DVD

I don’t know what the title of You Were Never Really Here (15) ★★★★ means, but watching it, I did more than once wish I wasn’t there. Not that Lynne Ramsay’s movie is a stinker. It’s as crisp and witty a thriller as you’ll see this year. The movie gives a whole new meaning to hammer horror. The man holding the hammer is Joe (Joaquin Phoenix), an Iraq vet with posttraumatic stress disorder. Back home with his mum (Judith Roberts), he makes his living rescuing trafficked children. He’s been asked to find Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov, left, with Phoenix), the daughter of a senator. So far so Taxi Driver, but Ramsay mixes things up with some rapid-fire flashbacks to Joe’s childhood and army days. They don’t so much thicken the plot as beef up his character. Apart from the odd comic moment, it’s a heavy-going movie with graphic violence, and I’m not sure the whizzbang editing and visuals are quite right. For all its blood and guts, this wears too much art on its sleeve. Finding Your Feet (12) ★ is as funny as foot-and-mouth. Snobbish Imelda Staunton leaves her hubby, moves in with her council flat-dwelling sister (Celia Imrie), and finds new love on the dancefloor in the arms of working-class Charlie (Timothy Spall).