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Summary: It's, like, Shakespeare, man! This good-natured and likeable update of "The Taming of the Shrew" takes the basics of Shakespeare's farce about a surly wench and the man who tries to win her and transfers it to modern-day Padua High School. Kat Stratford (Julia Stiles) is a sullen, forbidding riot grrrl who has a blistering word for everyone; her sunny younger sister Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) is poised for high school stardom. The problem: overprotective and paranoid Papa Stratford (a dryly funny Larry Miller) won't let Bianca date until boy-hating Kat does, which is to say never. When Bianca's pining suitor Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) gets wind of this, he hires the mysterious, brooding Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger) to loosen Kat up. Of course, what starts out as a paying gig turns to true love as Patrick discovers that underneath her brittle exterior, Kat is a regular babe. The script, by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, is sitcom-funny with peppy one-liners and lots of smart teenspeak; however, its cleverness and imagination doesn't really extend beyond its characters' Renaissance names and occasional snippets of real Shakespearean dialogue. What makes the movie energetic and winning is the formula that helped make "She's All That" such a big hit: two high-wattage stars who look great and can really act. Ledger is a hunk of promise with a quick grin and charming Aussie accent and Stiles mines Kat's bitterness and anger to depths usually unknown in teen films; her recitation of her English class sonnet (from which the film takes its title) is funny, heartbreaking and hopelessly romantic. The imperious Allison Janney ("Primary Colors") nearly steals the film as a no-nonsense guidance counsellor secretly writing a trashy romance novel. "--Mark Englehart"

Languages: English

Subtitles: Swedish

Summary: Anti-vivisection activists make a very bad judgment call and release an experimental monkey infected with "rage". "28 Days Later...", as the title has it, bicycle messenger Cillian Murphy wakes up from a post-traffic accident coma in a deserted London hospital, ventures out to find the city depopulated and the few remaining normal people doing everything to avoid the jittery, savage, zombie-like "infecteds" who attack on sight.
Our bewildered hero has to adjust to the loss of his family and the entire world, but hooks up with several others--including a tough black woman (Naomie Harris) and a likable London cabbie (Brendan Gleeson)--on a perilous trip northwards, to seek refuge at army officer Christopher Eccleston's fortified retreat. However, even if they survive the plague, the future of humanity is still in doubt.
Directed by Danny Boyle and scripted by novelist Alex Garland, this is a terrific SF/horror hybrid, evoking American and Italian zombie movies but also the very British end-of-the-world tradition of John Wyndham ("Day of the Triffids") and "Survivors". Shot on digital video, which gives the devastated cityscapes a closed-circuit-camera realism, this grips from the first, with its understandably extreme performances, its terrifyingly swift monster attacks and its underlying melancholy. Deliberately crude, "28 Days Later" is also sometimes exceptionally subtle. --"Kim Newman"

Languages: English

Summary: Put that cynical look away, because the critics were right. "28 Weeks Later" really is a sequel that delivers, that expands on the original, and in many ways even surpasses it.
Faithful in many ways to the enjoyable, if derivative, "28 Days Later", this sequel sees original director Danny Boyle (who went off to make "Sunshine" instead) replaced by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo behind the camera(director of the excellent Spanish film "Intacto"). And Fresnadillo is an inspired choice, putting together a film that's not bereft of flaws of its own, but one that proves to be an ambitious and surprisingly thought-provoking follow-up.
Many of the building blocks are the same. Primarily set over six months after the Rage virus engulfed Britain, turning many of its inhabitants into deadly zombie-esque creatures in the process, the film this time though sees the American military arrive to help sort things out. Only things quickly go wrong, allowing Fresnadillo to mould a pacey, exciting and desperately enjoyable action carnival, that's got a little more under the surface.
Grounded by Robert Carlyle as one of the survivors of the virus, replete with his kids in tow, "28 Weeks Later" skilfully navigates the labyrinth of sequel hell and really, really delivers. What's more, it opens up the enticing possibility of a further sequel, and on the evidence of this film, that's a very welcome thought.
"28 Weeks Later", like its predecessor, isn't a film for the faint-hearted, and wholesome family entertainment it absolutely isn't. But it's a very good, energetic horror movie, and far, far better than you might've originally given it credit for. --"Jon Foster"