DVD OF THE WEEK

HOME BY CHRISTMAS ***
Dir: Gaylene Preston. Starring: Tony Barry, Martin Henderson, Chelsie Preston-Crayford

In Home For Christmas director Gaylene Preston returns to the unseen New Zealand of World War 2, which she has previously explored in War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us, with a very personal project pitched somewhere between documentary and drama, as Tony Barry recreates tapes made by Preston family patriarch Ed about his war experiences, mainly involving life in an Italian prison camp during a long four years overseas.
This is skilful filmmaking, with excellent contributions from cinematographer Alun Bollinger and music from Gaylene's sister, noted boogie pianist Jan Preston. It makes for a low-key and loving tribute, though its appeal to viewers without a particular interest in the period might be limited. Martin Henderson's role as the young Ed is very small, most incidents being retold with archival visual material. But those wanting to discover more of ordinary New Zealanders' experiences during the war will find much to enjoy.

A mere week before the A-Team remake lands on DVD we get the low-rent alternative arriving in the relatively entertaining shape of DC comic book adaptation The Losers (***), a somewhat grittier carbon copy group led by an attractively laconic Jeffrey Dean Morgan and including the wisecracking Chris Evans. Yes, they're an elite US Special Forces unit who are predictably double-crossed and need to seek revenge and clear their names and so on, in a twisty but never surprising plot that has Jason Patric enjoying himself on villain duties while Zoe Saldana is the possibly duplicitous eye-candy. Many explosions ensue.

With Office Space and the underrated Idiocracy under his belt you'd think writer/director Mike Judge was on pretty safe ground with Extract (**), a return to labour market comedy but this time the blue collar factory of 'Extract King” Jason Bateman. But, despite valiant turns from a likeable cast (Ben Affleck's laid-back bartender is but one highlight) the various plot strands that entwine from an industrial accident, a possible sale of the business, the machinations of a young con-woman, and Bateman's underwritten attempts to either cheat on or reconcile with his wife, simply fall apart in an unfortunately unbalanced mess.

With only sketchy memories, two members of a flight crew wake up on a vast mysterious spaceship transporting settlers to a new planet. Pandorum (***) tries hard to be an exciting sci-fi action mystery thriller and it sorta just about mainly succeeds, as the pair encounter other crew and a horde of cannibalistic aliens whilst unravelling the ship's dark secrets. There's also the titular space disease to cope with. The somewhat confused storytelling and overly-murky cinematography don't help and there are a lot of nods to other films, but all up this is a pretty solid effort which will certainly be of interest to fans of the genre.

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (**) attempts to combine the sort of extremes of body horror that David Cronenberg mined in his early films with the tropes of exploitation cinema. You're not sure whether to laugh or be repulsed. The most likely reaction – for hardened horror buffs certainly – is both. Two staggeringly annoying American girls travelling in Europe have a puncture and seek help from a crazy German doctor (prone to muttering things like 'I hate humans”). Before you know it they've been sown up end to end – along with a random Japanese fellow - to create the doctor's dream, the titular 'centipede”. It's pretty yucky. And pretty hammy as Dieter Laser, playing the good doc, plunges mercilessly over the top. Director Tom Six obviously takes himself way too seriously and plans this as the first part of a trilogy. You have been warned.