Robert Tanitch reviews the latest DVDs
KEEPING ROSY (Metrodome).
An efficient, but highly strung and highly unpopular, career woman loses her job and accidentally kills her Polish cleaner. She decides to keep her baby (Rosy).
This small budget, TV-scale and implausible thriller, directed by Steve Reeves, is made watchable by the clever, classy Maxine Peake gives an edgy, distraught performance. Blake Harrison, a former ‘inbetweener’, has his most serious role yet as a dodgy security guard.
THE BEST OF ME (Entertainment One) is romantic drama.
A couple are reunited after 21 years. They should have married; but her father didn’t think he was good enough for her. She is unhappily married.
What should she do? We know what she should do, but will they do it? The story, directed by Michael Hoffman, alternates between their older selves (James Marsden and Michelle Monaghan) and their younger selves (Luke Bracey and the delightful Liana Liberato) and fails to be the weepie movie it wants to be. The violence is always excessive and always seems added on rather than inherent.
THE MAZE RUNNER (20th Century Fox).
A group of teenagers, all suffering from amnesia, are imprisoned in a glade surrounded by a high concrete wall. Who put them there, we don’t know. The only way out is a dangerous maze which constantly changes its shape and is liable to crush any invader to death. Its guardians are giant spiders.
The best thing about this post-apocalyptical adventure story, which is aimed at a teenage market, is the daunting architecture of the maze. Sequels and even prequels are already in the pipe-line.
WARN THAT MAN (StudioCanal).
An English peer is kidnapped in his castle as a prelude to kidnapping Winston Churchill.
This ghastly stagy wartime spy rubbish (circa 1943) gets the rubbishy acting it deserves from Gordon Harker hamming it up, Raymond Lovell (immensely boring in a dual role) and Jean Kent.The comedy is dire and there are no thrills.
NIGHT BIRDS (StudioCanal)
Another even older (1930) British movie, also badly acted, which is not worth preserving.
A silly ass detective (Jack Raine) wants to catch Flash Jack, a notorious robber.
“I’m fed up with this nonsense,” says one of the characters, judging the mood of the viewer perfectly.
The main surprise about this thriller-without-thrills is that the appalling script is by actor-playwright Miles Malleson, translator of Moliere and the definitive Dr Chasuble in Oscar Wilde’s The Important of Being Earnest.
If you would like to buy any of these DVDs at discounted prices click on the links below.
