FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL * * *
Cert 15 111 mins
Chubby underachiever Peter (Jason Segel) is crushed when Sarah (Kristen Bell), the star of the TV cop series for which he writes the incidental music, dumps him after five years and takes up with narcissistic English pop star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand). 

Finding that casual sex isn’t helping, he takes the advice of brother-in-law Brian (Bill Hader) and heads to Hawaii to get away from it all.Unfortunately, he finds himself in the same hotel as Sarah and, that’s right, Aldous. Cue much cry baby wallowing and commiserating from hotel staff like barman Dwayne (Davon McDonald), surf instructor Chuck (Paul Rudd) and chef Kemo (Taylor Wily) whose idea of cheering him up is getting him to help slaughter a pig.

The most welcome and indeed most attractive shoulder, though, is that of desk clerk Rachael (Mila Kunis), who herself came to Hawaii to escape heartbreak. 

Naturally, this being a boy-loses-girl, boy-meets-new-girl romcom, she and Peter strike up a tentative relationship, but the constant presence of Sarah and Snow doesn’t make it easy for him to get past the pain, even if he does come to realise he was always living in her celebrity shadow. The reason is, of course, he’s never got round to completing his Dracula rock opera, with puppets.

Equally naturally, this being another from the Judd Apatow comedy factory, there’s several wholly unnecessary (no, it’s about showing vulnerable emotional nakedness, really!) full frontal shots as well as much talk of sexual practices, genitalia and so forth. 

A mix of the rude and the sweet like Knocked Up, but not quite as funny, Segel, who also provides the screenplay, makes for an appealing self-pitying sad sack. Bell and Kunis have spark to go with the eye candy and, dryly channelling Mick Jagger in the way Johnny Depp channels Keef Richards, an amusingly droll Brand proves a real screen presence. If he learns to act rather than just deadpan lines, he could have a proper big screen future.

This being an Apatow production, there’s the obligatory cameos by Jonah Hill as a star-struck waiter and Jack McBrayer as the honeymooner whose Christian beliefs are at odds with his wife’s sexual demands. 

William Baldwin and Jason Bateman also put in game appearances, playing themsleves, as Sarah’s TV show co-stars.

Never side-splittingly hilarious and somewhat flabbily repetitive around the midsection, even so there’s laughs here you’ll be remembering for weeks to come.

STOP LOSS * * *
Cert 15 112 mins
According to the end titles, to date the American government has exercised a military loophole to "stop-loss" some 80,000 service men and women.

That is to say they have, by dint of a Presidential order, been sent back to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan despite their contracted tour of duty having officially come to an end.  One such was the younger brother of Kimberly Peirce who has taken the issue to heart for the much belated follow up to her 1999 Oscar winning debut Boys Don’t Cry. 

The narrative revolves around three central characters, hometown Texas buddies and soldiers Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Steve (Channing Tatum), and their former sergeant in Iraq, Brandon (Ryan Phillippe).

Returning home, they’re hailed as heroes but find it hard to reclimatise after everything they’ve seen and been through. Brandon, especially, is haunted by a decision taken in the film’s opening firefight, blaming himself for the death of one of his men and the severe wounding of another.
 However, that is something to try and put behind him as he returns to a semblance of normal, civilian life. Or so he thinks until he’s given orders to report back for duty in Iraq. 

Angered at what he sees as his country’s breach of moral trust as well as contract, he refuses and goes AWOL, determined to take his case to Washington. Helping him get there is childhood friend Michelle (Abbie Cornish) who also happens to be the fiancée of jingoistic bomb-them-all-to-hell Steve. He’s been stop-lossed too. But he’s ready to return and is determined to persuade Brandon to do likewise. 

Evoking both Born On The Fourth of July and The Deer Hunter (especially so in Tommy’s fate), it never burns with quite the same heat. There’s some strained narrative choices and the ending feels like an uncomfortable compromise between questioning the morality and legality of the government’s actions and honouring the patriotism of the men who fight.

But, powerfully acted and often emotionally brutal, it clearly has the passion and the righteous anger of its convictions.

