THE FINAL DESTINATION (15)

Sep 4 2009 Liverpool Daily Post

FILMED in eye-popping 3-D, the gleefully gory fourth instalment of the Final Destination series, from director David R Ellis, sees bodily parts flying all over the screen, accompanied by fountains of blood and the occasional one-liner.

Bobby Campo plays the lead who saves his friends and other bystanders from certain death at a speedway track, then sees them killed one by one as death restores its true order.

Rating: lll

FUNNY PEOPLE (15)

THERE'S nothing remotely funny about Judd Apatow's follow-up to his hit comedies The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, which is based on his early years writing jokes for other performers.

Adam Sandler stars as a stand-up comic turned film actor who finds out he has leukaemia, and hires Seth Rogen to pen him gags. After surprisingly recovering, he seeks out an old flame (Leslie Mann), who is married with kids. Funny People is a bore, pitching haphazardly for laughs at the expense of plausibility.

Rating: lll

THE HURT LOCKER (15)

KATHRYN BIGELOW'S thrilling war drama is a master-class in sustained tension as a three-strong US Army bomb disposal squad risks life and severed limb to defuse roadside devices in Iraq, based on screenwriter Mark Boal's war experiences there.

Jeremy Renner is the gung-ho unit leader whose excessive bravado worries his subordinates (Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty), while Guy Pearce and Ralph Fiennes have small but pivotal roles.

Rating: llll

BROKEN EMBRACES (15)

SPANISH auteur Pedro Almodovar returns to the noir conventions of Bad Education with this serpentine thriller about a film director's ill-fated affair with his leading lady. It lacks the wistful air of his recent films, but Penelope Cruz lights up the screen as the sultry siren at the centre of the mystery who counters the dark under-currents and sparks smouldering screen chemistry with Lluis Homar.

Rating: llll

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (18)

QUENTIN TARANTINO’S long-mooted war opus is a blood-soaked fairytale set in Nazi-occupied France, divided into five hefty chapters.

He plays loose and fast with historical fact, and splices genres to dizzying effect across its over-long 2½ hours, with Christoph Waltz providing an Oscar-worthy supporting performance as a sadistic German officer and Brad Pitt plotting to kill the upper echelons of the Third Reich.

Rating: lll

I LOVE YOU, BETH COOPER (15)

WE ALL remember the one that got away: the seemingly perfect first crush, who never knew how we felt because we lacked the courage to tell them.

I Love You, Beth Cooper is a filthy-minded romantic comedy about a high-school nerd (Paul Rust) who decides to wear his heart on his sleeve and declare his feelings for a girl (Hayden Panettiere) who doesn’t know he exists. It charms, disturbs and bores in equal measures.

Rating: ll

SHORTS (PG)

FOLLOWING his foray into sci-fi horror with Planet Terror from the ill-fated Grindhouse double-bill, writer-director Robert Rodriguez returns to more family-friendly fare with a fast-moving, colour-saturated adventure reminiscent of his Spy Kids films.

Rodriguez shows understanding of his target youth audience’s limited attention span as he unleashes a blitzkrieg of digital effects and slapstick in chronologically-fractured chapters.

Rating: lll

THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE (12A)

UNFOLDING over the course of 35 years, The Time Traveler’s Wife recounts a heartbreaking romance between two people who were always destined to meet and fall in love – one of whom suffers from random fits of time-travelling.

Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana star in director Robert Schwentke’s faithful adaptation of the best-selling book by Audrey Niffenegger, which builds to a harrowing finale.

Rating: llll

ALIENS IN THE ATTIC (PG)

A SPACESHIP full of ray gun-wielding extra-terrestrials, intent on invading Earth, meets resistance in a most unexpected form in John Schultz’s out-of-this-world family comedy.

Aliens In The Attic is a special effects-laden adventure in which a group of kids save mankind, armed with items from their toy cupboard.

Rating: lll