What's On: Screen previews

COMEDY
Year One (12A)
3/5

There's always something stirring behind the bank manager visage of writer-director Harold Ramis.

The thoughtful funnyman, who brought us Ghostbusters, Caddyshack and other old school laugh machines, revealed he had his mind on mighty matters in the masterly Groundhog Day, which not only put Bill Murray through the washer but touched lightly on subjects such as immortality, existentialism and all those other Big Themes.

He buries his concerns deep, deep beneath layers of comedy so if we say that Year One makes a bold stab at reinterpreting history, don't think Ben Hur, think Bill and Ted.
"I started reading the Old Testament as a comedy and this is what came out," he said recently.

Jack Black and Michael Cera are a pair of lazy hunter-gatherers who embark on a journey through the ancient world after being exiled from their village right into Genesis.
Jack Black plays Zed and, although Zed is a loud-mouth bombast in the same vein as, well, Jack Black, he's also up for hunter-gathering some soul food too.

Black said: "I've always had a kind of existential 'What is this life all about?' thing and I've always wanted to do a movie that asks those kinds of questions."

DRAMA
Sunshine Cleaning (15)
3/5

Sunshine in the title. Check. Alan Arkin as granddad. Check. Strivers trying to make something out of their little lives. Check.

Yes, this is 2009's Little Miss Sunshine and if you think that's a stretch, the producers of that Oscar darling are the producers of this.

Here we have Amy Adams and Emily Blunt as two sisters whose lives are not what they planned. Adams plays a single mum who wants better things for her son. She joins forces with her screw-up sister to start a crime scene cleaning business.

It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it and the sisters prove they can rise above the stench and offal to mend their own broken lives.

FAMILY DRAMA
My Sister's Keeper (12A)
3/5

Heartstrings are tugged with an almost sadistic glee in this family drama whose likely destination is the Friday afternoon movie slot on Five.

However, it packs a heavyweight cast (Cameron Diaz, Jason Patric, Alec Baldwin) and tackles a very modern dilemma. Sara and Brian's family life is blissful until they learn that two-year-old daughter Kate has leukemia.

The only hope is to conceive another child, Anna, specifically raised to save Kate's life. The two sisters grow up to have a closer bond than most but when the crucial moment comes, 11-year-old Anna says no and hires a lawyer to free her from her medical destiny, threatening to rip the family apart.