Robert Tanitch reviews the latest DVDs
THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL (20th Century Fox). A story of murder and a stolen Renaissance painting is written directed and produced by Wes Anderson with extravagant Belle Époque decor and sophisticated artifice. A cast of well-known actors is headed by a camp, foul-mouthed concierge (played with great panache by Ralph Fiennes). He is accompanied on his ludicrous adventures by a lobby boy (Tony Revolori). The story-line is gloriously, stylishly, absurdly comic and the dialogue is so witty: a connoisseur’s delight.
BEYOND THE EDGE (Metrodrome). On the 29th May 1953 New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hilary and his Sherpa guide, Tenzig Norgay, were the first to scale the 29,035 summit of Everest, the tallest mountain in the world. This straightforward and tactful documentary, with the aid of newsreels, interviews and some mime, reconstructs the journey, a race against time. It’s a romantic quest, a great adventure, daunting, awesome and magnificent, the last hurrah of the British Empire, and an acute moment of national pride. Hillary got a knighthood. Norgay only got a medal.
THE BOOK THIEF (Metrodrome). A German family fosters a 13-year-old girl and hides a young Jew in their cellar during World War 2. She keeps him alive by reading books to him. Markus Zusak’s novel was aimed at young adults and Brian Percivale’s stolid film version, feels like a sentimental fairy story for young girls. You may have a feeling of déjà vu; but the really off-putting thing about it is the squirm-making narration by Death, a voice-over by a badly miscast Roger Allam.
IN BLOOM (Artificial Eye). Two teenage girls grow up during the Georgian Civil War in 1992. A young man gives the girl he loves a present of a hand-gun. Will she use it? In Georgia if a girl turns down an offer of marriage, the man kidnaps her, rapes her and then marries her and everybody carries on as if that is most normal thing in the world. No bloom, it’s all bleak and gloomy.
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