DONALD CLARKEreviews the latest dvd releases

LIFE DURING WARTIME
****

Directed by Todd Solondz. Starring Shirley Henderson, Ciaran Hinds, Allison Janney, Michael Lerner, Charlotte Rampling, Paul Reubens, Ally Sheedy 16 cert

Solondz returns to the characters from his sick, brilliant 1998 film Happiness, but, with typical perversity, he has recast all the roles with often very different actors. Hinds is particularly brilliant as a predatory pederast, recently released from prison. The film, shot in typical flat style, does not buzz quite so angrily as its predecessor, but it retains Happiness's compulsive sense of unease.

DOGTOOTH/KYNODONTAS 
****
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Starring Christos Stergioglou, Michele Valley, Aggeliki Papoulia, Christos Passalis 18 cert

The second feature from Lanthimos, a young Greek director, concerns itself with a very strange family. The sinister patriarch has taken protectiveness to psychotic proportions and detained his son and two daughters in a bland house
with a large, depressingly soulless garden. Oscillating between black humour and bleak horror, this is an absolute must.

IT’S A WONDERFUL AFTERLIFE 

* 
Directed by Gurinder Chadha. Starring Shabana Azmi, Goldy Notay, Sally Hawkins, Zoë Wanamaker, Mark Addy 12 cert

An elderly lady is haunted by the ghosts of those she murdered in this terrible British comedy from the director of Bend It
Like Beckham. The acting is okay, but the dialogue is so clumsy and the direction so hamfisted that it ends up looking like the work of amateurs. Front-runner for worst film of the year.