Top 10 Blu-rays (UK) for April 2022

From jazz poetry to union discord and through to grumpy metallers, it’s another eclectic mix of all timers, lost gems and cinematic treats hitting Blu-ray this month.

by Mark Costello
Movies & TV Shows News

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Top 10 Blu-rays (UK) for April 2022
MSRP: £15.00

The year is now a third gone and the release schedules are settling down into familiar patterns. So with Arrow, Criterion, 88 Films, Studiocanal and even a couple of smaller studios all releasing this month, which ones are worthy of your time?

A big month for 4K (Spidey, Ghostface and Gene Kelly, oh my!) lets the boutiques sneak under the radar and put out a gorgeously wide-ranging set of films that cover all the bases for physical media fans. And already the labels are spoiling us with severely high-quality films being released on some seriously high-quality releases, causing their 4K cousins to glance nervously and enviously over their shoulders at the smorgasbord of delights awaiting us and our ever-emptying wallets.

So without further ado, let's dive into this month’s releases – and in an unusual move, I’ve managed to watch significantly more than ten of these new releases thanks to a plethora of discs arriving in time for deadlines (we’ve received the most films/discs yet for a monthly review – sixteen films across twelve disc releases, plus a digital one to boot). So what has been top of my far-too-unwieldly ‘to watch’ pile this month?

10. Love Jones

(1997, Criterion, Region B UK Blu-ray, Release Date 25th April 2022)

A run-of-the-mill romantic drama, notable at the time for its depiction of its all African-American cast, that sadly hasn’t aged well due to its heavy reliance on all the usual contrivances associated with the genre and very little else.

Darius Lovehall (Menace II Society’s Larenz Tate) meets Nina Mosely (Boyz N The Hood’s Nia Long) at a jazz poetry club, the kind of place where whispered verses are accompanied by bongos to the finger-clicking amusement of the audience. From here, love tries to blossom, but unfortunately, those old friends; miscommunication, petty jealousy and insecurity pay a visit and we follow all of these, and a host of their other friends, through make ups, break ups and life lessons. All to the sounds of jazz infused poetry readings…

Immediately placing us in a strange, rarefied world, where people can quit jobs to concentrate on ‘writing’, house sit in luxurious penthouse apartments, and 90% of everyone are some form of renaissance people means any notion of ‘real life’ doesn’t get a look in. And while this is absolutely the intention of writer/director Theodore Witcher – to push back against the notion that ‘black cinema’ was all about urban thrillers – it not only dates the film horribly, but also throws up a barrier to accessing these characters. Which isn’t helped by some truly insane narrative beats that just don’t ring true – being head over heels in love with one character suddenly means moving in with an ex who has been slated the entire film solely with the purpose of ‘making sure’ may be exploring notions of what ‘dating’ means (are they dating or just ‘kicking it’?) but instantly puts one of our leads offside thanks to unadulterated stupidity.

The cast are all good though, including early roles for Isiah Washington and Leonard Roberts, and the soundtrack, all laid back jazz beats, certainly helps set the mood. A solid romantic drama that is now achingly 90s for both the good and the bad that that entails.

The picture from Criterion is decent, but has almost as much teal in it as T2. Fine detail and grain treatment is pretty good, print damage is completely absent thanks to a 4K restoration, and the colours are all nicely rich… as long as you’re not averse to that teal. The lossless 5.1 soundtrack handles the music perfectly well and expands out of the front array when needed (ubiquitous thunderstorms anyone?). Extras may appear limited – commentary, extended interviews with Witcher and music scholars about the soundtrack as well as a cast/crew Q&A hosted by Barry Jenkins are the meat of it - but these are all really solid watches, if all just a little too celebratory.

Film: 6/10 Video: 8/10 Audio: 8/10 Extras: 7/10 Overall: 6/10

The Criterion Collection and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment present In Cold Blood on 4th April 2022 and Love Jones and Make Way for Tomorrow on 25th April, on Blu-ray.


9. Superhost

(2021, Acorn/Shudder, Region B UK Blu-ray, Release Date 4th April 2022)

A fairly disposable but fun Shudder exclusive now on disc, this one pokes fun at the whole travel vlogger culture/disease (delete as appropriate) by way of an unhinged home invasion/slasher riff.

