Street Kings

(15)

Alcoholic Los Angeles cop Tom Ludlow (Keanu Reeves) goes to the line and well beyond it to rescue two kidnapped young girls at the start of this hard-edged and bloody thriller. “We’re the police,” he says, “we can do whatever the hell we want.”

Which is exactly what happens when, while being investigated for alleged wrongdoing by cynical Captain James Biggs (Hugh Laurie, doing an enjoyably grumpy riff on his moody medico in television’s House), he seeks revenge and sets out to clear himself.

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Fool's Gold

(12A)

Treasure hunters Ben (Matthew McConaughey) and Tess (Kate Hudson) have just divorced. The reason for the split is revealed by Tess’s sardonic divorce lawyer who observes: “You married the guy for sex and expected him to be smart?”

But the couple reluctantly join forces again to find sunken Spanish treasure off the coast of Florida (played here, quite convincingly in fact, by the coast of Queensland, Australia).

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21

(15)

This fascinating fact-inspired thriller (adapted from Ben Mezrich’s book Bringing Down the House) centres on genius maths student Ben (Jim Sturgess), who is recruited by Kevin Spacey’s devious professor Micky Rosa to join a team of gifted students who use their number skills to win fortunes at Las Vegas casinos.

Kate Bosworth in 21

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Leatherheads

(PG) Wise-cracking Chicago newspaper journalist Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger) is assigned to investigate too-good-to-be true World War One hero-turned-college football idol Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) who is signed by fellow football hero Dodge Connolly (George Clooney) to save his failing team. Naturally both men make a play for Lexie. Clooney, who doubles as director, stages some exciting football sequences, but, hampered by the lumpen screenplay, he mostly fails to revive the spirit of vintage 1930s screwball comedies.

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Shine A Light

(12A)

This concert movie is guaranteed to please Rolling Stones fans, who will love the vivid coverage of the band’s recent concert at New York’s Beacon Theatre, interspersed with flashbacks to past interviews, notably one showing Mick Jagger speaking in an upper-class English accent rather than his more usual mockney. Given all four of the Stones — Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood — are now eligible for bus passes, their on-stage energy is remarkable.

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Ran Tal: Orphaned by idealism

Director Ran Tal focuses on the kibbutz children who were separated from their parents and raised according to the principles of collective living. It seemed a huge price to pay for utopia

An elderly Israeli man is explaining how he got his name. "There was a vote... Nachum won by eight votes." Another man recalls how he never called his parents "mummy" or "daddy", only by their names. Anything else was "too bourgeois".

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Secret plight of the desert nomads

Ori Kleiner’s film demands that Israel’s Bedouins be rescued from a life of terrible poverty.

Nobody could view Ori Kleiner’s documentary about the lives of Bedouin communities in Israel as anything but a damning social critique. Shot on location in the Negev over the summer of 2006, Recognized presents a shocking portrait of the desperate poverty facing many of Israel’s estimated 110,000 strong Bedouin population.

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Son Of Rambow

(12A)

Too many recent period movies — The Other Boleyn Girl is a notable example — have excessive period detail dumped on them. But writer-director Garth Jennings’s perceptive coming-of-age comedy subtly establishes its 1982 suburban England setting without over-dressing.

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No more Mr Grumpy

Mike Leigh, the acclaimed director of bleak movies, tells Stephen Applebaum that his gloomy days are over

For more than 30 years, Mike Leigh has mapped the tragicomedy of everyday life, in the process uncovering universal truths about the human condition. His film work in particular, as in Naked and the Oscar-nominated abortion drama Vera Drake, can be disturbing, bleak and emotionally gruelling. If there is hope, it is usually of the faint variety.

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Funny Games

(18) Ten years ago, Austrian writer-director Michael Haneke made a German-language thriller about two young psychopaths holding a holidaying family hostage, terrorising them and forcing them to “play” the eponymous funny games. It was well directed and acted. It was also shocking, sordid and exploitative.

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