LoveFilm have recently updated their apps such that the films download a lot faster and more reliably, so I've been watching a lot more movies.
Brooklyn's Finest
This is an American cop movie starring Don Cheadle, Wesley Snipes, Ethan Hawke (who once signed one his novels in Chelmsford!) and Richard Gere.
The movie follows the paths of three different policemen: a burnout seven days until he retires (Gere); a desperate family man who hits on the idea of robbing drug dealers (Hawke); and an undercover cop and having divided loyalties (Cheadle).
Although an excellent crime drama, it does suffer from having too many stories to tell. The burnout story could have been left out and more effort put into the other two stories, but each of the stories could have made a decent movie all by itself. Cheadle stands out for me as the conflicted undercover cop, but the others are all excellent, despite their limited screen time.
Angels and Demons
This is the adaption of the book by Dan Brown, whose name is a curse on the lips of every second-hand book seller:
If The DaVinci Code was silly, this is just ludicrous. I just wanted the bomb to go off - right in the middle of Vatican City, half way through the movie, so I didn't have to sit through the rest of this waste of celluloid. I hope it bombed.
Persepolis
This is an adaption of
Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical comic book about growing up and living in Iran and Vienna:
Satrapi was co-director of the film, so what you see is pretty much as the books tell it. It's also a sad film as her family suffered terribly in the revolution and the Iran-Iraq war and she ends up leaving Iran forever, but it is a story about freedom and what it costs. The rendition of "Eye of the Tiger" was beyond funny.
