film
RIDDICK ***
by Keiron Self
RUSH ****
Dir: Ron Howard (15, 123 mins) The epic battle between James Hunt and Niki Lauda dominated Formula 1 racing in the 70s. Very different on paper, James Hunt was the risk-taking British playboy who partied hard and Lauda the clinical, seemingly emotionless Austrian who would be struck down by tragedy and rise again. Ron Howard’s film follows them through their turbulent 1976 season with hair racing results and meandering accents. Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth, plays long haired lothario Hunt and the excellent Daniel Bruhl his rival. Their relationship forms the basis of this bio-pic scripted by Peter Morgan, writer of The Queen. By displaying its characters warts and all, amidst some nerve-shredding races, and blending CGI with real footage, Rush manages to place you behind the steering wheel. Olivia Wilde and Natalie Dormer show up as Hunt’s female conquests and director Howard painstakingly recreates 1976 and the races themselves. Lauda’s accident is suitably grim, and his return to racing only 42 days later makes for compelling viewing, thanks to Bruhl and Howard’s deft documentary handling of events. Opens Sept 13
Dir: David Twohy (15, 119 mins) After the bloated excesses of The Chronicles Of Riddick, a film that tried to create an epic mythology for Vin Diesel’s titular character, this third film featuring the growly anti-hero goes back to basics. This is very much in the same vein as the classier ‘aliens in the dark’ film Pitch Black, with Riddick now left for dead on a sun-scorched planet and attracting the attention of a ship-load of bounty hunters and a mysterious figure from Riddick’s past. The planet itself is full of nasty beasties too so it’s a good job our hero can see in the dark, as he dispenses aliens and pursuers with gravelly-voiced gore aplenty. On his tail is Katee Sackhoff from Battlestar Galactica, still very much capable of rocking a vest, and some lesser known expendable alien fodder, who inevitably die messy deaths as a catastrophic super storm closes in. Plenty