CLASH OF THE TITANS(12A 106 mins) 5/10

Intro

1 FILM Film Reviews Mar 29

Note to editors: Please note language in par 16 of the review of Kick-Ass.

The film Remember Me, which opens on Friday April 2, screens to critics on

Monday March 29. Full and digest reviews will be available by 3pm on Tuesday

March 30. Clash Of The Titans, which is also released on Friday April 2, screens

to critics on the night of Tuesday March 30. A full and digest review will be

available by 3pm on Wednesday March 31. (with pictures)

FILM VIEW

By Damon Smith, Press Association

RELEASED THIS WEEK

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (PG, 97 mins) Family. Featuring the voices of Jay Baruchel, America Ferrara, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, TJ Miller, Kristen Wiig. Directors: Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders.

Released: March 31 (UK & Ireland)

Almost 10 years since Shrek emitted his first pungent burp, DreamWorks Animation soars to dizzying heights with a brilliantly-executed and deeply touching story of one boy’s friendship with a supposedly fearsome dragon.

Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda both lacked spark but How To Train Your Dragon has invention and emotion in abundance, and will delight audiences of all ages with its lush visuals and smart script based on the book by Cressida Cowell.

Screening in 3D in selected cinemas and traditional 2D everywhere else, Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders’ fantasy combines a traditional rites of passage drama with breathtaking action and uproarious comedy.

The eye-popping format works especially well during the vertiginous flying sequences - you feel like you can almost reach out and touch the clouds as human and beast soar through the air in perfect harmony.

The unlikely hero is a weedy Viking called Hiccup (voiced by Baruchel), who has been told his whole life that dragons are evil beasts that would eat a man as soon as look at him.

Consequently, Hiccup and the other children in the village grow up with a hatred of the creatures and dream of training for battle alongside their warrior fathers.

Alas, Hiccup is too feeble and his father, tribe leader Stoick (Butler), protects the youngster from harm by entrusting him to the care of burly blacksmith, Gobber (Ferguson).

“One day I’ll get out there, because around here, killing a dragon is everything,” bemoans Hiccup.

Gobber convinces Stoick that dragon training might give the boy some backbone.

So Hiccup joins feisty Astrid (Ferrara), Fishlegs (Mintz-Plasse), Snotlout (Hill) and the twins Ruffnut (Wiig) and Tuffnut (Miller) in the ring, where they learn to cope with all manner of fire-breathing creatures.

Unbeknown to the other recruits, Hiccup has befriended an injured dragon - a mysterious Night Fury - and has nursed the creature back to health and even nicknamed him Toothless.

As the bond between animal and boy deepens, Hiccup questions everything he has ever been told.

How To Train Your Dragon is a wonderful adventure for the entire family, underpinned by the bond between Hiccup and Toothless that develops organically as the two characters become accustomed to each other.

The freedom that the boy feels in the sky contrasts with his suffocation on terra firma.

Vocal performances are strong.

Baruchel milks every ounce of sympathy for young Hiccup as he tries to make everyone happy and become the Viking that Stoick wants him to be.

When Stoick inevitably discovers his son’s betrayal and angrily disowns him - “You’re not a Viking, you’re not my son!” - there’s a genuine lump in our throats, which we soon swallow when the script delivers yet another belly laugh before setting up the rousing finale.

NO SWEARING NO SEX VIOLENCE RATING: 8.5/10

KICK-ASS (15, 117 mins) Action. Aaron Johnson, Chloe Grace Moretz, Mark Strong, Nicolas Cage, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Clark Duke, Evan Peters, Lyndsy Fonseca, Garrett M Brown. Director: Matthew Vaughn.

Released: March 31 (UK & Ireland)

Being a superhero is a dangerous business in Matthew Vaughn’s brutal coming of age tale, based on the comic written by Mark Millar and John S Romita Jr.

Adapted for the screen by Vaughn and Jane Goldman, Kick-Ass is a thrilling, hilarious and at times heartbreaking portrait of teen angst that will undoubtedly raise eyebrows for its heady combination of foul-mouthed, sword-wielding children and graphic violence.

