INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS 15

1978 ★★★★★ OUT NOW BD, 4K UHD

EXTRAS ★★★★★

Commentary, Documentary, Featurettes, Art cards, Poster, Booklet

The late 70s/early 80s treated cinemagoers to a run of provocative do-overs of 50s sci-fi flicks. The first, Philip Kaufman’s rich and resonant Body Snatchers remake, relocates the ‘pod people’ to San Francisco, switching out the original’s Cold War allegory for the isolation and paranoia of big-city living. The new 4K upgrade turns out to be a bit of a body snatcher itself, exactly replicating the 2013 Blu-ray in every way, but with improved image fidelity.

CONTAGION 12

2011 ★★★★★ OUT NOW 4K UHD

EXTRAS ★★★★★

Featurettes

An apocalyptic scenario is treated with intelligence and restraint in Steven Soderbergh’s disaster movie, whose depiction of a lethal virus unleashing a global pandemic proved eerily prescient. Celebrity status is no guarantee of survival here, as an all-star cast (Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow) races to contain the deadly pathogen. As gripping as it is, however, scenes of the afflicted coughing up blood before being disposed of in mass graves may feel a bit too raw for some to revisit. No new extras on this 4K UHD release.

AFTER HOURS 15

1985 ★★★★★ OUT 22 MARCH CINEMAS

It may be one of Martin Scorsese’s less-celebrated films, but this darkly comic trawl through New York’s underbelly is still a beguiling work, especially in this big-screen 4K restoration. Griffin Dunne is Manhattan office drone Paul Hackett, who escapes his drudgery by pursuing Rosanna Arquette’s stranger into an increasingly fraught world of subway journeys, sculptures and sleazy nightspots. An early entry in the yuppies-inperil subgenre, its rogues’ gallery (everyone from Cheech Marin to Linda Fiorentino) and off-kilter plotting make for a compellingly wild ride.

HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM 12

1959 ★★★★★ OUT NOW BD

EXTRAS ★★★★★ Commentary, Featurette, Introduction, Gallery, Art cards

Shocking in its day, schlocky today, the first entry in Anglo-Amalgamated’s ‘Sadian’ trilogy is an odd hybrid of Anglo-American conceits. Michael Gough’s crime journo gets overexcited helping the police hunt ‘a brilliant maniac’ murdering women. Shocker: it’s actually him, and he’s got a brainwashed teen doing his killing. The result resembles a US youth-in-crisis movie made lurid in London, featuring proto-Saw death devices in the basement and an amusingly OTT Gough.

PATHS OF GLORY PG

Kubrick goes forth…

1957 ★★★★★ OUT NOW BD, 4K UHD

EXTRAS ★★★★★ Commentary, Featurettes, Booklet

From the title down, Stanley Kubrick’s anti-war masterpiece has a bitter sting to it. ‘The paths of glory lead but to the grave’ is the quote from the Thomas Gray poem behind Humphrey Cobb’s fact-based novel, eviscerating any triumphalist hints. A controlled howl at war’s futility, Kubrick’s adaptation rings down the years like sniper shots across no man’s land.

Kirk Douglas gives a seething turn as the WW1 colonel tasked with sending soldiers on an impossible mission: to take the impregnable ‘Ant Hill’. And he remains beleaguered when, afterwards, he tries to defend three troops court-martialled on bogus charges of cowardice.

The soldiers are scapegoats for their superiors’ failures. Class rage broils in the tangible contrasts between the officers’ chateau and the trenches, where Kubrick’s dolly shots convey despair and horror. The battlefield is worse still, a nightmare of mud and mangled corpses; Kubrick used 600 extras and experimental explosive techniques to max authenticity.

Against this backdrop, George Macready projects callous indifference as the brigadier, perhaps pre-empting the satire of Blackadder Goes Forth’s Melchett. You can see Dr. Strangelove’s appalled absurdism stewing here, too. Kubrick would make bigger films, of course, after Douglas helped bank him the Spartacus gig. But this sure, sharp classic ranks among his finest.

THE VERDICT Brutal, bravura, beautiful: Kubrick’s critique of military hypocrisy is one of the great anti-war movies.