New to rent (From The Northern Echo)

New to rent

11:56am Thursday 8th July 2010 in

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Green Zone (15, 114 mins, Universal Pictures, DVD £19.99/Blu-ray £24.99/Limited Edition Steelbook Blu-ray £27.99).

Stars: Matt Damon, Khalid Abdalla, Greg Kinnear, Jason Isaacs, Brendan Gleeson.

FOUR weeks after a 1993 blitzkrieg on Baghdad, US Army warrant officer Roy Miller (Damon) and his team seek the weapons of mass destruction. Based on a book by journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Green Zone is a breathless two hours of adrenaline-pumping action and political manoeuvring that places as much emphasis on emotionally charged dialogue as the set pieces. The film is distinguished by Paul Greengrass’ tour-de-force direction, galloping through the streets of Baghdad with handheld cameras so we remain uncomfortably close to Miller as he risks his life for a country he was entrusted to tear apart.

Valentine’s Day (12, 119 mins, Warner, DVD £19.99/Blu-ray £24.99).

Stars: Ashton Kutcher, Jessica Alba, George Lopez, Jennifer Garner, Bryce Robinson, Shirley MacLaine, Hector Elizondo, Jamie Foxx, Queen Latifah, Jessica Biel, Eric Dane, Julia Roberts, Bradley Cooper.

FLORIST Reed (Kutcher) proposes to career-driven girlfriend Morley (Alba) and miraculously she accepts, to the surprise of his happily married right-hand man, Alphonso (Lopez), and teacher best friend, Julia (Garner). Elsewhere, a string of Valentine’s Day events are part of a morass of cloying fairytale romances across the generations that predominantly end with a happy ever after or, at the very least, a comeuppance and emotional closure.

Screenwriter Katherine Fugate has evidently overdosed on Richard Curtis’ comedy Love Actually, penning her own version on the sun-baked streets of Los Angeles.

Leap Year (PG, 96 mins, Optimum, DVD £19.99/Blu-ray £24.99).

Stars: Amy Adams, Matthew Goode, Adam Scott, John Lithgow.

ANNA Brady (Adams) follows conference-bound cardiologist boyfriend Jeremy (Scott) to Dublin to propose to him on Leap Day. Her itinerary falls apart when bad weather forces the airplane to make a detour and she calls upon the services of handsome innkeeper Declan (Goode) to help her travel all of the way to Dublin in time for February 29. The sappy road movie has lead characters that are an unlikely match while screenwriters Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont clumsily contrive slapstick interludes, building to a happy ending set on a windswept clifftop.