Donald Clarkereviews the latest DVDs
FUTURAMA: BENDER'S GAME
****
Directed by Dwayne Carey-Hill. Voices of Billy West, Katey Sagal, John DiMaggio, Tress MacNeille 12 cert
Fox did its best to kill off Futurama, but Matt Groening's snarky, ambitious follow-up to The Simpsons continues to enjoy a fruitful afterlife. Bender's Game, the third in four projected DVD features, finds the titular robot getting into all kinds of meta-textual scrapes while playing Dungeons Dragons.
Genuinely believing himself to be a knight named Titanius Anglesmith, Bender is sent away to the HAL institute for Criminally Insane Robots.
As ever in Futurama, the story goes on to coil itself into so many knots that the viewer may feel the need to take notes (or, at least, do a bit of rewinding). But the jokes remain fabulous throughout, and the characters - though largely inhuman - continue to display delightful levels of humanity.
The DVD, nicely packaged, comes stuffed with superb extras, including an instructional video that informs the viewer "how to draw Futuramain 83 easy steps". So, if the series does eventually vanish, the faithful should be able to generate an infinity of sequels.
INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL
***
Directed by Steven Spielberg. Starring Harrison Ford, Shia LaBeouf, Cate Blanchett, Ray Winstone, Karen Allen, John Hurt, Jim Broadbent 12 cert
The much-delayed fourth Indiana Jones adventure certainly honours the series' commitment to action: pursuit through vines, preposterous swordplay on speeding trucks and so on. The film is, however, too fussy for its own good. The yards of boring exposition slow the plot down, and the overabundance of 1950s period detail is somewhat suffocating.
SAVAGE GRACE
***
Directed by Tom Kalin. Starring Julianne Moore, Stephen Dillane, Eddie Redmayne, Unax Ugalde, Belen Rueda 16 cert
Kalin's moistly decadent film, dealing with the unhappy demise of Barbara Daly Baekeland, wife of the heir to the Bakelite fortune, certainly offers the viewer grim and unsettling sights. Barbara, given peaches-and-cream fragility by Moore, seduces her own son and makes everyone else's life miserable. This disturbing clinical case study is a hard watch, but it just about repays the effort.
FRED CLAUS
**
Directed by David Dobkin. Starring Vince Vaughn, Paul Giamatti, Miranda Richardson, Kevin Spacey, Kathy Bates, Rachel Weisz PG cert
More The Santa Clausethan Bad Santa, this fitful Christmas entertainment finds Santa's layabout of a brother (Vaughn) forced to relocate to the North Pole after a run-in with the police. Though passably diverting at first, the film abandons itself totally to sentimental slush in its lousy final act.
DONKEY PUNCH
**
Directed by Olly Blackburn. Starring Robert Boulter, Sian Breckin, Tom Burke, Nichola Burley, Julian Morris, Jay Taylor, Jaime Winstone 18 cert
Three girls from Leeds encounter a gang of geezers and join them on their cabin cruiser for frolics. One girl suffers a violent death and all hell breaks loose. The first 45 minutes features a sinister accumulation of tension, but, when the shagging begins, the good ship Donkey Punch hits Squalor Reef and never regains its buoyancy.
BUDDHA COLLAPSED OUT OF SHAME/BUDA AS SHARM FORU RIKHT
***
Directed by Hana Makhmalbaf. Starring Nikbakht Noruz, Abdolali Hoseinali, Abbas Alijome 12 cert
Touching if somewhat baldly allegorical Iranian film dealing with an Afghan child's efforts to make her way to school. Along the way, she is accosted by boys who first pretend to be members of the Taliban, and then American soldiers. Makhmalbaf draws such an exhilaratingly charming performance from tiny Noruz that the film's deficiencies ultimately seem insignificant.
