DVD OF THE WEEK

THE SQUARE ****
Dir: Nash Edgerton
Starring: David Roberts, Claire Van Der Bloom, Joel Edgerton, Bill Hunter

Ray is about to do something stupid. He is a married building contractor, mixed up with some dubious kickbacks and having an affair with neighbour Carla. Carla's boyfriend is a thug with a stash of money hidden in their ceiling. And she wants Ray to steal it and run off with her. What could possibly go wrong?
An Aussie film noir in all but visual style, set in the vaguely seedy underworld of petty crims and dodgy builders, The Square apparently failed at the Australian box office, a shame since it is a very solid piece of work. It has the same class and assurance as a film like Lantana, but considerably ups the suspense and (infrequent) violence. It is intrinsically Australian but could be from anywhere.
Though likened on the cover to Fight Club and the films of the Coen brothers, this debut film from the Edgerton brothers – Nash directs, Joel wrote it and acts, both exec produce - is nothing of the sort, but rather a gritty straight-ahead suburban crime drama with believable characters and a complex involving plot.
And what could go wrong for Ray? Well pretty much everything. Before long he's being blackmailed and dead bodies are piling up all around. Take one step off the moral path in the film noir universe and you're stuffed. And there's no way back for Ray, as every tiny wrong choice is yet another marker on his road to a ruined life.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (***) arrives just in time for the school holidays. And, with some jaw-dropping bits of animation and just enough smart asides for adults, it is indeed fun for all the family. This time the menagerie (the four central characters plus the penguins and Sacha Baron Cohen's King Julian – dunno what animal he's meant to be) end up in Africa where they deal with family issues and rediscover their roots. This is, of course cartoon Africa where lions don't actually eat the other animals. Not a classic by any means but it's all good clean fun.

Steve Coogan takes centre stage as a beleaguered drama teacher in Hamlet 2 (***). His department is about to be closed and his students are the school's hip-hop rejects. So, in a spark of creative brilliance he writes the titular musical as his final school performance. There are many laughs to be had here. The kids unsurprisingly play against their stereotypes and Coogan is in good form. The play itself has moments of insane brilliance. But the whole drama teacher thing was actually done a lot better (and funnier) recently by Chris Lillie in the Australian series (now on DVD) Summer Heights High.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (**) wants desperately to be something hipper and edgier than typical slasher films, but with a group of attractive teens heading off to a remote location for a weekend of sex, drugs and booze and then being killed off one by one, each fleeing victim stumbling inevitably upon recently-killed companions, the work is cut out trying to inject originality. As the clichés pile up with the corpses, and the initially promising characterisations turn out to be just window-dressing, it quickly becomes obvious that only new twist here is the stylishly grainy camerawork.

While the original featured a young couple checking into an isolated motel and being menaced by the owners, Vacancy 2 (**) is an origin story, showing how the murderous hospitality workers got so inhospitable. It starts with filming their unwitting guests for amateur porno. Then one night a serial killer wanders in and gets taped by mistake leading to an uneasy allegiance and a move to snuff films. Three irritating teens who may or may not be the next victims and their attempts to escape comprise the bulk of goings on.