Blu-ray

Sinister events are afoot in a small Cornish village. Not only is a mysterious plague killing off the locals – but those it affects don’t seem keen on staying put in their coffins. But what could all of this possibly have something to do with the sadistic Squire Hamilton, recently returned from a stay in Haiti?

Let’s get this out of the way up front – John Carpenter’s The Thing ranks alongside Singin’ in the Rain and Casablanca as one of my all-time favourite movies. That said, while I wasn’t exactly delighted at the prospect of this prequel/remake (premake?), the fact that Carpenter’s film was itself an update of the 1951 sci-fi The Thing from Another World meant that I would have been a hypocrite to be opposed to the concept on principle alone. I was happy to approach the film with an open mind. Not that it helped in any way…

The brilliantly filthy, bitingly funny animated spy spoof returns looking bigger and better than ever. While the debut season took a few episodes to really find its groove, this second year hits the ground running and races through 13 hilarious episodes that see secret agent Sterling Archer dealing with an over-sexed 16-year old German heiress, a prostitute who claims he’s the father of her baby, breast cancer and continuing problems with his mother/boss.

The Green Hornet is undoubtedly a disappointment for fans of both the masked vigilante himself and of inventive filmmaker Michel ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ Gondry. With Gondry at the helm and a slimmed down Seth Rogen playing the Hornet, you might at least have hoped for something truly unusual. But instead what we have is a pretty standard mix of comic book action and tired comedy antics, with virtually none of the visual flair or creativity we’d been hoping for.

A simple business trip to Hong Kong results in a global pandemic that threatens to wipe out a vast proportion of the human race in Steven Soderbergh’s medical thriller. But despite it’s all-star cast (including Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Jude Law and Laurence Fishburne), Contagion couldn’t be further removed from the likes of Outbreak.

Released into cinemas back in 2009, Coraline is the latest stop-motion animated feature from director Henry Selick, the man behind A Nightmare Before Christmas. This time around he turned to a novel by noted fantasy author Neil Gaiman for his source material, and the result is a dark, disturbing and marvellously grotesque modern fairytale. Bored and neglected by her workaholic parents, Coraline stumbles into an alternate world where the button-eyed 'Other Mother' and 'Other Father' give her the love and attention she always craved. But as you might expect, it all comes at a terrible price...

While some may favour Life of Brian and others The Meaning of Life, for me …Holy Grail stands proud as the best Monty Python movie. Hilariously silly and brilliantly irreverent, it’s a tour de force of cinematic comedy gold that somehow feels more authentic in its approach to the Arthurian myths than most ‘straight’ adaptations.