DVD OF THE WEEK

BRUNO ****
Dir: Larry Charles
Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen

It may be a little uneven, and certainly a lot less satisfying than Borat, but there are still laughs a-plenty in Bruno.
This time round, again with director Larry Charles, Sacha Baron Cohen adopts the persona of gay Austrian fashion journalist Bruno who - after a disastrous faux pas at the Milan Fashion Show (which isn't quite as dramatic as you might wish for) gets him fired from his TV show, Funkyzeit - heads to America in search of celebrity. And it's the usual shtick of confronting unsuspecting members of the public and collecting shocked reactions to his, this time, over-the-top screamingly gay persona.
This is fearless comedy. Some of it works, some of it doesn't, and some of it is too contrived. The best bits: screening the TV pilot of his proposed new show – including an unforgettable 'dancing” penis - in front of a shocked focus group; parading an adopted 'African” baby for a black talk show audience; getting it on with his gay lover in a caged wrestling ring while a blood-thirsty redneck crowd, expecting cage fighting, howl with horror.
And there's more… Presidential candidate Ron Paul , a couple of Southern preachers who specialize in 'curing” homosexuality, and a Hollywood medium contacting Milli Vanilli for afterlife sex are all entertaining but, while the character of Bruno is simply brilliant in its creation and execution, you can't help thinking he's often shooting fish in a barrel, while recent revelations of less than honest set-ups during a slightly pointless section visiting the Middle East does leave an occasional uneasy feeling.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (**) is enough to make you want to gouge out your eyeballs and never watch a film again, such is the rampant stupidity, including ill-judged bouts of casual racism, on display. For director Michael Bay, more has always been better, so we get a bewildering excess of indistinguishable new giant robots and some of the most embarrassing comedy relief in recent memory. I know you can't expect much from films based on toy franchises, but at two and a half hours this is like purgatory. And I actually quite enjoyed the first Transformers movie…

In An American Affair (***) Adam is a young teenager, it is 1963, and he is obsessing over his vivacious blonde neighbour, who appears to be having an affair with JFK. However, despite this set-up and the obvious implications from the DVD cover she is not Marilyn Monroe and the film has nothing to do with the actress. Instead expect a coming of age story with (disappointingly underdeveloped) thriller undercurrents as Adam overhears political plotting in the wake of the Bay of Pigs. It's ultimately a sad serious little period piece, thoughtful and well-made, with Gretchen Mol heartbreaking as the blonde.

After trashing most of the recent slew of horror films, along comes a quite decent one, Britain's Eden Lake (****), wherein a young couple, he about to propose to her, run into trouble while camping at the titular body of water. The threat here is violent yoofs, and fear and uncertainty about out-of-control young thugs is well exploited. It's brutal, nerve-shredding, features impressive performances, and is all the better for having a social context at its core.

New Town Killers (***) is another outing from the UK, Glasgow this time, a thriller, again with contemporary social resonance, in which a young lad, down and out, is offered a bundle of money to play a game of hide and seek by two business-suited financial types. He has to hide for 24 hours and realises a little late (duh!) that they are hunting to kill. It's fast and furious and has moments of genuine tension, and Dougray Scott is particularly good as the lead killer, a cold-blooded money-man with Thatcherite distain for society.