Ghostbusters (12A)
Directed by Paul Feig
4/5
WITH far too many sequels currently cluttering up cinemas, it’s a pleasure to savour a remake or, rather, a riotous gender-change cinematic reboot.
Director and co-writer Paul Feig drolly revamps the 1984 supernatural comedy hit, replacing testosterone with oestrogen to transform Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones into a hilarious ghost-busting quartet.
Having proved his comic touch with Bridesmaids and Spy, Feig wisely plays fair and funny with the original as he sends his zany spectre-slayers into action to save the Big Apple — and the world, of course — from the gallery of grisly ghosts attacking the city.
Feig’s emphasis is firmly on
paranormal thrills and wild comedy and he delivers lashings of both, while decorating proceedings with stunning special effects that bring the zany apparitions to spectacular life.
Verbally and visually it’s fast and fun and there are some smart lines, memorably when Wiig tells the Big Apple boss: “Please don’t be like the mayor in Jaws.”
With cameos by the original’s stars Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson, as well as Sigourney Weaver and Annie Potts, this is an enjoyable, no-strain-on-the-brain comic caper.
Alan Frank

The Hard Stop (15)
Directed by George Amponsah
4/5
THIS powerful and intimate documentary reveals who the real Mark Duggan was.
His killing by police in August 2011 sparked some of the worst civil unrest in recent British history and George Amponsah’s film shows how his death affected his friends and family.
More importantly, it provides a valuable insight into why the residents of Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham, London, feel disenfranchised and have come to distrust and hate the police.
Over 24 months, the film follows Duggan’s childhood friends Marcus and Kurtis, who all grew up on Broadwater Farm, as they deal with bereavement, imprisonment, unemployment and the controversial findings of the judicial inquiry into Duggan’s killing.
The news reports of his shooting and the debate over who he was play out in the background as Amponsah, through observational video, concentrates on the impact on his best friends and his family, including his fiancee and their four children.
The presence of Duggan permeates their heartbreaking testimonies.
In the words of Martin Luther King: “A riot is the language of the unheard” and this hard-hitting and sobering documentary provides those previously silent with a much-needed voice.
Maria Duarte

Men & Chicken (15)
Directed by Ander Thomas Jensen
4/5
DESPITE being produced by M&M productions, this is no gratuitous exercise in product placement.
But there is an unexpected sweetness in Ander Thomas Jensen’s fascinating black comedy that becomes increasingly addictive as it unfolds.
Weird brothers Elias (Mads Mikkelsen) and Gabriel (David Dencik) have only one thing in common — their harelips. And they are, respectively, prone to excessive masturbation and constant vomiting.
Learning that they were adopted, they head for a remote island inhabited by their father to discover their origins and are pitchforked into a scenario so extraordinary that Snow White seems grittily realistic by comparison.
Jensen colourfully charts their increasingly bizarre experiences among hare-lipped siblings and delivers a riveting amalgam of Frankenstein and The Island of Dr Moreau.
His own unique additions are adorned with a narrative that grips, shocks and amuses in equal measures from start to finish.
Alan Frank

Ice Age: Collision Course (U)
Directed by Michael Thurmeier and Galen Chu
3/5
THERE is no stopping the Ice Age juggernaut as film number five sees Scrat accidentally creating the solar system and sending a meteorite hurtling to Earth due to his unrelenting pursuit of his beloved acorn.
Manny (Ray Romano) and company join forces with Buck (Simon Pegg) to stop Armageddon and their impending extinction.
In the meantime, Manny and Ellie (Queen Latifah) have to deal with the fact that their daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer) is getting married and moving far away.
It isn’t the most inventive film of the series. But Scrat steals it once more, while Manny and his friends still have enough charm to captivate young audiences.
The children that I took to see it, ranging from three to nine years old, were all enthralled by the characters’ antics and thrilled by the visual gags.
It is more of the same franchise-wise but, as the saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Maria Duarte

Keanu (15)
Directed by Peter Atencio
3/5
ANOTHER small-screen comedy team makes the big leap from television to film in Keanu.
While the popular duo from Comedy Central, Keegan-Michael Kay and Jordan Peele, haven’t quite mastered the transformation to film there’s sufficiently bad-taste humour on offer to please.
The pair clearly enjoy themselves as they play urban but not streetwise cousins facing mounting mayhem when Rell Williams (Peele) discovers that his beloved feline Keanu is stolen. That forces he and sidekick Clarence Goobril (Kay) to impersonate killers and infiltrate the catnapping street gang.
Subtlety is happily absent.
Escalating comic chaos opens in a church, where gangsters are packaging drugs. A shootout ensues, followed by enough enjoyably tasteless verbal and visual comedy to overcome the lacunae in Peele and Alex Rubens’s screenplay.
And, while the purloined feline effortlessly steals its every scene from the two-legged actors, the relentlessly foul-mouthed star duo’s sheer energy and innate likeability compensates for a film that sometimes loses comic energy but nonetheless delivers lively fun.
Alan Frank

Precious Cargo (15)
Directed by Max Adams
1/5
IF YOU can ignore the tsunami of four-letter words drenching the sub-Spillane dialogue — not easy — then co-writer Max Adams’s directorial debut resembles a barely average TV movie thriller.
Bruce Willis scowls impressively while sensibly coasting through a few supporting scenes as ruthless crime king Eddie, who’s hunting double-crossing thief Karen (Claire Forlani).
Which leaves Jack (the bland Mark-Paul Gosselaar) to take the lion’s share when he opposes Eddie by joining forces with Karen for a mammoth gem heist.
The best way to get through this is to put your intellect in neutral and simply savour the plentiful action.
It features a lively water chase and enough mindless gunplay and thudding slugfests to keep you watching while the cliched exposition staggers its familiar way to the climax.
The Mississippi, attractively photographed by cinematographer Brandon Cox and doubling for the Cayman Islands, gives far and away the most convincing performance in the film.
Alan Frank