The best DVDs for your viewing pleasure this week…
Boyhood
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Ellar Coltrane
Director Richard Linklater continues the cinematic experimentation with this searingly honest portrayal of growing up. It’ll make you think about being a dad – and a son – as we follow Mason (Coltrane throughout) go from young child to legal adult. Unique, powerful, gut-wrenching.
The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug Extended Edition
Starring: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage
Even more of Bilbo and the dwarves thanks to this now de rigeur lengthened version of the second in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit adaptation. One for serious fans.
The Fault In Our Stars
Starring: Ansel Elgort, Shailene Woodley, Nat Woolf
Look – your daughter has been banging on about the book and you’ll have to buy the DVD anyway, so why not lean into it? Novelist John Green’s story is melodramatic, but there’s enough wit to keep adults entertained. Whether that’s true the 40th time you watch it, let us know.
Blue Velvet
Starring: Dennis Hopper, Isabella Rossellini, Kyle MacLachlan
If you thought Twin Peaks was weird in a totally cool way (and are looking forward to the recently-announced new series), then why not check out David Lynch’s 1986 bizarreathon. Packed full of sexual tension and wanton violence, it’s the master at his most sinister, but with his trademark black humour.
Chef
Starring: Jon Favreau, Sofia Vergara, John Leguizamo
Favreau’s first foray as a writer/director was the seminal Swingers and he followed that up with (the underrated) Made. This sees the former cool young thing firmly in mid-life territory, as a disillusioned forty-something who sets up a food truck. Then again, he did cast Vergara and Scarlett Johansson as his love interests, so he’s still crafty.
