COMPETITION: Step Brothers

How to describe Step Brothers? How about ‘ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha’ ? Yeah, that’s pretty much spot on.

The film sees funnymen Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly go head to head as pair of manchildren who go head to head after their single parents marry.

We’ve got four copies of this bad boy to give away and to win, just answer this question:

What is the name of the racing-based comedy Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly starred in together?

Send your answers to competitions@the-void.co.uk by March 1.

COMPETITION: Death Race

Jason Statham is king of the world, which by default makes Death Race king of the movies.

Death Race is the most extreme racing competition on Earth, where convicts get behind the wheel and race to the death. The rules are simple: win five events and you’re set free.  Lose, and you’re roadkill on the internet.

A reimaginging of Roger Corman’s classic Death Race 2000, this sexy new version has faster cars, badder bad guys, hotter women and bigger explosions, and it can be yours just by entering this competition.

We’ve got three Death Race sets to give away, each one containing a copy of the film on DVD along with a cap and t-shirt.

To win, just answer this question:

What is the name of Jason Statham’s character in The Transporter?

Send your answers to competitions@the-void.co.uk by March 1.

Start your engines!

CINEMA: The Wrestler

Sometimes, casting directors get it so right you cannot conceive of anyone else playing a film role than the person they have chosen for it.

This is absolutely the case with Mickey Rourke and his character in this film – Randy ‘the Ram’ Robinson a washed-up, has-been pro wrestler with dodgy joints, an even dodgier ticker, but an unquenched thirst for the adulation from the crowd. Once Randy was a true star of the ring, feeding off the roar from his fans, now he’s living in a trailer and forced to do sparsely attended exhibition bouts and signings in school sports halls in order to earn a dime. This isn’t the life he envisaged for himself and so against the advice of everyone around him, Randy goes back on the circuit – and almost kills himself.

However, his recuperation at first proves therapeutic with Randy taking the time to build bridges between himself and his estranged lesbian daughter (Evan Rachel Wood), and even to embark on a quasi-romance with exotic dancer Cassidy (a welcome if rare glimpse of Marisa Tomei).

But Randy is like an old lion put out to grass – he craves one last chance to bask in the glory and the limelight and so with the aid of enough painkillers to fell a horse dons his wrestling shorts again and returns to the ring.

Director Darren Aronofsky favours a low-key approach to the story, shooting in almost documentary style, the camera often following Rourke around like a faithful dog. In fact, the film needs no fancy shots or special effects because Rourke effectively carries the film single-handedly. He really is Randy; he eats, breathes, sleeps the excitement, raw physicality and adrenalin rush of the ring and you can actually see his eyes come alive as the applause from the audience reaches a crescendo. It is an absolutely riveting, extraordinary performance full of bittersweet pathos (Randy the Ram is basically held together with bits of tape and prescription drugs).

Mickey Rourke may have been a troubled soul, but he is also a trooper and this, his triumphant return to mainstream movies, must taste all the sweeter after years spent on the sidelines.       Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Seven Pounds

We are so used these days to seeing Will Smith in comedy roles it is easy to forget that he’s actually a very fine dramatic actor. However, his talents are ill served in this very worthy modern day morality tale which is so downbeat it almost exudes grey.

Smith plays a man haunted by a mistake he made in his past and now seeking to atone for what he sees as a great sin. He has set himself the task of helping seven strangers in order to clear the slate, but as he soon finds out it is not always easy to help those who will not help themselves, including a blind pianist (Woody Harrelson) and a battered mother too afraid to escape with her children. However, there is one person he can definitely help – the beautiful but fragile Emily (Rosario Dawson) – but in order to do so he must make the ultimate sacrifice.

Smith looks gaunt and haunted in the movie and tries his best to convey the spiritual agony his character is going through, but the problem is in order not to give away the ending of the film, he actually has to remain something of a cipher. Because of this, what should be heartbreaking is rendered rather dry and almost dull with little bits of plot drip-fed to the audience so slowly they may well lose patience with the whole thing a long time before the denouement.       Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: A Christmas Tale

Screwed up, bourgeoise, chain-smoking, spirit-drinking French families – don’t you just love them? Well, not if they are the family depicted in this chaotic, sometimes charming, and sometimes extremely irritating French film that features a Gallic gathering which turns almost gothic.

