HIP HOP EVOLUTION S3
(Netflix)
The return of Netflix’s hugely successful hip-hop documentary series is always welcome – highlighting as it often does some of the more obscure pioneers of the genre’s long and storied history. After focusing on specific eras and regions in the first two series, MC Shad now pulls back towards the wider cultural context – investigating the East Coast/West Coast beef, the impact of Biggie and Tupac, the arrival of Eminem and the rise of Outkast. It’s more focused than series 2 (which jumped around regions without really clarifying the chronology at times), though a lack of female presence still frustrates; only Lil’ Kim and TLC get any real attention, and you feel there could be more. Head-bopping stuff. ***FT
RABID
(Home release, 101 Films)
This very welcome re-release of early David Cronenberg feature Rabid is gruesome, grim and grubby. We follow a woman who has an emergency experimental skin graft after a horrible motorcycle accident; the graft looks like an anus with a penis sticking out of it (no other way to describe this) and lives under her armpit. The graft causes her to have an insatiable thirst for blood and she inadvertently starts a rabies-like epidemic across Montreal. It’s an ugly film, evocating a decaying lonely Canada, and easily one of Cronenberg’s best and most overlooked works, touching on social panic, paranoia and social anxiety, all with plenty of bodily yuckiness. Even early on, he was a genius. This re-issue from 101 absolutely packs in the extras too. ****FT
OLDBOY (4-DISC LIMITED EDITION)
(Home release, Arrow Video)
The film that announced South Korean cinema’s rebirth to the world is getting the deluxe treatment from Arrow. The four-disc treatment includes all three films from Park Chan-Wook’s Vengeance trilogy (that’s Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance and Lady Vengeance if you’re not aware). A fourth disc includes a doc on Oldboy’s making, and the actual Oldboy disc is itself loaded with extras. As for the film itself? Brutal, elegant and masterful – and looking sharper than ever thanks to the transfer. If you want to do a deep dive on the brilliance of Park Chan-Wook’s filmmaking, sucking up every last morsel of information about the Vengeance trilogy, you can’t go far wrong with Arrow’s boxset here. ****FT
THE CAPTURE
BBC1 (iPlayer)
If you’ve been looking over your shoulder and giving CCTV cameras a steely glare a lot more than usual lately, then the chances are you’ve started watching The Capture. With only two more episodes to go at time of writing, the mindbending BBC drama has sparked conversations across the country about just how much we don’t know about surveillance, and whether people hidden behind computer screens really do have power over the truth. So far, viewers have been taken deeper and deeper down the rabbithole of a twisted international conspiracy, and quite frankly we can’t wait to see where it all ends up. ****EE
