From cash-in-transit heists to ballet, there is something for everyone in the films opening this week.
Armored
A cash-in-transit company’s worst nightmare: the inside job. A cash-in-transit company employee’s wet dream: a cool $42-million on its way from point A to point B under the supervision of you and your crooked mates. This is the premise for Armored, except that it all goes very wrong, very quickly. Ty Hackett (Columbus Short), the reluctant accomplice, gets cold feet and locks himself inside the armoured vehicle. Cue a desperate and deadly struggle between Ty and his roguish colleagues to secure the vehicle and its contents for their rapidly diverging ends. Almost all the subsequent action occurs in an abandoned steel mill where the motley gang, led by the calculating and charismatic Mike Cochrone (Matt Dillon), have retired to stash the cash. And they have just one hour to settle the matter before they have to report back to the company. Look out for superb cameos by ratty rogues Quinn (Jean Reno) and Baines (Laurence Fishburne). Much crash, bang, pow. — Lionel Faull
Don Quixote
Don Quixote the ballet is less a retelling of Miguel de Cervantes’ masterpiece than an excuse for a glorious romp featuring some of classical ballet’s most spectacular choreography. In this lush and lavish production filmed in the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, the Kirov Ballet does full justice to Marius Petipa’s choreography and Ludwig Minkus’s delightful Spanish-inflected score. The huge company literally doesn’t put a foot wrong and the soloists, led by a virtuoso Olesia Novikova (Kitri) and Leonid Sarafanov (Basil), are breathtaking. Though his role is minute, Vladimir Ponomarev’s Don is endearing and enchantingly bemused and the whole makes for a joyous balletic experience. — Pat Schwartz
How to Train Your Dragon
Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel) is an awkward, skinny adolescent desperate to become a dragon-slaying Viking just like his father, Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler). In his attempt to kill a dragon, Hiccup wounds a mysterious and purportedly dangerous Night Fury but is unable to finish the job. Instead of slaying the dragon, he forms a bond with the beast, whom he names Toothless. The young Viking learns that dragons are misunderstood and need not be feared. This animation is bound to make DreamWorks the kind of revenue generated by popular films such as Shrek and Kung Fu Panda. A heart-breaking dilemma, epic music and puppy-dog eyes all attempt to manipulate the audience’s affection for Hiccup and Toothless — and it works wonderfully. The quirky and colourful characters will certainly entertain children, while the humorous dialogue and entrancing plot will appeal to audiences of any age. — Lisa Steyn
The Last Station
Biopics of legends in their old age have a ring of injustice about them. They are usually portraits of larger-than-life figures, not as young energetic writers putting out masterpieces but as old mortals walking into their proverbial sunsets. But the last months of Leo Tolstoy (played by Christopher Plummer), as captured in this movie, were anything but quiet. His wife Sofya (Helen Mirren) is in the middle of fights with her husband’s associates over control of the writer’s works. On hand to witness these intrigues at the court of a count is Tolstoy’s new secretary, Bulgakov (James McAvoy), recruited and seconded by Tolstoy’s friend Chertkov (Paul Giamatti). Directed by Michael Hoffman, the film is philosophical, wildly theatrical and manages to sustain its tight drama right until the end. One of the things that didn’t quite work for me, though, was the fact that the movie is in English instead of Russian, the master’s language. — Percy Zvomuya