The Look of Love (StudioCanal, cert 18, Blu-ray/DVD)
Michael Winterbottom’s biopic about porn king Paul Raymond (Steve Coogan at about 50 per cent Partridge) has a fatal lack of sympathy for its central character but paints a gorgeously tacky picture of his world.
Oblivion (Universal, cert 12, Blu-ray/DVD)
Total Recall with a respray, a super-luxe sci-fi actioner starring Tom Cruise, Olga Kurylenko and Andrea Riseborough (doing the nasty Sharon Stone stuff like she’s chewing a wasp).
Teen Beach Movie (Disney, cert U, DVD)
Two modern Disney-ish teenagers get trapped in a 1960s Disney surfing movie where everyone looks like Zac Efron. Tremblingly kitsch, a singing-dancing-grinning guilty pleasure.
Bernie (Universal, cert 12, DVD)
What happens when the nicest guy in town (Jack Black) murders its most awful bitch (Shirley Maclaine)? This true story from director Richard Linklater mixes mock-doc, real-doc and pure fiction to uneven effect.
Inseparable (Matchbox, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)
The Chinese take on Hollywood with a weird bi-lingual hybrid of fantasy, romance, thriller, action, superhero and comedy genres in which Kevin Spacey plays a Mr Fixit to man-in-a-fix Daniel Wu. Flawed but fascinating.
The Tarnished Angels (Eureka, cert U, DVD)
Rock Hudson, Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone in a beautiful remaster of Douglas Sirk’s 1957 lip-quiverer – what Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan), Robert Zemeckis (Flight) and Pedro Almodóvar (Broken Embraces) were aiming for.
Box Sets
The White Queen (Anchor Bay, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)
If you want history, buy a Simon Schama book, but the BBC's panting War of the Roses series fits the historical romp model of The Tudors, Braveheart and even I, Claudius.
Experiment Under London (BFI)
Volume 11 of the BFI’s British Transport Films series is a collection of five fascinating films on the building of the Victoria line, between 1961 and 1969, the Crossrail of its era.
Top of the Lake (2entertain, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)
Jane Campion directs, Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss stars, New Zealand provides the scenery, The Killing delivers the vibe and Blue Velvet the basic idea. In other words, a crime drama that’s intelligent, well acted, beautiful, moody and mad.
Released Mon Aug 12
The Gatekeepers (Metrodome, cert 15, DVD)
A remarkable documentary that interviews the former heads of Israel’s counter terrorism agency. They look like Bond villains but their political opinions are as surprising as their jaw-dropping openness.
Spring Breakers (Universal, cert 18, Blu-ray/DVD/download)
Against a background of kegs, bongs and foam, Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez and friends get into bikinis and go gangster in a Harmony Korine film as scant of clothes as it is of plot. Sure looks nice though.
The Place Beyond the Pines (StudioCanal, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)
Ryan Gosling (overdoing the Steve McQueen) and Bradley Cooper (quietly excellent) star in a sprawling, generation-hopping, fate-drenched drama about two men whose sins are visited on their sons.
Evil Dead (StudioCanal, cert 18, Blu-ray/DVD)
A double-orchestra remake of the seminal 1981 horror, with fountains of gush, chainsaws, Exorcist-style satanic growling, the works.
Papadopoulos and Sons (101 Films, cert 15, DVD)
An exquisitely good Stephen Dillane plays the immigrant-done-good busted back to the East End in a My Big Fat Greek Chip Shop britcom. It lacks a Richard Curtis killer payoff but there’s tons of heart.
The Sun in a Net (Second Run, cert 15, DVD)
The 1962 Czechoslovak drama that broke the stranglehold of socialist realism is a cool monochrome beauty about a skinny-jean teenager’s summer of lust, freedom and collective farming.
The Seasoning House (Kaleidoscope, cert 18, Blu-ray/DVD)
Nice Sean Pertwee plays a very nasty warlord being given the runaround by a deaf girl in a Balkan whorehouse in this gory British horror, too pretty for its own good.
Box Sets
Friday Night Lights The Complete Collection (Universal, cert 15, DVD)
Season 2 falls apart a bit but otherwise the five seasons of this show about Texas smalltown football is as near to perfection (ie The Wire) as TV drama gets.
Girls Season 1-2 (Warner, cert 15, DVD
The brutally honest comedy about super-entitled twentysomethings making a stop-go of it in New York, written and directed by, and starring Lena Dunham.
Skins Series 1-7 (4 DVD, cert 18, DVD)
Kaya Scodelario and Nicholas Hoult featured in the refreshingly funny, sexy, sweary, druggy, vomity, “kids today, huh” series that worked hard to shock Generation Dad.
Released Mon Aug 5
Trance (Fox, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)
James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson and Vincent Cassel hold it together but Danny Boyle’s Inception – a heist, some hypnosis, multiple realities and edgy Shallow Grave-style group dynamics – falls apart towards the end.
Good Vibrations (Universal, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)
A short, sharp shock of feelgood in this well turned biopic about Terri Hooley, the Belfast record shop owner who made The Undertones’ Teenage Kicks possible.
The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh (Metrodome, cert 12, DVD)
Here’s a director to watch – Rodrigo Gudiño, who takes a man, a house, a restless camera and a voiceover (by Vanessa Redgrave) and produces an innovative, textured ghost story out of almost nothing.
Blancanieves (StudioCanal, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)
A silent Spanish movie imagining Snow White as a 1920s bullfighter. Beautifully shot, though never as convincingly in period as The Artist, it creaks into life after an hour.
Stolen (Lionsgate, cert 12, Blu-ray/DVD)
The plot to Taken (“who nicked my daughter?”), altered just enough to keep the lawyers off and with Liam Neeson replaced by Nicolas Cage at full megaphone. Why does he do it?
Dark Skies (E One, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)
Take The Exorcist, Sixth Sense and Paranormal Activity, add TV-movie favourite Kerri Russell and you’ve got this frustrating mix of the familiar and the genuinely spooky.
The Jungle Book (Disney, cert U, Blu-ray/DVD)
The last project Walt Disney supervised now remastered, though it’s the songs (King of the Swingers, Bare Necessities, I Wanna Be Like You) not the animation that make it a classic.
Box Sets
Great British Railway Journeys Series 1-3 (Fremantle, cert E, DVD)
Michael Portillo and an 1863 Bradshaw’s guide travel the county by train in the TV series that’s strangely popular. Maybe it’s the pink shirt and lime-green blazer combo.
Boardwalk Empire Season 1-3 (Warner, cert 18, Blu-ray/DVD)
Steve Buscemi is its star and Martin Scorsese its executive producer, but this TV series about the bootleggers of Atlantic City remains the “nearly man” of HBO’s output.
Paul Temple Complete Collection (Acorn, cert 12, DVD)
The surviving 16 episodes of the lavish 1970s BBC co-production, with smoothy Francis Matthews (the voice of Captain Scarlet) as the crime writer helping the police solve cases. Murder, He Wrote.
