ASH WEDNESDAY Cert 18, 98 mins X
Fatally, Ash Wednesday asks us to swallow that Elijah Wood is Edward Burns's brother. Wood and Burns are so different - not just physically (one a hobbit, the other a jock) but in manner, spirit, breed.
Burns never reacts to anything, while Wood is always shaking his noble head, and working his space-monkey eyes.
The action takes place in the Irish sector of Hell's Kitchen. Wood comes out of hiding after murdering two local hoods (file under Unlikely) and big brother Burns must protect him.
This might have been a good film if Burns (writer, director, producer) had tried harder. It could have been one of those jangly, talky flicks in which compromised but essentially good men on the brink of redemption get shot in alleys near the Hudson, and after which you can't shake the gloom for the rest of the week. It isn't.
THE PERFECT SCORE Cert 12a, 93 mins X
A wannabe architect, failing at school, needs to up his grades. He recruits an academically diverse team of fellow students to help, but their collective brain conjures something more criminal.
Marketed as a sort of Breakfast Club meets Ocean's Eleven, this has little in common with either. A clingy voiceover goes on about how exams render us little more than machines, and like, that's totally unfair. It makes The Breakfast Club look like one of the smartest experiences of your life.
Scarlett Johansson appears as a laconic brunette. This, of course, before she became the most laconic blonde in the world, after Owen Wilson.
The Perfect Score
Cert: cert12A
