Something 4 The Weekend by
Welcome ladies, gentlemen and film
fans everywhere to entertainment manchester's weekly
feature 'Something for the Weekend'. If, as
Forrest Gump once might have said were he a film fan,
cinema really is like a box of chocolates, then think
of us as your mini-menu, steering you away from the
coffee creams and towards the Turkish delights of the
movie world.
BBC 1. Football. BBC 2. Worthy drama. ITV. Football. Channel 4. Reality TV. Channel 5. Well, Channel 5's just Channel 5. As per usual, the TV is offering viewers very little this week, unless you're keen on seeing England struggle against teams they really should be hammering. So, if you're looking for something else to do between now and the time Brazil lift the World Cup in Berlin, here's what the world of film has to offer you from Friday onwards.
Aaron Ekhart stars in Jason 'son of Ivan' Rietman's Thank You For Smoking, playing Nick Naylor, a morally bankrupt tobacco industry spokesman who has a talent for deflecting criticisms as freely as Paraguayan defenders deflect free kicks. The only problem is that his son Joey (Cameron Bright), is looking to his father for moral guidance - quite a problem when Nick is busy telling other kids about the joys of lighting up.
Maria Bello, William H Macy and Katie Holmes co-star as a fellow tobacco lobbyist, anti-smoking senator and destructive reporter respectively, meaning Reitman's film is certainly star-studded. However, being so un-PC and addressing an issue as divisive as smoking, it could prove controversial, much like Hard Candy, a paedophile thriller starring Patrick Wilson and X-Men 3’s Ellen Page as a 32-year-old man and the 14-year-old he meets on the internet respectively in a film which could well top this year‘s Daily Mail ‘Ban This Sick Filth’ list.
If you do happen to be a Daily Mail reader, there’s the more stately presence of An Unfinished Life, which, I regret to inform you, stars Jennifer Lopez. In Lasse Halstrom's film, J to the L-O plays Jean Gilkyson, a widowed single mother who is also estranged from her father-in-law, played by Robert Redford. Needing support to bring up her daughter, Jean decides to move in with The OAP Sundance Kid and together they are forced to confront their differences and grow as people blah-de-blah-de-blah. Morgan Freeman also stars, but let's face it, that really doesn't neutralise the Lopez threat, does it?
Back for a THIRD (?!) instalment, The Fast and the Furious 3 boasts neither Vin Diesel or Paul Walker, but the acting power house that is Lil’ Bow Wow (yipee-yo-yipee-yea. Where my dawgs at? Bark with me now!). Being subtitled Tokyo Drift, it's hardly surprising to learn that it's set in Japan, but what is strange is that the drift doesn’t refer to drifting off to sleep, but to some special kind of cars that drift down the road. Or something.
Next up: lesbians. Two of them, played by Piper Perabo and Lena Headey in Imagine Me and You. Boasting the ingenious tagline 'A love story between a woman...and another woman', Ol Parker's film finds Perabo's blushing bride Rachel leaving her husband at the alter to hook up with Heady's florist Luce. A heartwarming tale of lesbo infidelity then. Go see if only for the appearance of someone called Boo Jackson.
Finally, if lesbians don't tickle your pickle, it's either Stay Alive, a nasty teen horror film about a nasty online game or Lobo (The Wolf) a drama about a Spanish secret agent who infiltrates terrorist group ETA. So, if you're looking for something fun, maybe it's best to hunker down with Crouch, Owen and Beckham after all.
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