ADORATION (15)
AS PART of a French lesson, a high school teacher sets a translation exercise about a news item involving a terrorist who planted a bomb on his pregnant girlfriend without telling her. One of the class was orphaned some years ago when both his parents were killed in an accident and he starts to imagine he was connected with the news story. Showing at Clwyd Theatr Cymru in Mold from Tuesday-Thursday.
STAR RATING: ****
THE BACK-UP PLAN (12A)
CORPORATE high flier Zoe (Jennifer Lopez) gave up her stressful job and cashed in her stock options to buy a downtown pet store. A chance encounter with Stan (Alex O’Loughlin), who runs a dairy stall at a New York farmer’s market, puts a healthy glow in Zoe’s cheeks. The fledgling romance goes from strength to strength and eventually, Zoe is forced to tell Stan that in nine months he will be playing surrogate father to a pair of ginger-haired mewling tots. It’s a massive shock to the system and Stan wonders if he is ready for fatherhood. Meanwhile, Zoe ponders whether she actually needs a man or if she should revert to her old plan of becoming a single parent.
STAR RATING: **
DEAR JOHN (12A)
ARMY special forces operative John Tyree (Channing Tatum) heads home for two weeks’ leave to see his father (Richard Jenkins). During an afternoon on the beach, John meets local girl Savannah (Amanda Seyfried) and the spark of attraction is immediate. Inevitably, the two weeks end and John returns to the front line, promising his sweetheart, “I’ll be back for good.” Fate conspires to reunite the lovers, though not in a way that either of them would have wished.
STAR RATING: ***
FOUR LIONS (15)
OMAR (Riz Ahmed) is a devout Muslim, who is enraged by the West’s treatment of his spiritual brothers and sisters. He spearheads a terrorist cell in the heart of multi-cultural northern Britain with best friend Waj (Kayvan Novak) and paranoid, white Islamic convert Barry (Nigel Lindsay), who believes passers-by are undercover police officers gathering intelligence on the group. The jihadists debate potential targets for their deadly payload with Faisal (Adeel Akhtar), who is training crows to fly through windows carrying primed explosives in their beaks. Omar brings the men together to pose as charity fun runners in the capital, with the aim of blowing themselves up on the streets and taking innocent members of the public with them.
STAR RATING: ***
FURRY VENGEANCE (PG)
DAN Sanders (Brendan Fraser) works for a real estate company which is developing a small community in the forests of Oregon. Sanders transplants his teacher wife Tammy (Brooke Shields) and teenage son Tyler (Matt Prokop) to the back of beyond while he completes the year-long project. However, a tenacious racoon and his forest friends, including a rowdy bear, fight back to protect their stomping ground, lighting the touch paper on a titanic battle between man and beast.
STAR RATING: ***
HOT TUB TIME MACHINE (15)
PARTY guy Lou (Rob Corddry) attempts to commit suicide by choking down exhaust fumes in his garage, and childhood pals Adam (John Cusack) and Nick (Craig Robinson) rush to his hospital bedside. The three men decide to return to the Kodiac Valley skiing resort which was the site of their greatest triumphs when they were teenagers. Adam drags along techno-savvy nephew Jacob (Clark Duke) and the four men drive to the snow-laden mountains where the hotel is now in disrepair. Thankfully the hot tub still works and after a night of heavy drinking under the stars, the drunkards wake to find that they have been sent back to the decade of Adam, Nick and Lou’s youth.
STAR RATING: ***
IRON MAN 2 (12A)
JON Favreau and his cast return for the explosive sequel to the 2008 blockbuster, based on the red and gold armoured Marvel Comics superhero. Billionaire industrialist and inventor Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) embraces his dual life as the supersonic Iron Man in the full glare of the media spotlight and wins countless adoring fans in the process. However, the US government and private investors are keen to acquire his technology for their own needs and Stark resists at all costs.
STAR RATING: ***
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (18)
THE teenagers of leafy Elm Street are shocked when sleep-deprived hunk Dean (Kellan Lutz) slits his own throat in front of classmate, Kris (Katie Cassidy) in this re-imagining of A Nightmare On Elm Street. Other classmates discover they are experiencing the same nightmares about a maniac called Freddy (Jackie Earle Haley).
STAR RATING: **
PRECIOUS (15)
LEE Daniels directs this adaptation of the novel Push by Sapphire, about an African-American girl’s incredibly harsh life growing up in Harlem. Treated like a virtual slave by her mother and pregnant for a second time by her father, the ironically-named Precious retreats into daydreams until a glimmer of hope starts to emerge in real life. Showing at Clwyd Theatr Cymru in Mold from Friday-Monday.
STAR RATING: ****
ROBIN HOOD (12A)
RUSSELL Crowe and Cate Blanchett are a match made in heaven in this rollicking good adventure from director Ridley Scott. They are perfect as Robin and Marian in an origins story that takes the legend in a different direction to the many past attempts at bringing to life the hero of Sherwood Forest, setting it all in a convincing and surprisingly accurate historical context.
STAR RATING: ***
