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Damon is a blast in Green Zone action thriller
High octane thrills from Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass.
EXCITING, believable and thought-provoking, GREEN ZONE (15: Universal), a blend of military action and conspiracy thriller, is what great popular movie-making is all about.
Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass join forces again and they deliver plenty of their high-octane, Bourne-style entertainment.
The fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction immediately after the 2003 Iraq invasion leaves one dogged US Army officer questioning his own side.
Damon's character barrels through a series of life-threatening chases and scrapes and there's a startling sense of immediacy as the viewer is pitched into the chaos following the fall of Saddam.
Greengrass's trademark bullet-dodging hand-held camera captures the mayhem and the whole cast contribute powerful turns that illustrate different sides of the argument, even though the film condemns the short-sightedness of the Bush-led campaign.
The pick of the performances are from Brendan Gleeson as a pragmatic CIA station chief, Greg Kinnear as a Washington intelligence expert fighting the propaganda war, and Khalid Abdalla, representing the aggrieved and excluded ordinary Iraqis.
VALENTINE'S DAY (12: Warner), the latest rom-com from director Garry Marshall, whose credits include Pretty Woman and Runaway Bride, is delightful and cringe-making by turns.
Stars old and new are dovetailed into a plot which, like Love Actually, looks at love from a number of different angles during a very American February 14.
The film centres on florist Reed Bennett (Ashton Kutcher) who, on the busiest day of the year, finds his love life agitated by his fiancee Morley Clarkson (Jessica Alba) and his best friend Julia Fitzpatrick (Jennifer Garner), who has fallen for a married man.
Julia Roberts appears as an army captain flying home for one day, while Taylor Swift makes an enchanting debut as a ditzy high school sweetheart.
Everyone will have a favourite tale in this breezy, sentimental and amusing picture, although it's unlikely that anyone will love them all.
Michael Cera plays the central character in YOUTH IN REVOLT (15: Momentum) with the same deadpan bewildered charm that served him well in Juno and TV's Arrested Development.
Timid, Sinatra-loving teen Nick Twisp is desperate to lose his virginity in this sharp coming-of-age comedy. But when he falls for Sheeni (Portia Doubleday), the free-spirited girl of his dreams, he realises he will need to develop a rebellious streak to win her heart.
Enter Francois Dillinger (Cera again), a moustachioed, chain-smoking, bad-boy alter ego, who leads Nick on a trail of destruction that wrecks relationships, cars and a chunk of his home town.
The script takes several well-aimed pot-shots at the teen movie genre, but has a tendency to occasionally wallow in the crude humour of the American Pie films.
CHLOE (15: Optimum), the remake of a 2003 French picture, has a twisty plot that clearly takes its inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock and is fun to watch, even if it ultimately stretches credibility beyond breaking point.
Julianne Moore plays a middle-aged doctor who suspects that her lecturer husband (Liam Neeson) is having an affair. She hires a high-class prostitute (Amanda Seyfried) to pose as a student and test his fidelity.
When she reports back that he took the bait, providing a blow-by-blow account, Moore feels left out and wants in on the action.
No-one can keep their passions or emotions in check and the whole thing becomes overwrought as it moves towards the, er, climax.
> Anna (Amy Adams) rushes from Boston to Ireland to propose to her cardiologist beau (Adam Scott) on February 29, only to be confounded by the one thing she can't control – the weather – in LEAP YEAR (PG: Optimum).
She's miles off course and enlists the help of handsome minicab driver-cum-publican Declan (Matthew Goode) and the bickering pair set off to reunite her with her intended.
Adams teeters on ridiculously high heels and Goode manages to hang on to a strained Irish accent, flashing his puppy-dog eyes along the way, in a frothy romance with just enough blarney to charm the susceptible.
TOP TEN: 1.The Book Of Eli; 2.Did You Hear About Morgans? 3. Sherlock Holmes; 4. Chloe; 5.Leap Year; 6.The Lovely Bones; 7. Edge Of Darkness; 8.Alice In Wonderland; 9.Daybreakers; 10.Princess And The Frog.
Chart supplied by Blockbuster
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Weather for Leighton Buzzard
Wednesday 08 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -3 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: North east
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Temperature: -1 C to 2 C
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