What to watch at home in August

Anton Bitel pro­vides a look at six titles head­ing to stream­ing and phys­i­cal media releas­es this month that you should add to the top of your shop­ping list.

A Moment of Romance, dir. Ben­ny Chan, 1990

Ben­ny Chan’s fea­ture merges crime flick and romance, while teas­ing out these gen­res’ dif­fer­ences. Its ​‘meet-cute’ occurs when Tri­ad dri­ver Wah Dee (Andy Lau) takes 17-year-old heiress JoJo Huen (Jack­lyn Wu) hostage dur­ing the get­away from a bru­tal­ly vio­lent jew­ellery heist. Yet even if their rela­tion­ship improb­a­bly begins with such rough objec­ti­fi­ca­tion, it is not Stock­holm syn­drome that keeps draw­ing JoJo back to Dee, but rather the gen­uine kind­ness and respect that she per­ceives beneath his crim­i­nal­i­ty. Reared by three fos­ter moth­ers after his real moth­er died for love, Dee comes, alone among his hyper­mas­cu­line col­leagues, with a fem­i­nine side to match all the cool bravado.

It is this con­flict, as much inter­nal as exter­nal, that pro­pels the star-cross’d lovers, whose chaste assig­na­tions unfold in noisy love hotels, high­light­ing the con­trast between vice and virtue. Dee may be doomed by the internecine pow­er games of his adopt­ed lifestyle, but he faces his fate still wear­ing the ele­gant wed­ding suit that he had put on for one last night of love (and death) with JoJo, even as she sports a sim­i­lar­ly stolen bridal dress whose white­ness, emblem­at­ic of her inno­cence, is now stained not with her but his blood.

A Moment of Romance is released on Blu-ray, 21 August via Radi­ance Films

Weird Sci­ence, dir. John Hugh­es, 1985

At the begin­ning of John Hugh­es’ goofy com­ing-of-age com­e­dy, friends Gary (Antho­ny Michael Wal­lace) and Wyatt (Ilan Mitchell-Smith) fan­ta­sise about what they would do with the girls they are watch­ing work out in the school gym – yet despite their voyeuris­tic randi­ness, there is some­thing pecu­liar­ly inno­cent about their express­ly un-sex­u­al inten­tions. Lat­er, when they use Gary’s com­put­er and a Franken­stein-inspired vision to cre­ate the woman of their dreams Lisa (Kel­ly LeBrock) who makes her­self avail­able to ful­fil their every whim, the only sex­u­al advan­tage that they take of her is to have a show­er with her (while them­selves clothed and ter­ri­fied), or mere­ly to watch her do gym­nas­tics (like those girls at the beginning).

The premise here threat­ens puerile per­ver­sion, female exploita­tion, and an uncom­fort­able age gap (Wyatt seems young for 15, Lisa old­er than 23) – but in fact Hugh­es gives Lisa the con­fi­dence, agency and pow­er that the boys lack, and makes her more fairy god­moth­er than sex object. Lisa places the imma­ture boys in sce­nar­ios where they learn to con­front their par­ents, talk to girls and stand up for them­selves, while – like the true fan­ta­sy that she is – eras­ing all evi­dence that she ever existed.

Weird Sci­ence is released on Lim­it­ed Edi­tion UHD, 21 August via Arrow

Time Ban­dits, dir. Ter­ry Gilliam, 1981

While his par­ents obsess over the lat­est house­hold con­sumerist items, lit­tle Kevin (Craig Warnock) reads books about the ancient world and is lost to his dreams. Per­haps a lit­tle too lost, giv­en that at night he is vis­it­ed in his room by a fugi­tive sex­tet of diminu­tive thieves (led by David Rappaport’s Ran­dall) who whisk him away on a time-( and real­i­ty) hop­ping ser­i­al heist to plun­der the past, even with the embod­i­ment of Evil (David Warn­er) and God him­self (Ralph Richard­son) in pursuit.

The result­ing adven­tures of Kevin and the Six Dwarves involve a whis­tle-stop tour of his­to­ry and fan­ta­sy, tak­ing in Napoleon (Ian Holm), Agamem­non (Sean Con­nery), Robin Hood (John Cleese), the Titan­ic, and Evil’s Lego-brick lair. This fairy­tale is recon­sti­tut­ed by a boy’s cre­ative mind (dur­ing his sleep­ing hours) from the toys, books and posters in his bed­room – but with Ter­ry Gilliam at the helm, and Michael Palin co-writ­ing, it is also inflect­ed with a Python-esque sense of absur­di­ty that lam­poons the child­ish adult char­ac­ters here, big and small.

It is a fun­ny, weird cameo-filled caper that finds val­ue even in vice, and lets wild imag­i­na­tion ulti­mate­ly win out over drab reality.

