Butley (Blu-ray)

On any given day, Ben Butley, a self-made train wreck of an English Literature professor at a London university, can shrug off everyone and everything with equal ease. But today, the disaster of Butley’s proudly misspent life threatens to dwarf even his cynically fatalistic non-expectations. Arriving at his cramped cave of an office, Butley is informed that his adored protege Joey (Richard O'Callaghan) is moving in with another man, his estranged wife (Susan Engel) is re-marrying, and his seemingly untalented colleague has been published ahead of him. Acclaimed playwright Harold Pinter, in what Time Magazine hailed as “a quite superior directorial debut,” turns author Simon Gray’s single-set dialogue-driven play into an irresistibly dynamic visual experience that tracks Bates’s hilarious and fearless performance with cunning precision.