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This week's movie releases

Woody Allen returns with Blue Jasmine, starring Cate Blanchett, while Robert De Niro riffs on his mobster roles in The Family

Star of Blue Jasmine Cate Blanchett, with director Woody Allen.
Star of Blue Jasmine Cate Blanchett, with director Woody Allen.CHARLES PLATIAU (REUTERS )

As each new Woody Allen feature rolls around, it's hard not to feel that faint sense of hope that the now 77-year-old director of Annie Hall and Manhattan might once again conjure up something to match one of those masterpieces. Too often in recent years, he's disappointed, but by all accounts he's come mighty close with his latest, Blue Jasmine. Cate Blanchett plays the complicated character at its heart, a one-time New York housewife and socialite who rocks up desperate, broke and mentally imbalanced on sister Sally Hawkins' doorstep in San Francisco. In flashbacks we learn how she lost everything following the collapse of crooked financier husband Alec Baldwin's Ponzi scheme; now she has to go through the painful process of building herself back up again.

Be warned: watching The Family might make you think it's 1993 all over again. Robert De Niro riffs on his GoodFellas and Casino roles as a mobster, while the now lesser-spotted Michelle Pfeiffer plays his wife in Léon: The Professional director Luc Besson's new action comedy. The plot has the pair and their kids relocated to France under a witness-protection scheme after they testify against the mafia. Another 1990s old hand, Tommy Lee Jones, plays the FBI agent trying to stop them from blowing their cover.

The family troubles keep on mounting this week. Deadfall, directed by German Stefan Ruzowitzky (The Counterfeiters), stars Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde as a brother and sister who are forced to split up after suffering a car accident as they flee a botched casino heist. As the former breaks for the Canadian border cross country, the latter is picked up by ex-boxer Charlie Hunnam (Pacific Rim) en route to a Thanksgiving dinner at the home of parents Sissy Spacek and Kris Kristofferson, a retired sheriff.

Body snatchers

Starring Quim Gutiérrez, Ernesto Alterio, Julián Villagrán, Enrico Vecchia, Clara Lago, Úrsula Corberó and soccer player Andrés Iniesta, Spanish writer-director Santi Amodeo's comedy ¿Quién mató a Bambi? (Who killed Bambi?) is a tale of two kidnappings. The movies sees a couple of work colleagues contrive to get their boss home safe after finding him locked semi-naked in the trunk of his car, while a down-on-his-luck businessman, together with his associate, mistakenly snatches his own father.

From director Manuel Carballo, Spanish-Canadian horror The Returned is set in a post-zombie world where humans live side by side with the infected; only a daily dose of a protein drug stops them from turning into the undead.

Recomendaciones EL PAÍS
Recomendaciones EL PAÍS
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