Muddle after the massacre

There's suck-you-in sentimentality from Steven Spielberg's thriller Munich, Charlize Theron stars in a story of prejudice and stubborn righteousness in North Country and Seance On A Wet Afternoon is a great old Brit thriller...

Munich
***
Steven Spielberg's thriller Munich, about the aftermath of the extremist Palestinian terrorist action at the 1972 Munich Olympics where 11 Israeli athletes were assassinated, tackles its topic head on - then swerves around it. Avner (Eric Bana) and team are sent to avenge the attack, and it is this that forms the film's subject.

But Spielberg's suck-you-in sentimentality is weakened by too-careful political/ emotional balance, while controversial Arab/Israeli issues are soon mere background to Bana's abandonment issues with his own father and need to protect his own family.

What emerges - eventually - is a story about Bana's own hunter-turns-hunted moral hell, where the conclusion 'killing makes you feel nasty' seems limited reward for the marathon-length journey it took to get there.

Extras: Introduction by Spielberg; Munich: The Team, The Mission featurette. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh

North Country
***
Dramatising America's first class-action sexual harassment lawsuit doesn't sound like riveting cinema. But in North Country, director Niki Caro digs the excitement out of this story of prejudice and stubborn righteousness with the same tough-mindedness that Josey (Charlize Theron) brings to the Minnesotan mines - at least until the climactic court scene, when it all rather falls apart.

It's the 1980s and single mother Josey is willing to break her back working but refuses to have her spirit broken by a bunch of chauvinists who believe a woman's place is anywhere except an iron mine. The story's trajectory will be familiar to anyone who has ever watched a law drama - but Theron is excellent and is helped along by the ever-marvellous Frances McDormand.

Extras: Making-of, deleted scenes.

Seance On A Wet Afternoon
****
If you love TV's Medium, Psychic Investigator or, indeed, if you just love a great old Brit thriller then you'll love this eerily shot, stylish, black-andwhite curio from 1964. In Seance On A Wet Afternoon, Richard Attenborough, super-duper as ever, stars as a weak husband who assists Kim Stanley, his increasingly spooky and delusional psychic wife, in kidnapping a child.

Which allows wifey to offer her 'supernatural' services to the child's parents when police are unable to help. This Oscar-nominated and Bafta-winning mystery drama excels in creating the sort of ghostly creepiness rooted in childhood trauma beloved by later inheritors such as The Others. Well worth indulging in on a wet afternoon.

Extras: Featurette on writer/director Bryan Forbes, commentary, trailer, stills.

Kwaidan
****
Japanese artists have a noble heritage of scaring the socks off audiences, from Kabuki ghost stories to the current Asia Extreme whimper-fests. And Masaki Kobayashi's 1964 Kwaidan has an honoured place in that history. This adaptation of four ghost tales by folklorist Lafcadio Hearn won the Cannes Special Jury prize - and bankrupted Kobayashi's production company.

His meticulously crafted vision of the human and supernatural worlds in head-on collision is a visual feast, with Turu Takemitsu's unnerving score driving the tales to their chilling finales. The dead are narked and determined to show it, whether it's a deserted wife, a massacred warrior clan or a trapped soul.