DVD OF THE WEEK

MICMACS ****
Dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Starring: Danny Boon, Andre Dussollier, Nicolas Marie

The films of Jean-Pierre Jeunet tend to polarise people, some finding them too cute and whimsical, others enjoying his eccentric design and characters. Amelie, from a few years back, caught the popular imagination but his follow-up, the even more impressive A Very Long Engagement, was virtually ignored outside France.
MicMacs has had the same split reaction, some loving its wild cartoony nature and inventiveness, others irritated by the rampant silliness it joyfully indulges. I loved it.
The story follows video store clerk Bazil (Boon) who, during a nearby shootout, is struck by a bullet which lodges in his brain. After losing his job and home he stumbles across a band of misfits and junkyard dealers (who seem to have come from some strange carnival sideshow), including a mathematical wiz, a female contortionist and other unlikely types. They band together and the group set out on a quest to bring down the world's two biggest weapon manufacturers, the people responsible for Bazil's injury (and his father's death).
It's great stuff, smart and funny and revelling in Jeunet's regularly brilliant camera-work and set designs. The colours and incredibly intricate background detail make for almost an overload of information but, though the plotting is fast and furious, the characters have a genuine emotional resonance.
It's French of course, and in French. Don't let that put you off. One reviewer described it as ‘a live-action Wallace & Gromit'. That's not far from the mark.

The recent Orphan and Case 39 had one evil kid each – there are a brace of them in The Children (****). Two families holiday together in a woodland manor, but fun days playing in the snow are short-lived as the various kids start behaving strangely. Before you know it Very Bad Things start happening around the little tykes. Despite an unknown cast, this makes a very spooky and effective job of things, ratcheting up the tension and getting full mileage from the parents' reluctance to confront or blame their increasingly psychotic offspring. Bracing.

Another day, another completely bonkers Japanese movie. Survive Style 5+ (****) – yes, that really is the film's name – tells five interconnecting stories, featuring hit-men, hypnotists, burglars, and ad execs. The stories are, to say the least, bizarre, and frequently violent, obscene and funny (though the film is only M-rated) but the most striking thing is the extraordinary day-glo design and sets dressed to bursting with kitsch collectibles. It's like Japanese Almodovar on acid, and Vinnie Jones is in it too! I completely fell for this gorgeous oddity – few films surprise and delight so frequently.

Fans of Sin City and other recent comic book pseudo-noirs will find a lot to enjoy in Give ‘Em Hell Malone (***), which relishes its hard-boiled private eye dialogue and an eccentric cast of femme fatales and psychotic villains. Thomas Jane stars as the titular private dick and makes a solid job of things. It's good to see Aussie director Russell Mulcahy helming a decent movie again: the over-the-top plotting and characters find a foil in his imaginative visual flourishes, though nothing comes close to the extravagance of the opening shoot-out. Perhaps they blew the budget on the first 10 minutes.

Some films feel good from the get-go. As Good as Dead (**) isn't one of those, coming on more like a tele-movie, as divorced photojournalist father Gary Elwes finds his everyday life interrupted by a pair of Southern white supremacist religious fanatics. They hold him hostage and extract revenge for a murder he denies committing. The film actually delivers intermittent tension, mainly thanks to Frank Whaley's eccentrically slimy psycho who just about makes up for the usual blank turn from Andie McDowell.