Week commencing 8th February 2010

Summary reviews (and the ability to comment on them!), together with updates to the Ranking Table below will appear towards the end of the week since none of this week's releases have arrived yet.

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The only two Blu-Rays received in time for this week's deadline were The Invention of Lying and Broken Embraces.

The Invention of Lying

It's official. Ricky Gervais isn't funny any more!

Of course there are those who say he was never funny in the first place, but a list of awards would seem to put paid to that. Alas, the success seems to have gone to his head, and The Invention of Lying is a mess of a movie. The basic premise - that in a world where nobody can lie, Gervais' character finds out how to - is fundamentally flawed, even if it does raise the movie's ONLY laugh-out-loud moment (an ad for Pepsi on the side of a bus which reads 'When Coke isn't available'). For example, at one point Gervais and chums walk into a casino where the door-person tells them everything's rigged and nobody can ever win anything - and yet the place is packed. The 'internal world' that Gervais has created makes absolutely no sense. When our hero does find out how to lie everything he says is automatically believed - even when he tells friends he's a black Eskimo with just one arm. How on earth does that work?

Even if one can suspend disbelief long enough to try and believe the somewhat confused premise, the idea that Jennifer Garner would turn down Rob Lowe for Gervais is patently ludicrous, even if references to his being 'fat with a pudgy nose' do keep being thrown in. It's hard to work out what the intention behind the film was. It's not a comedy, because there are no real laughs. It's not a rom-com because there's no real romance or relationship at the film's heart. It's not a 'piece of life' because of the wacky 'in a different world' premise. And when you think you've pinned down what it is it suddenly shoots off at a tangent, at one point stopping the story to deliver a patronising and insulting sermon about God and religion.

Self-indulgence abounds, and Gervais ropes in everybody he knows for minute cameos that don't add anything to the film other than 'Oh look that's Barry from East Enders as his dad in a flashback' or 'Look Ed Norton's popped in for a few minutes to play a cop'. It may make the cast list look fantastic, but too often it seems like great actors like Phillip Seymour Hoffman have been pulled in to deliver a couple of lines just so that Gervais could boast about who's in the film.

The Blu-Ray is generally a good-looking transfer, although I was disappointed at how much grain was featured, particularly when so much of the film is shot in bright lighting. Extra's are copious (if short) and unfortunately mostly in Standard Definition rather than HD. They include: a 5 minute 'prequel' sketch showing the first Stone Age lie (narrated in another surprise cameo - from Patrick Stewart), albeit in very low quality non-anamorphic standard definition (SD); several Gervais video podcasts (SD); Gervais' regular side-kick Carl Pilkington in a 20 minute 'Making of' that shows his experience performing as a background extra - not in the film itself, but the prequel included on the Blu-Ray(SD); 7 minutes of 'additional scenes' (SD); a 'proper' 7 minute 'Making of' that's all 'shrieking hyena' with celebrities and little factual content (HD); some deleted scenes and a 'gag' reel that lives up to its name in that all it did was make me want to gag as yet again it's an endless reel of Gervais corpsing with that really irritating laugh for no real reason other than he seems to think everything he does is hilarious.

Honestly, this is no The Office or Extra's and best avoided, unless you're really struggling to add something you haven't seen to your rental list.

Broken Embraces

Can actress Penelope Cruz or director Pedro Almadovar do any wrong? Come to that, can they do anything other than keep remaking the same film? Apparently not, but when the two together are this good, I don't think any of us mind.

In yet another slightly disguised tale from episodes of his own life, Almadovar tells us the story of a successful writer who has gone blind and reminisces about the life and love he experienced when making his last film, 14 years ago. Cruz plays the mistress of a very rich businessman who produces this last film as a way of keeping an eye on her after she insists on working because she is desperate to be an actress, even though she has no talent. He persuades his homosexual son to make a documentary about the making of the film as a way of ensuring she is not cheating on him, trying to obtain evidence that she is having an affair with the writer (and also at this time, the director) of the film.

Cruz delivers a powerful, emotional performance, perhaps one even better than in Amodovar's last 2006 oscar-nominated film Volver. Unfortunately the film is nowhere near as mainstream (or humorous) as that film, and one suspects that the usual public appetite (or lack of it) for subtitled foreign language films, means this will pass most by.

That would be a shame because although he may be repetitive Almadovar knows how to tell a character-driven story and take you on an interesting journey. The writer/director also has a great visual eye, which means shots are never dull or pedestrian. Broken Embraces may not be his best film, by a long way. But it's still a lot better than most of what gets released by Hollywood these days.

The Blu-Ray transfer is first class. There are minor incidents of soft grain, but nothing too intrusive. Colours are strong with great black levels and, at times the pin-sharp HD detail is stunning, although the '3D pop' of the best titles isn't really in evidence.

Extra's wise the package is less than generous. You get the seven minute 'film within a film' (in Standard Definition); three deleted scenes lasting 12 minutes in total (in HD); six minutes raw footage of the director giving instructions for the 'film within a film' but not the main feature (in HD); the UK theatrical trailer (in HD) and a minute and a half animated 'Photo Gallery' (SD). The usual Blu-Ray case is delivered in a cardboard slipcase.

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