Time Ban­dits is released on Lim­it­ed Edi­tion UHD, 28 August via Arrow

Gregory’s Girl, dir. Bill Forsyth, 1980

“The nicest part is just before you taste it. Your mouth goes all tingly,” wise beyond her 10 years Made­line (Alli­son Forster) tells her teenage broth­er Gre­go­ry (John Gor­don Sin­clair). ​“But that can’t go on forever.”

Made­line is talk­ing about the gin­ger beer float that she has just ordered – but this Abron­hill-set microbud­get romance is sim­i­lar­ly focused on that sweet peri­od of antic­i­pa­tion before ado­les­cents come of age sex­u­al­ly. So while it may start with Gre­go­ry and his fel­low foot­ballers spy­ing randi­ly on a nurse as she undress­es, these boys are in fact naïve vir­gins (one of whom faints at the mere sight of her breasts). Gregory’s expressed desire to take one girl ​“up the coun­try park” turns out to be intend­ed lit­er­al­ly rather than as innu­en­do – and while the boys cer­tain­ly objec­ti­fy women, their sex­ism is con­found­ed by the arrival of Dorothy (Dee Hep­burn), whom they all fan­cy even as she out­class­es them at foot­ball (which they regard as their male province).

What in oth­er hands might have been a lust­ful low-brow com­e­dy, writer/​director Bill Forsyth makes a work of win­ning charm and sur­re­al back­ground detail, where every­one desires, but not every­one knows what – or who – they want.

Gregory’s Girl is released on Blu-ray and UHD, 21 Aug via BFI

Three Ages, dir. Buster Keaton, 1923

Although he had made a slew of suc­cess­ful shorts, and starred in Her­bert Blaché and Winchell Smith’s The Sap­head, this was the first fea­ture that Buster Keaton would write, direct and star in. Though cer­tain­ly par­o­dy­ing the mul­ti­ple, time-hop­ping nar­ra­tives of D.W. Griffith’s Intol­er­ance, this film’s tri­par­tite struc­ture, as it cuts between sto­ries set in the Stone, Roman and Mod­ern Ages, was also an insur­ance pol­i­cy: if it failed in its full-length form, it could be split up again into three sep­a­rate shorts.

In fact, its three parts are close­ly inter­twined, with the same cast repeat­ing essen­tial­ly the same sto­ry in three dif­fer­ent time zones, all sup­pos­ed­ly to prove a the­sis deliv­ered at the begin­ning by God Him­self: ​“The only thing that has not changed since the World began is love. Love is the unchang­ing axis on which the World revolves.”

Yet as puny but per­spi­ca­cious Keaton vies with the larg­er, cheat­ing Wal­lace Beery for the hand of Mar­garet Leahy, it will turn out that the oth­er con­stants in this non-evolv­ing his­to­ry are inge­nious stunts, prat­falls and sight gags, which see Keaton always even­tu­al­ly out­smart­ing his bul­ly­ing rival and tying the knot with Leahy.

Three Ages is released on Blu-ray, 21 August via Eureka!

The Last House On The Left, dir. Den­nis Iliadis, 2009

Whether you think it is a har­row­ing indict­ment of a vio­lent Viet­nam-era Amer­i­ca divid­ed from itself, or just a tonal con­fu­sion of com­e­dy cops, cringy music cues and human cru­el­ty, every­one can agree that Wes Craven’s shocky, schlocky 1972 The Last House On The Left, loose­ly updat­ing Ing­mar Bergman’s The Vir­gin Spring, belongs to that most vil­i­fied sub­genre of hor­ror, rape-revenge.

This is what makes Denis Iliadis’ remake so inter­est­ing. For while it fol­lows most of the original’s nar­ra­tive beats, again pit­ting two fam­i­lies – one mid­dle-class and main­stream, the oth­er mar­gin­al and mur­der­ous – against each oth­er, it is more a mat­ter of rape-sur­vival. Still griev­ing the recent loss of their son, Dr John (Tony Gold­wyn) and Emma Colling­wood (Mon­i­ca Pot­ter) will stop at noth­ing to keep their teen daugh­ter Mari (Sara Pax­ton) alive, even as Krug (Gar­ret Dil­lahunt) and his crim­i­nal gang, who abduct­ed, raped and left Mari for dead, are now holed up in the near­by guest house.

Only in the final scene does Iliadis deliv­er the basic revenge, served microwave hot, that he has till now care­ful­ly with­held. It is a sor­did con­clu­sion, putting us right in our place for being drawn to this remake, and con­fronting us with the ugli­ness of what we expect­ed – and desired – all along.

The Last House on the Left is released on Lim­it­ed Edi­tion UHD and Blu-ray, 28 August via Arrow