This week's new DVD & Blu-ray

Dressing up in a silly costume and fighting crime is only heroic in the movies and comics. In real life, it's more likely to be the result of a mental breakdown than a quest for truth, justice and the American way.

It's the real-world approach that Super takes and pursues relentlessly. Rainn Wilson (Dwight from the US The Office) plays a delusional cook whose life collapses when his ex-junkie wife, Liv Tyler, leaves him for local criminal Kevin Bacon. He snaps and becomes The Crimson Bolt, wielding a monkey wrench while delivering his goofy catchphrase, "Shut up, crime!" He teams up with a far too enthusiastic sidekick, Boltie (a very game Ellen Page), and sets out to right wrongs, hospitalising drug dealers and muggers with wrench blows to the head. He also doles out the same punishment for relatively minor infractions like butting into cinema queues. Director James Gunn did his training in the zero-budget exploitation of Troma films before writing the Dawn Of The Dead remake and directing enjoyable monster satire Slither. He's a director who doesn't pull punches, which is what this story needs to work. It's darkly funny, with a message that is far more complex than The Dark Knight, Spider-Man, etc. Plus, with no stupid rocket jetpack to shatter the mood, it kicks Kick-Ass's ass.

DVD & Blu-ray, G2 Pictures

Bittersweet coming of age comedy, directed with bags of style and a sure hand by first-timer Richard Ayoade.

DVD & Blu-ray, Optimum

The Rock stars in a surprisingly merciless and effective revenge thriller. Score by Clint Mansell.

DVD & Blu-ray, Sony

Average Joe becomes a brainiac thanks to an untested pill with sinister origins. Bradley Cooper stars with Robert De Niro in this limited but entertaining thriller.

DVD & Blu-ray, Momentum

Impeccably written, acted and directed classic Ealing comedy. Essential.

DVD & Blu-ray, Optimum

Parisian TV crime thrillers don't come much grittier than this.

DVD, 2 Entertain

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This week's new DVD & Blu-ray

Here's A Health To The Barley Mow.

We are very lucky here in the British Isles to have a folk cultural tradition that isn't just ancient and rich in pageantry, it's also incredibly spooky.

There are bits of this collection of 44 films about strange rural customs and traditions that seem more suited to horror films. You could easily picture the grainy footage of men wandering around country lanes wielding antlers as something off a haunted VHS in a Ring movie. While there's plenty that's familiar, such as Morris Men and sword dancing, there's much that's specific to one area. Events such as the Shrovetide football match in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, where both the upper and lower halves of the town collide en masse around a ball, or the ancient sport of dwile flonking from the Norfolk/Suffolk area, which is half-custom/half-drinking game and was recently banned under health and safety regulations. We meet mummers, hobby horses, tups and all kinds of other fascinating festivities. A lot of the films are old, which only adds to the fun, making footage of customs where local men wear gaudy skirts for a day appear to be something far darker and primal. Still, who cares what they do as long as it makes the crops come in on time? It's a peek into a world hidden in plain sight, where young girls can perform precision dance routines with swords, under the watchful eye of a man dressed as a woman. A world that's often a lot like The Wicker Man, only far creepier.

Liam Neeson carves out a Euro thriller niche for himself with this superior Berlin-set paranoia adventure.

DVD & Blu-ray, Optimum

Historical action movie about the siege of Rochester castle, with a movie-stealing turn by Paul Giamatti as the king.

DVD & Blu-ray, Warners

Jerzy Skolimowski's unusual 1970 UK drama, best known for the amazing track Mother Sky by Can.

DVD & Blu-ray, BFI

Underrated Elmore Leonard-based backwoods crime show about lawman Timothy Olyphant and full of bone-dry humour.

DVD, Sony

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