Teddy and Claire are the super annoying hosts of the super annoying YouTube channel Superhost – they stay at fancy locations and make inane videos for their thousands of subscribers. Yet this weekend getaway is different – the gorgeous house in the mountains has a borderline insane host (played suitably OTT but deliciously so by Gracie Gillam of The Vampire Diaries fame) whom Teddy and Claire think will be comedy gold in their videos… until she turns out to be not altogether who she says she is.

Not really saying anything much at all about the shallow vlogger/stranger-riddled Airbnb world in which we now live, it’s all very obvious from the get go. Writer/director Brandon Christensen (Z, Still/Born) inserts Tab A into Slot B efficiently, but with the very first sight of locked rooms, video cameras everywhere and exposition that all but explains the big reveal we know is coming, which is even spoiled by the box art, the entire film is laid out for all to see from the very first minute. There’s still some fun to be had in Gillam’s unhinged performance and a cameo from everyone’s favourite scream queen Barbara Crampton which threatens some actual unexpected twists, but come the end of its very swift 84-minute run time, it's little more than a fairly pedestrian chiller which can be a fun but forgettable ride while it lasts.

The transfer is typical low budget digital fare – razor sharp detail, clean lines and solid colours, but little depth or texture to the image; however the lossless 5.1 surround track has some fun with its nicely ambient score and its myriad of audio stings. Extras are bountiful – commentary, short web series episodes and a host of BTS featurettes, one of which focusses on the making of the film during the pandemic is incredibly interesting and well worth watching.

Film: 6/10 Video: 8/10 Audio: 8/10 Extras: 7/10 Overall: 6/10

Superhost gets its UK Blu-ray debut from Acorn Media International on 4th April 2022.


8. Monster on the Campus

(1958, Eureka, Region B UK Blu-Ray, Release Date 11th April 2022 - part of the Three Monster Tales of Sci-Fi Terror Boxset)

Goofy fun, riffing on the classic (1941’s ‘The Wolfman’ notably) and the not-so-classic (by way of Sam Katzman’s patented brand of B-movie ‘hard science’, such as ‘Creature with the Atom Brain’) to give us a schlocky slice of good time hokum.

A coelacanth is shipped to Dr. Blake at Dunsford University, unbeknownst to him is that the gamma irradiated water used to ship it in has mixed with its own ‘living fossil’ genes and created a potent brew that causes those who accidentally imbibe it to suffer their own ‘devolution’ back to a more primitive, throwback state. Cue fun and games as this water gets everywhere… pet’s drinking water, professors’ smoking pipes, all manner of places that allow a series of throwback creatures to run amok…

The science is doubled down on in a way that tries to sound intelligent, but just renders large sections of this all rather dull. Thank goodness for the insanely hokey but gloriously charming make up effects that see a huge dragonfly flap its wings at several speeds and do little else, a dog wearing outrageous false teeth and our old chum Dr. Blake forced to wear the most ridiculous mask and hairy shoulder pads seen outside of an episode of Dynasty. It's guff for sure, but great Sunday afternoon guff nonetheless.

This film gets its own disc while the other two films share one, but all look pretty solid. The B&W image isn’t pristine but it’s got some nice detail and grain present, while the lossless English mono track is free from almost all hiss. This film came with the choice of aspect ratios (1.33:1 and 1.85:1) and an audio commentary with Kim Newman, plus a couple of rather redundant photo galleries. The other films in the set are Man-Made Monster (1941 – Lon Chaney Jnr in goofy Shocker grandparent) and The Monolith Monsters (1957 – attack of the killer stones) – neither of which are quite as good/terrible as this one is. But as a set at a reasonable price (Arrow, take note), this is great value for connoisseurs of B-movie twaddle.

Film: 6/10 Video: 7/10 Audio: 7/10 Extras: 4/10 Overall: 7/10

Eureka Entertainment to release THREE MONSTER TALES OF SCI-FI TERROR (Man-Made Monster, The Monolith Monsters, and Monster on the Campus) on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK as a part of the Eureka Classics range. Available from 11th April 2022, the first print-run of 2000 copies will feature a Limited-Edition O-card Slipcase & Collector’s Booklet.

