This week’s DVD picks: From last year’s best heist movie and some of the must-sees to a brain-scrambling black comedy

DIRECTOR Bart Layton weaves together the tale of American Animals, Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively star in thriller-comedy A Simple Favour, Kevin Costner’s webbed fish-man is resurrected, crazy rich Asians explore identity and integrity, residents struggle to survive an alien insurgency in Occupation, Emma Thompson is tasked with a dizzying moral weight in The Children Act, and a boat racer leads a double life in John Travolta’s latest, Speed Kills.

Read on...

DVD of the Week: American Animals

(15) 117 mins, out now

“THIS is not based on a true story. This is a true story.” So begins this remarkable drama-documentary hybrid, which is also the year’s best heist movie. It’s worth reminding yourself of that as the antics get increasingly far-fetched.

This tells the bonkers story of a 2004 art robbery staged by four college kids in Lexington, Kentucky - an escapade both breathtakingly audacious and staggeringly naive.

Irish actor Barry Keoghan (Dunkirk) plays Spencer Reinhard, a bored art student in search of some meaning in life, or at least something fun to do instead of going to lectures.

Evan Peters (X-Men’s Quicksilver), looking uncannily like a young Malcolm McDowell, plays his pal Warren Lipka as a hyperactive, possibly bipolar agent of chaos.

Interviews with key figures intercut the drama, the robbers displaying varying degrees of regret, amusement, confusion and self-loathing.

The conflicting accounts spun by these unreliable narrators are beautifully woven together by British director Bart Layton - the man behind the equally jaw-dropping doc The Imposter.

It helps that the real Reinhard and Lipka are such engaging talkers - both likeable, charismatic figures in their contrasting ways.

While Reinhard comes across like an Aaron Sorkin character, the grinning, shaggy-haired Lipka initially seems to have ambled in from the Kevin Smith cinematic stoner-verse.

As the tension ratchets up to a near-unbearable climax, Layton also finds a rich vein of comedy, with the robbery playing out like some mutant Jackass stunt gone wrong (witness the bizarre, self-defeating old-man makeup).

While nodding to genre classics like Ocean’s Eleven and Reservoir Dogs, this is quite unique - and utterly unmissable.

Five stars

A Simple Favour

(15) 114 mins, out now

“MOMMY needs a drink.” You might too after this brain-scrambling pitch-black comedy that packs about four different movies into less than two hours. Is it a thriller? A comedy? A steamy exploration of sexual awakening? Yes. No. All. None.

Anna Kendrick (Pitch Perfect) plays hyperactive single parent and lifestyle vlogger Stephanie, plunged into chaos by an unlikely sort-of-friendship with martini-chugging mom-fatale Emily (Blake Lively).

When Emily disappears, leaving Stephanie to look after her young son, the police are called… and all hell breaks loose.

The leads’ fizzing early chemistry sets an impossibly high bar for the rest of the movie - but director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids) keeps the hysteria building, while laughs come thanks to Kendrick’s gift for physical comedy, a script sharp enough to slit your throat and a raft of ace supporting turns, including from Homeland’s Rupert Friend.

Comparisons to Gone Girl are understandable but this is leaner, meaner and funnier, if every bit as ridiculous. You might love it, you might hate it, but you won’t forget it in a hurry.

Four stars

Waterworld

(12) 135 mins, out now

REMEMBER when $100million was a lot of money to make a movie? Kevin Costner’s 1995 flop-buster gets the limited-edition re-release nobody was clamouring for. Once the costliest film ever made, time has been kind to this prophecy of a drowned world.

With real stunts and actual, physical sets, it belongs to a bygone era, prompting the question: Did Waterworld get smarter or did we all get dumber? (Costner’s gilled, webbed fish-man needn’t feel inadequate next to Aquaman in the showers.)

There are some daring choices - that astonishingly drab palette of rusty browns and algae greens; opening with Costner drinking his own pee - as well as some real puzzlers.

