DVDs of the week

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Red Road
Verve Pictures, 18, £19.99
****
Great things were expected from Andrea Arnold's first feature - after all, her short, Wasp, won an Oscar. And, although this thriller set in the grottiest of Glasgow tenements is wilfully lacking in beauty, great things are what we get. Jackie (Kate Dickie) is a CCTV operator whose working life is spent in front of a bank of TV screens watching, zooming in and, sometimes, manipulating the details. The character's parallels with a film director (especially one working in digital video) are obvious, which makes it all the more intriguing when Jackie spots a man she knows - Clyde (Tony Curran), an ex-con. His connection to Jackie remains mysterious, even as she begins to sidle up to him and his friends - bolshie Stevie (Martin Compston) and vulnerable April (Nathalie Press, pictured) - stepping into the CCTV's arc in order to do so.
Arnold uses her meagre resources brilliantly, drawing the strings of tension tighter until we're as trapped in Jackie's world as she is in Clyde's. And, while there is plenty of film-school fodder here, the fine acting and pitch perfect plot will win it an even broader set of friends.
Extras: Featurette and cast interviews. Nina Caplan

Marie Antoinette Sony Pictures Entertainment, 15, £19.99
***
A teen movie in 18th-century designer clothing, Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette takes a distinctly modern view of the iconic but doomed young French queen. Loosely adapted from Antonia Fraser's biography, Coppola's peppy period drama sees the 14-year-old Austrian princess (Kirsten Dunst) literally stripped of everything she owns and immersed in the heady glamour of the court of Versailles. There's wicked humour as the royal newly-wed attempts to consummate her marriage with an uninterested Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman), with plenty of eye candy, guest turns including Steve Coogan and Marianne Faithfull and an enjoyably cool pop culture soundtrack (including the likes of Air, Gang Of Four and Siouxsie And The Banshees) as she trips around the court sipping champagne and trying on an array of new frocks. From glittering rise to revolutionary end of reign, this is an entertaining portrait of a girl thrown into a woman's world - just don't expect a history lesson.
Extras: Making-of featurette, deleted scenes, MTV Cribs-style tour of Versailles Palace hosted by Schwartzman. Anna Smith

Let Them Eat Cake!
Universal Pictures Video, 12, £15.99
***
This 1999 sitcom sending up pre-revolutionary France is something of a rare beast - one of the few things that the prolific comedy duo Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders starred in that they didn't create themselves. It's hardly a stretch for them, though, since the busty, powdered duo - plus a nicely cast Alison Steadman - wade through debauchery and Franglais in Marie Antoinette's court (good timing for this release) with the same gleeful, over-the-top abandon that defined their sketch show and Saunders's Absolutely Fabulous. There are only six episodes on this disc - the upshot of it being dropped after one series, most likely because of nonplussed reviews from critics. But it stands up to a second watch, partly because there has been no female double act as talented since, and because its ridiculousness now comes across as rather charming. C'est bien? Not 'arf.
Extras: Stills. Sharon Lougher

Until The End Of The World
Metrodome, 15, £19.99
****
It's a shame this DVD version is only half the length of Wim Wenders's fabled 280-minute director's cut but, with Peter Carey as co-writer plus U2, Tom Waits and REM on the soundtrack, this daffy trans-world odyssey is crammed with original ideas. The opening 90 minutes features Claire Tourneur (Solveig Dommartin) doggedly pursuing Sam Farber (William Hurt) through 15 cities, seven countries and four continents on the trail of a stolen camera which can both record and replay dreams. Things get bogged down when Wenders starts showing off his HD video camera in the climactic dream sequences but it's a rollicking ride until then. Released in 1991 and supposedly set in 1999, Wenders's vision of the future also has retro charm to spare, with videophones the size of telescopes, car satnav systems with 14in monitors and a charming Internet search engine which takes the form of a talking animated bear.
Extras: Just a trailer and an annoyingly lightweight essay. Eddie Harrison

Idlewild
Universal, 15, £15.99
***
Hip hop duo Outkast's immensely entertaining period gangster movie is bursting at the seams with visual and musical inventiveness. The fact that this makes the film itself a bit of a mess seems somehow less important when Idlewild is shrunk to small-screen proportions - thanks, maybe, to its close resemblance to a music video (director Bryan Barber's speciality). AndrÈ Benjamin plays Percival, a repressed, piano-playing undertaker's son; Antwan A Patton is Rooster, the swaggering singer-turned-manager at raucous speakeasy Church.
These unlikely friends face separate dilemmas: Percival has fallen for the glamorous new chanteuse (Paula Patton), while Rooster is trying to face down Terrence Howard's trigger-happy gangster. There's a cartoon-like vibrancy to this depiction of 1930s Georgia - which includes some great turns from Macy Gray and Ving Rhames - and its set pieces are dazzling experiments in fusing hip-hop, blues and jazz, with some breathtaking dancing to boot. What's more, fans will find the film answers some questions about the pair's double album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below.
Extras: None - that's a huge disappointment. Siobhan Murphy

Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41
Eureka, 18, £15.99
****
Bonkers Japanese exploitation flick Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 is a cult classic and apparently inspired Tarantino's Kill Bill. In fact, this 1972 film makes Quentin's effort look about as edgy as Heartbeat.
Director Shunya Ito, walking the fine line between art and trash, presents a delirious whirl of increasingly surreal scenarios as we follow the beautiful, near-mute prisoner Scorpion (Meiko Kaji) as her escape from a prison dungeon and its vicious guards is followed by an orgy of violence before she can exact her final, steely-eyed revenge. Shocking and perverse, yet bizarrely verging on being a feminist tract, it's hard to work out whether you're watching B-movie tat or an art-house masterwork. But whatever it is, it's impossible not to be riveted to the screen.
Extras: Trailer and booklet essay by Matt Palmer. Siobhan Murphy

 

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