This was the first movie that plunged us into the bizarre, surreal world of screenwriter – later director – Charlie Kaufman.
Directed by Spike Jonze, it has John Cusack as a down-on-his-luck street puppeteer forced to take an office job, Cameron Diaz having a bad hair day as his wife and Catherine Keener as Cusack's co-worker when he finds a hidden portal that leads straight into the head of John Malkovich. Soon he and Keener are renting out 15-minute trips inside the actor's head. And then Malkovich himself wants to try it…. Subversive, deranged and sheer delight from start to finish.
EXTRAS: Featurettes > Stills gallery > Bios
THE WOLFMAN
Sometimes, pre-production scars won't fade. Despite director Mark Romanek's departure, Universal's monster reboot had a sturdy stand-in (Joe Johnston) and cast: Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins. Yet as Benicio's thesp returns to his family's wolf-worried estate, the tonal leash slips.
The wolf attacks roar, dinner scenes bore; Blunt is BBC proper, hammy Hopkins flagrantly improper. A disengaged del Toro, meanwhile, nods off (in this extended cut) nattering to Max von Sydow on a train: clearly, playing a hairy growler didn't stretch him. The fire-licked final fight is nicely OTT, but this beast’s wounds run too deep for repair.
MICHAEL COLLINS
Neil Jordan brings a grand historic sweep to his account of the lost hero of Irish independence (played by Liam Neeson at his most passionate), who started out fighting the British only to be brought down at age 31 by his own compatriots.
EXTRAS: Commentary > Intro > Documentary > Deleted scenes
WAKING LIFE
A decade after Slacker, Richard Linklater revisited its philosophical walk-and-talk, with a twist. Here, as Wiley Wiggins’ narrator realises he’s in a dream, reality warps into lysergic animation. Shot live, then redrawn by rotoscoping, the result is – like Boyhood – a radical break with convention that makes the ordinary extraordinary.
With its episodic editing further destabilised by the seasick, asynchronous visuals, it’s as freeform as cinema gets. The non-stop intellectual debate, riffing on notions of free will, identity and progress, might exhaust some, but for those prepared to dig deep it’s a joyous trip into Linklater’s optimistic headspace.
EXTRAS: Commentaries > Deleted scenes > Featurettes > Shorts