Junon (Catherine Deneuve) and Abel (Jean-Paul Roussignon) are the matriach and patriach of a sprawling clan once traumatised by the death of their first-born son. Now their three surviving children are gathering for Christmas with assorted husbands, wives and children in tow. Soon, the family home is full to bursting – not just with people, but also with their squabbles, resentments, hatreds and petty jealousies.

The biggest fly in the ointment is middle son Henri (Mathieu Amalric), an alcoholic at war with older sister Elizabeth (Anne Consigny) and intent on making mischief. But in fact, there doesn’t seem to be one ‘normal’ relationship between all of them and although some of the bickering is amusing and the scenes with the children adorable, this is one dysfunctional family you will be more than happy to see the back of come New Year.      Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Clubbed

Based on the book Watch My Back by Geoff Thompson this is a trawl through the seedier side of life in Britain’s clubs during the 1980s. It follows the fortunes of Danny (Mel Raido), a family man who has cheated on his wife, been kicked out of the family home, and is now rather lost.

His fortunes change when he gets beaten up by some thugs and decides to start fighting back. He meets Louis (Colin Salmon), Sparky (Scot Williams – a dead ringer for Jonny Lee Miller in Trainspotting) and Rob (Shaun Parkes) at the local boxing club and as they become mates they invite him to join them as bouncers on the door of the local nightclub. But things are not all as they seem because Sparky is a loose cannon – accepting backhanders to let in the drug dealers – while Rob is on a mission to bring down the local crime boss, and the internal tension at the club soon escalates into all out war.

Clubbed deals with material that has been well covered by previous films (‘hard’ men, tribalism in inner cities and drug culture) and although certain individual performances are good (Shaun Parkes in particular) the problem is you never feel any real sympathy for central character Danny as he brings most of his problems on himself. It also lacks the great sense of energy and dynamism that epitomised the 1980s and ultimately is rather bland.

Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Bride Wars

In which the case of equality for women is thrown back at least 40 years, because if you were to believe this excruciatingly dated movie the only thing clever, ambitious women want to do is get married – right? Wrong!

The women in question are best friends Liv (Kate Hudson) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) who are now all grown up and in good jobs (Liv is a lawyer, Kate a teacher) with live-in boyfriends. They’ve both always dreamed about getting married at New York’s Plaza Hotel and so when their boyfriends propose they immediately make a dual appointment to see hot wedding planner in town Marion (Candice Bergen) in order to reserve their dates. But somehow, among all the talk of dresses, flowers and invitations, the bookings at the Plaza get mixed up and the girls suddenly find themselves getting married on the same day, at the same time, in the same hotel. The boys’ answer to this is to have a double wedding, however the thought of sharing their special day, albeit with their supposed best friend, sends the girls into a frenzy of tit for tat pettiness as they try to spoil each other’s weddings.

What were Hudson and Hathaway thinking signing up to a movie that would have looked retro in the 50s, let alone the noughties? Bride Wars is supposed to be a comedy, instead it’s an embarrassing farce, portraying women as mean-spirited harpies whose only mission in life is to get that ring on their fingers. On no account treat this as a good first date movie, because having seen two supposedly sane, intelligent women descend into Stepford Wife caricatures, any red-blooded man worth his salt will turn into a paranoid commitmentphobe.      Dee Pilgrim.

CINEMA: Defiance

From Bond to gritty resistance fighter, Daniel Craig’s steely blue gaze and chiselled jaw serve him well as a man of courageous acts yet few words. Here he stars in an amazing true story of valour and resilience as one of three Eastern European Jewish brothers who managed to keep hundreds of their fellow Jews alive during the Nazi reign of terror by hiding them deep in the woods, far from prying eyes.

