DVD releases

Gran Torino (15) Korean War veteran Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) is consumed by grief over the death of his wife and harbours resentment towards his two sons, Mitch and Steve, who want to ship him off to a care home. The old coot has no time for the Asian next-door neighbours he labels "swamp rats". When Hmong gang-banger Spider and his four-strong posse scrap with neighbour's son Thao on his lawn, Walt intervenes with a rifle. Spider and co flee the scene and Thao's older sister Sue shows her gratitude by strengthening ties between the two households. Against the odds, Walt finds himself warming to his neighbours and he takes Thao under his wing. Gran Torino is another beautifully crafted, deeply compassionate and timely humanist drama from Eastwood. Rating: 4/5

Revolutionary Road (15) Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) and aspiring actress April Johnson (Kate Winslet) meet at a Greenwich Village cocktail party, fall in love and marry. They move into a pretty, little house on Revolutionary Road, raise two children and forge ambitious plans to move to Paris, where she can take a well-paid secretarial position at a government agency and he can decide what he wants to do with the rest of his life. Dreams of the French capital crumble when Frank sleeps with a secretary, and an increasingly unhappy April encourages the advances of married neighbour Shep. Sam Mendes's adaptation of Richard Yates' novel is beautifully-crafted yet emotionally cold. We struggle to emotionally connect to Frank and April, misery tumbling from their mouths and sadness etched in every furrow of their brows. Rating: 3/5

The Pink Panther 2 (PG) Long-suffering Chief Inspector Dreyfus (John Cleese) consigns bumbling Inspector Clouseau (Steve Martin) to traffic duty to minimise potential damage to the public. Out of the blue, Clouseau is seconded to the Dream Team – a group of detectives from around the world, who have vowed to track down an elusive thief known as The Tornado. The case becomes personal when The Tornado steals The Pink Panther gem from under ze noses of ze gendarme in ze French capital, increasing the pressure on Clouseau to unmask the perpetrator aided by his devoted secretary Nicole (Emily Mortimer) and beautiful author Sonia (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan). The Pink Panther 2 opens to the strains of Henry Mancini's theme tune but the similarities to the Peter Sellers films end there. Rating: 1/5