7. Dreadnaught

(1981, Eureka Entertainment, Region B UK Blu-ray, Release Date 25th April 2022)

Action legend Yuen Woo-Ping (The Matrix) directs an insane concoction of superbly choreographed comedy, dance and fight beats that while almost feeling overstuffed and bloated within a relatively short runtime, still manages to satisfy on the sheer bravado of what it's putting up on screen.

Beginning with a gruesome ambush of an infamous outlaw and his wife, we then cut to a mousy laundry man struggling to collect payment from a theatre troupe, a breathtaking dragon dance performed by the local lord plus real-life folk hero Wong Fei-hung treating a local ne’er do well with his patented brand of medical just desserts, before all come crashing into each other via a series of stunningly audacious scenes that at first feel completely disassociated from one another. Each one uses a blistering array of martial arts skills and moves for anything other than actual fighting – a shirt being dried becomes a flurry of highly skilled precision moves, a measurement for a suit turns into a cat-and-mouse dance of tape measures and blurred hands and a dragon dance across an obstacle course of benches a tension-packed display of almost superhuman balance.

We even get great slabs of all kinds of comedy, from bumbling Clouseau-esque policemen to Roxanne-style romantic shenanigans. But these only come together successfully in the film’s final act as the outlaw, now daubed in terrifying face paint, fights for his freedom as the film finishes as almost a martial arts slasher. The final fight is gloriously frenetic and superbly creative and it's only after the credits have rolled do you realise that the film feels more like a collection of supremely adventurous and entertaining set pieces as opposed to a satisfying whole. Little matter that the whole doesn’t equal the sum of its parts when the parts are so damn great…

The new 2K restoration of the picture is great when it’s good, but pretty poor when it’s not, thanks mainly to some very questionable focus issues across great swathes of the film. Not a lot Eureka could no doubt do about this source issue, but it does mean an awful lot of the image is soft, even if colour, grain and stability are all pretty solid. There are three main soundtracks – lossless mono Cantonese and two English dubs – and all have constant underlying hum to them throughout. Not getting in the way of the dialogue, but it's omnipresent and noticeable. The rest of the track is good with decent balance and fidelity to it and the newly translated subtitle track has no obvious issues. Extras are two audio commentaries and a 20 min legacy interview with the film’s female star Lily Li.

Film: 7/10 Video: 7/10 Audio: 6/10 Extras: 5/10 Overall: 7/10

Eureka Entertainment to release Dreadnaught, the iconic and influential martial arts flick starring Yuen Biao and Bryan Leung, on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK from a brand-new 2K restoration as a part of the Eureka Classics range. Available from 25th April 2022, the first print-run of 2000 copies will feature a Limited-Edition O-card Slipcase & Collector’s Booklet.

6. The Swindle

(1997, Arrow, Region B UK Blu-ray, Release Date 25th April 2022 - part of the Twisting the Knife: Four Films by Claude Chabrol Boxset)

Chabrol’s 50th feature film is a playful, con movie that’s less interested in the con itself and more in those attempting to pull it off.

Isabelle Huppert and Michel Serrault are two middle-aged con artists who know their game/level and are sticking to it – targeting drunk convention goers at casinos and stealing just enough so that their marks don’t notice, it’s a life they are seemingly happy with. Until the handsome and suave Francois Cluzet breezes into Huppert’s life with a locked briefcase of 5 million Swiss Francs and his own plan to swindle his employers. Then begins a game of who’s conning who that goes from the slopes of the Swiss Alps to the sun-drenched beaches of Guadalupe, all shot through with Chabrol’s patented blend of Gallic Hitchcockian intrigue and thoughtful character work.

It's the kind of film that feels odd the more you watch it – you know it’s a movie about a con, you can see the con coming, but suddenly you’re left feeling did it actually happen? What was the con again? Who conned who? Chabrol isn’t interested at all in the mechanics of the swindle itself, so often the centrepiece of similar genre films, instead turning it into more of a character study of these two people operating at the fringe of society. Yet Chabrol cleverly also eschews so many trappings of even these kinds of film – there’s no flashbacks or delves into their characters pasts to understand their current motivations and actions, no huge emotional arcs for us to gain access to them via, almost nothing at all other than simply seeing these two people doing what they do in this particular situation.

