Clockwork Orange - Two-Disc Special Edition - By Paul Bullock

When A Clockwork Orange was finally unleashed on the Great British public in the year 2000, some thirty years after the recently-deceased Stanley Kubrick had banned it from this nation’s screens amid fears of its effect on young audiences, it was greeted with indifference by the teenagers of the millennium. This is it?, came the response. Decades of controversy and countless dodgy, under-the-counter VHS’ boiled down to this? An over-the-top, slightly camp story of a borderline toff who drinks milk, listens to Beethovan and describes sex with the almost-prudish term "in out, in out". This film wasn’t abhorrent, it wasn’t horrific or worthy of censorship. To the generation brought up on video nasties, A Clockwork Orange was, well, a bit naff. Eight years on, the film is likely to elicit the same response from today’s teenagers. It certainly has not aged well. From the gaudy decoration of Alex’s home to its antiquated technology (vinyl? cassette tapes?), the film is rooted firmly in the decade it was made in, and you almost have to remind yourself that we’re in a dark, dystopian future rather than the dim days of Ted Heath‘s England while watching. But scratch beneath the surface and you have a film that is as relevant today as it was back in the 70s, if not more so. After all, what is the word chav but a modern day version of the word droog? What is a hoody but a uniform akin to Alex’s white jump suit and black bowler hat? And what are ‘anti-teen devices’ but thinly-veiled behaviour modification machines a la the Ludevigo technique. In short, this is a timeless tale of teen delinquency and individual freedom against state control, and just as its relevance has not faded, nor has its controversy. For the first half, Alex is a monster, a force of nature driven by an orgy of sex, violence and, of course, Beethoven. But his evil is instinctive and, in Kubrick’s dark vision, simple human nature. The government’s ‘rehabilitation’, however, is premeditated and once Alex has been set free from the Ludevigo Centre, the film flips and becomes sympathetic towards him; his fellow droogs, who he beat mercilessly earlier, now portrayed as his oppressors, and the old man whose wife he raped, now turned into a demented torturer, playing Beethoven until Alex attempts suicide. It’s almost impossible to see a modern director doing the same and making the victim of a crime the villain and vice versa in today‘s cinematic landscape and even less likely that he would be hailed as a genius thereafter, and fittingly for such a revolutionary film, the DVD comes with some intelligent special features. With Kubrick himself no longer with us, it’s his Clockwork right-hand man, a never-better Malcolm McDowell, who takes centre stage. Along with historian Nick Redman, the actor gives an informative yet informal commentary, and is the subject of classy career profile O Lucky Malcolm, produced and directed by Kubrick’s brother-in-law Jan Harlan. Meanwhile, a Channel Four documentary from the time of its re-release and a new making of put the film in its social and cinematic context to round-off a package which, like the director it pays tribute to, is low on quantity, but high on quality.

The Shining - Two Disc Special Edition - By James Ellaby

The first time I watched The Shining, I had just read Stephen King's book, and I have to say I was very disappointed with this odd film by some guy called Stanley Kubrick, mainly because it ditched so much of the basic horror elements. Of course, the more I watched it the more I realised that the film was vastly better than the book, and when King produced a TV mini-series that was more true to his story, you could clearly see that Kubrick had made the right decisions. It isn't a perfect film, as the performances of both Shelley Duvall and Danny Lloyd are slightly irritating at times, but the positives massively outweigh the negatives. Of course, Jack Nicholson is immense as the writer on the verge of a murderous breakdown whilst working as a caretaker at the isolated Overlook Hotel, and he eats up every scene he's in, which is almost every scene. But what makes The Shining one of the best films around is the stunning set designs and cinematography and it's a gorgeous film to look at, not least thanks to the use of Steadicam in the famous tracking shots around the hotel and in the maze finale. This Special Edition comes with a load of bonus features, including the excellent The Making Of The Shining, a documentary filmed on set by Kubrick's daughter Vivian, which works so well because it's so unlike most movie documentaries, particularly the sanitised on-set featurettes you get with most other films. However, it was on the old DVD release too, so it's nothing new. Luckily, what makes this version Special is the rest of the bonus features, with a commentary track for the movie by Steadicam inventor Garrett Brown and movie historian John Baxter, while there is an excellent featurette called View From The Overlook: Crafting The Shining. It's brand new for this DVD and is really very interesting, with various Kubrick biographies, people who worked on the film and various fans of it, like William Friedkin, Sydney Pollack and Steven Spielberg. They even manage to get Nicholson to take part, and everyone has something useful and interesting to say, rather than just being talking heads, and while it's only half an hour long, you feel like you've got a greater understanding of the film afterwards. And they all return for The Visions Of Stanley Kubrick, which goes into further detail about the visuals of The Shining, which is also excellent, while Wendy Carlos, Composer highlights the music in the film and is again very interesting as it has Carlos talking about how it came together as well as some parts that didn't make it. All of this adds up to a brilliant package for a stunning movie and an essential purchase.