Cert 12A, 136 mins
SAMUEL L Jackson is disciplinarian Coach Carter, who takes over a failing school basketball team, full of potential jail fodder, turns them into winners and then locks them out of the gym because their grades aren't good enough. The moral is that if you want success in life, sport isn't the only way. Though much too long, the film is highly proficient, and even inspirational if you don't mind a whole bag of clichés being thrown at you. You can't duck them, but thanks to Jackson's bold performance, you don't mind too much.
HIDE AND SEEK
Cert 15, 101 mins
A NEW York psychologist (Robert De Niro) loses his wife, apparently by suicide, and takes his small daughter (Dakota Fanning) to live in the country. She begins to act strangely. Perhaps she doesn't like his new girlfriend (Elisabeth Shue). Or perhaps she's just traumatised. Director John Polson is a good film-maker but this degenerates into an absurd horror thriller which plays around with a child's grief in wholly unacceptable ways. De Niro walks through it, grimacing a little. Fanning contributes a fine performance if you can tolerate the cuteness of Hollywood children.
BEWAFAA
Cert 12A, 136 mins
AN interminable Bollywood epic which has Kareena Kapoor marrying her older brother-in-law (Anil Kapoor) in order to look after the twins of her sister (Sushmita Sen) who has died in childbirth. She is really in love with Akshay Kumar's handsome musician. Is infidelity excusable? Not with dialogue like this. Fortunately the songs are better than the script, or the by-numbers acting.
CASSHERN
Cert 15, 142 mins
A LARGELY incomprehensible Japanese science fiction epic, populated with stars with nothing much to do. It is irredeemably vulgar, vastly overlong and dares to compare itself with Fritz Lang's M and other classics of the genre. It is described as live animé but, for all its apocalyptic visuals and genetic mutants, it might as well be dead. I made an excuse and left the screening room.
