DVD OF THE WEEK

BURN AFTER READING *****
Dir: Joel & Ethan Coen
Starring: John Malkovich, George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt,
Tilda Swinton

A new Coen brothers film is usually a cause for celebration but their brilliantly eccentric new offering is going to be disliked by a lot of people.
The Coens have created an immensely funny and intricate shaggy dog story with one overarching joke: this is a spy film, so nothing is what it seems. But there is one huge difference. With the 'nothing is what it seems” they don't mean in the actual story. No. In fact the audience is aware of everything that is happening (though the movie's characters are all completely unaware). What isn't what it seems is every aspect of the actual filmmaking.
For a start, it isn't a spy film, that's just a red herring. There is no spying (except by divorce lawyers). Secondly, the central character – who the audience are going to have a really hard time relating to – isn't Pitt's sweetly blank gay gym worker. Or Clooney's self-obsessed federal marshal. Or McDormand, dumber than dumb and searching for love on the internet. It's Malkovich's disillusioned drunkard of a CIA analyst who spends most of the film either depressed or apoplectic with anger. Hard to relate to, but he's our guy.
Then there's the serious spy music, signalling… nothing. Nothing but anticlimaxes. The film is full of anticlimaxes. Deaths (except one, which is a real surprise) happen off camera. The real 'action” consists of two CIA agents discussing what has happened.
The whole thing is a subtle joke, beautifully told, but if you're not in on it you're going to hate this movie

Funny Games (****) has an odd history. It was first made in Europe almost a decade ago. Now the original director Michael Haneke has remade it, almost shot for shot, in America with Tim Roth, Naomi Watts, and Michael Pitt in key roles. And, with DVD shelves crammed with violent torture-porn variations of home invasion scenarios, it's timing couldn't be better, since Funny Games tells exactly that story.
Two well-dressed young men wander in and proceed to take a vacationing mother father and son hostage, playing the game of 'will you be alive in the morning?”. What sharply differentiates this film is the determined lack of sensationalism and the fact that one of the protagonists turns to the camera about half way in and says (effectively) 'Is this what you came to see?” From then on the audience is increasingly implicated in the increasingly disturbing action. The film is saying 'You want to see people suffering? Then take some responsibility.” And it says it very effectively. Disturbing and recommended viewing for those who get their jollies from the likes of the Saw and Hostel films.

Max Payne (*) proves again that it's just no fun watching bullets go through bodies in slow motion if you don't care who the body is or why it's happening. The titular detective (a scowling but otherwise blank Mark Wahlberg) is based on a video game 'character”. He plods through a story so obtusely told that it appears complex, but the hunt for his wife's killer is in fact simplistic, dumb and predictable. More promisingly, menacing CGI angels flap around and occasionally kill people for no good reason. Sadly. they don't add much.

In a retro-futuristic dystopia (owing a little to the look of Chronicles of Riddick) people can kill by DNA hacking (causing tentacles to spout out of the body!) and all sorts of lowlifes wander the streets (and punk-style clubs). Naturally everyone seems unhappy and wants to leave. This is The Gene Generation (**), wherein Bai Ling dresses like a Thai hooker with a bondage fetish but is, in fact, an assassin who kills DNA hackers. The CGI environment (presumably full-greenscreen like Sky Captain or Sin City) is the biggest attraction, let down by dreadful dialogue, a creaky plot and some very hammy acting.

There is clearly a market somewhere for director Olivier Assayas' Eurochic industrial espionage 'thrillers”. People take him awfully seriously but Boarding Gate (**), like the earlier Demonlover (you'd think with a name like that it would at least be a little fun) is so slow and serious - dare we say pretentious? – that it's a struggle to do more than simply long for the closing credits. Perhaps, as one fan described them, these films are a 'cautionary, though entirely plausible, tale(s) of humans debased by their own lust for ungoverned capitalism.” If that requires more scenes of Asia Argento and Michael Masden engaged in long sub-Goddardian discussions of business ethics and S&M sex then just kill me now.