DVD

Beast (15A) ★★★★ opens with Geraldine James conducting a church choir, but, once the scene is over, debut writer/ director Michael Pearce waves goodbye to any hint of the twee gentility of your average Brit flick. We’re on Jersey island (ravishingly photographed by Benjamin Kracun), where Moll (our own Jessie Buckley, pictured below) lives a tightly controlled life with her martinet mum (James). Here comes the match. Straggly of beard and unwashed of hair, he’s called Pascal (Johnny Flynn), a handyman with a Hardyesque sideline in poaching. He’s also the man the cops suspect of being the local serial killer... Not that Beast is a whodunit. The movie’s puzzle is not the murders but Moll. Alas, Beast degenerates as the exigencies of plot take over. Thankfully, you soon forget the clunking explicatory scenes it feels obliged to throw in, while the atmosphere and mystery stay with you.

Wonderstruck (PG) ★★★ is a mood piece too – or rather, two pieces that share a mood, though why they do so doesn’t become clear until the end. Todd Haynes’ movie flits back and forth between the Roaring Twenties and the Sagging Seventies, and the attention to detail in both periods is astounding, though it rather overwhelms the mirrored dramas of children (Millicent Simmonds as a 12-yearold deaf girl, far left) looking for adults. Not even Julianne Moore, who shows up in both strands, can tie things together. Messier still is Isle Of Dogs (PG) ★★. Like Fantastic Mr Fox, the new Wes Anderson is an animated feature, though I can’t say my features were at all animated by these canine capers. The only good news is that Scarlett Johansson, Bryan Cranston and Bill Murray have a ball supplying the doggy dulcets – meaning the movie’s bark is better than its bite. Don’t miss the 40th anniversary 4K Blu-ray of The Deer Hunter (18) ★★★★ – the greatest ’Nam and napalm movie ever, with De Niro and Streep at their most magnificent.