The best DVDs reviewed!

11 April 2012
The Weekender

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The Manchurian Candidate

Landed as a Gulf War hero, robotic Liev Schreiber enters the race for the White House. But is he really the hero he seems or just a remote-controlled pawn of the sinister corporations that back him?

Fellow vet Denzel Washington is determined to expose the truth. Jonathan Demme's film bowls absorbingly along and Meryl Streep (stepping into Angela Lansbury's stilettos) is suitably creepy as Schreiber's controlling mother.

But there's none of the nightmarish quality of the original, probably because American corporations, however dangerous, lack the scary exoticism of Chinese hypnotists and scheming Russians.

Extras: Director commentary, two featurettes, five deleted/extended scenes and Schreiber's screen test.

There can't be many Westerns as strange as Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar. For a start, it's all about Joan Crawford rather than the eponymous Johnny (Sterling Hayden as her recently retrieved long-lost love), who barely figures as a beefcake-shaped plot device.

Crawford is Vienna, running a saloon in a backwater town and determined that nobody's going to take it from her. There's a long waiting list to do just that, though, headed by rejected suitor Scott Brady and, more juicily, Mercedes McCambridge, who wants Brady, refuses to admit that she wants him and turns all her considerable rage on Crawford.

In other words, it's a fantastic bitchfight dressed up in leathers - where Crawford's idea of a discreet running-away outfit is flashing eyes and a scarlet shirt.

Whether you watch Westerns to deconstruct them for anti-McCarthy pot-shots, subversive gay messages, feminist tendencies or merely to hear horses' hooves echo - this is a classic.

Extras: Sadly none

It is almost 20 years since Tom Cruise powered his way to superstar status with the entertainingly ridiculous Top Gun and only now are we finally getting the Special Edition we deserve.

Once again, we can thrill to the twirling plane scenes, gasp as student navy pilot Cruise takes on Val Kilmer and lures instructor Kelly McGillis into bed, and hoot at some of the least subtle lines ever to fall off a scriptwriter's pen. Packed with up-and-comers, including Tim Robbins and Meg Ryan, it's big budget and big fun.

Extras: More than three hours' worth, including commentary, previously unseen footage and a seven-part making-of doc.

Milos Forman's biopic of comedian Andy Kaufman,Man On The Moon, may be best remembered for REM's title song but this is not Forman's fault. Cult prankster Kaufman blended hilarity with high-voltage annoyingness for years, until his early death in 1984.

Sometimes this was wildly successful, as in his turn as Latka Gravas in hit sitcom Taxi, and sometimes it distinctly wasn't. Jim Carrey fervently pours his own irritating comedic self into the role and he gets sturdy support from Danny DeVito, Kaufman's real-life cohort in Taxi, and Courtney Love as Kaufman's long-suffering girlfriend.

The trouble is that Kaufman's humour was too weird even for a feature film, and two hours of watching him rib, mock and play pranks on friends and family is enough to drive you nuts.

Extras: Some behind-the-scenes footage, interviews and, of course, REM's music vid.

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