New to rent (From The Northern Echo)

New to rent

10:56am Thursday 12th November 2009

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Star Trek (12, 127 mins, Paramount, DVD £19.99/two-disc DVD £24.99/Blu-ray £29.99).

Stars: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Eric Bana, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Simon Pegg, Bruce Greenwood, Leonard Nimoy.

COCKSURE and impetuous James T Kirk (Pine) enrols at Starfleet Academy, making an instant friend in Dr Leonard McCoy (Urban). Spock (Quinto) is harder to win over until a Romulan attack on the Vulcan homeland unites the young men and women. With Captain Christopher Pike (Greenwood) at the helm, crew members Uhura (Saldana), Chekhov (Yelchin) and Sulu (Cho) guide the pristine USS Enterprise into battle. Ardent fans of the universe created by Gene Roddenberry in the early Seventies will take issue with some changes, including the introduction of a forbidden romance and a timetravelling narrative thread.

Four Christmases (12, 84 mins, Entertainment In Video, DVD £19.99/Bluray £24.99)

Stars: Reese Witherspoon, Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau, Robert Duvall, Mary Steenburgen, Tim McGraw, Dwight Yoakam, Sissy Spacek, Jon Voight.

EVERY Christmas, San Francisco couple Brad (Vaughn) and Kate (Witherspoon) make outlandish excuses to avoid spending the festive season together.

When the couple must reluctantly visit their four respective households in one day, each reunion becomes more deranged and painful than the last, involving Brad’s father (Duvall), Kate’s New Age convert mother (Steenburgen) and her pastor boyfriend (Dwight Yoakam). The film finally runs out of steam with brief visits to Brad’s mother (Spacek) and Kate’s father (Voight, blink and you’ll miss him). Four Christmases is a tinsel-strewn retread of Meet The Parents, which fails to make us care about Brad and Kate.

Moon (15, 93 mins, Sony, DVD £19.99/Blu-ray £24.99)

Stars: Sam Rockwell, Dominique McElligott and the voice of Kevin Spacey.

ON the moon, Sam Bell (Rockwell) single handedly oversees the harvesting of the Helium-3 isotope, which has become Earth’s primary fuel source. Sam’s health deteriorates and he wakes in the sickbay to the familiar voice of resident computer GERTY (Spacey), with no recollection how he got back to base. The astronaut’s mounting paranoia turns to confusion when he is greeted by a familiar face.

Traversing similar terrain to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien and Silent Running, Moon is a haunting meditation on alienation and solitude.

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