Matt Damon or Tom Cruise? In our inevitable post-apocalyptic space opera future, who do you want on your side? If you're Neil Blomkamp, creator of sharp and knowing apartheid satire District 9, it's an easy choice: you're going to pick defender-of-the-people Damon. You will define him as a working stiff by shaving his head even though bald is, distractingly, the poor fellow's least best look. With plentiful explosions, robot machine gunners, off-world dwellings for those not restricted to Mad Max adventure wear, and a middle-aged lady authority figure, Elysium appears to be Oblivion but with a better vocabulary.
Sarah, Duchess of York (formerly HRH Duchess of York, keep up), once delayed her financial troubles by producing a series of children's books centred on Budgie, a little helicopter who was based on neither AW Baldwin's Hector the Helicopter nor the Reverend Awdry's Thomas the Tank Engine. Disney's Planes, on the other hand, is Disney's Cars with wings, and when this Christmas you trip over a plastic airplane that says something fatuous in the voice of Dane Cook, you will have made physical contact with pure cynicism in its plastic form.
Fleshing out the rest of the week's mashup, Jennifer Aniston stripping vehicle We're the Millers is this generation's National Lampoon's Summer Vacation; TV's The Mentalist shows up in lewd Brit romcom I Give It a Year; and for children of all ages between 8 and 9, there's a sequel to that wannabe Harry Potter movie of a few years back, Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters. Meanwhile, adults, Blue Jasmine is still showing at your local picture house.
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