Tuvia (Craig), Zus (Liev Schrieber) and Asael (Jamie Bell) are reluctant saviours – at first they hide in the woods after their farm is attacked and their parents killed. But as more displaced Jews join them they realise in order to survive they must build a community and all work together for the common good. Scavenging for food, putting their skills to good use and building a village underground they manage to evade their tormentors and even find love with their ‘forest’ wives.

The look of the film, all cold blues and muted browns, gives a feel of the raw elements these people are subjected to after they have lost their homes and loved ones, while director Edward Zwick deals with a lot of big issues –vengeance, race, family, greed, desperation – with little dialogue, letting actions speak louder than words.

Although Craig and Schrieber are well matched as the older brothers it is Jamie Bell who really shines here, his Asael is a mix of burning anger and frustration at his own inability to change the world order. This is a very human story, told simply but incredibly touching in its exploration of the better aspects of human nature coming to the fore in times of great distress.       Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Slumdog Millionaire

Although Slumdog could never really live up to the enormous hype surrounding it, this is one British-made movie with worldwide appeal – and a welcome tale of hope, happiness and success it is in these gloomy times.

This is the story of one young man’s rags to Rajah rise, as a son of the slums makes it onto national television and is given the opportunity to win a fortune. The film opens in the sprawling slums of Mumbai where young muslim brothers Salim and Jamal run wild with their mates. But their lives are changed forever when their mother is killed in a religious uprising. Forced to fend for themselves they team up with orphaned Latika and are lured into a life of begging and scavenging in order to survive. As they grow, the brothers choose different destinies with the more hard-hearted Salim (Madhur Mittal) throwing his lot in with the city’s biggest crime lord and taking the blossoming Latika (Freida Pinto) with him, while Jamal (Dev Patel) decides to stay on the right side of the law, although the loss of Latika, his one true love, hits him hard.

A few years later, Jamal is scraping a living as a teaboy for a mobile phone company and waiting for his one chance to win Latika back.  It comes when he becomes a contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?  But can a slumdog be trusted? As Jamal keeps answering questions correctly quizmaster Prem (Anil Kappor) smells a rat and it looks like Jamal’s efforts will all be in vain as the police are called in.

Although director Danny Boyle does not shy away from the nastier, harsher side of life on the streets in Mumbai’s desperately impoverished slums, it is the feelgood factor of the film that makes the biggest impression. At no time do you ever stop rooting for Jamal, played with a winning blend of innocence and optimism by young Dev Patel. There is a vibrancy, exuberance and kinetic movement about the action that means the plot never stops rushing relentlessly on – all that bustle and motion mimicking the life of the great city of Mumbai itself.

Our own version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? has never been this nail-bitingly exciting and the happy ever after ending is life-affirming rather than being twee. If you want to start the year with a big fat grin on your face, then this is the film guaranteed to put it there.      Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Yes Man

Jim Carrey has always been a bit of a Marmite actor – you either love him or loathe his gurning, OTT style of comedy. However, age seems to have mellowed him and this, his latest slice of silliness (based on the book by Danny Wallace) is actually a genuinely funny and rather sweet romcom.

Carrey is Carl Allen, a ‘no’ kinda guy, stuck in a rut after being left by the love of his life. Now, rather than take chances, he sits at home and mopes. However, that all changes when he is taken to a self-help conference led by motivational speaker Terrence Bundley (an on form Terence Stamp) who advocates people say ‘yes’ to everything life throws at them. Soon, Carl is out partying and jogging, he’s taken up photography and riding a motorbike, and now approves every single applicant coming for a loan at the bank he works in. He also takes a chance on love with the free-spirited Allison (Zooey Deschanel) who shows him just how wonderful it can be if you just say yes to life.

Although the beginning of the movie is a bit of a slow burner, once it hits its stride it doesn’t look back and the humour here is warm and generous rather than mean-spirited. Carrey is never better than when whacked out on Red Bull or bouncing the laughs off his boss at the bank, Norm (played with charm by Kiwi actor Rhys Darby). However, it is the criminally under-rated Zooey Deschanel who really shines and brings out the best in Carrey in a movie that really will have you chortling in the aisles.      Dee Pilgrim