The Kid With A Bike

Dangerous liasons...Cécile de France..Thomas Doret..The Kid With A Bike

The Kid With A Bike is a heart-warming powerful piece of cinema that makes the audience think about their parents. It follows the life of Cyril, a disturbed young boy, living in foster care looking for his father who left a month prior to the film and a missing bike. He meets Samantha  (de France), a kindly hairdresser who retrieves his bike. Cyril takes a shining to her and soon Samantha fosters Cyril for weekends only. One weekend, Cyril meets "The Dealer," a shady crook who enlists Cyril to commit a robbery. It's touching and the scene where Cyril's father abandons him, is very sad and heart-wrenching. The shots go on for too long and it feels a little stretched but still a very good film.




4/5

The Hunger Games

Another trilogy....Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games is another trilogy following in the footsteps of the hugely popular Twilight series. It manages to keep the audience entertained for it's a two and a quarter length and make us want to see it's two sequels immediately. Jennifer Lawrence plays Katniss Everdeen, a character very unlike Kristen Stewart's bland Bella Swan. Courageous and kind-hearted she puts a huge amount of character into Katniss and acts it very well. She lives in a futuristic dystopian sc-fi world called Panem, which rules under President Snow's (a slightly under-used Donald Sutherland) iron fist. It has twelve "district's" and every year they have a "pageant" called The Hunger Games where two people are selected from each district to compete with others in a televised battle to the death. Obviously Katniss is one of the "tribute's" from her District and her male companion is Peeta Mellark (played rather well by Josh Hutcherson). Together they travel to compete in the games. It's hugely entertaining and Elizabeth Banks plays a great Effie Trinket with Woody Harrelson chipping in as Peeta and Katniss' mentor. It's length plays to it's weaknesses and the music tells you when to cry and whoop. What looks to be an enjoyable series. 


4/5

The Decoy Bride

To wed or to not wed...David Tennant...Kelly Macdonald..The Decoy Bride

The combination of Sally Philip's hilarious script and Kelly Macdonald and David Tennat's great performances makes a very good rom-com about a 'decoy bride.' It makes fun of the rural-ness of Scottish islands and their communities and gives hilarity too. When Katie (Macdonald) arrives home to Hegg, a remote Hebrides island, she doesn't expect to be asked to stand in for famous movie actress Lara Tyler, played by Alice Eve. After a mix-up with wedding certificates, Katie and Lara's husband-to-be end up married. It has several great lines, including Tony Roper as the island reverend saying, "when God created time, he made lots of it and when he created twine, he made balls of it." Ridiculously OTT and sad at parts, The Decoy Bride is a perfect British rom-com. 






4/5

Wanderlust

Hippy flick..Paul Rudd...Jennifer Aniston..Justin Theroux

It's not often that you find a comedy with Jennifer Aniston where she isn't playing a single, successful woman or a woman in a marriage she hates. As a friend said, "you wouldn't find her playing a single, alcoholic mother of one on a council estate." Surprisingly she's in a functioning relationship with Paul Rudd as her husband. Wanderlust is a culture-clash comedy that is crude and excessive but funny all the same. When George (Rudd) and Linda (Aniston) buy a "microloft" in New York, they realize it was a mistake and to top things off, George loses his job the following week and Linda fails to pitch a docu-drama to HBO about penguins with cancer. Deciding to head to Atlanta where George's grotesque brother lies in wait, a manufactor of Porta-Loos to construction sites, they take a detour to a bed and breakfast hotel that turns out to be a hippy commune. Led by an acid-destroyed Alan Alda and irritating "guru-shaman" Seth (Justin Theroux), they try to leave but are soon captivated by the whole free-spirit community. Wanderlust is crude with all the hippy cliches in the book, but somehow it manages to squeeze 98 minutes of entertainment for the audience. The highlights being of course, Ken Marino and Michaela Watkins as Rick and Marisa, George's brother and sister-in-law. 




3/5