American Pie Reunion (15, Universal, 112mins)

The gang’s all back and while there are plenty of smutty jokes to be found – Jim get’s caught masturbating, again! – the real fun to be had is in everyone trying to find their place. Jim (Jason Biggs) is now a dad, Oz (Chris Klein) a sports caster, Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas)  struggling to maintain his ‘most interesting person we know’ tag, Kev (Thomas Ian Nicholas) still pining over Tara Reid’s Vicky, and Stifler (Seann William Scott) still ass-slapping any hot woman he sees. Eugene Levy is good value as Jim’s dad, who is still mouring the death of his wife, but it’s not as fresh as it once was, and the overriding feeling is one of having seen it all before.

You can check out our full review of the film here.

Out Wednesday May 2

The Lucky One (12A, Warners, 101mins)

Zac Efron sticks to his pin-up guns as a US soldier, of impeccably good looks, who finds amidst the dusty battleground a pictue of a young blonde lady. Keeping hold of this photo keeps him sane through the brutality of life on the front line of American’s war on terror, so when he gets home he makes it his mission to find out who this young  lady is. Adapted from Nicolas Sparks’s bets selling novel, you know how this one is going to go, right from the off, but it is the getting there that makes it. Efron holds his own, and middle America is shot like a gleaming picture postcard of never ending, sun-drenched rolling fields.

Out Wednesday May 2


Films released Friday May 4…

Clone (15, Arrow Films, 111mins)

Matt Smith goes genre again for his leading man feature length debut in this sci-fi-er about cloning and the ramifications inherent in. He plays Tommy, a man who dies and whose lover, played by one time Bond lass Eva Green, tries to bring him back through the titular scientific technology, to renunite them. Green and Smith make for engaging leads, and this film deserving a larger audience than its short cinematic outing permits.

Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (18, Revolver, 126mins)

Takashi Miike, the mental mind behind such contemporary horror rule breakers Audition and Ichi The Killer, directs this tale, a remake of the 1962 cult swords and samurais flick, of revenge by a poverty striken samurai on a feudal lord.

Juan of the Dead (15, Metrodome, 100mins)

Once upon a time zombie movies meant Romero, with any film likely to have begged, borrowed or just outright stolen fomr the undead legend. Now though, young filmmakers entering the genre as just as likely to be influenced by Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, and Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright’s Sean of the Dead, as evidenced here by this Spanish Cuban horror comedy. As a horror flick, it is passable, entertaining but never in danger of offering anything new. Where it comes alive, so to speak, is in its satirical skewing of Cuba under Castro.

Piggy (18, Metrodome, 100mins)

This psychological Brit drama mixes elements of Shane Meadows’ Dead Man’s Shoes and the more recent Kill List to devastating effect. Martin Compston is a shy and retiring delivery boy whose brother (Neil Maskell) is killed. He begins a friendship with an old friend, Piggy, only for this rekindled friendship to take on an altogether more violent and sinister aspect. It’s uneven, particularly the final act, but decidedly usettling too.

Safe (15, Momentum, 94mins)

Jason Statham is a former cage fighter, of course, who is trusted witih rotecting a young girl fro Traids, the Russian mob and crooked cops, all of whom wnt her because of the secre code she has stored in her head. Not a challenge for the Stats then, but he does these roles well, and throws himself in to this exciting, kinetic actin flick with reckless abandon.