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Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary

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Filmed shortly before her death, this extended reminiscence from Traudl Junge about her time working for Hitler promises more than it delivers. Junge opens with a doubtless sincere condemnation of Hitler for his evil-doings and reproaches herself for failing to recognise the evil in him. You suspect she's still a little starstruck and her recollections of him depict a kind man, albeit with a lot on his mind. Banal, unilluminating.

Filmed shortly before her death, this extended reminiscence from Traudl Junge about her time working for Hitler promises more than it delivers. Junge opens with a doubtless sincere condemnation of Hitler for his evil-doings and reproaches herself for failing to recognise the evil in him. You suspect she’s still a little starstruck and her recollections of him depict a kind man, albeit with a lot on his mind. Banal, unilluminating.

Death In Venice

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Nobody wants a painfully slow death: do you want to watch one, even if it's set against the crumbling beauty of Venice? Visconti's '71 adaptation of Thomas Mann's novel is a classic no one dares question, but its study of ageing composer Dirk Bogarde falling in unrequited love with a golden, fey young boy is stately and overwrought, and so enamoured of itself it forgets the audience. Perilously sluggish.

Nobody wants a painfully slow death: do you want to watch one, even if it’s set against the crumbling beauty of Venice? Visconti’s ’71 adaptation of Thomas Mann’s novel is a classic no one dares question, but its study of ageing composer Dirk Bogarde falling in unrequited love with a golden, fey young boy is stately and overwrought, and so enamoured of itself it forgets the audience. Perilously sluggish.

Le Doulos

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The great French director Jean-Pierre Melville understood American movies better than the majority of Hollywood, and devoted himself to a remarkable series of terse tough-guy thrillers which claimed the term "noir" back for France. Shot on the streets of Paris dressed to look like Manhattan, this spare, razor-sharp 1962 affair has Jean-Paul Belmondo looking great as the doomed stool-pigeon at the centre of a web of deceit.

The great French director Jean-Pierre Melville understood American movies better than the majority of Hollywood, and devoted himself to a remarkable series of terse tough-guy thrillers which claimed the term “noir” back for France. Shot on the streets of Paris dressed to look like Manhattan, this spare, razor-sharp 1962 affair has Jean-Paul Belmondo looking great as the doomed stool-pigeon at the centre of a web of deceit.

Man Of The Year

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Like the preppy cousin of City Of God, this handsome crime flick from Jos...

Like the preppy cousin of City Of God, this handsome crime flick from Jos

Planet Of The Apes: Special Edition

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Forget the awful sequels, spin-off TV show and Tim Burton's disappointing remake. The original 1968 movie, with Charlton Heston's astronaut stranded on a world where mute, dumb humans are enslaved by civilised apes, is a sci-fi classic, thanks to Rod Serling's subversive screenplay and that final, legendary shot.

Forget the awful sequels, spin-off TV show and Tim Burton’s disappointing remake. The original 1968 movie, with Charlton Heston’s astronaut stranded on a world where mute, dumb humans are enslaved by civilised apes, is a sci-fi classic, thanks to Rod Serling’s subversive screenplay and that final, legendary shot.

Dark Star: Special Edition

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Written as a student project with future Alien writer Dan O'Bannon, John Carpenter's ingenious no-budget directorial debut, named after a Grateful Dead song was the first stoner sci-fi pic. On a scuzzy spaceship far away, four furry freak surf dude astronauts are bored out of their skulls on a long-haul mission to destroy unstable planets, and plagued by troubles when their talking bomb gets ideas of its own and the alien "pet" O'Bannon has smuggled aboard escapes. Sideswipes at Kubrick's 2001 are entirely intentional; the attack of the munchies the movie brings on pure coincidence.

Written as a student project with future Alien writer Dan O’Bannon, John Carpenter’s ingenious no-budget directorial debut, named after a Grateful Dead song was the first stoner sci-fi pic. On a scuzzy spaceship far away, four furry freak surf dude astronauts are bored out of their skulls on a long-haul mission to destroy unstable planets, and plagued by troubles when their talking bomb gets ideas of its own and the alien “pet” O’Bannon has smuggled aboard escapes. Sideswipes at Kubrick’s 2001 are entirely intentional; the attack of the munchies the movie brings on pure coincidence.

The Trial

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Orson Welles' darkly comic 1963 adaptation of Kafka's paranoid fable is still visually stunning, with an unforgettable performance by Anthony Perkins as the hapless Josef K, placed on trial for reasons unknown. "He's guilty as sin," was Welles' verdict, and so Perkins plays it all the way as a shifty, twitchy ball of nerves. Superb.

Orson Welles’ darkly comic 1963 adaptation of Kafka’s paranoid fable is still visually stunning, with an unforgettable performance by Anthony Perkins as the hapless Josef K, placed on trial for reasons unknown. “He’s guilty as sin,” was Welles’ verdict, and so Perkins plays it all the way as a shifty, twitchy ball of nerves. Superb.

