Gran Torino (15)

4/5

Korean War veteran Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) is consumed by grief over the death of his wife and harbours resentment towards his two sons, Mitch (Brian Haley) and Steve (Brian Howe), who want to ship him off to a care home.

The old coot has no interest in the sermons of local priest Father Janovich (Christopher Carley), and even less time for the Asian next-door neighbours he labels “swamp rats’’.

When Hmong gang-banger Spider (Doua Moua) and his four-strong posse scrap with neighbour’s son Thao (Bee Vang) on his lawn, Walt intervenes with a rifle.

Spider and co flee the scene and Thao’s older sister Sue (Ahney Her) shows her gratitude by strengthening ties between the two households.

Against the odds, Walt finds himself warming to his neighbours and he takes Thao under his wing.

Gran Torino is another beautifully crafted, deeply compassionate and timely humanist drama from Eastwood, which provokes difficult, moral questions about personal responsibility and sacrifice in a world riven by gang violence and peer pressure.

In what reportedly is his final appearance in front of a camera, the veteran leading man is mesmerising as a curmudgeon who chews on political correctness and spits out the bones.

Confessions Of A Shopaholic (PG)

3/5

Rebecca Bloomwood (Isla Fisher) is a journalist with a dream: to work for fashion bible Alette and its ultra-stylish French editor Alette Naylor (Kristin Scott Thomas).

Unfortunately, the job she wants is nabbed by bitchy staffer Alicia Billington (Leslie Bibb) so Rebecca decides to climb the corporate ladder by landing a job at sister magazine Successful Saving, under the direction of charismatic new editor Luke Brandon (Hugh Dancy).

Rebecca’s quirky interpretation of financial journalism in a column entitled The Girl With The Green Scarf is a breath of fresh air and the magazine’s stagnant sales sky rocket.

However, she has a dark secret – she is a shopaholic and has maxed out all of her credit cards.

Fisher is luminous in the lead role, oozing sweetness and charm.

Revolutionary Road (15)

3/5

Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) and aspiring actress April Johnson (Kate Winslet) meet at a Greenwich Village cocktail party, fall in love and marry.

They move into a pretty, little house on Revolutionary Road, raise two children and forge ambitious plans to move to Paris, where she can take a well-paid secretarial position and he can decide what he wants to do with the rest of his life.

But dreams of the French capital crumble when Frank sleeps with a secretary (Zoe Kazan), and an increasingly unhappy April encourages the advances of married neighbour Shep (David Harbour).

If you feel a chill in the air, it’s just Sam Mendes’s beautifully-crafted yet emotionally cold adaptation of the novel by Richard Yates.

Set in 1950s suburban Connecticut, where white picket fences and impeccably-mown lawns project an image of suburban bliss to mask the betrayal and regret, Revolutionary Road doesn’t move us at all during the opening hour.

The film is technically polished, including flawless production design and Roger Deakin’s cinematography.

Performances are electrifying too with DiCaprio and Winslet verbally tearing strips off each other, in stark contrast to the last time they shared the screen in Titanic. Yet we struggle to emotionally connect to Frank and April.

New In Town (12)

2/5

Ambitious executive Lucy Hill (Renee Zellweger) is challenged by her bosses in Miami to spearhead the restructuring of the ailing Munck Foods plant in the tiny Minnesotan town of New Ulm.

Lucy is a city girl with a love of shoes. Unfortunately, what she finds in New Ulm is snow, more snow, the odd stray cow in the middle of the road and union representative Ted Mitchell (Harry Connick Jr), who intends to safeguard the jobs of as many employees as possible.

At first, the newcomer clashes with all and sundry, even firing plant foreman Stu Kopenhafer (JK Simmons). However, Lucy soon settles into the ebb and flow of town life and discovers an affinity with her neighbours.

New In Town is a hopelessly misconceived and poorly executed fish-out-of-water comedy reminiscent of Sweet Home Alabama, careening awkwardly from slapstick to heartbreak via tedium and incredulity. The romance between Zellweger and Connick Jr leaves us equally cold.

The Pink Panther 2 (PG)

1/5

Long-suffering Chief Inspector Dreyfus (John Cleese) consigns bumbling Inspector Clouseau (Steve Martin) to traffic duty.

Out of the blue, Clouseau is seconded to the Dream Team – a group of detectives from around the world, including Vincenzo (Andy Garcia), Pepperidge (Alfred Molina) and Kenji (Yuki Matsuzaki), who have vowed to track down an elusive thief known as The Tornado.

The case becomes personal when The Tornado steals The Pink Panther gem from under ze noses of ze gendarme in ze French capital, increasing the pressure on Clouseau to unmask the perpetrator. Aided by trusty sidekick Ponton (Jean Reno), devoted secretary Nicole (Emily Mortimer) and beautiful author Sonia (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), Clouseau pursues the elusive culprit in his own oblique style.

Martin goofs, gurns and flings himself into each misadventure with gusto but the slapstick is telegraphed in advance.