Hot Fuzz (M18)
Simon Pegg/Nick Frost/Jim Broadbent/120 minutes
This flick reunites the team behind Shaun Of The Dead (2004), the cheekily entertaining zom-romcom, or zombie romantic comedy.
Edgar Wright directs and splits writing duties with Pegg, who stars as top cop Nicholas Angel. Frost plays Danny Butterman, the bumbling sidekick.
Angel is reassigned to the quiet town of Sandford after showing up the rest of his city colleagues with his ridiculously superior police work.
But there’s more to Sandford than meets the eye and townsfolk are dropping like flies in what everyone else insists are mere accidents.
Hot Fuzz is both a loving send-up of, and homage to, macho cop flicks such as Bad Boys II (2003) and Point Break (1991).
It starts promisingly enough, but the overlong and wildly uneven film inexplicably veers into video-game shoot-’em-up territory in its final 30 minutes.
The disc comes with a number of bonus features, though most are short throwaways. There is also a commentary by Pegg and Wright, which helpfully points out Cate Blanchett in an uncredited cameo.
Someone once asked why was it that English villages in the movies were always full of quaint and quirky charm while American small towns were always seething with intrigue and conspiracies.
Well, Hot Fuzz should even the score a bit.
(ST)

Bug (M18)
Ashley Judd/Michael Shannon/Harry Connick Jr/101 minutes
The award-winning play makes the leap to feature film under the direction of William Friedkin, best known for helming the seminal horror flick, The Exorcist (1973).
So it’s worth noting that he calls this the “most profound and disturbing film” he has made.
Friedkin explores here the “mask of sanity” which he proceeds to rip right off in a terrifying descent into the heart of madness.
Judd plays Agnes, a waitress living in a rundown motel, and Shannon is Peter, a shy drifter whom she hooks up with.
But there’s more to Peter than meets the eye and things begin to unravel, innocuously enough, with him discovering a bug in bed.
It’s nice to see Judd going for a meatier role after the string of rote thrillers she had been churning out.
And Shannon, who reprises his stage role, so fully inhabits the character that he seems to be Peter even in the making-of interviews.
As the film builds towards its climax, the two actors tap into an ecstatic hysteria that is both magnetic and disturbing.
The extras include a discussion with Friedkin on his film-making career as well as an audio commentary by him.
While some of the comments are a literal description of what’s unfolding onscreen, you also get the director expounding on the themes of Bug and “the thin line between good and evil”.
(ST)

Sunshine
Danny Boyle
Cillian Murphy/Chris Evans/Michelle Yeoh/Hiroyuki Sanada/107 minutes
After the enchanting fable Millions (2004), director Danny Boyle takes to outer space with this sci-fi horror film.
In the year 2057, the sun is dying and a team of astronauts is sent on a mission to re-ignite it and save humankind. We pretty much saw what Hollywood would have done with such a script in Michael Bay’s special-effects extravaganza Armageddon (1998).
But Sunshine can be thought of as the anti-Armageddon. Boyle uses the silence in space to great effect and has also assembled a cast which actually acts instead of merely posing.
The generous extras include deleted scenes and interviews with the cast and crew, including a playfully bantering Yeoh.
There are also two commentaries.
Boyle’s is enthusiastic and engaging and he reveals the touchstones that influenced Sunshine – Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) and Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979).
The other commentary track is by The University of Manchester’s Dr Brian Cox, the scientific consultant for the film.
The most comforting fact gleaned is that the sun has enough fuel to burn for five billion years, not 50.
And also, it’s a misconception that one would explode unprotected in space; one can in fact survive up to 30 seconds in such a case. That’s good to know.
(ST)