Days Of Wine And Roses

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Jack Lemmon is the boozy PR man. Lee Remick is the teetotal secretary. He buys her a brandy. They're hooked! They lose their jobs, have an unwanted baby and get stuck into the hard stuff. He reforms. She doesn't. "You and I were a couple of drunks on the sea of booze, and the boat sank!" Hysterical yet Oscar-worthy stuff from Blake Edwards.

Jack Lemmon is the boozy PR man. Lee Remick is the teetotal secretary. He buys her a brandy. They’re hooked! They lose their jobs, have an unwanted baby and get stuck into the hard stuff. He reforms. She doesn’t. “You and I were a couple of drunks on the sea of booze, and the boat sank!” Hysterical yet Oscar-worthy stuff from Blake Edwards.

Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde

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The 1932 and 1941 adaptations of Stevenson's landmark work of horror fiction on one disc. The earlier movie finds director Rouben Mamoulian going heavy on the claustrophobic atmosphere and sexual undercurrents with Frederic Marsh on Oscar-winning form as the doctor and his bestial alter ego. The later version teams Spencer Tracy (transformed via a bad wig and bushy eyebrows) with Ingrid Bergman (putting on an appalling cockney accent). Enough said.

The 1932 and 1941 adaptations of Stevenson’s landmark work of horror fiction on one disc. The earlier movie finds director Rouben Mamoulian going heavy on the claustrophobic atmosphere and sexual undercurrents with Frederic Marsh on Oscar-winning form as the doctor and his bestial alter ego. The later version teams Spencer Tracy (transformed via a bad wig and bushy eyebrows) with Ingrid Bergman (putting on an appalling cockney accent). Enough said.

A Bridge Too Far

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And at least an hour too long. Representing the tail-end of the epic war movie wave, Richard Attenborough's 1977 superproduction reconstructs the disastrous Allied attempt to seize half-a-dozen Dutch bridges behind enemy lines. Ponderous, but with a cast featuring everyone from Laurence Olivier, Dirk Bogarde, Sean Connery and Michael Caine to Gene Hackman, Robert Redford, James Caan and Elliott Gould, it's satisfyingly star-studded.

And at least an hour too long. Representing the tail-end of the epic war movie wave, Richard Attenborough’s 1977 superproduction reconstructs the disastrous Allied attempt to seize half-a-dozen Dutch bridges behind enemy lines. Ponderous, but with a cast featuring everyone from Laurence Olivier, Dirk Bogarde, Sean Connery and Michael Caine to Gene Hackman, Robert Redford, James Caan and Elliott Gould, it’s satisfyingly star-studded.

People I Know

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Pacino is electric in this shamefully overlooked, brilliantly scripted parable of an ageing New York PR man reaching the end of his tether. Footage of the Twin Towers meant its release was screwed up by cuts, but a charged, engrossing film remains, with druggie starlet T...

Pacino is electric in this shamefully overlooked, brilliantly scripted parable of an ageing New York PR man reaching the end of his tether. Footage of the Twin Towers meant its release was screwed up by cuts, but a charged, engrossing film remains, with druggie starlet T

Girl With A Pearl Earring

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This fictitious backstory to the creation of Vermeer's best-known painting looks so impressive, and so precisely mimics the colours the 17th-century Dutchman used, it's a while before you realise it's just a prissy costume drama starring Colin Firth and pouty Scarlett Johansson. A dainty tale of repressed lust, perfectly pitched at its middlebrow audience.

This fictitious backstory to the creation of Vermeer’s best-known painting looks so impressive, and so precisely mimics the colours the 17th-century Dutchman used, it’s a while before you realise it’s just a prissy costume drama starring Colin Firth and pouty Scarlett Johansson. A dainty tale of repressed lust, perfectly pitched at its middlebrow audience.

