PUBLIC ENEMIES (15)
DIRECTOR Michael Mann (Heat, The Insider) 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.
Hoover labels Dillinger America's first-ever “Public Enemy Number One” and pledges to capture the robber as a demonstration of his department's ability, enlisting tenacious agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) to lead the nationwide hunt.
STAR RATING: ***
RED MIST (18)
PADD Breathnach follows up Shrooms with another horror-thriller, this time set in a teaching hospital where lowly janitor Kenneth Chisholm (Andrew Lee Potts) stares adoringly from afar at beautiful medical student Catherine (Arielle Kebbel).
When he dares to approach her in a bar, her friends spike his drink and leave him unconscious outside the hospital in the cold, unaware that he is slipping into a coma.
When Catherine learns of his critical condition, she introduces an experimental drug to his system in the faint hope this might revive Kenneth and assuage her guilt.
Instead, her friends begin to die in freak accidents and the medical student wonders if the wonder-drug has somehow released the patient from his body and allowed him to wreak revenge on his tormentors.
STAR RATING: **
BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE (18)
THE live action, English-language version of Hiroyuki Kitakubo’s revered animated film centres on beautiful 17-year-old Saya (Gianna Jun), who conceals a terrible secret. She is the product of a marriage between a human father and vampire mother, doomed to suffer the same bloodlust as the creatures of the night she detests.
STAR RATING: **
THE DAMNED UNITED (15)
MICHAEL Sheen takes on another persona for Peter Morgan’s new screenplay. Famous football manager Brian Clough is about to move to Leeds United, determined to stamp out their poor practice and dirty tactics, not realising the impact it could have on his own career. Showing at Clwyd Theatr Cymru in Mold from Friday to Monday.
STAR RATING: ***
DRAG ME TO HELL (15)
SPIDER-Man director Sam Raimi returns to his Evil Dead horror roots for this thoroughly entertaining gore epic in which poor, unfortunate Alison Lohman falls foul of a Gypsy curse which puts her through all manner of nightmarish ordeals.
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: **
THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (18)
LAME remake of Wes Craven’s landmark 1972 horror film, a grisly rape revenge thriller which has been rendered essentially harmless by this inept retread.
STAR RATING: *
LOOKING FOR ERIC (15)
BRITISH director Ken Loach shot his latest bittersweet slice of life on location in Manchester, and scores possibly his most mainstream, feel-good hit to date. Featuring a pivotal dramatic role for both Manchester United Football Club and its fondly-remembered Gallic superstar, Eric Cantona.
STAR RATING: ***
MY SISTER’S KEEPER (12A)
ADAPTED from Jodi Picoult’s heartbreaking bestseller, 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. Brian Fitzgerald (Jason Patric) and his wife Sara (Cameron Diaz) are blissfully happy with their son Jesse (Evan Ellingson) and two-year-old daughter Kate. Their lives change forever when they discover that Kate has leukaemia, and they make a controversial decision: to conceive another child, a genetic match, in order to save Kate’s life. But when that child reaches the age of 11, she announces that she no longer wants to be a guinea pig.
STAR RATING: ***
SUNSHINE CLEANING (15)
FEUDING sisters rediscover life amid the detritus of the recently deceased in Christine Jeffs’s portrait of dysfunctional family life. Oscar nominee Amy Adams and Emily Blunt are spookily well-matched as the chalk-and-cheese siblings who always end up at loggerheads.
STAR RATING: ***
TERMINATOR SALVATION (12A)
MAN battles the machines once again in an all-guns-blazing reboot of the Terminator series.
STAR RATING: **
TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (12A)
THE robots in disguise clash again in the eagerly-awaited sequel, pictured. Director Michael Bay (Armageddon, Pearl Harbor) returns to the helm to destroy large swathes of planet Earth via computer-generated imagery. Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox again try to add a touch of human drama.
STAR RATING: **
YEAR ONE (12A)
HAROLD Ramis’s ramshackle road movie, set in the Paleolithic era, is headlined by Jack Black and Michael Cera, two of the most gifted comic actors of their generations. But put the actors side-by-side in Year One as hunter-gatherers with a nose for adventure, and the results are painful.
STAR RATING: **
