DVDs of the week

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London to Brighton

A Good Year

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Harrold Lloyd - The Short Films

Tourette de France

This week's DVD releases include: A Good Year, Perfume: The story of a Murderer, Tourette de France, and the harrowing London to Brighton.

London to Brighton, 18, £17.99
*****

Fresh new writer/director Paul Andrew Williams became the hot buttered toast of the British film industry last year with this astounding debut. Along with Andrea Arnold's captivating Red Road, it convinced even cynics that underworld Brit flicks had finally progressed beyond Guy Ritchie.

The opening scene confidently biffs you straight into the action. It's 3.07am and a bruised woman shoves a young, scared girl into a pub toilet - and locks her in. Is she the girl's protector? Her enemy? Her pimp? Are they sisters? You're gripped as the action unfolds or, rather, unclenches, as the two go on a desperate run from London to Brighton. Only for the plot to fist you in the gut time and again.

The odd dodgy 'gangster' moment aside, this is a thriller with a pleasingly realistic setting, full of moral mazes and superb performances. Lorraine Stanley may have missed out on a Bafta nomination but she proves she's a contender in her own right here, while newcomer Georgia Groome is a talent to watch. It's hard to recommend this highly enough.
Extras: Alternative ending, deleted scenes, director's commentary, Georgia Groome audition, original short on which London To Brighton is based. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh

A Good Year, 12, £19.99
**

A romcom mainly memorable for a piece of vintage miscasting: ie, Hollywood thug Russell Crowe as its dithering lead. What next? Hugh Grant in a leather skirt for Gladiator 2? Crowe plays Max Skinner, a ruthless, loveless shark of a City trader, who suddenly inherits a lovable, crumbly old French vineyard from his lovable, crumbly old uncle (Albert Finney).

Briefly ducking out of the fast lane to check it out for resale, the shameless - if deliciously envyinducing - shots of dusty sundrenched vineyards suggest Max's heart may eventually crumble too.

Particularly with a helping hand from a certain defensively sexy, gives-as-good-as-she-gets waitress in the village. Will these two opposites attract? Is a romcom made of fromage?

Based on fave middle-class holiday author Peter Mayle's 2004 novel, the thin story is adequate enough, with top comedy support from Tom Hollander ensuring that all our laughs aren't entirely at Crowe's expense.
Extras: Making-of featurette, and hilarious, just-too-easy-to-mock music clips by Crowe and his band The Ordinary Fear Of God. LI-Z

Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer, 15, £19.99
***

Eighteenth-century orphan Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (a star turn from Brit Ben Whishaw) is in search of the scent of a woman - but he's no Al Pacino. The grubby loner's killer sense of smell becomes a killer habit when he
travels around Europe, offing women in order to snatch and bottle their scents. Rachel Hurd- Wood plays the flame-haired beauty he needs to complete his morbid collection, but her father
(Alan Rickman) is on to him, so the suspense kicks in as he tries to stop him sniffing her out.

Communicating smells through the medium of film is a tricky business (only Willy Wonka could do that) but this visually stunning drama has a darned good try.

Adapted from Patrick Süskind's novel, it suspensefully tracks this serial sniffer to the bitter, bizarre end. Where you should watch out for the ridiculous orgy scene climax – ouch.
Extras: Making-of featurette,
trailer, gallery. Anna Smith

Harold Lloyd - The Short Films, PG, £19.99
****

The iconic shot of horn-rimmed spectacled silent star Harold Lloyd desperately dangling from a clock tower is one of cinema's bestselling-posters. But how many people have actually seen one of his 200 films? You really should because they're jolly funny, judging from this collection of ten jaunty shorts from 1918-21. And I don't mean in a wry, chin-stroking film-buff kind of way.

Lloyd's daredevil slapstick shenanigans and extended chase sequences will have you falling off your sofa.

Famous for his 'glasses' character, an aspiring American go-getter with slicked-back hair, Lloyd's persona may have been slightly less popular and populist back in the day than that of Charlie Chaplin's loveable anti-hero tramp.

But his sassy wit and offbeat intertitles
arguably chime better with modern viewers. At times these films strike a nigh-on Lewis Carroll note, such as Dr Dizzy (1920) set in 'that never-to-be-forgotten period when cloves, corkscrews and foot rails went out of fashion'.
Extras: None.
LI-Z

Tourette de France, no cert, £15.99
***

John Davidson has been the subject of many documentaries about neurological disorder Tourette's - a fact that once prompted an encounter with Prince Charles. 'Suddenly I shouted: "F***ing parasite. Camilla's a s*** ride,"' he confesses at the beginning of this short and sweary Channel 4 doc.

'He didn't even flinch.' Davidson is the main driving force behind this film, in which he and comic actor Keith Allen take youth organisation Tourette's Scotland on a jaunt to Paris in a Routemaster bus to attend a lecture at the hospital where the disease was first diagnosed in the 19th century.

There's too much style over substance (comparisons to Cliff Richard's upbeat Summer Holiday video get tiresome) for this to seem revelatory. But what substance there is - and they seemed to have chucked most of it into the lengthy special features - is interesting: there's some insight into depression, paranoia, selfharm, the merits of medication, how schools are unable to cope with sufferers and the teenagers' attempts to hold in their physical ticks.

And amiable Allen does a thoughtful and entertaining job as interviewer, particularly when he decides that Tourette's is just an extension of freedom of speech.
Extras: Almost two hours' worth, including additional scenes, trailers and stills. Sharon Lougher

 

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