Funny As Hell

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Gone are the days when one would be risking abject ridicule by daring to publicly suggest that The King Of Comedy is De Niro's greatest movie. Not just up there in the same ballpark as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and GoodFellas but darker, funnier and mightier than them all. Seemingly, the culture has finally caught up with Martin Scorsese's second least popular movie (after The Last Temptation Of Christ). The King Of Comedy always was ahead of its time, almost precognitive in anticipating our fast-burning, soul-corroding obsession with celebrity. After all, as Garry Shandling has unsmilingly declared, "the whole world is showbiz now." Released in 1983, in the wake of the Lennon assassination and the botched attempt on Reagan's life, The King Of Comedy was widely misunderstood as a wry satire on celebrity worship and De Niro's character, Rupert Pupkin, tagged as a kind of sitcom Travis Bickle. In the retrospective documentary that comes with this new DVD package, Scorsese makes the point that, if anything, Pupkin is a more potentially violent character than Bickle could ever be. As the aspiring stand-up who hatches a kidnap plot so that he can grab his 15 minutes and appear on The Jerry Langford Show, Pupkin risks infamy in his attempt to escape anonymity on the basis that it's "better to be king for a night than a schmuck for a lifetime." He is truly God's Loneliest Man. Twenty years before it was fully accepted that fame and merit could be mutually exclusive, Pupkin perfectly encapsulates the maniacal mindset of the no-talent loser who realises that lack of talent will get him everywhere with the right kind of hype. The King Of Comedy moves at a frenetic pace that's in keeping with Pupkin's manic oddness. But all the freneticism is on the surface. Beyond that, the light and colour seem to be claustrophobically underworldly (more so than ever on this DVD version). The characters, meanwhile, are in constant kinetic motion but also appear strangely, horribly still (Pupkin frozen in lonely self-delusion, Jerry Lewis'deadpan Langford stiff with the boredom of success, Sandra Bernhard's Masha a slow-ticking timebomb of sexual terrorism). The result is, of course, a comedy of profound embarrassment that at its best (Pupkin's excursion to Langford's vacation home, his visits to the Hell's waiting-rooms of TV studio receptions) is unbearably funny for the simple reason that it rings so uncomfortably true. But the result is more than a masterpiece of dark comedy. The result is also a masterpiece of modern everyday horror. At every brilliant turn, The King Of Comedy mines the horror of soulless banality that's the only sure consequence of a world where all is showbiz and we can all be king for a night, just so long as we are pathological enough.

Gone are the days when one would be risking abject ridicule by daring to publicly suggest that The King Of Comedy is De Niro’s greatest movie. Not just up there in the same ballpark as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and GoodFellas but darker, funnier and mightier than them all. Seemingly, the culture has finally caught up with Martin Scorsese’s second least popular movie (after The Last Temptation Of Christ). The King Of Comedy always was ahead of its time, almost precognitive in anticipating our fast-burning, soul-corroding obsession with celebrity. After all, as Garry Shandling has unsmilingly declared, “the whole world is showbiz now.”

Released in 1983, in the wake of the Lennon assassination and the botched attempt on Reagan’s life, The King Of Comedy was widely misunderstood as a wry satire on celebrity worship and De Niro’s character, Rupert Pupkin, tagged as a kind of sitcom Travis Bickle. In the retrospective documentary that comes with this new DVD package, Scorsese makes the point that, if anything, Pupkin is a more potentially violent character than Bickle could ever be. As the aspiring stand-up who hatches a kidnap plot so that he can grab his 15 minutes and appear on The Jerry Langford Show, Pupkin risks infamy in his attempt to escape anonymity on the basis that it’s “better to be king for a night than a schmuck for a lifetime.” He is truly God’s Loneliest Man. Twenty years before it was fully accepted that fame and merit could be mutually exclusive, Pupkin perfectly encapsulates the maniacal mindset of the no-talent loser who realises that lack of talent will get him everywhere with the right kind of hype.

The King Of Comedy moves at a frenetic pace that’s in keeping with Pupkin’s manic oddness. But all the freneticism is on the surface. Beyond that, the light and colour seem to be claustrophobically underworldly (more so than ever on this DVD version). The characters, meanwhile, are in constant kinetic motion but also appear strangely, horribly still (Pupkin frozen in lonely self-delusion, Jerry Lewis’deadpan Langford stiff with the boredom of success, Sandra Bernhard’s Masha a slow-ticking timebomb of sexual terrorism).

The result is, of course, a comedy of profound embarrassment that at its best (Pupkin’s excursion to Langford’s vacation home, his visits to the Hell’s waiting-rooms of TV studio receptions) is unbearably funny for the simple reason that it rings so uncomfortably true. But the result is more than a masterpiece of dark comedy. The result is also a masterpiece of modern everyday horror. At every brilliant turn, The King Of Comedy mines the horror of soulless banality that’s the only sure consequence of a world where all is showbiz and we can all be king for a night, just so long as we are pathological enough.

Blow-Up

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To explode a myth: in 1966 Antonioni's first English film was pitched not on the Italian director's vision or its meditations on the interface between reality and fantasy, but on its 'unflinching' portrayal of Swinging London?ie, much nudity. The original trailer, included here, makes that perfectly clear: it was popular because of breasts, not because it asked what 'meaning' meant. And photographer David Hemmings' romps with models and Vanessa Redgrave remain icons of "yeeeah, baby" wish fulfilment for lensmen everywhere. Antonioni makes off-kilter use of London locations and The Yardbirds' rocking, and there are many then-radical scenes and op-art colours. But as the navel-gazing story takes hold, with Hemmings trying to ascertain whether he's unwittingly snapped a murder in a park, there's a curious listlessness. Watching it now's like seeing Austin Powers morph into The Scent Of Green Papaya halfway through. Under-developed, but unique.