Yet, as recent headlines have brought home with chilling clarity, too many of our youngsters roam the streets with concealed weapons.

Childhood innocence died a long time ago.

Kick-Ass taps into modern day lawlessness and senseless brutality by pitting one regular teenager, without a single super power to his cumbersome name, against real life bad guys capable of killing him with a single blow to the head.

“With no power, comes no responsibility,” he rues, lamenting our unwillingness to rush to another person’s aid.

Turning a blind eye to crime is so much easier than taking a stand.

Geeky teenager Dave Lizewski (Johnson) lives with his father (Brown) in New York, where he attends high school and admires unattainable classmate Katie Deauxma (Fonseca) from afar.

“My only super power was being invisible to girls,” notes Dave in voiceover.

During a conversation with comic-book obsessed pals Marty (Duke) and Todd (Peters), Dave wonders aloud if a normal guy could transform himself into a bona fide superhero.

Consequently, the teenager buys a wetsuit off the internet and becomes the heroic Kick-Ass.

Unfortunately, his first forays into crime-fighting end with serious blood loss and a trip to the hospital.

Then the mysterious Big Daddy (Cage) and Hit Girl (Moretz) - aka unfairly disgraced cop Damon Macready and his daughter Mindy - answer the call to arms, thwarting the ambitions of kingpin Frank D’Amico (Strong).

When D’Amico decides to fight back with the help of his son Chris (Mintz-Plasse), Dave is suddenly at the centre of a real life battle between good and evil.

Kick-Ass is an incendiary, fast-paced jaunt though the Big Apple in the company of two motherless youngsters, who discover their strength behind the masks of their alter egos.

Johnson sports an inflexion-perfect American accent as the eponymous do-gooder and Cage delivers his first decent performance for years but it’s pint-sized Moretz who scene-steals from her first blood-spattered skirmish, when she baits the bad guys: “Okay you c**ts, let’s see what you can do!”

Action sequences are directed at a breathless pace by Vaughn - notably a night vision shootout and the storming of D-Amico’s rooftop headquarters - but the visceral thrills never come at the expense of our emotional connection to the characters.

They kick ass and we silently cheer them, with clenched fists, from the aisles.

SWEARING NO SEX VIOLENCE RATING: 8.5/10

Also released...

CLASH OF THE TITANS (12A, 106 mins)

Released: April 2 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)

Director Louis Leterrier updates the classic 1981 adventure based on Greek mythology, made famous by Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion Medusa and other creatures of the underworld and underwater including the mighty Kraken. In the new version of Clash Of The Titans, state-of-the-art digital effects replace the painstaking manual effort, following Perseus (Sam Worthington) as he embarks on a quest to avert a war between his father Zeus (Liam Neeson) and vengeful Hades (Ralph Fiennes). En route, Perseus clashes with the gorgons and a giant scorpion in the desert. Both provide formidable tests of the hero’s mettle. The beautiful Io (Gemma Arterton) aids Perseus on his epic odyssey but even the offspring of one of the Gods is powerless against some denizens of the land and sea.

REMEMBER ME (PG, 112 mins)

Released: April 2 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)

Robert Pattinson briefly steps away from his signature role as vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight saga to headline Allen Coulter’s bittersweet tale of young love. Remember Me casts the brooding English actor as Tyler Hawkins, the black sheep of a wealthy New York family headed by his attorney father, Charles (Pierce Brosnan). He also has a cherubic sister, Caroline (Ruby Jerins), but even she cannot help to shake Tyler out of the grief for his dead brother. Tyler agrees to woo his classmate Ally (Emilie de Ravin) purely to spite her over protective father (Chris Cooper), a cop in the NYPD. Unexpectedly, Tyler and Ally fall head over heels, drawn to each other because of their deep emotional wounds. The events of September 11, 2001, impact deeply on the characters as they emerge shell-shocked from the devastation and struggle to piece their lives back together again.

