Cinemas - Still showing - 23/12/09

Dec 23 2009 Ellesmere Port Pioneer

ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS 2: THE SQUEAKQUEL (U)

GIRL power is alive and well in the Chipmunks sequel as Alvin, Simon and Theodore meet their match in three feisty females (voiced by Christina Applegate, Amy Poehler and Anna Faris), who challenge them for battle-of-the-band honours at their new high school. Director Betty Thomas treads a familiar path, driving a wedge between the tiny animated heroes and then reuniting them for a foot-stomping finale.

STAR RATING: **

THE BOX (12A)

CAMERON Diaz stars in a cautionary tale from Donnie Darko writer-director Richard Kelly about a family living in 1970s suburban America who are faced with a terrible moral dilemma. They receive a box with a red button: if they push it in the next 24 hours, someone they don’t know will die and they will collect one million dollars; if they don’t, the box will be taken away and they get nothing.

STAR RATING: ***

CARRIERS (15)

SIBLINGS Alex and David Pastor write and direct this thriller set in the aftermath of a global pandemic which has devastated the human race. Lou Taylor Pucci leaves behind his dying parents and heads off with loved ones including Star Trek’s Chris Pine and Piper Perabo (Coyote Ugly), facing difficult dilemmas in the diseased world when they meet a stricken man (Law And Order’s Christopher Meloni) and his infected daughter.

STAR RATING: ***

A CHRISTMAS CAROL (PG)

ROBERT Zemeckis’s technologically groundbreaking adaptation of Charles Dickens’s festive novella is a delightful early Christmas present.

STAR RATING: ***

THE INVENTION OF LYING (12A)

THE truth about Ricky Gervais’ new comedy, co-written and co-directed by Matthew Robinson, is that it is mean-spirited, misconceived and starved of big laughs. Predictably, Gervais casts himself in the lead role and as with Ghost Town, he’s an unsympathetic and unconvincing romantic lead. The notion that Jennifer Garner’s acid-tongued beauty might succumb to his so-called charms is more laughable than anything in the script. The Invention Of Lying is an unnecessarily crude subversion of polite social mores. Showing at Clwyd Theatr Cymru in Mold from Saturday to Monday.

STAR RATING: **

NATIVITY! (U)

CHRISTMAS comes early courtesy of British director Debbie Isitt (Nasty Neighbours, Confetti) and her improvised comedy about the preparations for a primary school nativity play.

STAR RATING: ***

ME & ORSON WELLES (12A)

High School Musical star Zac Efron steps away from cutesy, teen-friendly fare with this handsome period piece, directed by Richard Linklater. He tests his acting mettle as part of an impressive ensemble cast in a drama inspired by Orson Welles’s notorious 1937 Broadway staging of Julius Caesar, but is upstaged by Lancashire-born newcomer Christian McKay, who plays the bullying, egocentric titular legend.

STAR RATING: ****

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (15)

ENTERPRISING Israeli-born film-maker Oren Peli wrote and directed this much-hyped, low-budget supernatural horror movie that is set to make him millions. Shot at his own house in his spare time, his modest vision has bloomed into a 21st-century Blair Witch Project, scaring the bejeezus out of audiences with its deceptively simple narrative and grainy camerawork.

STAR RATING: ****

PLANET 51 (U)

THE computer-animated comedy from debutant Spanish directors Jorge Blanco, Javier Abad and Marcos Martinez unfolds on a world far from ours where little green men, women and children live in domestic bliss. But the crash-landing of a dim-witted American astronaut (voiced by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) causes chaos. Planet 51 is an entertaining if slight fantasy that nods to the likes of ET and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

STAR RATING: **

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON (12A)

THE eagerly anticipated rendering of the second installment of the four-book Twilight saga is thoroughly entertaining and more polished than its predecessor. Although the good-looking cast could probably stare silently into the camera for two hours and fans of Stephenie Meyer’s teen romances would still flock to the multiplexes in their millions, as soap opera writ large goes, this is still a great film. It even comes complete with a cliffhanger finale that leaves the audience teetering on the edge of their seats until next summer.

STAR RATING: ***