CHERI (15)

STEPHEN Frears returns with Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of Colette’s tragicomic love story set in early 20th century Paris. Lea, an ageing courtesan, agrees to take a friend’s playboy son, Cheri, under her wing. To everyone’s surprise, a blissful romance develops between them. But Cheri’s mother has other plans. Michelle Pfeiffer stars. Showing at Clwyd Theatr Cymru in Mold from Friday-Monday.

STAR RATING: ***

COCO BEFORE CHANEL (12A)

AT a time when summer blockbusters saturate the market, Coco Before Chanel is a welcome dose of Gallic chic chronicling the rise to fame of one of couture’s most revered icons. Amelie’s Audrey Tautou stars as the fashion designer from humble beginnings who became a cause celebre in pre-First World War France. This history lesson has sparkle and style in abundance, but emotions get lost in a swirl of silks and glittering accessories.

STAR RATING: ***

G-FORCE (PG)

BLOCKBUSTER producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s first 3D film is a light-hearted mix of live action and digital trickery which follows a team of guinea pigs recruited to covertly fight terrorism. The turbo-charged screenplay panders to the short attention-span of children by packing as many thrills and spills and poop gags into 88 minutes as possible. Star voices include Sam Rockwell, Penelope Cruz, Nicolas Cage and Steve Buscemi.

STAR RATING: ***

THE HANGOVER (15)

A STAG night goes hilariously awry in The Hangover, the new comedy from Todd Phillips, writer-director of Road Trip and Old School.

STAR RATING: **

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE (12A)

DIRECTOR David Yates returns for the penultimate instalment in JK Rowling’s magical series as the boy wizard and his friends face their toughest test yet. The sixth film is a big improvement on the disappointing last outing, The Order Of The Phoenix, and rides some of the same dark undercurrents as The Prisoner Of Azkaban. However, the film’s most important sequence doesn’t deliver the emotional sucker punch we’re expecting.

STAR RATING: ***

LAND OF THE LOST (12A)

COMEDY heavyweight Will Ferrell stars in this lamentable reworking of the kitsch 1970s television series about a family flung back in time, with Anna Friel woefully miscast as a plummy British explorer. The entire budget of Brad Silberling’s film has been wasted on a menagerie of prehistoric, computer-animated critters and the leading man’s bloated salary. It’s a deeply unsatisfying mish-mash of comedy and action.

STAR RATING: **

MY SISTER’S KEEPER (12A)

ADAPTED from Jodi Picoult’s heartbreaking best seller, this is an emotionally wrought and morally complex story of one family’s extraordinary fight to save their own flesh and blood from terrible suffering.

STAR RATING: ***

A NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM 2 (PG)

A RARE example of a superior sequel following up a rather lame opening entry.

STAR RATING: ***

THE PROPOSAL (12A)

SANDRA Bullock returns to sparkling form in Anne Fletcher’s screwball romantic comedy, which proves that the path to true love can sometimes begin with some good old-fashioned blackmail. She plays the boss from hell who forces her assistant, the impossibly buff Ryan Reynolds, to marry her to avoid being deported back to her native Canada. Reynolds matches her every goof of the way as the faux-mance kindles genuine attraction.

STAR RATING: ***

PUBLIC ENEMIES (15)

DIRECTOR Michael Mann surveys a volatile period in his country’s history in a slow-burning crime thriller based on Bryan Burrough’s book Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave And The Birth Of The FBI, 1933-34. The film centres on the exploits of charismatic bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), who becomes a major Depression-era celebrity and a folk hero to the public, outwitting J Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) and his fledgling Federal Bureau of Investigation.

STAR RATING: ***

SLEEP FURIOUSLY (U)

GIDEON Koppel, whose parents settled in a small farming community in mid-Wales many years ago, directs this haunting portrait of a way of life that has all but disappeared. The film is set about 50 miles north of Dylan Thomas’ fictional Llareggub from Under Milk Wood. Showing at Clwyd Theatr Cymru in Mold from Tuesday-Wednesday.

STAR RATING: ***

SOUNDS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT (12A)

JAMIE Jay Johnson’s documentary follows the 2007 Junior Eurovision Song Contest, starting with the Belgian finals and taking us through to the main event and its aftermath with interviews and musical footage of the young hopefuls. Showing at Clwyd Theatr Cymru in Mold on Thursday only.

STAR RATING: ***

THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123 (15)

TONY Scott directs an action-packed second big-screen adaptation of the 1973 novel, with John Travolta as a criminal mastermind who hijacks a carriage full of terrified commuters on New York’s subway system and Denzel Washington as the train dispatcher caught up in negotiations. Scott’s testosterone-fuelled revamp lacks the tension of the 1974 film – you have to “mind the gaps” in its logic and plausibility.

STAR RATING: ***