Rubber

Rubber has received considerably more attention than most straight-to-DVD films, possibly because it's one of the rare ones that doesn't star Brian Dennehy, but most likely because of its sky-high concept:

You're unlikely to have seen a film like this before. The tale of a sentient tyre with psychokinetic powers and murderous tendencies, as watched by a cinema audience within the film who eventually become part of the story, Rubber doesn't just break the fourth wall, it smashes it to smithereens with a wrecking ball before having a ruddy good go at the fifth and sixth walls too.

Still, if you're Quentin Dupieux, the French crackpot who made albums with titles like 'Analog Worms Attack' and 'Moustache (Half A Scissor)', you've got a reputation to live up to so you may as well direct a film with the kind of plot that came to you during a cheese-and-absinthe-fuelled dream you had one night.

Yes, Rubber is weird, and yes, it's all right, but it deliberately goes out of its way to be a meaningless exercise in things happening for no reason. It's so successful in this aim that a couple of days after watching, all you'll remember is that it was about a psychotic wheel and there were lots of exploding heads. It's fun while it lasts, but as a loose collection of ideas thrown together without any connective tissue, Rubber relies too heavily on its daft premise to provide enduring entertainment.

Still, it does star an actor called Wings Hauser. So that's good.

LOCAL COMMUNITY ANNOUNCEMENT FOR

BENEFIT OF TINY FRACTION OF READERSHIP

Just before Rubber "hits the shelves" on Monday, its only remaining cinema screening is at Brixton's Ritzy, where it's on this Friday night as part of their Midnight Movies / Culture Shock strand. There's a party beforehand and everything, which has the troubling dress code "Rubber wear or tourist attire". Personally I have doubts about the wisdom of wandering round Brixton on a Friday night dressed in rubber or as a tourist so I'll probs give it a miss.