DVD OF THE WEEK

UP *****
Dir: Pete Docter
Starring: Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jason Nagai

While many of the very many recent animated features rely on either celebrity voices or easy pop-culture jokes - Ice Age 3 being a current example of both failings - Pixar continue to set the bar, telling unconventional stories with humour, heart and soul.
Up offers an unexpected set-up, centring as it does on a curmudgeonly old man and an irritating young boy. A series of misadventures bring them together flying to South America is a house suspended by balloons, the old man trying to finally reach his lifelong dream, Paradise Falls. Not giving much away, when they get there adventures ensue and they are joined by some very funny cartoon animals.
And it works. The characters are perfect, the dogs and strange bird hilarious, the adventure exciting and the resolution heart-warming. This, like Wall-E, is masterful storytelling.
By now it is almost redundant to praise the quality of animation and there are few things in Up that appear as groundbreaking as, say, the underwater effects in Finding Nemo. We have, after years of exposure, become almost immune to the wonder that modern animation used to conjure. Yet when Total Film magazine came to pick its top animated scenes in movie history, it was a short montage from the beginning of this film that came in first place. It had reduced a hardened audience of film critics at the Cannes premiere to tears.
And, OK, I'm not ashamed to admit I had tears cascading down my cheeks too. Beautiful stuff. You'll know the scene when it happens - the marriage montage. It's only one high-point in a film full of them. See it and be happy.

Killer kids have always been great movie fodder and you don't have to be a genius to realise that the spooky looking kid on the cover of Orphan (***) is a bad egg who will cause serious trouble for whatever unlucky couple adopt her. So it proves, as the young and unnaturally gifted young tyke proceeds to terrorise the other kids before getting stuck into their parents. This is a good old-fashioned story, played on a sensitive and realistic level and offering more than a few tense jolts as well as a satisfyingly nutso final 'twist”.

A Perfect Getaway (***) is the latest from Pitch Black director David Twohy, whose career has yet to recover from that film's sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick. It follows a couple of couples honeymooning in idyllic Hawaii amid news that another couple have been murdered (by yet another couple). David Oliphant, Steve Zahn, Milla Jovovich and Kiele Sanchez do good work as the film moves through slow-building tension to the eventual reveal of the killers. Sadly it all seems a bit tired in a 'seen it all before” way and the paucity of suspects makes the eventual 'surprise” somewhat less than jaw-dropping.

A team of Hong Kong surveillance officers are the focus of Overheard (***), a well-made police procedural which throws up moral dilemmas by the score after the cash-strapped policemen hear suspects giving information about illegal share trading. Temptation raises its head and before you know it our 'heroes” are ducking and diving to prevent fellow officers catching on. It's a tense scenario, pulling us into the ever-more complex ring of intrigue and providing yet another template that Hollywood could learn from.

And with Bangkok Dangerous (*) Nic Cage flunks out yet again. Astonishingly enough this is the fourth one-star film in a row for the man with the bad wig and rapidly receding past acting cred. Following the dire Next, National Treasure 2 and Knowing with a film equally as bad is quite an achievement but this remake by the Pang Brothers (of a film they made in the first place) is incoherent, illogical and cliché-ridden to a degree that is hard to fathom. He's a hit man. He has an apprentice. He's doing 'one last job”. Yawn. Visually striking, but not in a good way, this should be avoided unless heavily medicated.