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This week's new movies

Seth Rogen and Adam Sandler together at last. It’s fun for them and maybe a good career move but a only mixed bag of a movie for us. Your alternatives this week include a great deal of suspense and music.

FUNNY PEOPLE: Local boy Seth Rogen is back where he belongs, in Judd Apatow’s comedy troupe. They understand him and use him to good effect, unlike the off-putting results of two of his other recent outings made in other camps. Here he’s playing what he knows, a standup comedian looking for fame at the improvs. He, Apatow and co-star Adam Sandler have all been there so there’s an authentic feel to this film. Unfortunately it’s a shallow world they inhabit and the film is self-absorbed, much too long and only fitfully funny. The story touches lightly on success, loyalty, friendship and most of all narcissism. Sandler plays a comic much like himself. He’s rich making bad movies, but he’s also a jerk, divorced, friendless and diagnosed with leukemia. Rogen is drawn step by step into his chaotic and needy life when he starts writing jokes for him. A common movie story unfolds. Who will change, and in what way? It’s told with at least as much serious content as comedy, which may surprise the fans. Rest assured, though, there are lots of smutty jokes and celebrity sightings. Eminem’s is the funniest but James Taylor’s is the most telling. When Rogen asks if he gets tired of always singing the same songs, Taylor counters with: “Do you ever get tired joking about your dick?” Not in this movie, he doesn’t. Nobody does. (At theatres all over)


FOR HER (POUR ELLE): Ready for a good suspense thriller from France? This one is worth your time and you might as well catch it now, as part of the Ridge Theatre’s French Film Festival. An English re-make has been announced, to be directed by Oscar-winner Paul Haggis (“Crash”). The original cranks up the tension nicely in the story of an ordinary man driven to extremes. He’s a high school teacher whose quiet life has been shattered. The police barged in and arrested his wife (Diane Kruger) for murder. She’s now in prison showing suicidal tendencies, while he (Vincent Lindon) has run out of possibilities to prove her innocence. So, he decides to break her out of jail. To learn how, get fake passports made up and get enough money together, he has to consort with a bunch of low-life types, which comes across as highly improbable. Get past it, though, to when the police get on his trail, and you’ll be hooked. The film has a brisk pace and an economical way in telling its story. The acting is solid, even by Kruger, and Lindon is another plain looking but strong Gallic everyman..

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Disney wildlife times two, a blast at American politics and a traumatic teen drama

Also a couple of small but amiable comedies, one of them Canadian

More streaming ideas take you to Brazil, low-life China and two Jesse Eisenberg films

As well as a cleverly-plotted trip to Barcelona thanks to Netflix

Movie theatres are shut down, so what’s streaming?

Some modest recommendations and stay for the last one, an alarm about what has happened to the internet.
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