And it’s both fascinating and slightly disappointing – you do invest in Huppert and Serrault, you do want to know how it’s going to pan out for them when it inevitably goes wrong, and yet you still feel like you’re the one on the end of Chabrol’s swindle, somehow cheated of what the film promised and teased.

Arrow brings another raft of new 4K restorations with these films, including The Swindle – it looks vivid and detailed, with fine grain omnipresent and looking nicely natural. It’s a flat picture, but still something of a looker (although caveats about these new colour grades that were needed for the first boxset may still be needed here… so beware). The lossless French stereo track is free from any sibilance or underlying hum and subtitles are similarly free from any obvious issues. There are some nice extras here, the best of which is a new 14 min visual essay looking at the themes and motifs of Chabrol’s work here, which draws some interesting comparisons to other cinematic masters. In addition, the disc includes legacy interviews galore together with a new commentary and interview with the director's daughter/assistant director looking more at the man himself. Note: the other films in this set weren’t able to be watched in time for this month’s deadline so scores are for The Swindle alone.

Film: 7/10 Video: 8/10 Audio: 6/10 Extras: 6/10 Overall: 7/10

Arrow Presents Twisting the Knife: Four Films by Claude Chabrol - On Limited Edition Blu-ray 25th April 2022.

5. Gift Horse (aka Glory at Sea)

(1954, Studiocanal, Region B UK Blu-ray, Release Date 4th April 2022)

A very stiff upper lip ancestor of Greyhound, packed with great British talent, this gloriously old school WWII navy flick never feels as old fashioned as it so obviously is.

Loosely following true events – the US navy ‘loaned’ the British mothballed destroyers before they officially joined WWII and this film follows the life of one such ship – the newly christened HMS Ballantrae. Equally called back into service is its new skipper, Trevor Howard, and together with its ragtag crew packed full of famous faces (including Bernard ‘M’ Lee, Richard Attenborough and James Donald) they fight their way through mechanical failures and poor decision making to earn the right to take on a secret mission in France, involving the only dry dock outside of Germany able to repair the Nazi’s battleships…

Immediately striking is its character work – the crew all get their little moments and backstories, some light hearted and positively witty (Sid James crops up as the landlord of the local at the port the ship calls home), others darker and quite emotional (those involving Dora Bryan and James Kenney, while narratively obvious still manage to hit hard). But together with some quite superb acting from Lee and especially Howard, it gives a sense of emotional reality to the more sea-based escapades, which feature all the usual beats and are handled surprisingly well, as long as you don't mind some wonderfully old school SFX and model work. And it even manages to end on a note of dark triumph, again not the usual, generic happy ending, but something altogether bleaker but still with a sense of victory for this scrappy little ship and its crew.

Feeling very much like the recent Tom Hanks' film in a way (except this film spends slightly more time off ship and the time span of the film is expanded to longer than a handful of days), this was a surprisingly modern feeling and mature WWII film with some decent emotional meat on its bones.

The disc from Studiocanal has a really good transfer on it – there’s a lot of optical VFX work so there is some softness, but altogether, it’s had some solid restoration work carried out. The B&W image looked to have a decent contrast ratio, print damage was completely absent, fine detail looked nearly best in class and grain all healthy and organic. The lossless mono track had some sibilance behind the dialogue but it never intruded and the only extra, a lengthy look at the real-life events of the HMS Campbeltown that inspired some of the story, was fascinating and well worth a watch.

Film: 8/10 Video: 8/10 Audio: 6/10 Extras: 5/10 Overall: 8/10

Studiocanal release on Blu-ray Compton Bennett's Gift Horse a.k.a. Glory at Sea (1952), starring Trevor Howard, Richard Attenborough, Sonny Tufts, Dora Bryan, and James Donald on April 4th.


4. Matewan

(1987, 88 Films, Region B Blu-ray, Release Date 4th April 2022)

As a piece of historical socio-political drama, John Sayles’ (yes, Battle Beyond the Stars’/The Howling’s/Alligator’s John Sayles…) telling of the coming of the workers' union to the 1920's West Virginian coal mining town of Matewan may be a little broad, easing a touch too much into its author’s pulpy roots with some very tropey storytelling beats… but as a neo-Western, it’s a gritty, authentic look into a rural past that feels both mythical in its construction and characterisations and fresh in its distinctly realised setting.

