AEAON FLUX This adaptation from the futuristic TV animated action show about a female assassin (Charlize Theron) was not screened for critics prior to release. That’s usually a bad sign, as the overseas reviews indicate. The Village Voice in New York called it “cretinous”; “spectacularly silly”, said Variety. The Cinema du Merde website (“where cinema goes to die”) notes that “ludicrous dystopian sci-fi was never quite so dull”. Sounds like a stinker. — Shaun de Waal
AN UNFINISHED LIFE To escape an abusive boyfriend, Jean (Jennifer Lopez) takes her daughter Griff (Becca Gardner) to her estranged father-in-law Einer’s (Robert Redford) Wyoming ranch. It is here we meet Einer’s ranch hand and wise friend Mitch (Morgan Freeman), who teaches the trio valuable life lessons. Ultimately, the film never seems to achieve the emotional depths it tries so overtly to reach. — TM
ANNAPOLIS An Officer and a Gentleman on steroids. James Franco plays Jake, a young shipyard worker who squeaks into the Annapolis naval academy, where there are both attractive young women as superior officers and nasty black men as brutal instructors. There is also a boxing match looming. You can see the shape of it already, can’t you? The attractive officer (Jordana Brewster) will motivate Jake and help train him for the boxing match, which will of course climax in a bout against the nasty black instructor (Tyrese Gibson). This piece of sentimental machismo is utterly clichéd, totally unconvincing and drowned in corny music, but it is not unentertaining. Franco is, at any rate, cute to look at, and the amount of frowning he does here shows that he is trying to be a serious actor. — Shaun de Waal
BIG MOMMA’S HOUSE II
Martin Lawrence is back as FBI agent Malcolm Turner. Shaking the dust off his Big Momma suit, he heads off to infiltrate the home of computer “worm” designer Tom Fuller (Mark Moses), who has hacked into government intelligence files. Turner must keep tabs on Fuller while maintaining a series of lies to his wife Sherrie (Nia Long) back East. Big Momma’s House II plays out like a badly conceived piece of theatre. The comedy skits are trite and incidental, and the plot is horrendous. — Kwanele Sosibo
CAPOTE Shaun de Waal reviews the Oscar nominated feature Capote
CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN II The Baker parents (Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt) whisk their progeny off to Lake Winnetka only to find long-time rivals, the near-perfect Murtaugh family, in a swish house across the water. While the kids get on, the Baker parents suffer the pretensions and criticism of their neighbours. Despite its share of silly set-ups, there are four strong adult roles here and some decent one-liners. — Tumi Makgetla
DATE MOVIE Encountering a would-be spoof of date movies that boneheadedly calls itself Date Movie is like finding one of those generic supermarket brands called “beans” or “cola”. This is a deeply rubbish film starring Alyson Hannigan (American Pie) that attempts to mimic a whole bunch of successful romantic comedies ranging from My Big Fat Greek Wedding to Bridget Jones’s Diary, the satirical variant in each case being simply to remove the comedy. Unlike the Scary Movie comedies or the Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker spoofs, the gags do not come thick and fast; they come thin and slow. Or more often, not at all. — Peter Bradshaw Â
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