DVD reviews

Series four of Lena Dunham's smash hit comedy reveals its heroine, aspiring novelist Hannah Horvath (Dunham), to be no less witty, self-obsessed, awkward or annoying than in previous series, and her gang of friends to be no less white, privileged, shallow, narcissistic and middle class. But we can forgive her and them all of that because Girls is also still whip-smart, sassy, lewd, endlessly funny and brilliant at mocking the very thing it seems to represent. “I got so good at taking selfies I just didn't feel challenged any more,” says gay best friend Elijah (Andrew Rannells) at one point. “Then I thought: 'What happens if I turn the camera around?'”

What has changed as season four opens is that Hannah is finally leaving New York for a creative writing course at the University of Iowa and putting her relationship with on-off boyfriend Adam (Adam Driver) on ice.

In her absence, life goes on for her friends Marnie (Allison Williams), Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) and Jessa (Jemima Kirke), which basically means an on-going saga of job rejections, relationship problems and, for Jessa and Adam, an arrest for urinating in the street. Hannah doesn't last long in Iowa, though, and returns to find that her definition of “on ice” doesn't quite tally with Adam's.

The very first episode of Girls opened with Hannah telling her incredulous parents that she thought she might be the voice of her generation. In a sense, that's the role in which Dunham has since been cast: Girls certainly speaks honestly about many issues affecting young women in the west. But life in a comfortable bubble, even a New York-sized one, is only interesting for so long, and already the clock is ticking on the zeitgeist-surfing comedy.

Dunham knows it, too. Season five airs in the US next weekend and its creator, who will turn 30 shortly after the run ends, is pulling the plug after the following season, due to air next year. “The show has quite perfectly spanned my twenties, the period of time that it's about,” she said in a statement published last month. “So it feels like the right time to wrap our story up.”

Nina Forever (18)

Studio Canal, £9.99

A stylishly-edited blend of Skins and virtually any J-Horror you care to mention, this dark comedy-horror (and first feature) from British brothers Ben and Chris Blaine won plaudits at last year's SXSW festival. Still, it comes to DVD without the benefit of a theatrical release, though Edinburgh's Cameo Cinema is one of a handful of UK arthouse cinemas showing it in a series of one-off screenings this month (February 22, if you're interested).

Cian Barry and Abigail Hardingham star as Rob and Holly, two depressive students working dead-end supermarket jobs in an unnamed English university town. They meet and bond over a shared outsider status, but it's when they climb into bed together that the trouble starts: Rob's girlfriend Nina (Utopia star Fiona O'Shaugnessy) isn't too happy about the new relationship even though, as he quite reasonably points out, she's dead, killed in a car crash a year earlier. Even more worrisome, she only appears when Rob and Holly are having sex, a plot device which allows for numerous nude scenes and, at one point, a rather macabre threesome.

There are some great lines - “Basically, you're Florence Nightingale job-sharing with Linda Lovelace,” Nina tells Holly during one appearance from beyond the grave, in this case the one Holly and Rob are having sex on top of - but it's a shame O'Shaugnessy isn't given more screen time. She plays her part with real comic relish, a contrast to the po-faced approach of Barry and Hardingham. Still, an intriguingly quirky Brit horror from the director siblings.

Underground (15)

BFI, £29.99

It's 20 years since Emir Kusturica became one of a select group of directors to win the Palme d'Or twice and 20 years since Cannes thrilled to his extraordinary romp through nearly half a century of Yugoslav history. Marking that anniversary, the BFI brings the film to Blu-ray and DVD in this sumptuous three-disc set.

The over-arching story turns on the relationship between drunken Belgrade ne'er-do-wells Blacky (Lazar Ristovski) and Marko (Miki Manojlovi?), and their shared love for actress Natalija (Mirjana Jokovi?). But it also takes in the Nazi occupation and the fight against it; the subsequent rise of Tito and the onset of the Cold War; and the internecine brutality that gripped the Balkans in the 1990s. What makes Underground so unforgettable, though, is its free-wheeling vitality, Kusturica's extraordinary image-making and the layers of myth and magic realism the director layers on to his story: one crucial plot device has Blacky living in a cellar for two decades and not realising the war is over. Tragic, beautiful and farcical by turns, Underground is a cinematic tour-de-force.

Included in the extras are interviews with the director, a making-of documentary and - the real gem in the collection - Once Upon A Time There Was A Country, the original five-hour TV version of the film which screened in six parts on Serbia's RTS channel.