The town of Matewan feels trapped between the old and the new (the Old West and its optimistic view of opportunity and prosperity for all and the new frontier of industry and big business, seemingly focussed on solely exploiting its workers), between the rural and the urban and so do its characters – a superb cast of quite brilliant character actors (led by Chris Cooper, David Strathairn, Mary McDonnell, Bob Gunton, Ken Jenkins and James Earl Jones) imbue the vast array of residents with a sense of real legitimacy. And this is the key to Sayles’ world – from its bluegrass score, to the thick accent work, to the use of wonderful locations, you feel the town in every frame. You feel the characters in every line of dialogue. And you feel the lyrical plight of a very traditional good vs evil narrative but with an almost palpable sense of gritty realism at every turn.

And even though the second act sags a little due to some overt narrative contrivances that seem to also impact the pacing of the film, come its bullet-strewn finale, you’re left having felt that you’ve not so much spent two hours watching a film, but more been part of real life in a real place with real people. And you can’t get much higher praise than that.

Looking like 88 Films has used the same 4K restoration that Criterion did for its 2019 US release, it may well be greeted with the same comments about use of a more stylised colour grading. Detail, grain management and print damage are all really solid, and the colours look incredibly bold and vivid, but some have said that there’s a new hint of yellow/green in faces that isn’t quite as intended… well tell that to Sayles’ who allegedly approved this! It looks perfectly good to my eyes having never seen any previous versions on home video. The lossless mono track is clean and has some nice dynamics around the music and gun shots and while 88 Films couldn’t secure the extras from Criterion’s disc, it does add four short interviews of its own which are an ok watch.

Film: 8/10 Video: 8/10 Audio: 8/10 Extras: 5/10 Overall: 8/10

88 Films presents Matewan on Blu-ray 4th April 2022.

3. In Cold Blood

(1967, Criterion, Region B Blu-ray, Release Date 4th April 2022)

Truman Capote’s seminal novel, the second-best selling true crime book in history, was hailed as a masterpiece of prose, structure and detail, especially in the way it delved into the lives and psyches of the two antagonists behind the true-life Clutter murders in 1959. And it’s to writer/director Richard Brooks’ (the Oscar winning scripter behind the classics Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Elmer Gantry and Key Largo) credit that he brings these complex elements to the screen almost intact.

Taking a similar approach narratively, the films starts with our introduction pre-murder to small time criminals Dick Hickock and Perry Smith (played quite brilliantly by Scott Wilson and Robert Blake), before jumping ahead in time to post murder and splitting into two strands, one following the investigation by John Forsythe’s G-man, the other Hickock and Smith on the run, before coming back around in time to the murder to understand what exactly happened following their apprehension. Tonally, Brooks layers clever cinematic tricks such as overlapping voiceovers, flashbacks and hallucinations into the narrative to provide much depth and texture and thus the film is a dense, rich tapestry of characters and themes, all skilfully woven around the horrendous real life quadruple murder. Feeling incredibly modern in terms of its desire to get under the skin of Hickock and Smith, there’s little to date it in terms of its feel and possibly its use of black and white photography (chosen specifically to not add any ‘colour’ to the real-life case).

However, at nearly two hours and twenty minutes, it feels long – its second act following the pair into Mexico and back again spends an inordinate amount of time with them that adds little overall. And here is where time has possibly been unkind to the film – given how much criminal ‘entertainment’ has embraced the notions of the film (especially the understanding of the antagonist), the audience has had so much more exposure and experience of what ground the film was breaking back in 1967 that a lot of what we’re being shown feels almost ‘yeah… and?’ to modern viewers schooled on weekly doses of CSI and Netflix documentaries.

Yet, as the film ends with a superb monologue from Blake just before he’s marched to the gallows, the film fading to black to the sound of his own fading heartbeat and the flashing up of the title card causing audiences to question to what it was actually referring, it remains a fascinating look back at a time when understanding a criminal was not yet common place and of a time when capital punishment was seen as the ultimate endpoint of any murder investigation.

