Madchester: The Movie, in which Michael Winterbottom proves his versatility knows no bounds. In lesser hands, the juiced-up story of Joy Division, New Order, Happy Mondays and self-styled pratgenius Tony Wilson could've been scrawny sit-com, but the pace (and the music) makes it zing. Steve Coogan's hilarious as the north-west's answer to Warhol, and it's the first film to feature a joke about the drug dealers of Rhyl.
A document of their 1994 Dog Man Star tour, this captures Suede just about surviving the notorious crisis of losing that album's principal architect, Bernard Butler. Still, Brett Anderson bumps and minces with considerable verve and new boy Richard Oakes oozes confidence nevertheless. More interesting are the accompanying tour films, dedicated to Derek Jarman and visibly influenced by said director's Smiths promos.
DVD EXTRAS: Lyrics menu, rare NFT video footage, teaser for accompanying Lost in TV DVD.
Jean Renoir's 1932 blueprint for Paul Mazursky's heavy-handed 1986 remake Down And Out In Beverly Hills stars Michel Simon as a Parisian tramp rescued from suicidal despair by kindly bookseller Charles Granval. Simon's ungrateful Boudu takes over Granval's house, wife and life, exposing his bourgeois complacency. Enduring, Chaplin-esque social satire.
DVD EXTRAS: Introduction by Renoir, essay on the film, trailer for the Mazursky remake.
By the early-to-mid '80s, Nico was holed up in Manchester on the comeback trail junkie habit in tow. A live performance at the Library Theatre, Heroine is a funereal study of stark cool, drawing on The Velvet Underground—"All Tomorrow's Parties", "Femme Fatale"—alongside rather less celebrated fare from Camera Obscura (1985) and Drama Of Exile (1981).
The inferior An Underground Experience places her in a nameless club—haunted, drawn and distant.
Belgian director Frank Van Passel's handsome Euro-pudding adaptation of a novel by Flemish writer Willem Elsschot evokes bohemian, early 20th-century Paris with sepia-toned style—think Moulin Rouge meets Delicatessen. Sadly, a fine ensemble cast (including Julie Delpy, Shirley Henderson, Timothy West) are wasted on a routine, soapy plot about class, manners, infidelity and looming war.
DVD EXTRAS: Trailers and scene selection.
Patchy South African drama from 2000 in which an actor, landing a role as a Soweto gangster, asks an authentic underworld figure and old school friend to show him the ropes of crime and carjacking. Lines get blurred. Director Oliver Schmitz makes some still-valid points about race and class issues, but it's no Bullets Over Broadway.
On this "Special Edition" DVD you get a wealth of biographical information and visual material, as well as a Renault 21 TV ad based on this legendary Cold War-era feast for late-'60s conspiracy theorists. The holy grail for Prisoner fanatics, however, is a rough-cut, alternative version of episode one, "Arrival", never officially available before, featuring different intro music.
Touted as 'Sex & The City: The Movie', as Nicole Holofcener often directs the series, this nervy comedy's actually closer in neurotic spirit to her earlier, excellent Walking And Talking. Catherine Keener stars, but Brenda Blethyn's mugging threatens to upset the work of Jake Gyllenhaal and Emily Mortimer. Women on the verge.
Awful slapstick version of Conan Doyle's tale from 1978, with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (as Holmes and Watson) recycling old sketches badly as they head up a cast of vintage British comic talent (Kenneth Williams, Irene Handl, Max Wall). It's basically 'Carry On Sherlock', and it does the memory of all concerned no favours.
DVD EXTRAS: Trailer, biographies, interview with director Paul Morrissey.