FILM

USA 2010 87 mins Dir: Errol Morris Best known for heavy-duty documentaries such as the Oscar-winning 'The Fog of War', Errol Morris kicks back and has some fun with the notorious real-life case of the manacled Mormon.…

(Dir: Gary Winick, 78 mins) Overtly influenced by ‘The Graduate’, this ultra-low-budget Sundance Festival award winner is very much in the style of Whit Stillman and Wes Anderson. Indeed, ultra-precocious,…

(Dir: Jae-eun Jeong, 112 mins) Acclaimed by some as a landmark in new Asian cinema, writer/director Jae-eun Jeong’s low-budget character study roots a universal story in a culture and environment rarely seen on screen.…

USA 2011 121 mins Dir: Jeff Nicholls Starring: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain Imagine the first act of an M. Night Shyamalan movie - 'The Happening', say - stretched out to two hours and given an indie makeover. So…

(Dir: Liz Friedlander, 117 mins) A predictable, formulaic but enjoyably inspirational slice of feelgood entertainment drawing on the same source that inspired the hit documentary ‘Mad Hot Ballroom’ Upping the age level…

(Dir: Pierre Morel, 2008, 94 mins) Written by Luc Besson, with tongue presumably lodged firmly in cheek, fellow Frenchman Pierre Morel’s preposterous attempt to make an action hero out of Liam Neeson plays like ‘Hostel’…

(Dir: John Luessenhop, 2010, 107 mins) Writer/director John Luessenhop has obviously watched Michael Mann’s oeuvre very, very closely indeed. Plus every heist movie ever made. Oh, and ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ (yep, it’s still…

(Dir: Chris Atkins, 2007, 100 mins) There’s little here that a reasonably assiduous liberal broadsheet newspaper reader won’t be familiar with. But taken together, the individual stories recounted in ‘Taking Liberties’…

(Dir: D.J. Caruso, 103 mins) Angelina Jolie stars in yet another ho-hum thriller, which is just a tired knock-off of every serial killer flick you’ve ever seen, its silliness provides the only entertainment value. It…

(Dir: Ang Lee, 2009, 120 mins) Taiwanese director Ang Lee and his long-term scriptwriting partner James Schamus adapt Elliot Tiber’s memoir. A warm-hearted – the uncharitable might say rose-tinted – account of how this…

(Dir: Goro Miyazaki, 2006, 115 mins, subtitles) Hayao (‘Howl’s Moving Castle’) Miyazaki passed this adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s fantasy classic to his son, Goro. Recognisably a Studio Ghibli production, with its…

(Dir: various, 2009 131 mins, subtitles) This Romanian portmanteau flick about daily life under Ceausescu, released to mark the 20th anniversary of his downfall and execution, is no tedious arthouse suffering peasant…

(Dir: Pedro Almodovar, 112 mins) Pedro Almodovar continues at the top of his game with this daring, powerful and narratively complex drama. It’s the tale of fortysomething travel writer Marco and male nurse Benigno who…

(Dir: Adam McKay, 105 mins) From the director/star/writer team behind ‘Anchorman’ comes a film with a remarkably similar plot: an egomaniac alpha-male cretin at the top of his game, surrounded by a team of buffoons, is…

(Dir: Stephen Frears, 2010, 111 mins) Adapted from Posy Simmonds’ comic strip, which imaginatively weaved Hardy’s ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ into her middlebrow Village England legover crowd-pleaser, ‘Tamara Drewe’ is…

(Dir: Nathan Greno & Byron Howard, 2011, 100 mins) For Disney's 50th animated feature, the blokes behind 'Bolt' do 'Rapunzel'. Only the bare bones of the Grimms' fairytale remain as the hirsute heroine gets a 21st…

(Dir: Carlos Saura, 117 mins) Abandoned by his wife and cruelly crippled in a car accident, ageing dance director Mario packs up his mid-life crisis and takes it down to Argentina, where he's been commissioned to make a…

(Dir: Richard Linklater, 86 mins) After the critical mauling dished out to his previous film, the visually ambitious ‘Waking Life’, Richard Linklater takes the modish low-budget digital video route with this adaptation…

(Dir: Jonathan Caouette, 88 mins) Much has been made of Jonathan Caouette’s $218 budget for his autobiographical documentary, which was fashioned from old photographs, Super 8 film, answerphone recordings, videotaped…

(Dir: Kevin Lima & Chris Buck, 88 mins) Disney’s uninvolving animated bash at the venerable Edgar Rice Burroughs yarn has the loinclothed loner enjoying a cutesy childhood with pachyderm pal Tantor and wisecracking…