THREE AND OUT * * *
Cert 15 106 mins
The last time Mackenzie Crook had a leading big screen role was in Sex Lives Of The Potato Men. Quite possibly the worst film ever made.

So you can imagine expectations weren’t high for this in which he plays tube driver Paul Callow who, having had two people go under his wheels in as many weeks, is told by colleagues of an unspoken rule that says if you kill three within a month you’re paid off with 10 years salary. 

In debt and desperate to escape London to a rural seclusion so he can write his novel, the opportunity isn’t lost on Paul who quickly sets about trying to find a potential willing victim. 

Which, after a run in with a French chef (a dreadfully hamming Antony Sher) who wants Paul to cook and eat his body parts, he chances upon Tommy (Colm Meaney), a down and out Irishman about to throw himself from a bridge.

A deal’s duly struck with Paul paying him a wad of cash to enjoy the weekend before doing the deed on Monday. However, before he goes, Tommy wants to settle an old score with a former gambling associate and put things in order with the wife and daughter he walked out on eight years earlier. Naturally, Paul insists on tagging along to protect his investment.

Up to this point, it’s an amusing broad black farce. But the moment things shift to the Lake District and Imelda Staunton and St Trinians star Gemma Arterton enter proceedings as the abandoned family, the film’s tone shifts dramatically to become something far more emotionally deep and affectingly poignant about the difficult pursuit of happiness.

Staunton’s so good and so real she forces everyone to raise their game and, although director Jonathan Gershfield still can’t resist a cowpat moment, he doesn’t compromise on promises made come Monday morning. Uneven yes, but far better than you might imagine.

PERSEPOLIS * * *
Cert 12A 96 mins
Winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes and nominated for an Oscar as Best Animation, Marjane Satrapi co-directs the adaptation of her own best selling graphic novel about growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war, recalling the hope that followed the overthrow of the Shah’s dictatorship and the oppression that followed with the rise of the fundamentalist Mullahs.

Framed with colour sequences of the grown Marjane (voiced by Chiara Mastroianni) sitting in a Paris airport lounge, the simply drawn black and white flashbacks detail her impressionable childhood and the rebellious teen years when her parents managed to get her out of Iran to study in Vienna where indulgence in Western excess was followed by homesickness and reacceptance of her roots.

Although it plays like a primer in contemporary Iranian political history, the film is far from dour. Indeed, despite talk of repression, torture and executions, Satrapi successfully finds the comedy in her story.

Especially amusing are the scenes of her getting down to a black market Iron Maiden cassette and sporting a punk t-shirt to the horror of two Islamic women; a reminder that teens are teens the world over.

Full of wonderful small details and insights, it’s also a welcome challenging of the West’s perception of ordinary Iranians and Muslin women in particular.  Catherine Deneuve revoiced into English her role as Marjane’s mother to splendid effect, though having other family members speaking in the American accents of Sean Penn, Gena Rowlands and Iggy Pop in the dubbed version strikes as a somewhat unintended irony.

THE EYE *
Cert 15 96 mins
Hobbling lamely on the heels of One Missed Call, here’s yet another American remake of a J-horror that proves a pale, insipid echo of the original. 

That was the genuinely scary and visually inventive work of the Pang brothers, Oxide and Danny, who breathed life into the already familiar set up of a young woman seeking out the origins of a supernatural evil in an attempt to bring the terror to an end.

Following their suspenseful French debut Them, directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud are disappointingly plodding here, following much the same plot line.

A blind woman (in this case a conCert violinist) has a corneal transplant, starts seeing dead people and the harvesters of their souls and joins forces with her psychotherapist to track down the donor’s identity and discover the purpose behind what she believes to be inherited memories.

It is, though, doomed from the outset by casting Jessica Alba as the afflicted heroine. No one deserves to be landed with the dialogue she has, but it’s fair to say she sinks to the occasion with a performance that might have given even Ed Wood second thoughts. 

Hardly surprising that Alessandro Nivola can’t summon the enthusiasm to heat up any chemistry between them as her shrink while casting Parker Posey as her sister is a stretch even for a film that’s already pushing credibility to the limit.  There’s a couple of spooky moments, but really you should just blink and miss it.