DVD
With fine performances and beautiful camerawork, The
Neighbour (15) ★★★★ is one of the year’s best thrillers. William Fichtner plays Mike, a middle-aged green-fingered type trying to ignore his fears that his life is, well, a tad dull. A young couple move in next door and Mike is charmed when the wife, Jenna (Jessica McNamee), asks for help with her own garden. Alas, her husband, Scott (Michael Rosenbaum) becomes jealous... If things go awry in writer/director Aaron Harvey’s high-intensity, slow-burn tale in the last act, that’s because the pressures of plot get in the way of the study of character. Forget Matt Damon. Forget John Malkovich. The most talented Mr Ripley there’s ever been is Dennis Hopper in Wim Wenders’s The
American Friend (12) ★★★★★, from 1977. Granted, Hopper doesn’t look much like Ripley in his beat-up denims and cowboy hat but he gets Ripley’s seductive, ne’er-do-well charm off pat. Remastered in 4K, Wenders’s picture has never looked better. Must-see of the week is Mark Cousins’s scintillating documentary
The Eyes Of Orson Welles (12) ★★★★★. This touching introduction to Welles’s visual genius is itself a treat to look at.