A 12-certificate Holocaust movie aimed at "younger" audiences suggests sugar-coated history and softly-softly politics. Yet in the hands of versatile British director Mark Herman, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008, 12, Disney £19.56) manages to be both honest and truthful about the horrors of the concentration camps without alienating its non-adult audience.
Adapted from John Boyne's novel, the fable-like film traces a growing friendship between two children - one the son of a Nazi camp commandant, the other the titular prisoner - through the barbed wire of a perimeter fence. While the idea may sound twee, the end result is surprisingly sturdy stuff, with the British Board of Film Classification's declaration that the film lacks "a reassuring outcome" savagely understating its inevitably bleak conclusion. It all adds up to an engrossing and educational experience which parents of secondary-school children are advised to watch (and discuss) with their kids.
More graphic but altogether less distressing is Quarantine (2008, 18, Sony £15.65), an unnecessary English-language rehash of the edgy Spanish shocker [Rec], in which a reality TV crew find themselves trapped with an unspeakable evil inside an apartment block. Despite effectively rehashing a string of scary set pieces almost shot-for-shot, this US knock-off lacks the stark, confrontational terror which characterised Jaume Balagueró's exhaustingly tense original. Instead we get shrieks and sub-Blair Witch "found footage" posturing with none of the sense of genuinely alien endangerment. Those in search of a good scare are advised to seek out [Rec], which is also available on DVD.
Brazilian director Walter Salles had his own brush with Americanised horror when he remade Hideo Nakata's Japanese chiller Dark Water. Linha de Passe (2008, 15, Pathe £19.56) finds the director on more familiar ground as four brothers struggle to stay onside in the suburbs of São Paulo. An antidote to the hyper-kinetic, crime-ridden antics of City of God (with which Linha de Passe shares script contributor Bráulio Mantovani), Salles's sprawling epic is a solidly humanist affair, firmly anchored by Sandra Corveloni's sturdy presence.
