News

It’s Monday, so we all know what that means! Yes, it’s time for another rundown of DVDs and Blu-ray’s hitting stores online and offline this week. It’s a jam-packed week, with plenty of movies waiting to take you money, so let us breakdown the new releases and highlight what you should – and shouldn’t – be buying from today, October 29th 2012.

Pick Of The Week

The Five-Year Engagement (DVD/Blu-ray)

Judd Apatow-produced romantic comedy starring Emily Blunt and Jason Segel. Anglo-American couple Violet (Blunt) and Tom (Segel) fall in love and soon after decide to get married. But the wedding is repeatedly delayed by the various intricate and perplexing circumstances in which they find themselves, to the point where both parties – and their families – start to wonder if they are doing the right thing after all. The Five-Year Engagement Review

And the rest…

Brake (DVD/Blu-ray...

King of Devil’s Island, the Scandinavian thriller by Norwegian director Marius Holst, is being released in the UK on 29th June by Arrow Films. Winner of Best Film and Best Supporting Actor (Trond Nilssen) at the Norwegian International Film Festival (2011) and Best Feature Film at Lübeck Nordic Film Days (2011), King of Devil’s Island depicts the violent uprising of a group of young boys against their oppressive guardians. Starring Stellan Skarsgård (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Mamma Mia, Angels and Demons, Pirates of the Caribbean, Good Will Hunting), Kirstoffer Joner (Shooting Star), and rising talents Benjamin Helstad (Body Troopers, Angel) and Trond Nilssen, this is a story of hope and friendship in the face of great hardship.

Based on a true story King of Devil’s Island tells the unsettling tale of a group of young delinquents banished to the remote prison of Bastøy. Under the guise of rehabilitation...

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

The interplay between beautiful and sinister imagery defines much of Marius Holst’s haunting Norwegian prison drama King of Devil’s Island. The bleakly perplexing visage of a harpooned whale dying alongside the arrival of two boys into a brutal prison system generates a stirring metaphor that grows only stronger over the film’s course.

Based on the actual 1915 uprising of Norway’s Bastøy Island, we meet new inmates Erling (Benjamin Helstad) and Ivar (Magnus Langlete) as they are initiated by being paraded around naked in front of their fellow prisoners. It creates an antagonistic atmosphere from the outset, one neither governed nor reprimanded by the prison’s ambiguous director, Bestyreren (Stellan Skarsgård). Violent confrontations are evidently endemic to the environment, no different from the majority of prisons worldwide. Disturbingly, those in positions of power, such as caretaker Brathen (Kristoffer Joner), order senior inmates to administer...

After playing a scientist trying to unlock the secrets of the Tesseract device in Marvel's Avengers Assemble, the Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard will next be on the big screen in King of Devil's Island.

The Scandinavian thriller is released in the UK by Arrow Films on June 29, 2012.

Winner of Best Film and Best Supporting Actor (Trond Nilssen) at the Norwegian International Film Festival 2011 and Best Feature Film at Lübeck Nordic Film Days 2011, King of Devil's Island depicts the violent uprising of a group of young boys against their oppressive guardians.

Also in the cast are Kirstoffer Joner (Shooting Star) and rising talents Benjamin Helstad (Body Troopers, Angel) and Trond Nilssen.

The film is described as a story of hope and friendship in the face of great hardship.

Based on a true story, King of Devil's Island tells the unsettling tale of a group of young delinquents banished to the remote prison of Bastøy.

The doors of Norway’s Bastoy Residential School remained open from 1900 to 1953, and in that half century hundreds of wayward boys called it home. They found themselves there for crimes big and small, but the goal was the same for all of them. Find the “honorable, humble, useful, Christian boy” inside the criminal, and then return them to society. But while this small chunk of rock adrift just south of Oslo was a home it was never meant to feel like one. A biting cold pervaded the place, inside and out, and it was as prevalent as the rigid discipline, hard labor and overall oppressiveness that was the school’s daily routine. And as inescapable as the island itself. King of Devil’s Island is based on the true story of a student uprising that occurred at Bastoy in 1915. An incident triggered by sexual abuse but fueled by pent-up rage led to the boys overthrowing their guardians...

The King Of Devil’S Island takes place in 1915 on Bastoy, an island off the coast of Norway that’s sort of an Alcatraz for teenage boys. This wooded island prison, known as a Borstal is in the middle of nowhere, inescapable and grim. As depicted in this engrossing new drama from Norwegian director Marius Holst, it’s one of the most realistic and depressing incantations of hell on earth you’ll ever see, albeit a freezing cold one. The inmates use numbers instead of names, and are forbidden to discuss their past. The sadistic guards heap mental, physical and sexual abuse on them, and instead of the boys being reformed with education they end up being exploited as cheap, manual labor. The King Of Devil’S Island focuses on the two newest residents at Bastoy; Erling (Benjamin Helstad), is a tough older teen who has already spent some time as a sailor,...

King of Devil's Island from Norwegian director Marius Holst with star Stellan Skarsgard in the lead, will open the Goteborg Film Festival which is Sweden's largest film event. The fourth film from Holst makes its international premiere at the festival which opens on January 28th and is a gritty tale based on a true story of a youth detention center uprising near Oslo. The main character is a new arrival who will do anything to escape and encourages inmates to launch a revolt against the sadistic regime. Also in the cast are Kristoffer Joner, Benjamin Helstad, Kimmo Rajala, Trond Nilssen and Magnus Langlete...