Bypassing the cinema

Michael Dwyeron direct-to-DVD movies that range from excellent to poor

The number of movies released at Irish cinemas has increased significantly in recent years. Because there are more screens, pictures are playing on wider release than ever before and consequently have shorter runs. And the reduced rate introduced for certifying films on limited release (on six screens or less at any one time) has made it a less daunting financial proposition to submit those films to the censor's office.

Nevertheless, interesting movies continue to slip through the net and are consigned directly to DVD release here, which also has been the fate of some misfired films featuring well-known actors.

THE LOOKOUT
****
Directed by Scott Frank. Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Matthew Goode, Jeff Daniels, Isla Fisher 15 cert
Screenwriter Frank (Get Shorty, Out of Sight) turns director with an intense, deeply involving picture of a bright young student whose reckless driving results in a serious head injury and memory loss. Working by night as a janitor at a Kansas bank, he is vulnerable to exploitation and is easy prey when drawn into a robbery plan.

His plight is treated thoughtfully and with concern in this slow- burning thriller that effectively turns up the dramatically coiled tension during and in the aftermath of the heist. Gordon- Levitt (Mysterious Skin) is magnetic in the central role, with the always reliable Daniels as his blind flatmate and British actor Goode (Match Point) convincing as an amoral American.

OUT OF THE BLUE
****
Directed by Robert Sarkies. Starring Karl Urban, Matthew Sutherland, Lois Lawn 15 cert
This gripping New Zealand thriller dramatises a shooting spree that took 13 lives in a sleepy coastal township on the South Island in November 1990. Set entirely over that eventful day, the film depicts the killer as an edgy recluse who, thanks to lax gun laws, buys a weapon that gives him a rare sense of power - and an instrument of revenge on the community that regards him as a laughingstock. Much of the movie is spent waiting, as people cower in fear before the gunman strikes again, and as director Sarkies builds and sustains the terrible tension.

HE WAS A QUIET MAN
***
Directed by Frank A Cappello. Starring Christian Slater, Elisha Cuthbert, William H Macy 15 cert
Unconnected to John Ford's similarly titled Irish romp, this jet- black comedy gives Slater his meatiest part in years. With a shaven forehead, a thick moustache and outsized glasses, he plays Bob, a timid, browbeaten nerd in a menial job.

When a staff member goes on an office shooting spree, Bob kills him and is acclaimed a hero. Another colleague (Cuthbert), after whom Bob has long lusted, is quadriplegic after the shooting and demands that he assists her suicide. There is a startling scene where her karaoke rendition of Midnight Train to Georgia is abruptly cut short. And there's a talking goldfish in a movie that gets progressively weirder before finally faltering in its resolution.

CHAPTER 27
***
Directed by JP Schaefer. Starring Jared Leto, Judah Friedlander, Lindsay Lohan 15 cert
A versatile actor who immerses himself in his roles, Leto (Requiem for a Dream, Fight Club) gained 62 pounds to portray John Lennon's assassin, Mark Chapman, in this brooding drama that attempts to get inside the mind of this fantasist holding the Double Fantasy album while he waits for days to meet Lennon outside his Manhattan apartment building. Lennon, Yoko Ono and their son Sean, all played by actors, are briefly featured in a film that offers few fresh insights. It is more effective at exploring Chapman's other obsession, The Catcher in the Rye, as he gradually blurs the distinction between himself and Holden Caulfield. Alone on screen for much of the movie, Leto gives a fascinating, deeply engaged performance as the creepy killer.

EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION
***
Directed by Jim Threapleton. Starring Omar Berdouni, Andy Serkis 15 cert
Formerly best known as Kate Winslet's first husband, Threapleton makes a compelling debut as writer-director with this micro- budget drama loosely based on the case of a Canadian citizen of Moroccan descent (Berdouni) arrested in New York in 2002 and imprisoned and tortured in Syria. While overtly political, this tough, unsettling film places equal weight on the personal dimension, adeptly employing flashbacks to contrast the man's mistreatment with the simple pleasures of his life before detention, and delineating the trauma he experiences after his eventual release.

BUTTERFLY ON A WHEEL
**
Directed by Mike Barker. Starring Pierce Brosnan, Maria Bello, Gerard Butler 15 cert
Butler and Bello are introduced as blissfully happy Chicago couple Neil and Abby, doting on their daughter while Neil smoothly scales the corporate ladder. The fly in this ointment is Brosnan as a gruff, stubbly, leather-clad man. Advising the couple that he has kidnapped their child, he subjects them to a series of sadistic mind games. Despite its promising set-up, the movie subjects the viewer to a plot full of holes, although not as many as it seems given what is revealed when the screenplay rebounds with a neat final twist.

CHROMOPHOBIA
*
Directed by Martha Fiennes. Starring Ben Chaplin, Penelope Cruz, Ralph Fiennes, Ian Holm, Rhys Ifans, Damian Lewis, Kristin Scott Thomas 15 cert
Selected as the closing film at Cannes in 2005, this British serious comedy finally arrives here on DVD. The second film directed by Fiennes (after Onegin), it struggles to intersect the fates of mostly self- absorbed characters, among them a predatory gay art historian played by her brother Ralph, along with an ailing Spanish prostitute (Cruz), a social worker (Ifans), a journalist (Chaplin), an art dealer (Scott Thomas), her financial lawyer husband (Lewis) and his father (Holm), a retired judge. All the actors are poorly served by a pretentious picture laden with heavy-handed social commentary.