Latest DVD releases reviewed
Directed by Wong Kar-Wai. Starring Tony Leung, Zhang Ziyi 15 cert
The protagonist of In the Mood for Love, left miserable after his unsuccessful romance with a married neighbour, conceives a fantastic sci-fi story in between dalliances with various women. An unlikely blend of futuristic dystopia and rooming-house squalor, this intoxicating film is as baffling as it is beautiful.
Directed by Trey Parker 16 cert
The men behind South Park give the finger to both whiney peaceniks and neocon crusaders in this gut-bustingly funny satire. Saying that a comedy in which Thunderbird-style puppets wage war against a singing, dancing Kim Jong Il is the best film of its type ever made sounds like faint praise. It isn't.
Directed by Mike Hodges. Starring Clive Owen, Malcolm McDowell, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Charlotte 15 cert
A not entirely successful retread of Hodges's Get Garter, this peculiar film casts the coiled Owen as a retired London hard man forced to get out his guns when his brother commits suicide after being raped. As always with this director, the grim atmosphere is well sustained, but the script clanks and clunks like a well dodgy motor.
Directed by Kim Ki-Duk. Starring Suh Jung, Kim Yoo-Suk 18 cert
This is the film in which the heroine, a prostitute who develops an obsession with a man fleeing his violent past, inserts fishhooks where no fishhooks should go. But this beautifully shot, oppressively sinister, worryingly misogynistic Korean puzzler is not just an exercise in shock. It's . . . Well what exactly?
Directed by Lawrence Guterman. Starring Jamie Kennedy, Alan Cumming, Bob Hoskins 12 cert
Carreyless sequel to the 1994 film about a mask which transforms its wearer into a shape-shifting maniac. Ugly, offensive and pointless, the film, which places the magic artefact in the hands of Kennedy's failed cartoonist, does have some amusing animated set-pieces. But most sane kids will prefer to watch the first film for the 26th time.