The 4K restoration from 2015 still gives some lovely texture to the image as razor sharp detail jostles with fine grain for best looker of the overall image. The detail just edges it as on a handful of occasions, especially over the stark white on black opening credits, it looks very noisy, however overall it’s a fine image, packed full of lovely contrast and superb greyscale. Quincy Jones’ brilliant jazz score has incredible fidelity and presence in the lossless 5.1 soundtrack and while dialogue is clear and locked to the centre, the surrounds are used for that lovely ambience. A brilliantly musical track. Extras are also varied and stuffed – four interviews look at the work of Brooks, Jones, Conrad Hall and editor Peter Zinner. In addition you get nearly 40 mins with Capote himself and further interviews with Brooks himself – a solid raft with the only thing missing is commentary on the influences of both the novel and film on modern popular culture.

Film: 8/10 Video: 9/10 Audio: 9/10 Extras: 7/10 Overall: 8/10

The Criterion Collection and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment present In Cold Blood on 4th April 2022 and Love Jones and Make Way for Tomorrow on 25th April, on Blu-ray.


2. Make Way for Tomorrow

(1937, Criterion, Region B Blu-ray, Release Date 25th April 2022)

Leo McCarey may have won the Best Directing Oscar in 1938 for The Awful Truth, but he, like so many others, reportedly admitted it was for the wrong film. And no one then or now would disagree with him, after having watched this classic tear jerker that Orson Welles allegedly said was so emotional it “would make a stone cry.”

Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi are aging parents to a brood of five grown up children in New York. They gather their offspring to tell them the bad news that they are unfortunately having to sell their family home and will soon be made homeless. Their children react with varying degrees of indifference, with two of them agreeing begrudgingly to take in one of their parents, separating them for the first time since they were married fifty years ago. While this plan is only temporary – the couple are to be reunited in three months once their eldest daughter can make suitable arrangements – the film then follows the all too familiar generational struggle as people of different ages and upbringings clash over every element of their lives, despite the obvious love between parents and their children…

When a film inspires another of cinema’s greatest works of art (Ozu’s Tokyo Story) and counts luminaries such as George Bernard Shaw, John Ford, Frank Capra and Jean Renoir as its most ardent supporters, it must be something special. And this is. Eschewing almost all the tropes of 30's cinema – no big stars were cast; all appeals for a ‘happy ending’ were rudely and rightly rebuffed – the film is a deeply emotional journey that all of us will be familiar with. The generational clash always has been and always will be one that continues to impact us all, yet never has it been brought to life so nakedly and emotionally as McCarey does so here. There’s no narrative conceit, no obvious and forced contrivances designed to force our family apart and then together again, just a horribly familiar set of circumstances that we have or will all find ourselves in at some point in our lives. It’s played and pitched to perfection and Welles was right… it’s a hard heart that is failed to be moved after the final act sees Bondi and Moore reflect on a life lived, of regrets told and of a future that seems to not want them to be together in it.

Dear God man, just writing that makes me need a hankie…

The transfer from Criterion looks its age, even after a decade-old thorough restoration and clean up. Detail is fine, but grain is thick and softens up the image considerably, with plenty of very faint print damage baked into the source material. It’s still watchable, but it’s very much of a vintage. The lossless mono track however sounds wonderfully clean, whilst its extras – skinny though they may be at two 20 min featurettes featuring Peter Bogdanovich and writer Gary Giddins talking about the film and about McCarey – are insightful and very easy to watch.

Film: 9/10 Video: 7/10 Audio: 9/10 Extras: 5/10 Overall: 8/10

The Criterion Collection and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment present In Cold Blood on 4th April 2022 and Love Jones and Make Way for Tomorrow on 25th April, on Blu-ray.


1. Days of the Bagnold Summer

(2020, Anti-Worlds, Region B UK Blu-ray, Release Date 25th April 2022)

The Inbetweeners' pipsqueak Simon Bird adapts a little-known graphic novel about the generational chasm (again), isolation and loneliness and the ultimate need for human connection and produces a rather lovely little ode to children and parents everywhere.

Think Ghost World by way of the ever-so-British suburbs, we spend those heady weeks of the summer holidays in the company of mum Sue (mousey, lonely, unrealising of her own unhappiness) and son Daniel (nihilistic metalhead who has been dumped by his dad and can’t find his own place in a world he continually doesn’t understand). And that’s it really.

