The latest DVDs and Blu-rays are given the once-over by our writers. Read first before reaching for your credit card.
Tomorrow You’re Gone (2013) is the new film from Director David Jacobson. Like his previous efforts Dahmer (2002) and Down in The Valley (2005), Jacobson is very much focused on atmosphere and aesthetic with the influence of Terrence Malick’s Badlands (1973) hanging like a cloud over his work. Here he brings together Stephen Dorff and Michelle Monaghan as the central Bonnie and Clyde figures.
This is the first of three DVD releases from writer/director Hal Hartley. An important part of the American independent film movement, the auteur is famed for his use of eccentric characters and deadpan comedy. Amateur is Hartley’s fifth feature (out of twelve) in a career spanning from the 1980s to the present day.
Everything about this war-set detective thriller delights, confounds and disturbs; even its ludicrous title (perhaps some poeticism was lost in translation) somehow gels with the melodrama.
Bernard Cribbins is a beat bobby daydreaming of Spanish hols, when he's bopped on the noggin by jewellery store robbers. Foiled in pursuit, he nips into a handy police box. Only it's not a police box, it's the Tardis. Upgraded from its last outing, there's now smooth metal panels and plush seats. Still got the Doctor and little Susan from last time, but the blonde has been swapped for a brunette, Barbara, played by Jill Curzon. Bernard's head injury kicks in and he faints. The Doc, heedless of butterflies and their effects, whisks the unconscious Bernard 200 years into the future.
The first big screen outing for the Doctor and his legendary arch enemies sees a loveably eccentric Peter Cushing having a blast with his performance as the titular time traveller, as he takes his Granddaughters Susan and Barbara and fellow companion Ian on a thrilling trip into time and space, winding up on the planet of the Daleks. Based on the second Doctor Who TV story, the film took the yarn to a new level of chaos and action, far eclipsing what was possible on the meagre TV budget.
