Cherry-poppin' gags

The 40-Year-Old Virgin is a marvellously un-PC, humiliation-fest, Veteran Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene provides a heart-rending story with Moolaade and The Three Marias are on a mission of revenge...

The 40 Year-Old Virgin
****
Wow - a hilarious comedy that actually is hilarious! Steve Carell (the guy in Anchorman who killed a man with a trident) plays the hairy virgin in question in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. His life, although otherwise complete (he collects rare action figures and makes a perfect sandwich) is missing something. Until Trish (Catherine Keener) comes a-knocking and all turns from marvellously un-PC, humiliation-fest to bizarre romcom. Up there with Dodge Ball until it loses its rhythm halfway through, this surprisingly sweet tale, like many Hollywood comedies, benefits from having its structural flaws masked by the small screen. Who cares if the ending should have come sooner? When you're laughing so much it hurts.
Extras: Deleted scenes, gag reel, audition tapes and that waxing scene - Ouch!

Moolaade
***
Veteran Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene is now in his 80s, but there's been no diminution of his sensibilities. Moolaade means protection and his latest film deals with the efforts of a circumcised woman (Fatoumata Coulibaly) to prevent four young girls suffering the same mutilation. The film is didactic but never tub-thumping - Sembene is too old a hand to sacrifice entertainment value to make his point, especially when the point makes itself - particularly once we see how his heroine's injuries have inflicted agony on such fundamental parts of life as sex and childbirth. And Coulibaly is heart-rending as a woman prepared to provoke civil war in her village if it will keep these young women whole.
Extras: Interview with Sembene and behind the scenes featurette.

The Three Marias
****
When Filomena's husband and two sons are killed by the family of her jealous ex-fiance, her response is a vengeful one. Her three remaining daughters - all called Maria - must kill the perpetrators of the crime. It all makes for a rather Kill Bill-ish mission - a woman wronged willing to go to any lengths to exact revenge - interspersed with religious overtones that ultimately turn Filomena's guiding principal ('an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth') into a poisoned chalice. But Brazilian director Aluizio Abranches's The Three Marias is ultimately about style and set-pieces over substance - the narrative is underdeveloped and the murdered characters dispatched too early for us to fully empathise with Filomena's anger and pain. Extras: None.

King's Game
****
Something is very rotten in the state of Denmark in tense political thriller King's Game. It opens with a car crash that, like most wrecks, comes completely out of the blue. But this has wider ramifications, for it leaves the ruling Center Party with a leader clinging for life in a hospital bed and his once-loyal henchmen circling like vultures over his leadership just days before an election. Into the fray steps naive young hack Ulrik Torp (Anders W Berthelsen), eager to step out from the shadow of his father (a former minister) and unearth the conspiracy he feels is about to go unnoticed and unpunished. It's a slow burner but as Torp and his dishevelled sidekick close in on the truth, you'll be utterly hooked.
Extras: Director and screenwriter commentaries, deleted and alternate scenes, political background and a trailer.