This week’s DVD picks from Anna and The Apocalypse to The Accountant Of Auschwitz
Check out our selection of the top films and TV box sets available this week
THE oddball zom-com musical Anna & The Apocalypse mashes up as many genres as it can lay its bloodied stumps on -- and somehow, it works.
Meanwhile, cult hero Jason Isaacs is the best thing about the forgettable psycho-drama Look Away, which should probably have been called Switch Off. And with friends like those Christina Hendricks has in Motherhood, who needs enemies?
DVD OF THE WEEK: Anna & The Apocalypse
(15) 98mins, out now
PATCHY but often very funny British zom-com that occasionally forgets it’s a High School Musical parody to boot.
Ella Hunt (Cold Feet) is a winning lead and there’s a creepily intense turn from Dennis Pennis funnyman Paul Kaye as the headmaster whose school is overrun by zombies.
It’s wildly scattershot -- or splatter-shot -- and like last year’s Slaughterhouse Rulez, it’s not entirely clear who the target audience is meant to be.
The script is too sweary and the action too gory for youngsters, while the songs so convincingly nail the sanitised sound of the megabucks HSM franchise, they are very nearly as forgettable.
In one glorious, hilarious showstopper, Hunt sings about the new life she’s about to forge while society visibly descends into bloody mayhem behind her.
That aside, the sporadic showtunes serve mainly to take you out of the action.
But with such energy and can-do spirit on display, it’s hard not to like.
★★★☆☆
Aquaman
(12) 43mins, out now
Goofy expansion of the DC universe that begins with a mermaid washing up on a lighthouse keeper’s doorstep and gets progressively sillier from there.
As you’d expect from the DC universe, it’s overlong and overblown.
Perhaps more than any other Justice Leaguer, Aquaman would have benefited from the Thor: Ragnarok treatment, which played for laughs and is easily the best of Marvel’s Asgardian trilogy.
While Jason Momoa (Game Of Thrones) brings a brutish affability as the seafaring superhero, the cast around him make little impression under the daft costumes and layers of computer wizardry. Patrick Wilson (Watchmen) is such a forgettable villain, his powers should include invisibility.
Still, it’s stunning to look at. Atlantis is spectacular - like The Abyss meets Avatar - and the sunnier, cerulean palette is a welcome contrast to the Batman blacks and Man Of Steel greys that smother earlier instalments. None of it looks real, of course, but that was probably inevitable given the abundance of fish-people in neon jumpsuits riding around on giant seahorses.
Tosh - but enjoyable tosh, which puts it below only Wonder Woman in the DC canon.
★★★☆☆
Motherhood
(15) 83mins, out now on digital
RELEASED as Egg in the US, this sly comedy-drama pitches two couples into a slow-burning war of words, as Alysia Reiner (Orange Is The New Black) hosts pregnant sort-of-pal Christina Hendricks (Mad Men) for what’s meant to be a friendly catch-up.
Sharply scripted and nicely played all round, it captures rather well the verisimilitude of complex relationships and the awkwardness of forced social encounters.
There are some keen observations, such as Reiner carefully selecting which bottles of pills to hide from her bathroom shelf before their guests turn up.
And it neatly skewers a certain kind of upwardly mobile smugness, with a hyper-glossy aesthetic that makes even Hendricks sat on the toilet look like something from an interior design catalogue.
However, the laughs dry up as nerves fray and of the four leads, only Gbenga Akinnagbe (The Wire) as Reiner’s fella is particularly likeable, which makes this easier to admire than to truly enjoy.
It’s like spending too long at a dinner party with people you don’t really know, or particularly care for.
★★★☆☆
Look Away
(15) 99mins, available on demand from April 15
SAY hello to Jason Isaacs as the less than sympathetic dad of a troubled teen in this tepid psycho-drama with a touch of the Black Swans about it.
India Eisley -- the spit of a young Denise Richards -- plays the girl whose difficulties only begin with the bullies at her school. The solution, involving the malevolent presence of a twin she never had, proves more problematic.
Eisley channels teen angst as well as you’d expect from an actress now into her mid-twenties.
But with no real scares to speak of, the chief interest for British viewers is Isaacs’ turn as the cosmetic surgeon whose tough-love parenting gets paid back in the grand manner.
Otherwise, Look Away could have been called Switch Off.
★★☆☆☆
The Accountant Of Auschwitz
(12) 75mins, out April 15
QUIETLY compelling documentary that examines the nature of guilt, justice and forgiveness instead of dwelling on the specific horrors of the Nazi nightmare.
It follows the trial of 94-year-old Oscar Groning as the former SS functionary is finally called to account, fully 70 years on, for his part in 300,000 deaths.
Moving testimony from survivors is used sparingly as the unique legal issues presented by Groning’s case take centre stage.
This may owe its existence to the true-crime boom swamping streaming services but is more measured and philosophical than most of those headline-grabbing offerings -- and all the more effective for it.
★★★☆☆
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