Latest video releases reviewed
NATIONAL TREASURE **
Directed by Jon Turteltaub. Starring Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, Sean Bean, Jon Voight, Harvey Keitel, Christopher Plummer PG cert
Adventurer Cage (thinning hair, thinning credibility) and historian Kruger (a damp, actress-shaped vacancy) move from one heritage site to another in their search for buried treasure staples. Like Raiders of the Lost Ark as scripted by The Riddler. Which is to say, not all that terrible.
Donald Clarke
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE ****
Directed by Jared Hess. Starring Jon Heder, Jon Gries, Aaron Ruell Ramirez, Tina Majorino, Diedrich Bader 15 cert
Each week brings another kooky American indie release, so readers could be forgiven for approaching Hess's debut - weird, quasi-autistic nerd makes friends and enemies in rural Idaho - with some suspicion. Don't be put off. Heder is touching and funny as the eponymous hero and the jokes are fresh throughout. As Napoleon might say: sweet!
Donald Clarke
BLADE: TRINITY **
Directed by David S Goyer. Starring Wesley Snipes, Jessica Biel, Ryan Reynolds, Parker Posey, Kris Kristofferson, Eric Bogosian 18 cert
Third and weakest instalment in the adventures of Snipes's ill-tempered vampire hunter. The DVD is packed with documentaries, blooper reels, alternate endings and commentaries. But eventually you will get round to watching the ghastly feature, which replaces the ornate horror of Guillermo Del Toro's Blade II with endless, numbing pop-video hysteria.
Donald Clarke
WHEN THE LAST SWORD IS DRAWN/MIBU GISHI DEN **
Directed by Yojiro Takita. Starring Kiichi Nakai, Koichi Sato, Yui Natsukawa 15 cert
This thoughtful, melancholy and quite impressively staged picture deals with rival samurai in 1860s Japan, in the dying days of the Shogun era. It is undermined, however, by a convoluted framing device, pedestrian pacing and a sentimental resolution.
Michael Dwyer
MA MÈRE/MY MOTHER *
Directed by Christophe Honoré. Starring Isabelle Huppert, Louis Garrell, Joanna Preiss, Emma de Caunes 18 cert
The Canary Islands is the unprepossessing setting for this overheated, calculatedly provocative Georges Bataille adaptation, featuring Huppert at her most fearless as a hedonistic widow enthusiastically arranging the sexual initiation of her sullen son, played by the equally uninhibited Garrel.
Michael Dwyer
