BROOKLYN’S FINEST (18)
SAL (Ethan Hawke) is a narcotics officer who is desperate to move house. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have all of the money for a down payment. Eddie (Richard Gere) has been a cop for more than 20 years and he is in his final week before retirement. Disenchanted with the job, he agrees to mentor a rookie cop for his final seven days. Meanwhile, undercover cop Tango (Don Cheadle) has sacrificed everything to get close to kingpin Caz (Wesley Snipes). Understandably, Tango wants to be reassigned but his lieutenant needs him to betray one of the people closest to him. The fates of the three men with badges entwine, culminating in a night of betrayal and bloodshed.
STAR RATING: ***
KILLERS (12A)
IF ROBERT Luketic’s action-packed romantic comedy is to be believed men are capable of hiding everything from their nearest and dearest. The film’s charming hero meets, woos and marries the woman of his dreams without revealing a vital part of his genetic make-up. Jen Kornfeldt (Katherine Heigl) marries Spencer Aimes (Ashton Kutcher). Spencer has been keeping a tiny secret: he is an international spy and assassin, who retired from active duty but has now been marked for death. Killers is an odd mishmash of genres, veering wildly from action to comedy and back again, sometimes in a single scene. Kutcher and Heigl are far better than the screenplay.
STAR RATING: **
LETTERS TO JULIET (PG)
WRITER Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is poised to marry chef Victor (Gale Garcia Bernal). They embark on a trip to Italy. She visits Juliet’s famous balcony and is surprised to see dozens of tourists penning letters to the ill-fated Capulet. A group of women, known as the secretaries of Juliet, collect the missives and reply to these love-sick strangers. Sophie offers to help and stumbles upon a long-lost note which demands her words of wisdom. The American is shocked when a snooty man arrives in Verona to berate the secretaries for encouraging his grandmother to seek out her soul-mate from all those years ago.
STAR RATING: ***
MACGRUBER (15)
MACGRUBER can be added to the list of failures to convert characters from America’s Saturday Night Live show to the big screen. It is a comedy about a hapless former soldier dragged out of retirement to save the world from his arch nemesis. In a poor parody of the TV series MacGyver, Will Forte plays MacGruber, a former soldier of fortune who re-enters active service to thwart Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer), who has stolen a nuclear warhead. He and his team attempt to infiltrate Von Cunth’s top-secret operative and prevent Armageddon.
STAR RATING: **
OUR FAMILY WEDDING (12A)
A PREDICTABLY fraught ensemble comedy about the clash of cultures between Mexican-American and African-American families, who must grit their teeth and bear their cultural differences for the sake of their love-struck offspring. Lucia (America Ferrera) and her fiance Marcus (Lance Gross) are head over heels in love. The soon-to-be-weds organise a meal where they intend to get the family introductions out of the way in public but their fathers already know each other – one has towed away the other’s illegally parked car. Our Family Wedding trades heavily on stereotypes, particularly Ontiveros’ character and her brood of God-fearing old dears.
STAR RATING: **
SHE, A CHINESE (18)
XIAOLU Guo’s film follows a young Chinese girl, Mei, as she seeks adventure away from her remote rural village and sets off for the big city, Chongqing, where she takes up with a local gangster. Moving on, she eventually winds up in London, her path still determined by the men she meets until she realises the value of her heritage.
Showing at Clwyd Theatr Cymru in Mold from Tuesday-Wednesday.
STAR RATING: ***
SHE’S OUT OF MY LEAGUE (15)
KIRK Kettner (Jay Baruchel) is cruelly dumped by his girlfriend Marnie (Lindsay Sloane). To rub salt into the wounds, his parents have adopted Marnie like a surrogate daughter so she is always around the house with her new boyfriend in tow. Kirk desperately wants to win her back but his best friend strongly counsels against it. Somehow, Kirk ends up on a date with Molly (Alice Eve), a beautiful passenger who passes through his security gate at Pittsburgh airport. She seems keen, much to the bemusement of Kirk’s jealous buddies, who rate their man as a five maybe six on the eligibility scale and Molly a perfect 10.
STAR RATING: ***
SHUTTER ISLAND (15)
MARTIN Scorsese’s thriller set in 1950s America starring Leonardo DeCaprio and Mark Ruffalo as marshals investigating the disappearance of one of the inmates of an isolated insane asylum where all is not as it should be. Showing at Clwyd Theatr Cymru in Mold from Saturday-Monday.
STAR RATING: ***
WILD TARGET (12A)
THIS comedy caper is a real romp on the big screen, and one you simply cannot help getting swept away with. Bill Nighy stars as Victor Maynard, a meticulous, lethally efficient, middle-aged and unmarried assassin under the thumb of his domineering mother, simply referred to as Mother (played brilliantly by Eileen Atkins). Emily Blunt is the reckless thief Rose, aiming for the ultimate art con who makes a phone call to Victor as soon as he realises he’s been duped. Victor sets out to perform the deadly hit in a car park but finds himself unable to kill her. This remake of a 15-year-old French film makes for an enjoyable big-screen outing.
STAR RATING: ***
