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DVDs of the week

Thriller: Jake Gyllenhaal plays a young cartoonist in Zodiac

Baraka: Chronos is a poetic study of the nature of time

James Brown: Relive the Godfather of Soul

Black Snake Moan: Samuel L Jackson stars

Dice: An adaptation of cult novel The Dice Man

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Serial killer thriller Zodiac heads the list of this week's top DVDs.

DVD OF THE WEEK
Zodiac
Warner Home Video, 12, £20.99
***
This latest thriller from David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club) is a decidedly strange and uneasy affair. It's based on the true case of a San Francisco serial killer who punctuated his crimes with a series of letters and ciphers sent to local papers. First reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr, excellent as ever), then young cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), then, arguably even Fincher himself (he spent a year and a half in research) become obsessed with solving the crime. But the Zodiac case was never solved, which gives this film the effect of an anti-whodunnit - a brave approach which seems rather interesting, if frustrating.

Also frustrating is the angle that this is a portrait not of a murderer but of the one-track obsession he inspires. In practice, other people's obsessions can make for insanely tedious viewing, particularly at a running time of 157 minutes. And the script adds little extra context or humanity to their addiction. However, the direction is a total dream: gliding, sophisticated and assured, it's Fincher's most mature work to date.

Extras: One, frankly feeble, 27-minute doc. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh

Baraka Chronos Box Set
Second Sight, PG, £29.99
*****
Having made his name for his timelapse photography in Godfrey Reggio's 1982 landmark Koyaanisqatsi, Ron Fricke went on to direct some of the most stunning non-narrative films to date.

This box set pairs Fricke's 1985 directorial debut Chronos with 1992's Baraka, often cited as the pinnacle of the genre. Shot in hulking Imax format, Chronos is a poetic study of the nature of time: vast pans and sweeping aerial views of sights such as Stonehenge and the Grand Canyon juxtaposed with frenzied human activity. It's modest compared to the hyper-vivid Baraka and its unashamedly lofty exploration of man's relationship with the eternal. Set to Michael Stearns's lavish orchestral score, it's a series of images so increasingly beautiful and strange that you can barely believe we share the same atmosphere with the subjects.

Extras: Making-of documentary, behind-the-scenes clips, theatrical trailer, commentaries and crew interviews. Nadine McBay

James Brown: Double Dynamite!
Liberation Entertainment, no cert, £15.99
****
The Godfather of Soul James Brown kept working right up to his death on Christmas Day last year, aged 73 - not for nothing was he called the hardest-working man in showbusiness. But these two concerts from the 1980s capture Brown in his heyday, working the crowds into a frenzy with the showmanship that has inspired scores of artists ever since. At legendary New York nightclub Studio 54 in March 1980, Brown gave no hint that his career at the time was far from being on the good foot; he powers through a sometimes messy set-list, including Sex Machine, Try Me and Please, Please, Please (complete with the famous boxing cape melodramatics). Meanwhile, his 1985 homecoming at Atlanta's Chastain Park venue was a much grander affair, with a younglooking Maceo Parker leading a tearing band through Brown's hits, and a heartfelt rendition of Ray Charles's Georgia On My Mind.

Extras: Sixteen-track 'highlights' CD, biography, discography, booklet and slideshow. Siobhan Murphy

Black Snake Moan
Paramount Home Entertainment, 15, £15.99
***
Director Craig Brewer made a valiant attempt to convey the soul of Southern hip hop in his last film, Hustle And Flow. For Black Snake Moan, he has shifted his attention to the blues, and its lurid tale rises and falls on those intoxicating Delta swells. In fact, the soundtrack - with blistering contributions from Charlie Musselwhite and the great RL Burnside's grandson and 'adopted son' - is probably the main attraction here. Samuel L Jackson plays Lazarus, a geetar-playing, God-fearing man whose wife has done him wrong by running off with his brother. When he finds barely dressed 'wicked woman' Rae (Christina Ricci) beaten unconscious on the road by his backwoods farm, he decides to teach her a lesson in compassion and cure her of her potty-mouthed, nymphomaniac ways by, er, chaining her to his radiator. Slicked with sweaty Southern Gothic cinematography and sexploitation, this has more than its fair share of morally dubious moments and, paradoxically, a rather too neat and sweet outcome, but the music will sweep you away.

Extras: Commentary, featurettes, deleted scenes and gallery. SM

Dice
Digital Classics, 15, £19.99
***
The knowledge that Dice director Rachel Talalay cut her creative teeth working for Wes Craven and John Waters makes some kind of sense of this curiously creepy 2001 TV mini-series. The mix of surreal camp and hammy horror carries echoes of both those American movie greats. But Talalay seems even more in thrall to Twin Peaks-era David Lynch as she targets the festering heart of secretsandlies suburbia in this loose adaptation of Luke Rhinehart's cult novel The Dice Man. Set in a hellish vision of smalltown Canada, it tells the tale of psychology teacher Glenn Taylor, an enigmatic charmer whose life-choices-on-the-roll-of-a-die philosophy soon has the whole town in his grip. Unsurprisingly, Dice falls short of the sum of its influences. The plot lurches suggest Talalay relied on the die for her editing choices while Aidan Gillen plays Glenn like he's still in Queer As Folk, coming off as smug when he's meant to be charismatic. It's Martin Cummins as closet gay cop Styvesant who makes Dice worth a roll; his suffering offers a mirror on the shrinking suburban soul.

Extras: None. Keith Watson

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