DVD releases

Paranoid Park, 2007, 15, Tartan £18.99

The cinematic shorthand of skateboarding as a metaphor for wasted modern youth is wearing thin. There's plenty of dreamy Super-8 board-work in Gus Van Sant's latest portrait of teenage wildlife, adapted from Blake Nelson's novel. From its MySpace casting call (which turned up newcomer Gabe Nevins) to its well-observed absent-parents milieu, the project reeks of down-with-the-kids authenticity. Van Sant certainly sympathises with his stars, and largely avoids the longueurs of Last Days. But there's still a sense of treading water in the wake of the superior Elephant, which remains his finest work. MK

Sleuth, 2007, 15, Paramount £19.99

Kenneth Branagh's handsomely mounted, evocatively shot bash at Anthony Shaffer's infamous two- (or three-?) hander suffers from a fatuous script update by Harold Pinter. Self-consciously 'earthy' dialogue and an unconvincing third act prove insurmountable obstacles even for a tack-spitting Michael Caine and an appropriately slimy Jude Law. Branagh gives it plenty of welly from behind the camera, and demonstrates an admirable lack of tact in getting to the heart of the text. But compared to Joseph Mankiewicz's original screen version this remains more notable for style than content. MK

Land of Promise: The British Documentary Movement 1930-1950 (1931-50, E, BFI, £32.50)

The British film industry has been in a state of crisis since the mid-1920s. But the documentary movement thrived under both private and public sponsorship from the advent of sound until the coming of television. This outstanding four-disc set contains 40 films, together with a 1959 appearance at the NFT by John Grierson, father of the British documentary, filmed memories by leading documentarists and an excellent 92-page book by scholars and archivists. The films deal essentially with three subjects: the social concerns of the depressed Thirties, the patriotic aims of World War Two, and the hopes and anxieties of the post-war age of austerity. They range from the sublime poetry of Robert Flaherty and Humphrey Jennings to the urgent prose of Edgar Anstey's 1935 Housing Problems, which Graham Greene thought one of the most original and hard-hitting films of its time. A vivid, invaluable aid to understanding 20th-century Britain. PF