Fans of Stephenie Meyer's addictive teen Twilight novels (whose number may be few among Observer readers) have long been worrying how the ongoing screen adaptations of her international bestsellers would handle the twisted psycho-sexual contortions of the final instalment. On the evidence of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (2011, EOne, 12) the answer is "not without a little difficulty". Director Bill Condon may be a safe pair of hands, but even under his mainstream moderation this tale of fatal attraction, vampire babies and alien love triangles still drifts into territory in which Davids Lynch or Cronenberg may have been more at home. Certainly, Bella's descent into living death in the wake of her long-awaited marriage to Edward contains some stark visual imagery, which pushes at the boundaries of the 12 certificate. Watching her wither on the vine as an incubus gestates inside her, sapping her strength from within, is the stuff of horror movies, as is the black satire of seeing Bella sucking blood through a straw in a parody of cosy "sickness-and-health" domesticity.
Some of it doesn't work at all, most notably a scene of CGI talking-werewolf silliness that threatens to scupper the entire romantic enterprise and drag everything into drama-destroying daftness. Yet despite the widespread critical raspberries there's still plenty here to keep the fans on board for the forthcoming Part 2 finale, not least in the consummation of Bella and Edward's love affair which is handled with a degree of tact and much sleight of hand by all concerned.
Be warned: if you haven't watched the previous three movies, none of this will make any sense whatsoever – you really can't just jump in this late in the day. The fact that this is not a patch on David Slade's excellent predecessor, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, has as much to do with the variable nature of the source material as the comparative skills of the film-makers, but at least Condon is now out of the woods and facing the home stretch. Extensive extras variously scattered across single and dual-disc DVD and Blu-ray formats include a director's commentary and behind-the-scenes featurettes.
One of the few real treats at last month's Academy Awards was the thrill of seeing Octavia Spencer grabbing the statuette for best supporting actress for her standout turn in the The Help (2011, Disney, 12). Spencer, along with best actress nominee Viola Davis, was the main reason to get excited about what was otherwise a rather bland (and, to some critics, patronising) adaptation of Kathryn Stockett's tale of housemaids breaking their silence during the advent of the civil rights movement. It's true that the narrative suffers from the all-too familiar problems of depicting liberal white folks – in this case Emma Stone's open-minded young journo Skeeter – solving the problems of their downtrodden black neighbours. Yet the combined dramatic force of Spencer and Davis easily compensates for the shortcomings of the story, ensuring that their characters and voices hold centre stage even when the film conspires to sideline them. Accusations that The Help somehow celebrates an archaic servile stereotype are frankly hard to reconcile with the sheer radiant power of their screen presence in an otherwise lukewarm movie.
There's little more substance in this week's other awards contender, My Week With Marilyn (2011, Entertainment, 15), although once again you'd have to be pretty hard-hearted not to be charmed by Kenneth Branagh's intoxicatingly tetchy portrayal of Laurence Olivier, slowly losing his mind in the presence of Michelle Williams's quivering Monroe. It's all fluff, that's for sure, and tends to come a cropper when grasping towards a deeper psychological understanding of its troubled heroine, whose manipulative charms seem to seduce all she encounters. But rising star Eddie Redmayne is suitably star-crossed as wide-eyed, innocent Colin Clark, upon whose memoirs the film is based, and whose undying infatuation with Marilyn is palpable throughout.
Why on earth anyone would want to remake Sam Peckinpah's most notorious movie, a "West Country western" defined by its tortured spirit and deeply troubled sexual politics, remains a mystery. Like the recent fatuous rehash of Wes Craven's Last House on the Left (or even, arguably, Meir Zarchi's I Spit on Your Grave), Rod Lurie's update of Straw Dogs (2011, Sony, 18) removes some of the rough edges of the original and in doing so renders the heated debates it once raised all but redundant.
Thus, in place of the (unintentional?) ideological battleground of the original we have an uninteresting tale of rape and revenge of which the most notable feature is its stunning mediocrity. Reduced to its nuts-and-bolts elements, this becomes little more than an upmarket B-feature, glossed with an inappropriate Hollywood sheen, but more at home on the straight-to-video shelf. Extras include director's commentary and making-of material.
In cinemas, Raúl Ruiz's epic swansong Mysteries of Lisbon (2010, New Wave, PG) presented something of a challenge to those who did not have four-and-a-half hours to spare at a single seating. Despite its obvious cinematic qualities, this wonderful adaptation of Camilo Castelo Branco's 1854 novel is perhaps all the more breathtaking on DVD where it can be watched in the manner of a TV mini-series boxed set. Spun around the tale of a young orphan discovering the truth about his heritage, this rich tapestry of interweaving narratives (a "diary of suffering") addresses issues of class, warfare, religion, redemption, love and death, heaven and hell, all with a deceptively deft touch. It's ravishing stuff that can happily be watched in episodes although you may be hard-pressed to resist the temptation to consume it all in one sitting.
