DVD
There’s no faulting the timing. Just as a new Cold War starts to set in, 1984’s Threads (two-disc special edition, remastered, 15) gets the 2K restoration treatment. It’s even more terrifying than you remember. The story, by Barry (Kes) Hines, is simplicity itself. We’re in Sheffield with a young, pregnant couple (Karen Meagher and Reece Dinsdale) looking for a flat when… boom. ‘They’ve gone and done it,’ somebody says, as the screen turns orange. Try to remember the warmth of that colour, because you’ll see no more of it in the nuclear winter that takes up the rest of Threads’ two-hour running time. Instead, we get to watch as a few ragged survivors light out for the Peak District. What’s most alarming about all this is the documentary feel director Mick Jackson insists on. Many of the cast he used weren’t actors – just folk, to whom he gave one piece of advice: ‘No smiling faces.’ Far from engendering solidarity, the nuclear winter merely brings out the worst in everyone. I hate
to say it, but Threads is necessary viewing. The same can’t be said of
Tunnel Of Fear (PG) though I loved it all the same. This is one of only three surviving episodes from the first series of The Avengers. The story’s the usual one about a secret being leaked to the enemy. But the set-up isn’t what you might think, because while Patrick Macnee’s John Steed is present, there’s no girl Avenger.
Stronger (15) is the true-life story of how Jeff Bauman (Jake Gyllenhaal) recovered after losing both legs in the Boston Marathon bombing of 2013. The movie’s early scenes are almost unbearably moving. But director David Gordon Green too often tells rather than shows, and the drama thins out as Jeff resists being made a symbol for anything bigger than himself.