Mother's Day for Halloween! The latest DVD releases

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Mother’s Day: ex-Saw director serves up an annual Halloween offering

Loosely based on Charles Kaufman’s cult 1980 Troma movie, Mother’s Day (Studio Canal) represents ex-Saw (II, III and IV) director Darren Lynn Bousman’s annual Halloween horror offering.

Following a botched bank robbery that leaves one of their crew badly wounded, three criminal brothers head for their childhood home to take refuge until the heat dies down. However, unbeknownst to them, their mother (Rebecca De Mornay, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle) recently lost possession of the family home, and no longer lives there. Instead, they stumble across the new owners, a young couple, and their guests who are in the middle of a cheerful party celebration. Out of options, the brothers take the new residents hostage, and then contact their mother to help extricate them from their bloody predicament. However, the plan to help her family escape across the border to Canada requires a serious cash injection, leading them to resort to desperate measures.

The Saw franchise has spawned a number of careers, and after last Halloween’s frankly gruelling The Collector (directed by Saw [IV, V and VI] writer Marcus Dunstan), his former colleague Bousman’s Mother’s Day almost feels like light relief. That isn’t to say that Bousman has made any efforts to tone down the gratuitous violence -he hasn’t -but it feels like a step back from the nihilistic abyss of The Collector. Unfortunately, despite a spirited turn from De Mornay, Mother’s Day is far too long for its own good, and the plodding narrative and slightly illogical back story do the film few favours. Bousman lets rip during the final stretch, unleashing the sadistic streak he is known for, but by that point it is too little, too late. Mother’s Day is a respectable Halloween outing, but not as horrific as the trailer makes out, and -crucially -not as interesting either.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams: Werner Herzog confounds expectations with an off-beat documentary on the world’s oldest cave paintings

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After releasing arguably the most mainstream movie of his career last year, with his surrealist re-tooling of Abel Ferrara’s nihilistic Bad Lieutenant, German director Werner Herzog confounds expectations once more with The Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Revolver), an off-beat documentary which sees him investigate Chauvet Cave, in southern France -home to the world’s oldest cave paintings. Since their discovery in 1994, the cave has been meticulously preserved, and the general public have been denied access, so Herzog was forced to request special dispensation from the French minister of culture to film inside. Further, Herzog was allowed just six shooting days of four hours each, with the near-toxic levels of carbon dioxide making it lethal for anyone to spend any longer in the subterranean chamber -a factor which presumably enhanced the appeal for the contrary filmmaker.

As with many of Herzog’s earlier documentaries, The Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a real labour of love, and the German’s distinctive voiceover gives the film a hypnotic quality as he waxes lyrical about the nature of communication and perception. True to form, Herzog manages to round up a handful of oddball supporting characters which help to spice up his already strange brew and the film weaves in and out of the director’s off-kilter vision in typically freewheeling style. It won’t be to everyone’s tastes -the 90 minute run-time stretches the material somewhat -but it is hard to imagine another director who could make an existential documentary about 32,000 year old cave paintings! Curious stuff.

Set Up: 50 Cent trudges around the weak re-tread of Ben Affleck’s impressive heist movie The Town

Looking back it seems crazy that Eminem’s sole movie appearance to date was in the electric 8 Mile, especially considering his former associate 50 Cent has now racked up more than a dozen film roles, despite exhibiting a mere fraction of the onscreen charisma. 50’s latest outing is Set Up (Lionsgate), which feels like a weak re-tread of Ben Affleck’s impressive heist movie The Town, with an additional sprinkling of Mel Gibson’s Payback on top. At the movie’s outset, three friends -Sonny (50 Cent, Righteous Kill), Dave (Brett Granstaff) and Vincent (Ryan Phillippe, Cruel Intentions) plan the heist of a lifetime, only for things to turn deadly when Vincent guns down his friends and makes off with the loot. Although Dave dies on the spot, Sonny manages to flee the scene, and it isn’t long before he crosses paths with local mobster Mr Biggs (Bruce Willis), and the pair find common ground as they both seek to retrieve what they believe is rightfully theirs.

Despite the smattering of household names, Set Up is a clumsy gangster thriller that merely goes through the motions while bringing very little to the party. The sorely limited 50 Cent trudges through the by-numbers narrative in his usual fashion, and his production credit guarantees him centre stage ahead of a number of far more accomplished performers. Particularly baffling is Bruce Willis’s thankless supporting role, especially considering his continued mainstream appeal. To its credit Set Up finds room for small screen veterans James Remar (Dexter) and Jay Karnes (The Shield), but they are also limited to meaningless supporting roles. With less clichÃ©d casting and a more purposeful plot Set Up could have been a neat little thriller, but as it stands it feels like a missed opportunity and yet another excuse for 50 Cent to inflate his already swollen ego. Inessential.

Deep Winter: an extreme sports DVD masquerading as a thriller

Presumably only warranting a DVD release on account of the popularity of leading man Kellan Lutz (who plays Emmett Cullen in The Twilight Saga), the slapdash Deep Winter (Chelsea Films) is an extreme sports DVD masquerading as a thriller. Lifelong friends Mark Rider (Lutz) and Tyler Crowe (Eric Lively, Butterfly Effect 2) have both achieved notable success on the winter sports scene -Mark as a snowboarding champion, and Tyler through downhill skiing. When pushy extreme sports video producer Stephen Weaks (Luke Goss, Death Race 2) coaxes the double-act into appearing in his next film -which will see them taking on a notoriously unrideable mountain known as ‘The Meteorite’ -their contrasting attitudes threaten to drive a wedge between them, with the carefree, impetuous Mark determined to conquer the mountain, whatever the cost

Despite a respectable straight-to-DVD cast -rent-a-household-name Michael Madsen is also on hand as a veteran mountain guide whose former partner was killed attempting the very same stunt -Deep Winter has very little substance, and the flimsy plot plays second fiddle to the snowbound thrills and spills throughout. While some of the downhill footage is undeniably impressive, it offers scant distraction from the lack of narrative, and the film will struggle to latch onto an audience outside of snowboarding circles. Distinctly underwhelming.