Shaun de Waal looks at the DVDs to look out for this month
DVD OF THE MONTH
Across the Universe
Director Julie Taymor is nothing if not versatile: her works range from a “post-modern” (that is, ahistorically designed) take on Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus to the staging of The Lion King. In Across the Universe, she turns a long series of Beatles songs, from I Wanna Hold Your Hand to Helter Skelter, into a story – and tells the story through the songs.
There is more singing than talking, and we get all the way from naivety to rage, from a depressed Liverpool to the anti-Vietnam protests on American campuses and concerts on the roof in New York. Which is to say pools of sorrow, waves of joy — Naturally, the main characters called Jude (Jim Sturgess) and Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), and there are slightly annoying jokes like the one about someone who came in through the bathroom window. (What, no Penny Lane?) Apart from that, though, it’s a visually impressive and always tuneful movie. I found it a little over-long when I saw it in a cinema, but that means it’s perfect for DVD: you don’t have to watch it all at once. The local release has no extras, which is a bit of a pity because the overseas version is a double disc with replete with them. — Shaun de Waal
ALSO RELEASED
The Lives of Others
This excellent German movie deservedly won an Oscar for best foreign film last year. It tells the gripping and moving story of an intellectual, arty East German couple and their surveillance and manipulation by Stasi agents in the 1980s — an experience apparently all too common in the former communist state.
Bee Movie
Jerry Seinfeld makes it to be big screen at last — or at least his voice does. But he also co-scripted this highly enjoyable animation about a young bee who courageously takes on the whole human race. Delightful. Buy it for the kids — and yourself.
The US vs John Lennon
Excellent documentary about the former Beatle’s move into political and social protest (how ever eccentric in form), and how the American authorities began to regard him as a dangerous subversive.
La Vie en Rose
Biopic of the “Little Sparrow” and France’s favourite chanteuse, Edith Piaf, who went from the gutter to the concert hall and international fame, via drugs and bad love. Beautifully filmed, convincingly acted (by Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard), confusing for some.
Deliver Us from Evil
Forget the rash of horror movies going straight to DVD. This is a real horror story: the true account of a Catholic priest who abused many, many children in California in the 1960s and 1970s, and got away with it because the church hierarchy refused to confront the issue. The bishops just kept moving him to a new parish — to abuse more children. And the church is still in denial, as this documentary shows all too chillingly.
Nomad: The Warrior
As part of its ongoing battle to counteract the libels of Borat, Kazakhstan has produced this nationalistic epic about harassed 19th-century Kazakhs fighting back against a traditional enemy. It’s politically meaningless to all but patriotic Kazakhs, but it is reasonably stirring, looks good, and has lots of galloping across the steppes.