Disney’s live action Cinderella, directed by Kenneth Branagh from a script by Chris Weitz, doesn’t stray as far from Disney’s 1950 animated version as last year’s Maleficent strayed from 1959’s animated Sleeping Beauty, but then any version of Cinderella requires that certain narrative threads be followed. Cinderella’s parents must be good. Her stepmother and stepsisters must be evil. The fairy godmother must weave her magic wand to create Cinderella’s ball gown, turn a pumpkin into a coach and so on. The emotional highlights of the piece must be Cinderella arriving at the ball, her dance with the prince, the loss of her slipper on the palace steps, the prince’s search for the mysterious girl and the climactic fitting of the slipper on Cinderella’s foot. All of these things Branagh’s film does as well as Disney’s animated classic and the three TV productions to date of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s musical version.

Lily James, best known for playing Lady Rose on TV’s Downton Abbey makes a sweet if somewhat bland Cinderella. Richard Madden, best known for playing Robb Stark on TV’s Game of Thrones has more to do than princes generally do in these things and that’s a good thing. The two make a charming couple.

Thankfully top-billed Cate Blanchett has less to do as the wicked stepmother. She gives it her all, but what kind of movie would it have been if her character was really the lead as her billing suggests? Derek Jacobi gives his usual fine performance as the dying king and Helena Bonham Carter is gently authoritative as the fairy godmother who is also the film’s narrator. Special effects are kept to a minimum and don’t overwhelm the proceedings. There are some modern touches such as Cinderella telling off her stepmother, but then forgiving her as she leaves hand-in-hand with the prince, or the young king as he has become. All in all a decent film, but I suspect young girls will be the film’s chief supporters.

Cinderella is available on both Blu-ray and DVD as is the animated version. All three versions of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella are available on DVD only.

Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys is the latest singer-songwriter to get a screen biography about his troubled life. Wilson is played by two actors, Paul Dano who plays him in his twenties, and John Cusack who plays him in his forties in Bill Pohland’s Love & Mercy. The real Brian Wilson sings the title song at the end of the film.

Dano, who actually looks something like the young Wilson, comes off best in the scenes that take place in the 1960s as his psychosis is developing. John Cusack, whose scenes take place during the 1980s, looks nothing like Wilson but more problematically is called upon to mumble and act irrational through most of his scenes. The saving grace in his section of the film is Elizabeth Banks as his new girlfriend and later wife and mother of five of his children. It’s a subtly moving performance quite at odds with the over-the-top performances she usually provides. Paul Giamatti, on the other hand, is way over-the-top and incredibly annoying as Wilson’s all-controlling psychiatrist.

The band’s recording session scenes are the film’s highlight.

Love & Mercy is available on both Blu-ray and DVD.

Criterion has released an updated Blu-ray and DVD of Brian De Palma’s 1980 hit Dressed to Kill with all the extras from the previous MGM release as well as new interviews with De Palma and Nancy Allen.

This was Allen’s first starring role and she more than holds her own against bigger names Michael Caine and Angie Dickinson as well as an excellent Keith Gordon as Dickinson’s son. Allen is the prostitute who witnesses Dickinson’s brutal murder a half hour into the film which is either De Palma’s most blatant rip-off of or tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, depending on your point of view. De Palma insists that he didn’t so much copy Hitchcock as expound on his themes and expound he does as the film unabashedly delves into Psycho, Rear Window and Spellbound and ends with a jolt reminiscent of De Palma’s 1976 film Carrie.

Warner Archive has released a Blu-ray upgrade of Edward Dmytryk’s 1944 film Murder, My Sweet based on Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely. In fact, the film starring Dick Powell, Claire Trevor and Anne Shirley, was released under its original title but was changed when test audiences complained that they thought from the title that it was another Dick Powell musical instead of his first tough guy detective story. Powell as private eye Philip Marlowe, Trevor as a femme fatale, and Mike Mazurki as the dimwitted thug whose low class tootsie is now an elegant society gal, come off best. Shirley, in her last film role, is lovely as ever but has little to do. Otto Kruger is a smooth talking villain. It was remade as Farewell, My Lovely in 1975 with Robert Mitchum and Charlotte Rampling. Sylvia Miles received an Oscar nomination for playing a slattern with loose lips, played equally sympathetically here by Esther Howard.

Kino Lorber has released Ken Loach’s 1990 film Hidden Agenda (1991 in the U.S.) about the British intelligence murder of an American civil rights lawyer in Belfast to cover up a right-wing plot that led to the overthrow of Britain’s Labor Party government and the installation of Conservative Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister in 1975. Brian Cox stars in a powerful performance as a fair-minded police investigator who is defeated by politics, and Frances McDormand gives one of her finest early performances as a fellow American civil rights lawyer and fiancé of the murdered man.

The film ranks with the earlier Kes and the later The Wind That Shakes the Barley as one of Loach’s best.

Hidden Agenda is available on Blu-ray and DVD.

Twilight Time has released another film set in Northern Ireland, Neil Jordan’s 1982 directorial debut Angel, which was released as Danny Boy in the U.S. in 1984.

The film is about a saxophonist who witnesses the murder of his manager and a deaf mute girl in the parking lot after a gig. It stars Stephen Rea, who would go on to create even more memorable portrayals in Jordan’s films The Crying Game and The End of the Affair. Although not in the same league as those films, it is nevertheless an impressive debut for the gifted writer-director.

Angel is available on Blu-ray only.

Twilight Time has also released a Blu-ray upgrade of J. Lee Thompson’s 1983 thriller 10 to Midnight. The film finds veteran tough guy Charles Bronson in full Death Wish mode as a cop who stalks psychotic killer Gene Davis even to the point of planting evidence to convict him of the murder of at least one of his victims. Davis, the brother of actor Brad Davis, had a breakout role in the film but quickly reverted to minor roles. Lisa Eilbacher as Bronson’s daughter and Andrew Stevens as his partner co-star in this better than you might expect thriller.

This week’s new releases include the Blu-ray upgrades of The Sentinel and The Satan Bug.