March 2009 Archives

Dreamworks dish out another animated movie of monsterous humour for the whole family.

As the title implies an odd assortment of monsters are called upon to save the world from an imminent alien threat.

Aliens Vs Monsters is in cinemas April the 3rd.

Eight years and millions of dollars later The Fast and the Furious franchise still knows how to draw in the petrol heads espeically when many other film series in their fourth outings are ready for the scrapheap.

Fans worldwide are looking forward to this offering because of the return of the original cast, who have not burned rubber together since the first movie way back in 2001.

After the poor third installment, the makers are hoping that the return of Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster will be a return to form.

The Fast and the Furious 4 is in cinemas April 7th.

By Lorraine Waddell

Richard Curtis, by his own admission, has carved out his career by making modern classic love films.

But the Love Actually and Notting Hill creator's brand new movie, The Boat That Rocked turns its attention to his other love, music.

The story is based on controversial pirate radio stations in the 1960s, in particular Radio Caroline.

It follows the friendship and camaraderie of the DJs and radio staff on the ship.
Aboard the Radio Rock, the cast including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rhys Ifans and Nick Frost, get up to mischief, perfectly sound-tracked with classic pop hits from the Rolling Stones and The Kinks among others.

Besides the hi-jinks on the boat runs, what seems from the outset, a more serious storyline about the government plotting how to bring down the pirate radio stations, forced to operate unofficially as they were not given radio licences.

This however provides just as many laughs as the mad-cap DJs and their antics on board.

Kenneth Branagh playing a stern Minister Dormandy and Jack Davenport as his assistant prove to be an accidental but hilarious comedy duo.

One of the real stars of the show is Tom Sturridge who plays the shy Carl or Young Carl as he becomes christened when he steps on the boat.

He provides an awesome performance of a teenager trying to 'find himself' in the mixed up world of drugs and booze which was the 1960s.

Without saying too much about the outcome of the movie, we see Carl on a voyage of discovery about himself, his family and most of all the friends he makes while banished to the ship.

The film is due for general release in UK cinemas on April 1 and is definitely worth a watch.

Without sounding cheesy, it is a real feel-good film and will firmly leave a smile plastered across your face.

It has broad appeal throughout the generations and is accompanied by a timeless and infectious sound-track.

Based on a true story of a rag-tag crew of DJs who set up their own pirate radio station in the North Sea in the 1960's, this humourous retelling of the story sees British greats including Bill Nighy and Nick Frost laughing at the government as they plaque the airwaves with their rebellious pop music and unorthodox broadcasts.

The Boat That Rocked is in cinemas from Wednesday April the 1st.

It's a rare treat to see a British film receive a silver screen release and Hush may prove to be just another one of those surprisingly little gems.

Zakes and Beth are travelling along the M1 in the dead of night when their regular trip is interrupted when Zakes sees something unusal and unsettling.

Convinced he has seen a woman being totured in the back of a white truck, Zakes calls the police but decides better than to get involved himself. But when his girlfriend goes missing at a service station he knows that she has been snatched...

Starring Will Ash, Christine Bottomley, Claire Keelan, Stuart McQuarrie and Andreas Wisniewski.

Hush is in selected cinema's this Friday.

We want to be bored now...

Just when you thought horror films could not become any more farfetched The Unborn pushes out all the stops to be the silliest attempt yet.

Movies about Americans being haunted by dead relatives is a plot that is almost as old as the history of cinema itself but this latest offering by David S Goyer (co-writer of The Dark Knight) tries to add a new twist to the moudly old storyline by having the lead character haunted by someone who was never even born in the first place.

Casey Beldon (Odette Yustman) is haunted by peculiar dreams on a day-to-day basis. But it is not until she is smashed over the head with a mirror that she begins to get haunted by her dead twin brother who died when he was only a few weeks old inside their mother's womb.

Strangely enough her non-existant brother takes on the guise of a five year old boy and seems to hold enough intelligence to spook his grown-up sister as well as being able to speak English as well as the next perosn despite never having been taught it.

Casey begins to suspect that the spirit of her dead brother is being possessed by a demon who wishes to be born so it can live in our world.

And her grandmother does little to discourage such crazy notions when she tells Casey that her own twin brother died decades earlier at the hand of Nazi experiments.

The more logical conclusion to resolve the movie's odd and over the top plot would have been to allow the film to end on the note that Casey had imagined the entire thing as a result of mild concussion from the blow she received over the head by the mirror earlier on in the storyline. But instead it chooses the route of exorcisms and grisly deaths.

The unborn is in cinemas now.