Say it with a DVD this Christmas

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10 April 2012

A DVD might not shout "look at this unique gift made just with you in mind", yet it can be. If you get the match right, a well-chosen movie can do double duty as the perfect last-minute present and, over the holiday season, an awkward silence filler, papering over familial cracks and plugging festive holes. Here are some recommendations to get the imaginative pixels pulsing.

BEST FOR BOYS

The Bourne Ultimatum (Universal, cert 12)
A blank Matt Damon plays blank amnesiac spy Jason Bourne in a boiled-down actioner with no plot, no character, but non-stop pursuit as thrilling as they come.

Die Hard 4.0 (Fox, cert 15)
The unexpectedly fantastic return of Bruce Willis demonstrates that middle age doesn't make men soft but iron hard. Very comforting, especially if your name is Bruce Willis.

Apocalypto (Icon, cert 18)
Director Mel Gibson's very bloody chase movie might have been shot in Mayan, but that doesn't matter for a second: breathless is breathless in any language.

Borat (Fox, cert 15)
Sacha Baron Cohen's bad-taste comedy about a Kazakh journalist baiting the Americans is not only the funniest of the year but the most daring too.

The Last King of Scotland (Fox, cert 15)
James McAvoy as the lusty doctor getting caught up with Ugandan dictator Idi Amin (an Oscar-winning Forest Whitaker) as he slips from mad, to bad, to very dangerous to know. Brutal, but nuanced too.

BEST FOR GIRLS

The Queen (Fox, cert 12)
Who won't love Helen Mirren as Her Majesty in the film that finds in favour of the "duty first" monarch?

Bobby (Momentum, cert 15)
Emilio Estevez's film also deals with ideas, looking back to the death of senator Robert Kennedy in 1968. It's impressively full of stars, fabulous Sixties fashions and even offers a rare chance to see Lindsay Lohan act.

Casino Royale (Sony, cert 12)
Action for the ladies, with Daniel Craig defying all that silly "stop the blond Bond" nonsense simply by walking out of the water, Ursula Andress style, in his scanties.

Notes on a Scandal (Fox, cert 15)
Cate Blanchett as the teacher having a sexual fling with a schoolboy, with Judi Dench as a lesbian old dear using it to blackmail her. Slightly demented and a bit melodramatic - a very ripe watch indeed.

The Painted Veil (Momentum, cert 12)
Naomi Watts as an unfaithful colonial wife out in darkest China with cuckolded husband Edward Norton. It's quivering, high-end beach-reading - Shogun meets The Thorn Birds - but beautifully well made.

BEST FOR CHILDREN

The Jungle Book (Disney, cert U)
When the second box of Quality Street kicks in and the toddlers have all started screeching, this beautiful, digitally restored version of Disney's classic will simmer them down.

Wallace and Gromit: 3 Cracking Adventures (2 entertain, cert U)
Includes A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave, which young children will watch till the end of time.

Spirited Away (Optimum, cert PG)
The best film from the brilliant Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. An Alice in Wonderland-style adventure, it won an Oscar in 2003 and, for once, Oscar got it right.

The Last Mimzy (EV, cert PG)
Reimagines the Terminator story but instead of Mr Schwarzenegger arriving from the future, we have a toy rabbit. The kiddie empowerment message, cool SFX and potent plot make it a winner.

The Simpsons Movie (Fox, cert PG)
Homer brings an environmental SWAT team down on Springfield, falls in love with a pig and gets all the best jokes in the most keenly anticipated film of the year. Woohoo!

BEST FOR AWKWARD CUSTOMERS

Downfall (Momentum, cert 15)
A stunning "last days of the Third Reich" movie that not only does the "whump" of artillery better than any other but also crawls inside the head of the Fuhrer and his unholy coterie.

Pan's Labyrinth (Optimum, cert 15)
An unusually fierce and imaginative Spanish Alice-in-Wonderland fantasy about a young girl escaping Franco's troops only to wind up with a horned beast. You can't accuse it of being cute.

Tell No One (Revolver, cert 15)
There's a little bit of Alfred Hitchcock and a touch of Michael Haneke in this cleverly constructed French thriller about a husband whose apparently dead wife starts sending emails.

The Lives of Others (Lionsgate, cert 15)
In a good year for German films this is the Oscar-winner that everyone was talking about, a quietly unfolding story of a Stasi agent undone by his eavesdropping in East Berlin.

Black Book (Lionsgate, cert 15)
Yes, the Nazis again, but seen from the Dutch angle this time as director Paul (RoboCop) Verhoeven returns from Hollywood for a drama that twists and twists again until even the best good guys are compromised.

BEST FOR GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST

Easter Parade (Warner, cert U)
Forget the unseasonal title - this is the only musical Fred Astaire made with Judy Garland and it's a holiday essential. No further exhortation necessary.

Becket (Second Sight, cert PG)
Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole at their peak in Jean Anouilh's story of how King Henry II and his archbishop fell out. Camp as a hosepipe, epic as they come.

A Prairie Home Companion (Universal, cert PG)
Robert Altman's last film dips affectionately into the idiosyncracies of Garrison Keillor's weekly, live staged variety radio show.

The Fog of War (Sony, cert PG)
The latest from Errol Morris, the world's best documentarian, is little more than a conversation with Robert McNamara, nearly 90 but lucidly determined to explain his role as US Secretary of Defense through the Vietnam years.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (BBC, cert PG)
Still staggeringly good, the 1979 spy series starring Alec Guinness as an MI6 spook hauled out of retirement to supervise the investigation of funny goings-on at the "Circus".

Say it with a DVD this Christmas

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