Today marks the 20th anniversary of South Africa's first democratic election, and whether it's by accident or design that Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (Fox, 12) arrives on DVD tomorrow, such timing flatters the authoritative aspirations of Justin Chadwick's intelligently mounted but fusty portrait. Not the first film to take on the anti-apartheid fighter, but the most far-reaching to date, it's a case study in the difficulty of cramming extraordinary lives into the blocky strictures of Attenborough-style biopic. The facts are so generously, commendably present as to leave little room for interpretation; while a miscast Idris Elba does his noble best, it's Naomie Harris who vividly colours outside the lines as his ferocious wife, Winnie.
Perhaps it needed a pinch of the fast-and-loose spirit of American Hustle (Entertainment, 15), David O Russell's delicious half-truth study – "Some of this actually happened," it boasts – of the FBI's Abscam operation in the 1970s. The operation itself is both enormously complicated and utterly secondary to Russell's real area of interest: the personal deceptions and delusions of Christian Bale's small-time shark, the two women (Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence) who may or may not love him, and the ragged FBI agent (Bradley Cooper) taken in by him. Repeat viewings help unknot the con, but they also reveal glittering dimensions to the performances: it's Lawrence's spurned trophy wife who dazzles most upfront, and Adams's Stanwyck-inspired seductress, lost in her own litany of disguises, who gains most in the long term.
The release pattern of Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac (Artificial Eye, 18), a personal erotic vivisection of sorts in two heavily stuffed parts, has been so confusingly structured that it's something of a relief to have it all in one place on DVD – well, not "all", since Von Trier's extended cut still awaits us. Viewed in one sitting, it's more coherent and moving than it seems in two: it's still the raucous humour of the enterprise that surprises most, drawing both jolting truths and confounding theories about human sexuality from the chaos. It's light years removed from the sensory economy of Claire Denis's Bastards (Artificial Eye, 18), a crystalline revenge noir with scarring sexual undertones that imposes such a formidable chill on first viewing that it takes a second to relax into its aesthetic riches. Its glare lingers for days, and it's not even top-tier Denis.
There's equivalent formal focus in All Is Lost (Universal, 12), JC Chandor's expert but aloofly self-elevating man-at-sea drama with a robust Robert Redford, and considerably less in James Franco's impenetrably umber-hued stab at Cormac McCarthy's Child of God (Signature, 18). Hard-biting Israeli thriller Big Bad Wolves (Metrodome, 18) is an uneven but crisply unnerving genre exercise that deserved a louder cinema release; as did Spanish animation Wrinkles (Anchor Bay, 15), which confronts the indignities of ageing with tissue-paper delicacy and compassion, and makes a swift jump to the small screen.
The week's most welcome Netflix arrival (aside from Noah Baumbach's more celebrated Frances Ha) is one that escaped UK cinema screens: Brian Goodman's 2008 Boston mob drama What Doesn't Kill You. This sturdy but familiar tale of childhood friends (played by Ethan Hawke and Mark Ruffalo) drawn grimly into the underworld wouldn't be especially notable if not for Ruffalo's savage turn as a family man on a dedicated course of self-destruction; it's one of the great lost performances of recent years.
