Check out this week’s top DVD picks from Oscar-worthy A Star Is Born, despite Best Director snub for Bradley Cooper, to Brit rap flick Vs.
A Star Is Born somehow exceeds the hype and there are also impressive turns in low-fi Vs. and Before We Vanish is surely the politest tale of alien invasion seen on screen
IF you somehow missed A Star Is Born at the cinema, there’s no excuse now. Lady Gaga grabbed the headlines but Bradley Cooper is astonishing in a movie that somehow exceeds the hype.
At the other end of the superstar spectrum, there are impressive turns in low-fi British rap movie Vs., while the heavenly bodies come to us in Before We Vanish, surely the politest take of alien invasion seen on screen.
A Star Is Born
(15) 135mins, out February 11
IT’S rare a movie lives up to the hype but if anything, this exceeds it. If Lady Gaga wasn’t already a star, she would be after her revelatory turn as aspiring singer Ally.
But this is Bradley Cooper’s movie — an astonishingly assured directorial debut and a career-defining performance as addict rocker Jackson Maine, Ally’s burnout lover and sometime mentor.
The soft-focus take on addiction threatened in the film’s early moments is put to bed in a horrifying, humiliating fashion, as Cooper pursues his inevitable path to self-destruction, detonating relationships with Ally and older brother Bobby (Sam Elliott) along the way.
The songs have been rightly lauded — there are a couple of genuine spine-tinglers, while Cooper captures the exhilarating chaos of live performance.
But the film’s greatness lies in the small moments — a raw, red-eyed glance from Elliott after his brother; Gaga hurriedly mopping at her underarms and crotch in the bathroom anticipating a romantic encounter (a moment familiar to millions of women but rarely depicted so frankly on screen). Also, the best, most surprising use of a cream bun in cinema history.
While Gaga and Elliott deserve their Oscar nominations, they also highlight the absurdity of snubbing Cooper — rightly nominated as Best Actor — for a Best Director nod. He even coaxes a subtle supporting turn from comedian Dave Chapelle — not a man generally known for understatement in his work.
Stellar stuff all round.
★★★★★
Vs.
(15) 97mins, out now
Enjoyably energetic British rap flick shot with a restless camera that manages the minor miracle of making Southend look like a low-fi electric wonderland.
Connor Swindells is an appropriately low-wattage lead as Adam, the scrawny foster-care kid led into a world of wordplay by Fola Evans-Akingbola’s charismatic local girl Makayla.
The script stumbles through a few cliches but the verbal sparring is venomous and propulsive, the domestic strife convincingly raw.
It’s also refreshing to see social services portrayed as something other than hapless ingenues or vindictive bureaucrats.
A promising debut from director Ed Lilly, who is likely destined for bigger things.
★★★☆☆
Before We Vanish
(15) 130mins, out February 11
GENTLY beguiling Japanese alien-invasion parable that opens in extraordinary fashion with a goldfish, a truck wreck and a misleadingly gory granny-slaying.
What follows is a patient, stately sci-fi of ideas, exploring themes of society, technology, identity and loyalty. If that sounds like heavy going, it really isn’t.
There are oddball laughs throughout and disarming glimpses of a small-town Japan rarely seen on British screens.
The action gets crazier and more violent in the final act but retains a dreamlike quality in keeping with what are surely the most polite extraterrestrial aggressors seen on screen.
★★★☆☆
Climax
(18) 96mins, out February 11
Stylish but insubstantial French-language curio from Argentine contrarian Gaspar Noe (Irreversible).
A bowl of spiked sangria plunges a ragtag dance troupe into a hallucinogenic nightmare — signposted by an early nod to Dario Argento’s giallo shrieker Suspiria.
The virtuoso dance sequences offer spectacle but, mon dieu, they’re long. And there’s nothing more boring than watching other people on drugs.
For the most part, this plays like the world’s most miserable house party. There are a couple of nasty moments — and a lot of screaming — but even the visceral shocks for which Noe is infamous are largely absent.
We should probably be glad someone is out there making movies like this. It’s just hard to imagine anyone enjoying this.
★★☆☆☆