Blue Velvet

Arriving some three years after the Region 1 release, this Blu-ray of David Lynch’s seminal psychodrama boasts one staggering extra: fifty-two minutes of ‘lost’ footage, learned back in 2010 in a Seattle warehouse.

Highlights? More Dennis Hopper, more Jack Nance and a strangely gorgeous scene between Kyle MacLachlan’s voyeuristic Jeffrey and Isabella Rossellini’s singer Dorothy on a…

The Killing Fields: 30th Anniversary Edition

“Well, it’s been real,” observes John Malkovich’s photojournalist during The Killing Fields’ regeneration of the US military’s air-evacuation of Phnom Penh in 1975. And, for the most part, Roland Joffe’s right-life drama devastatingly captures the horror of the Cambodian genocide.(It’s sad then that Rambo: First Blood Part II, released the same year, took four timesthe US box office).

…

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers

The 1956 original (and still the best) Body Snatchers, where folks in smalltown America are steadily taken over by ‘pod people’ – emotionless alien replicas of them, seemingly spawned from outer space.

The modest budget and B-list stars (Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter) – enhance the movie’s impact, and Don Siegel’s taut management makes the sheer ordinariness of…

Ghostbusters

A welcome one-day-only 30th anniversary re-release for Ivan Reitman’s blockbuster comedy. Half-Saturday Night Live, half-Industrial Light & Magic, its elements dovetail into a kid-scaring, adult-amusing and consistently entertaining adventure.

The elastic structure provides ample room for inspired surrealism, yet the looseness never compromises the film’s tongue-in-cheek like letter to pre-gentrification Manhattan or its piercing satire of Reaganite…

Aliens

The approach has felled others since, but James Cameron’s scaled-up 1986 sequel to Ridley Scott’s shocker makes brilliant work of a brusque formula: preserve what works and multiply. A subtle, spooky movie with teeth becomes a subtlety-bashing war movie.

With Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley and motherly themes thrust forwards, Cameron also aces the horror, using a flashed-up ‘proximity…

The Necessary Death Of Charlie Countryman

Commercials director Fredrik Bond makes his feature debut with this scattergun like report that sends Shia LaBeouf’s title character to Romania, where he swoons over Evan Rachel Wood’s troubled waif, crossing her gangster hubbie (Mads Mikkelsen) in the process.

Bond’s social class weighs heavily in this over-stylised, over-scored affair – with so many scenes of LaBeouf sprinting around…

The Overnighters

Patient, non-judgemental docu-making yields psychologically rich results in Jesse Moss’s potent send off from recession-hit America. His focus is Jay Reinke, a North Dakota pastor whose “overnighters” programme provides support to troubled men seeking oil industry work – despite local opposition.

Moss nurtures universal resonances (struggle, redemption) from grassroots materials: timely specifics, conflicted those. And few are more…

The Woman In Black

Re-released for Halloween (and, er, pre-sequel publicity), Daniel Radcliffe’s pre-Horns leap from Aggravate to horror is a loving tribute to ancient-school Brit-chills. Even now we know he’ll thrive post-Hogwarts, Radcliffe impresses as Arthur Kipps, the solicitor, widower and father with an invested interest in the afterlife.

Kipps gets every ghostly cliché tossed at him, but director James…

Mr. Turner

Fifteen years on from Topsy-Turvy, Mike Leigh returns to the substantial period biopic with a portrait of an artist, 18th-Century giant Joseph Mallord William Turner. A man who evidently didn’t suffer fools gladly – no less, you’d imagine, than Leigh himself. Tempting though it is to interpret Mr. Turner on some level as a self-portrait, this is but one brushstroke in a…

Nightcrawler

‘Network meets Taxi Driver‘ might have been the pitch for Dan Gilroy’s debut feature, a ghoulish satire that trawls the dark corners and neon-soaked streets of LA.

Gaunt and bug-eyed, Jake Gyllenhaal excels as Lou Bloom, a lost soul who stumbles across a bloody road accident and stands transfixed as a TV news crew feeds off the…