SAMSON & DELILAH (15, 100 mins)

Released: April 2 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)

The winner of numerous awards on the festival circuit including the Golden Camera at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, Samson & Delilah charts a seemingly-doomed romance between two teenagers living in an Aboriginal community in Central Australia. Samson (Rowan McNamara) is an aimless drifter who escapes the boredom of his life by sniffing petrol. He has doe eyes for Delilah (Marissa Gibson), who takes care of her grandmother (Mitjili Napanangka Gibson) and helps to sell the old woman’s colourful art. When her elderly relative dies and the locals hold Delilah responsible, she flees the outpost with Samson and the pair head for Alice Springs. They seek shelter beneath a bridge where Delilah also obliterates the harsh reality by sniffing petrol, with horrifying consequences.

THE RAILWAY CHILDREN (U, 108 mins)

Released: April 2 (UK, selected cinemas)

Re-release of the classic 1970 children’s drama about a family torn apart by a miscarriage of justice. Lionel Jeffries writes and directs the story of Edwardian siblings Bobbie (Jenny Agutter), Peter (Gary Warren) and Phyllis (Sally Thomsett), who are forced to relocate to Yorkshire with their mother (Dinah Sheridan) to avoid the shame of their father’s wrongful arrest. The youngsters attempt to make the best of a bad situation and they soon become embroiled in the day-to-day workings of the local railway line, gradually winning the affections of the local stationmaster (Bernard Cribbins). When disaster looms, the youngsters put their lives on the line to stop the train before it derails.

DOUBLE TAKE (Certificate TBC, 80 mins)

Released: April 2 (UK, selected cinemas)

Alfred Hitchcock was fascinated with doppelgangers and they were a recurring theme in his films. Director Johan Grimonprez and screenwriter Thomas McCarthy draw inspiration from the master filmmaker for this thriller, which uses archive footage to explore events on the set of The Birds. Hitchcock is called to the production office where his double makes a bold claim to be the real Alfred Hitchcock and proclaims that one of them must die. Set against the backdrop of the Cold War and inspired by the Jorge Luis Borges novella The Other, Double take pits Hitchcock against himself in a psychological battle of wits.

PSYCHO (15, 108 mins)

Released: April 2 (UK, selected cinemas)

A re-issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1960 thriller which has been ingrained in movie lore thanks to that one shower scene and Bernard Herrmann’s unsettling score. In any other director’s hands, Psycho wouldn’t work, but Hitchcock teases the audience at every turn, coaxing a career-best performance from Anthony Perkins as motel owner Norman Bates, who takes being a mummy’s boy to a completely new level. Janet Leigh is the unfortunate thief who checks in for one night and checks out a lot quick than she anticipated.

WHIP IT! (12A, 111 mins)

Released: April 7 (UK & Ireland)

Actress Drew Barrymore makes an auspicious directorial debut with a feelgood sports comedy set in the cut-throat world of women’s roller derby, based on the novel Derby Girl by Shauna Cross. Hormonally charged teenager, Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page), lives in sleepy Bodeen, Texas, where she is at the mercy of her beauty pageant obsessed mom, Brooke (Marcia Gay Harden). Ungainly and unfeminine, Bliss loves indie music and she is instantly smitten with roller derby, secretly attending a tryout for the local team, league underdogs the Hurl Scouts. Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig) and Smashley Simpson (Barrymore) take Bliss under their wing and with their encouragement, the teenager discovers her calling on four wheels. The introduction of a spunky new member to the team catalyses a dramatic change in fortunes for the Hurl Scouts, setting up the inevitable championship showdown with the venomous Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis) and her brutal posse.

COMING NEXT WEEK...

Julianne Moore and Jonathan Rhys Meyers lock horns in the psychological thriller SHELTER.

UK FILM TOP 10

1 (-) Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang

2 (1) Alice In Wonderland 3D

3 (-) The Blind Side

4 (2) Shutter Island

5 (-) Kick Ass (Preview)

6 (3) The Bounty Hunter

7 (-) 3D How to Train Your Dragon (Preview)

8 (4) Green Zone

9 (7) The Spy Next Door

10 (5) I Love You Phillip Morris

Chart courtesy of Cineworld Cinemas: www.cineworld.co.uk

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