Film Club: Hot Fuzz, Jindabyne, Red Road, Black Book

Alan Ray (Guest Host):  Our first film is called Hot Fuzz and it's British comedy mixed with an American action film. It's made by the same guys who mixed zombies and comedy in Shaun of the Dead - that is, writer and director Edgar Wright and star and co-writer Simon Pegg.

Simon Pegg played Shaun, in Shaun of the Dead , and here, he's a top notch police sergeant named Nicholas Angel. Angel gets transferred from his London precinct because his excellent arrest record was making everyone else look bad. He ends up in a sleepy backwater town named Sandford, only to be partnered with an overweight, heavy drinking officer named Danny.   Danny wants the bloodshed and the action he sees in movies like Point Break, but very little happens in Sandford… until, that is, a swan goes missing and mysterious deaths start to occur. It puts car chases and lots of guns in the world of Miss Marple and the English countryside. In this scene from the film, new partners Angel and Danny are on the job, sitting by the side of the road looking for speeding violations.  

Jindabyne is a quiet drama by director Ray Lawrence, who also did the film Lantana .  Jindabyne is based on a Raymond Carver short story and stars Laura Linney and Gabriel Byrne.  

It's set in the bush country of Australia. Four friends go on a fishing trip and find the dead body of an aboriginal woman floating in the water. They make the decision not to report the body until after their fishing trip is over. Their decision reverberates through the small-town of Jindabyne , most notably in the marriage of Claire and Stewart, played by Linney and Byrne. Claire is horrified by her husband's decision not to report the body. But she lives in a culture of hunting, macho men and a town with a long history of racial divisions. 

Red Road is the first feature film by British filmmaker Andrea Arnold. It's the story of a woman named Jackie who lives in Glasgow. Jackie works in the City Eye Control Room where she watches a wall of television monitors feeding live surveillance video from the city's projects.   It's her job to report crimes in progress.

Black Book is the new film by director Paul Verhoeven, who brought us RoboCop , Basic Instinct , and Showgirls . This time, Verhoeven directs a period piece, set in Holland at the end of World War II.  Black Book tells the story of a young Jewish woman named Rachel Stein. She is trying to escape capture by the Nazis and eventually joins the Dutch resistance. Rachel goes undercover, tasked with seducing the head of the local Gestapo. There's a lot of double crossing, violence, sex. Just what you'd expect from Paul Verhoeven.  

Guests

• Beth Accomando is the KPBS film critic.
• Scott Marks is the film critic for the Gay and Lesbian Times .
• Neil Kendricks is the film curator at the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art.