Mark Kermode's DVD round-up

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/jun/03/coriolanus-we-iron-sky-kermode

Version 0 of 1.

Despite the universal saleability of all things Shakespeare, there's a good reason why film-makers have previously steered clear of his later historical tragedy about legendary Roman leader Caius Martius Coriolanus. Famously featuring one of the Bard's most opaque antiheroes (a role that has variously challenged the skills of Olivier, Burton, Hopkins and even Christopher Walken), it's the kind of play that is frequently accused of engaging neither sympathy nor emotion.

Buy it from

Hats off, then, to first-time director Ralph Fiennes, whose Coriolanus (2011, Lionsgate, 15) relocates the action to a latterday war zone, garlanding the Shakespearean dialogue with contemporary trappings (tanks, handguns, rolling news broadcasts) in the manner of Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet or Richard Loncraine's Richard III.

Shot in Serbia and laced with images that echo TV coverage of all too recent conflicts, this beautifully streamlined adaptation cuts right to the heart of the matter in its depiction of a great warrior who turns out to be a lousy politician – a very timely subject in an age in which PR spin has become a primary weapon of war.

Fiennes is suitably impenetrable in the lead, visibly disgusted by the demands of the people to whom he must lay bare his wounds and thereby sell his soul. But it's Vanessa Redgrave's fearsome matriarch who steals the show in a bravura display of quite breathtaking precision and control. I cannot remember a film in which this powerhouse performer has showed more command of the screen.

Along with nominating Red, The Tourist and Burlesque as best picture contenders (ha!), there are few more conclusive examples of the utter bankruptcy of the Golden Globes than its fawning recognition of Madonna's stinkingly abysmal W.E. (2011, StudioCanal, 15). A labour of love for co-writer/director Madge, this revisionist balderdash makes an earnest plea for the deification of a stinking rich parasite who coveted someone else's wife and was on genial terms with Hitler, with whom he he shared an unfairly bad press; a sort of anti-King's Speech in which the hero can talk but you really wish he couldn't.

Spun around a risible twin narrative that finds a modern woman falling for a kilt-wearing, closet-intellectual Russian security guard (no, really) while researching the life of Wallace Simpson (often in her underwear), W.E. is quite simply one of the crassest, stupidest, most flatulently wrong-headed movies of all time, which even the radiant brilliance of Andrea Riseborough cannot save from the celluloid slag heap.

Low points include 1930s revellers dancing to the anachronistic sounds of the Sex Pistols (clearly Madge saw Marie Antoinette), a newsreader proudly name-checking the wrong monarch ("King George the Third has died…") and, worst of all, Mohamed Al Fayed being portrayed onscreen as the keeper of eternal royal truths before being vomit-inducingly arse-licked in the closing credits (along with John "misunderstood" Galliano).

If you want to take history lessons from a man who believes that Diana was "murdered" (Fayed's words) on the orders of Prince Philip, or a woman who isn't ashamed to open a song with the line: "If you were the Mona Lisa/ You'd be hanging in the Louvre", then be my guest.

I'd rather settle for the altogether more twisted (but frankly no less accurate) "history" of Iron Sky (2012, Revolver, 15), the Finnish, crowd-funded weirdie about Nazis escaping to the moon in 1945, since when they've been planning their return to Earth, apparently. Dismissed as disappointing by critics who have clearly never endured the all-title-no-movie nausea of Surf Nazis Must Die or Oversexed Rugsuckers From Mars, Iron Sky is a cut above the usual cult-trash fare, sprinkling some genuinely cine-literate gags (a re-editing of Chaplin's The Great Dictator, parodic nods to Downfall and Watermelon Man) on to a broad Carry On canvas, distinguished by some surprisingly well-rendered special effects that blend retro 40s design with 21st-century homespun technology.

While the overall tone may be wildly uneven, there's plenty to enjoy in director Timo Vuorensola's sparky farce, which is cheaper, shorter and funnier than this year's genuine sci-fi stinker John Carter (of Mars). Final score: Finland 1 Hollywood 0.

The influence of Michael Haneke is clear in Michael (2011, Artificial Eye, 18), the debut feature from Markus Schleinzer. A relentlessly cold and excruciatingly dead-eyed account of an "ordinary" man who keeps a young boy prisoner in his house for sexual abuse, this claustrophobic nightmare inhabits the awful silence left in the wake of the Josef Fritzl case. Almost worse than the scenes of imprisonment are the imitations of family life; the captor and his prey singing carols around a Christmas tree; a visit to a park; mealtimes shared across a tiny table.

There's no doubting the sincerity of Schleinzer's intentions to look into the abyss with compassion and understanding, nor the brilliance of the two central performances that are disconcertingly real. But this is relentlessly painful fare – as indeed it should be.

Time to cleanse the palette with the fantastical scrunge of Juan of the Dead (2011, Metrodome, 15), a likable zom-com splatterfest from Cuba (its first) with a meaty underbelly of rancid political satire. When Havana is overrun by the undead, the government is quick to announce that these "US-sponsored dissidents" will soon be under control. Meanwhile, enterprising Juan spies a business opportunity cleaning up walking corpses ("We kill your loved ones!") even as the city crumbles. Admirably unruly and engagingly anti-authoritarian, this ambitious oddity was a homegrown hit that deserves to find an audience among fans of rebellious, reanimated romps everywhere.