No huge plot developments outside of a rather dull day trip to the seaside and an audition for the Kidz Bop version of Cannibal Corpse get in the way of just spending time with these two and their various friends and family. Monica Dolan and Earl Cave are great in the parts, imbuing both with a sense of real character, as are the myriad of familiar supporting faces from Rob Brydon’s lothario to Alice Lowe’s despairing sister and Elliot Speller-Gillott’s brilliant teenage Justin Hawkins of The Darkness wannabe.

And that’s really it – it’s all about how much you can connect with these characters and, having now been both of these in one form or another, their all too familiar plights got completely under my skin. Pilfering liberally from the likes of Hal Ashby and Peter Bogdanovich’s more familiar tales of disaffected youth but shot through with a very British acerbic comedic sensibility, it’s slight, gentle and horribly charming, but all the better for it. I thought it absolutely lovely.

Digitally shot, it looked clean and sharp and those dull, drab suburban landscapes looked lovely. The lossless 5.1 surround track has little to do outside of perfectly showcasing the dialogue and the range of music from Belle & Sebastian to Fleshworks wonderfully. Extras look bountiful, but just head straight to the visual essay from Bird – he makes no bones about how he hates all this ‘supplemental feature’ rubbish, is only here to fulfil contractual obligations and then gives a great little showcase of all the films that inspired him, while making it completely obvious how horribly uncomfortable he was with the whole thing. Caustic and great fun.

Film: 9/10 Video: 8/10 Audio: 9/10 Extras: 7/10 Overall: 8/10

Director Simon Bird’s (The Inbetweeners, Friday Night Dinner) debut feature DAYS OF THE BAGNOLD SUMMER comes to Blu-ray from Anti-Worlds. Anti-Worlds' collector’s edition disc is a world first Blu-ray edition and features a huge array of extras giving a deep dive into the film. COLLECTORS EDITION BLU-RAY & DVD ON SALE APRIL 25th.


Final Thoughts

A seriously impressive month in terms of both quantity and quality of the films and their discs. Films watched that didn’t make the Top Ten include:

  • This utterly superb documentary on the Friday the 13th franchise, Crystal Lake Memories, gives each film its due – 40 mins a film, the entire thing coming in at over 5 hours! - through a series of excellent talking heads, behind the scenes archive footage and location revisits (the only reason it’s not included is because the disc wasn’t available for viewing, meaning a digital version was watched instead – but for franchise fans it’s an easy 9/10);
  • Studiocanal’s The Silent Enemy (1958) – another WWII naval drama, this time featuring a blond Laurence Harvey as a real scuba diving war hero and Sid James as a hard-ass naval officer (honestly) which depicts the battle between British and Italian frogmen in the seas around Gibraltar. Superb underwater photography just about makes up for staid and derivative plotting (a 6/10) – ()
  • Knockabout (1979) – another Sammo Hung old school martials arts flick that doubles down on the comedy here and sadly, it doesn’t work for me. A midway point lurch into the more serious doesn’t work either and while there is fun to be had, the greater focus on the humour renders this inert (5/10).

But, I hear you cry, enough of the films that weren’t your choice for Blu-ray of the month, Mark, tell us what was?

Mark’s Pick of the Month

DAYS OF THE BAGNOLD SUMMER

Not the most famous/infamous of films and not the most overstuffed and extravagantly packaged release. But it’s the very definition of a little gem that physical media now gives an extra chance at a life much deserved. Utterly charming, painfully amusing and wistfully recognisable, it’s a lovely film from the most unexpected of origins (a sitcom actor and a little known, non-superhero based graphic novel) and its release on home media will hopefully see more people watch this wonderful little film.

Days of Bagnold Summer

So that’s April done and dusted. A superb selection of films, with more than hint of repeating patterns this month (two classic martial arts flicks, two films of generational angst, even two WWII historical naval dramas), that once again flicks its middle finger at the naysayers who bemoan the death of physical media. And the great thing about these monthly release schedules? There’s another coming along in just a few short weeks, this time featuring new DC animation, more 80's cheesy slashers from Arrow, a Carl Dreyer silent classic, Keanu in his OTHER sci-fi ‘classic’ and all the usual Criterion releases that we can now expect to come along like clockwork. So as ever, have a great month all and see you in May!

Please let us know how right or wrong we are, and tell us what you most enjoyed on Blu-ray in April 2022 in the discussion!

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