Director: Paul Weiland
Running time: 101 minutesSomeone's been burning the midnight oil swotting up on 'RomComs for Dummies'. If only the team behind this cliché-ridden affair had invested more study into originality, this
might have been acceptable.
As it is, however, Made Of Honor follows all the formulae from My Best Friend's Wedding, Four Weddings And A Funeral and When Harry Met Sally, yet comes away the far poorer relation.
Starring Michelle Monaghan as the best friend of Patrick Dempsey (Grey's Anatomy) who returns from a whirlwind weekend engaged to a caber-tossing champion in the form of Kevin McKidd, the film gives away its objective from the get-go. Dempsey only realises his love for his friend when she becomes unobtainable.
Why McKidd felt it necessary to sign up for such a patronising depiction of 'och aye the noo' Scotland is anyone's guess. Maybe all that LA-la-land air has gone to the boy's head.
MONGOL: THE RISE TO POWER OF GENGHIS KHAN (15) ****
£19.99
Director: Sergei Bodrov
Running time: 125 minutesShot across four countries, this is a revisionist look at the early years of Genghis Khan. We meet the tyrant-to-be at the age of nine and follow him into early manhood. Bodrov's beautifully shot epic depicts Khan (known by the name of Temudgin as a child) as a peaceful, loving figure, not the barbarian we are more familiar with.
Some critics were moved to suggest that this is as epic a film as Lawrence Of Arabia, and the sweeping locations are matched by the central story of the film, that of Temudgin's marriage to a girl from another tribe, the action which ultimately results in the poisoning of his father, the drawing of enemy lines, but also an incredible love story which stretches over the years, despite their parting. The battle scenes are crafted beautifully, and Mongolian culture displayed with finesse. A tantalising first of a trilogy which rewrites many rules.
The full article contains 338 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