Dennis Hopper is an entertaining villain, the action has a gonzo, Fury Road feel and there are even a few moments of surprisingly soulful seafaring. Oh, and an admirable emphasis on recycling for eco warriors.

Still, it’s too long, losing momentum in the third act, while Jeanne Tripplehorn is a literal passenger throughout.

Certainly not a misunderstood masterpiece - but better than you remember, if you remember it at all. As for the 175-minute extended cut on one of the various bonus discs… well, nobody needs to see that.

Three stars

Crazy Rich Asians

(12A) 118 mins, released January 21

AMIABLE but largely laughter-free rom-com that plays more like a fictionalised travelogue. Constance Wu is a charming lead as economics professor Rachel, who is stunned to discover she is dating the heir to a property fortune.

But A Simple Favour’s Henry Golding is bland as her beau, anointed scion of the Young clan, whose titular relatives are crazy-rich rather than crazy and rich.

In fact, said Asians are largely dull, shrill and mean-spirited. A few chuckles come courtesy of supporting player Nico Santos but otherwise the well-meaning messages about integrity, identity and following your heart are disappointingly rote.

Two and a half stars

Occupation

(15) 114 mins, released January 21

REMEMBER that episode of Home & Away where Sunny Bay got enslaved by grumpy aliens dressed as Cylons who stuck poison in Yabbie Creek? Well, now you don’t have to. Occupation is that episode, drawn out to very nearly two hours.

This alien insurgency actioner doubles as a tribute to the famously phlegmatic Aussie spirit. Certainly, nobody seems particularly surprised when their game of Aussie Rules gets wiped out by laser-spraying greyskins. Perhaps it happens there all the time.

Early scenes hint at a gruff spawn of Tremors and Mars Attacks - and there’s a wry laugh to be had when a group of teens film their impending doom on their phones instead of turning to flee.

But what follows is too po-faced to be fun, too pedestrian for real thrills. Revealing the hostiles so early is a mistake, meaning the only mystery comes from a couple of odd leaps forward in the narrative.

The effects are fine and you can’t fault the makers’ ambition. There are just better ways to Occupy yourself of an afternoon.

Two and a half stars

The Children Act

(12) 103 mins, released January 21

SOLID turns from the ever-excellent Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci can’t drag this adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel above mediocrity.

Thompson plays a superstar judge tasked only with cases of the most dizzying moral weight - in her latest, Jehovah’s Witnesses battle a hospital over their son’s treatment for leukaemia. Tucci is her lecturer husband wearied by the lack of intimacy in their marriage and pondering an affair.

It is convincing enough as a portrait of a relationship quietly failing in civilised fashion, charting the petty slights and snubs that collect like poison over the years. (And we can all relate to Thompson’s gripe about having “the bloody Archbishop of Westminster breathing down my neck”.)

But the legal drama never convinces, with endless clumsy speechifying and constant explainers for the audience of what’s going on and why it’s important. Given the pedigree of those involved, very underwhelming.

Two stars

Speed Kills

(15) 98 mins, out January 21

THERE'S the bones of a really good tale in John Travolta's latest, a semi-biopic of Sixties speedboat racer Don Aronow (here, presumably for legal reasons, called Ben Aronoff).

He struggles to escape a shady Mob past by building a new life in Miami, racing and constructing boats.

But soon his old acquaintances want to use his super-quick vessels to smuggle drugs.

There are parallels with The Wolf Of Wall Street and the Tom Cruise vehicle American Made but blunders by director Jodi Scurfield sink this below the waterline. Ben's murder is shown in full at the start, eliminating any suspense.

For good measure, we see it all again at the end of the movie. It's a bizarre decision, given Don's story is not well known over here. Events are hurled at you, seemingly at random. First Ben is racing speedboats. Then he’s having a baby with a woman he only just met.

Travolta brings his usual charisma. But his casting is strange given the story spans 25 years and Travolta is already five years older than Don was when he died. Watching him get it on with nubile young actresses is faintly nauseating.

Maybe this could be salvaged with a heavy re-edit. But as it stands, this is more pedalo than speedboat.

Two stars

Jayme Bryla