To explode a myth: in 1966 Antonioni’s first English film was pitched not on the Italian director’s vision or its meditations on the interface between reality and fantasy, but on its ‘unflinching’ portrayal of Swinging London?ie, much nudity. The original trailer, included here, makes that perfectly clear: it was popular because of breasts, not because it asked what ‘meaning’ meant.

And photographer David Hemmings’ romps with models and Vanessa Redgrave remain icons of “yeeeah, baby” wish fulfilment for lensmen everywhere. Antonioni makes off-kilter use of London locations and The Yardbirds’ rocking, and there are many then-radical scenes and op-art colours. But as the navel-gazing story takes hold, with Hemmings trying to ascertain whether he’s unwittingly snapped a murder in a park, there’s a curious listlessness. Watching it now’s like seeing Austin Powers morph into The Scent Of Green Papaya halfway through. Under-developed, but unique.

The Mother

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Irrespective of the now infamous intra-generational doggie-doggie, this steely little tale concerning a granny (Anne Reid) and a horny builder (Daniel Craig) is a visceral attack from writer Hanif Kureishi on the hateful London middle classes. The merciless depiction of harsh money-grabbing sons and neurotic, self-obsessed daughters gives the flick its genuinely dark heart.

Irrespective of the now infamous intra-generational doggie-doggie, this steely little tale concerning a granny (Anne Reid) and a horny builder (Daniel Craig) is a visceral attack from writer Hanif Kureishi on the hateful London middle classes. The merciless depiction of harsh money-grabbing sons and neurotic, self-obsessed daughters gives the flick its genuinely dark heart.

There’s Something About Mary: Special Edition

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Arguably the Farrellys' best film, though already ageing badly. A bunch of set-pieces (Ben Stiller's zipper problems Cameron Diaz's innovative hair gel) linked by a ridiculous, overlong plot, it gets its big belly-laugh moments right and you tolerate the padding. Stiller's lack of vanity allows him to carry off sketches others would muff.

Arguably the Farrellys’ best film, though already ageing badly. A bunch of set-pieces (Ben Stiller’s zipper problems Cameron Diaz’s innovative hair gel) linked by a ridiculous, overlong plot, it gets its big belly-laugh moments right and you tolerate the padding. Stiller’s lack of vanity allows him to carry off sketches others would muff.

Swimming Pool

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Fran...

Fran

Mr Majestyk

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The greatest chase thriller about a melon farmer ever! Charles Bronson is the melon man, prevented from gathering his crop when he's handcuffed to mafia hitman Al Lettieri. Escaping, Bronson wants to turn the killer over to the cops so that he can harvest his melons, but soon the hoods are after him. Directed in pulpy style by Richard Fleischer from an Elmore Leonard script. Bronson's melons look lovely.

The greatest chase thriller about a melon farmer ever! Charles Bronson is the melon man, prevented from gathering his crop when he’s handcuffed to mafia hitman Al Lettieri. Escaping, Bronson wants to turn the killer over to the cops so that he can harvest his melons, but soon the hoods are after him. Directed in pulpy style by Richard Fleischer from an Elmore Leonard script. Bronson’s melons look lovely.

Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life: Special Edition

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Yikes?if you haven't seen this in a while, prepare to be disappointed. By '83, the Pythons' pioneering madcap humour had descended into reliance on pointless shock tactics. It may be bold, but it's not funny. Their guide to life and death?intelligent, sure, but self-congratulatory?includes copious vomiting, bleeding, organ removal and bouncing Benny Hill Show breasts. Not their best.

Yikes?if you haven’t seen this in a while, prepare to be disappointed. By ’83, the Pythons’ pioneering madcap humour had descended into reliance on pointless shock tactics. It may be bold, but it’s not funny. Their guide to life and death?intelligent, sure, but self-congratulatory?includes copious vomiting, bleeding, organ removal and bouncing Benny Hill Show breasts. Not their best.

Bottle Rocket

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Dazzlingly confident '96 debut from The Royal Tenenbaums' Wes Anderson which follows the misadventures of an eccentric gang of wannabe Texan mobsters. It immediately established the Anderson template: deadpan delivery, solid colours, Owen and Luke Wilson, strong musical soundtrack, immaculately cluttered production design, leisurely pace, iconic costumes, and an eerie sense of timelessness.

Dazzlingly confident ’96 debut from The Royal Tenenbaums’ Wes Anderson which follows the misadventures of an eccentric gang of wannabe Texan mobsters. It immediately established the Anderson template: deadpan delivery, solid colours, Owen and Luke Wilson, strong musical soundtrack, immaculately cluttered production design, leisurely pace, iconic costumes, and an eerie sense of timelessness.

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