THE ROARING TWENTIES PG

1939 ★★★★★

OUT 11 MARCH BD, 4K UHD

EXTRAS ★★★★★ Commentary, Featurettes, Essay

The Great War, the Great Depression, a love quadrangle, four musical numbers… Centred on James Cagney’s rising/falling bootlegger, Raoul Walsh’s decade-spanning gangster epic is stuffed to the gritty gills, but retains the lean punch the genre was famed for in the 30s. Director and star reteamed for the more-revered White Heat (1949), but at its best -Cagney trading quips with Gladys George, or barbs with Bogie - this burns just as bright.

DEVIL GIRL FROM MARS PG

1954 ★★★★★

OUT NOW DVD, BD, DIGITAL

EXTRAS ★★★★★

Commentary, Featurette, Stills, Art cards

Shot in three weeks in order to use up some pre-paid studio time, this Brit sci-fi quickie has acquired a degree of enduring cult appeal, thanks mostly to MVP Patricia Laffan’s imperious turn. The Quo Vadis actor plays Nyah, a Martian bound for London who crash lands next to a Highland inn instead. As our devil girl goes in search of male breeding stock, cheap thrills come via Nyah’s powers and the half-dozen soapy subplots that bubble up among the pub-goers.

AKID FOR TWO FARTHINGS PG

1955 ★★★★★

OUT NOW DVD, BD, DIGITAL

EXTRAS ★★★★★ Featurettes, Short, Gallery

A small boy adopts a singlehorned goat believing it’s a unicorn in this whimsical fable, set in east London’s bustling Petticoat Lane market. Carol Reed’s (The Third Man) first colour film doesn’t have much of a story and is guilty of the same broad ethnic stereotyping we’d see in Oliver! But there are incidental pleasures to be had, a glam Diana Dors and a pre-Carry On Sid James among them.

Alongside the 4K restoration is an earlier short from screenwriter Wolf Mankowitz.

CIRCLE OF DANGER U

1951 ★★★★★

OUT NOW DVD, BD, DIGITAL

EXTRAS ★★★★★ Intro, Featurettes, Gallery

Out of the Past, Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie… French director Jacques Tourneur made more famous films, but this thriller is an overlooked gem. Blending Hitchcockian mystery and humour with the eccentricity of a windswept Powell and Pressburger romance, Circle of Danger sees Ray Milland travel from Florida to England, Wales and Scotland to investigate the death of his younger brother. Colourful and compelling, it gleams in this 4K restoration.

DAZED AND CONFUSED 15

Sweeeeet emotion picture…

1993 ★★★★★ OUT 25 MARCH 4K UHD

EXTRAS ★★★★★

Commentary, Documentary, Featurettes, Deleted scenes, Booklet

As pop-culture writer Chuck Klosterman notes in one of the essays accompanying this 4K UHD reissue of Richard Linklater’s evergreen third feature, ‘Dazed and Confused is not a film about how things were; Dazed and Confused is a film about how things are remembered.’ It’s a movie that somehow manages to avoid the comfy trappings of self-conscious nostalgia-bait, while simultaneously making audiences nostalgic for a time and place that 99.9% of us never actually experienced.

A snapshot of the last day of school in Austin, Texas, during the summer of 1976, Dazed and Confused is less a story than a series of interwoven vignettes. If the lack of both narrative drama and the obvious jokes you’d expect from a traditional ‘teen’ movie are the things that make it feel so real, they’re the very same things that worried Universal, leading the studio to interfere with the shoot and scale back its cinema release. Unsurprisingly, Universal’s (mis-)handling of the film looms large in the vast array of extras adorning this double-discer. However, there’s plenty of joy to be found here too, with interviews and behind-the-scenes clips showing the fun the young cast of then-unknowns (McConaughey, Affleck, Jovovich…) had together when not on set.

THE VERDICT Hanging out with Richard Linklater’s classic coming-of-ager has never been so rewarding.