Halloween (15)
Directed by David Gordon Green
★★★★

FORTY YEARS ago, Jamie Lee Curtis found shock-film fame as she faced the crazed masked killer Michael Myers in John Carpenter’s genre classic.

They’re back again, with Curtis playing the Laurie Strode character from the first film and its two sequels and facing Myers (Jude Courtney), who's still slavering for serial slaughter despite being chained up in prison.

Ignoring previous story lines, director David Gordon Green, who co-wrote the script with Jeff Fradley and Danny McBride, has Myers escaping from jail and embarking on another, far bloodier killing spree, but Strode, having waited armed and dangerous all these years, is determined to kill him.

Cleverly, the old follow-ups to 1978’s Halloween are ignored, so that the film comes across as a very powerful, heart-thumping sequel to the original.

Curtis is superb, as is Judy Greer as her daughter driven away by her mother's obsessional behaviour only to end up facing Myers on his new killing spree.

The suspense and gore-splattered slayings mount, but Gordon Green always ensures that the key characters are credible and in tune with the environment of the small Illinois town where the film is set.

Alan Frank

After the Screaming Stops (15)
Directed by Joe Pearlman and David Soutar
★★★

BROS fans are in for a treat with this candid documentary, which chronicles the stormy reunion between Matt and Luke Goss as they prepare to play again for the first time in 28 years.

The twin brothers became teenage pop sensations back in the late 1980s with hits like When Will I Be Famous and I Owe You Nothing and they were also the youngest band to headline Wembley, with the opening credits very cleverly charting the rise and sudden fall of the band via pictures, film footage and newspaper headlines of the time.

After their shock split both brothers went to live in the US, where lead singer Matt continued in the music industry in Las Vegas while drummer Luke became a Hollywood actor appearing in a couple of Guillermo del Toro films. According to his co-star Ron Perlman, Del Toro adores Luke.

But despite not being in contact for almost 30 years, the animosity, the rivalry, past grievances and twin complexes between the brothers are still alive and kicking and they make for gripping viewing as you wait for the pair to implode as they attempt an ambitious reunion gig last year.

Film-makers Joe Pearlman and David Soutar deliver an affectionate yet humorous portrait, underpinned by a number of poignant moments when the pair discuss their late mother and younger sister who died in a car crash when they were at their height.

It is a nail-biting “will they or won't they make it to the gig?” kind of offering and it's a riveting watch, even for non-Bros fans.

Maria Duarte

Science Fair (PG)
Directed by Christina Costantini and Darren Foster
★★★★★

NOWADAYS, documentaries more often than not ask more of the viewer than does the average fiction film.

They tend to be made for the small screen, so all praise then to National Geographic, producers of this charming, quirky and consistently fascinating film for cinema release which follows nine high school students from all around the world as they compete for a place in the International Science and Engineering Fair in Los Angeles.

Film-makers Christina Constantini and Darren Foster vividly chart the progress of a fascinatingly mixed bunch of science and engineering hopefuls. These are scarily clever youngsters, but we're willingly drawn into learning about them, their hopes, dreams and extraordinary experiments and creations.

The film truthfully charts the summation, or otherwise, of their work and hopes to finally make it to the fair and win a $75,000 prize. It's genuinely suspenseful and a unique and thoroughly delightful experience.

AF

Hunter Killer (15)
Directed by Donovan Marsh
★★★

AT THE start of this this engaging, if not always entirely convincing, modern-day drama, US submarine Captain Joe Glass, played in stern, transatlantic style by Gerard Butler, is searching for a submarine in distress deep under the Arctic Ocean.

But this apparently routine rescue operation melds into a serious threat to world peace when Glass discovers that a rogue Russian admiral is attempting to carry out a bloodthirsty coup at a naval base in Russia and has to rescue the kidnapped Russian president in order to avert WWIII.

An essentially Boy’s Own Paper-style storyline comes off pretty well, with Butler’s stiff-upper-lipped hero in the grand tradition of similar naval men in film history. His star power saves the show when, in a hard-to-believe storyline, torpedoes are launched.

According to Butler, the film's “an exciting way to revive the submarine thriller for these times. And right now, this story couldn’t feel more relevant.”

That’s his opinion, but, as fiction, the story floats along agreeably enough.

AF