MY BEST FRIEND'S GIRL

CHARMLESS rom com that doesn’t really deserve its place in the genre as it is neither romantic or funny.

The very premise is cynically anti-romantic: Dane Cook plays a ladykiller who earns extra cash by getting hired by dumped guys to take their girlfriends on a date from hell so they will go running back into the arms of their ex.

Director Howard Deutch seems not to realise that what this means is you have a jerk helping out a bunch of losers – but what do you expect from the guy who helmed Grumpier Old Men and The Whole Ten Yards?

STAR RATING: *

BLINDNESS (18) (All major cinemas)

WHEN words like allegory and metaphor are used to convey a movie’s appeal, certain audiences will run for the hills and City of God director Fernando Meirelles has come up with something here that is guaranteed to polarise viewers.

For while this is symbolic film-making at its most pretentious, the story echoes the newly revived TV series Survivors and is also gaining notoriety for its graphic physical and sexual violence.

In an unnamed North American city, everyone is going blind and no one knows why. A group of the afflicted are quarantined in a sanitarium where they are pretty much left to get on with it – and suddenly humanity as its most base and primitive starts to come to the fore.

STAR RATING: **

QUARANTINE (18) (All major cinemas)

REMAKE of Spanish horror film [REC], this uses a fake documentary style for its story of a film unit following a fire crew on a tour of duty only to end up in a rundown apartment building where they become trapped with some bloodthirsty zombie-like mutations.

STAR RATING: *

ADVANCE PREVIEW

FOUR CHRISTMASES (12A) (All major cinemas; midweek previews)

EARLY festive offering which teams Reese Witherspoon with Vince Vaughn as a couple who attempt to visit all four of their divorced parents on one Christmas Day. Previews take place ahead of next Friday’s official release.