Robert Tanitch reviews the latest DVDs
DANNY COLLINS (Entertainment One) wears its big heart on its sleeve. Ageing Rock star, who sold out 30 years ago, has lived a life of drugs and bimbos. On receiving a letter from John Lennon, 40 years after it was written, telling him to be true to his music, he decides to make changes in his life and tracks down the married middle-aged son he has never seen in an attempt to redeem himself. The main pleasure is not in the sentimentality but in Al Pacino’s bags-of-charm performance and especially in his flirtatious banter with Annette Being who is cast as a no-nonsense Hilton hotel manager. As he so rightly says, “Some dinners are worth fighting for!” Their scenes together are in the best High Comedy tradition and are a delight.
ANGEL WITH A TRUMPET (StudioCanal). 1950 British remake of an Austrian movie: a
dour and heavily upholstered family saga starting in 1888 (Mayerling) and ending in 1938 (Anschluss). Henrietta (Eileen Herlie, stoic to the very last) is in love with Crown Prince Rudolf (Norman Wooland) but she does not have an affair with him because she is engaged to be married to a famous piano manufacturer (Basil Sidney). Rudolf commits suicide. Once married, she falls in love with Baron Hugo (Anthony Bushell) but she does not have an affair with him either; but that doesn’t stop her jealous husband shooting the Baron dead in a duel. Her son (Oskar Werner repeating the role he had in the Austrian movie) grows up to be a nasty Nazi. Wilfrid Hyde White plays her manservant.
GOOD PEOPLE (Lionsgate). A young American couple (James Franco and Kate Hudson), in debt, living in grotty London, find a stash (£22,000) in their sub-let basement. They decide to keep it. The bad guys rough them up. One bad guy (Omar Sy) thinks he is a modern Genghis Kahn. A hospitalised detective (Tom Wilkinson) gets out of his sickbed to help. How absurd can you get? The bloodbath finale in a derelict house is Home Alone stuff without the fun. I am sure you have better things to do with your time that watch this nonsense.
SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS (StudioCanal). 
Stephen Potter’s book on Gamesmanship (or how to succeed without actually cheating) was very popular in the early 1950s. The 1960 film was not. One of life’s losers (Ian Carmichael) goes to the College of Lifemanship (run by Alastair Sim, wasted) to learn the ploys and tricks of one-upmanship and how to become one of life’s winners. He then returns to teach a smug, conceited bounder (Terry-Thomas) a lesson. It should be funny. It isn’t. Director Robert Hamer always lets a scene run on long after the joke is over and his editor never cuts. The actors visibly strain for laughs.
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