DVD and Blu-ray film reviews: From The Killers to Remember Me

The opening to The Killers is terrifically tense (with clear influences on Tarantino) and Lancaster compels in this savage film noir from 1946

'The Killers', with Ava Gardner and Burt Lancaster (Photo by Everett Collection/REX)

The Killers (PG) Robert Siodmak DVD/Blu-ray (105mins)

Burt Lancaster, in his debut film role, plays the Swede, a former pugilist who fatefully turns to Atlantic City crime and the arms of Ava Gardner’s femme fatale. His story is told in flashback as two heavies plug the Swede in the opening 10 minutes. In the present Edmond O’Brien’s life-insurance investigator pieces together the dead man’s story. The opening is terrifically tense (and clearly influenced Tarantino) and Lancaster compels (he returned to the gambling city 37 years later in Louis Malle’s terrific Atlantic City) in Robert Siodmak’s savage film noir from 1946 (above).

****

Hockney (15) Randall Wright DVD/Blu-ray (112mins)

Randall Wright’s perky, affectionate documentary, which features some fascinating home-movie footage and past interviews, explores David Hockney’s influential art and his adoration of Los Angeles, among many other things. The likes of Celia Birtwell and Ed Ruscha lavish praise on the charismatic Yorkshireman, who comes across as lucid, diligent and funny.

***

Remember Me (15) Ashley Pearce DVD/Blu-ray (180mins)

“You’ve brought it away in your heart, now you can never take it back,” maintains “80-odd” Tom (Michael Palin) to Hannah (Jodie Comer), the young carer in Gwyneth Hughes’s magnificently scary ghost story. Tom fakes a staircase fall in order to escape his creepy home, but the murderous spirit of his haunted house follows him to his new nursing home where poor Hannah gets way too involved. Remember Me’s been accused of being too slow, but every decent ghost tale takes it slow and this one has more than a whiff of Let the Right One In about it.

****

The Congress (15) Ari Folman DVD/Blu-ray (123mins)

“Robin, you fell off the top a long time ago, you’re not worth two bucks,” maintains Danny Huston’s unctuous movie executive to Robin Wright (who is sort of playing a herself) in Ari Folman’s bold but flawed dissection of Hollywood. Wright, portrayed as a difficult actress who made some very bad choices, reluctantly agrees to sell the rights to her digital body to be replicated in computer-animated films. There is some terrifically barbed dialogue and arresting images, but it’s also too long and self-indulgent. It could be destined for cult status.

***

The Nut Job (U) Peter Lepeniotis DVD/Blu-ray (86mins)

There’s a nut shortage and self-centred purple squirrel Surly (Will Arnett) makes thing worse when he sets fire to the park community’s winter food supply. So Surly is banished by Liam Neeson’s dictatorial raccoon, much to the disappointment of good-natured Annie (Katherine Heigl). This feeble children’s animation, a Canadian-South Korean joint production, is unfunny, hugely derivative of the superior Over the Hedge and, worst of all, makes frequent use of the irksome “Gangnam Style”.

*