(Dir: Abbas Kiarostami, 98 mins) Mr. Badii is a suicidal, unshaven Iranian, who’s looking for someone to bury him after he pops some pills. Despite proffering a huge wad of used notes, this proves to be more difficult…

Singapore 2011 96 mins Subtitles Dir: Eric Khoo Starring (voices): Tetsuya Bessho, Motoko Gollent, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Mike Wiluan A Singaporean animated adaptation of a Japanese manga artist's autobiography is unlikely…

(Dir: Gerard Pires, 85 mins) Written by Luc Besson and bashed out in just 30 days as an antidote to the big-budget sprawl of his godawful 'The Fifth Element', this was never going to triumph in the content department…

(Dir: Tim Story, 97 mins) As if Tinseltown isn’t awash with feeble action movies of its own, this coals-to-Newcastle remake of Luc Besson’s French no-brainer fails even to meet rock-bottom expectations by wasting the…

(Dir: Gyorgy Palfi, 2006, 96 mins, subtitles)  “I had a new vomiting technique named after me!” This is not the kind of boast we hear often enough at the movies. It’s more pleasurable still when delivered by a man made…

(Dir: Franco Zeffirelli, 117 mins) Against the backdrop of ‘30s Italy and WWII, an Italian boy is adopted by the ladies of Florence's British colony, who cannot see why England and Fascist Italy should not live in…

(Dir: Trey Parker, 98 mins) Sending up George Bush’s “war on terr”, the Yankocentric worldview of Jerry Bruckheimer action flicks, and the self-importance of Hollywood’s liberals, all in marionette “supercrappymation”,…

(Dir: Wisit Sasanatieng, 110 mins) Not the kind of film you would wish on anyone nursing a hangover, this is a classic audience-divider which unpersuaded cynics might see as a feast of overacting, risible melodrama and…

(Dir: Antoine Fuqua, 121 mins) Antoine Fuqua’s follow-up to ‘Training Day’ is a military “extract and rescue flick in the ‘Blakc Hawk Down’ style, which races through the politics while the audience are still finding…

(Dir: Mitchell Lichtenstein, 2007, 93 mins) Yes it’s gimmicky, and it certainly performs its function as an attention-grabbing calling card for Mitchell (son of Roy) Lichtenstein. There are also more painfully severed…

(Dir: Guillaume Canet, 2006, 125 mins, subtitles) ‘Hitchcockian’ is a phrase that gets chucked about far too carelessly. But actor-turned-director Guillaume Canet’s absolutely cracking thriller, adapted from American…

(Dir: Mark Wexler, 95 mins) Fascinating and frustrating in equal measure, this documentary portrait of legendary radical cinematographer Haskell Wexler by his son Mark is certainly illuminating – if not necessarily in…

(Dir: Nick Moran, 2009, 119 mins) As portrayed by Con O’Neil in Nick Moran’s directorial debut, early 60s pop producer Joe Meek was a kind of bargain basement Brit hybrid of barking mad studio genius Phil Spector and…

(Dir: Chen Kaige, 116 mins) Like Chen Kaige’s brilliant ‘Farewell My Concubine’, this is a beautifully photographed unconventional love story whose characters’ relationships are distorted by the forces of dramatic…

(Dir: Abbas Kiarostami, 93 mins) Lauded Iranian director Kiarostami refines his minimalist technique with this film in which his digital video camera is fixed to a car dashboard. For the first ten minutes, it’s trained…

(Dir: Rolf de Heer & Peter Djigirr, 2006, 90 mins, subtitles) It’s a relief to find that the first feature film been made entirely in Australian Aboriginal language isn’t a solemn PC exercise, nor does it engage in any…

(Dir: Spike Lee/Werner Herzog/Jim Jarmusch/Wim Wenders/Aki Kaurasmaki/Victor Erice/Chen Kaige 92 mins) This collection of shorts struggles under a nebulous theme - seven directors contribute a ten-minute flick apiece on…

(Dir: Liam Lynch, 97 mins) If the Tenacious D phenomenon has passed you by, picture Bill and Ted’s portly, pothead older brothers, whose urge to rock is heroically undiminished by age, girth, and chemical impairment,…

(Dir: Kresten Vestbjerg Andersen, Thorbjorn Christoffersen & Stefan Fjeldmark, 78 mins) There’s something very rum going on with this first CGI animation to be rated ‘15’ by the BBFC. Danish comedian Anders Matthesen’s…

(Dir: Jonathan Mostow, 108 mins) Thinner, stupider and more mechanical than James Cameron’s first couple of Terminators, Jonathan Mostow’s ‘T3’ at least serves up the promised popcorn action in between the boring bits…

(Dir: Francis Ford Coppola, 2009, 127 mins) This sprawling, overwrought ‘sins of the father’ melodrama is billed as Francis Ford Coppola’s most personal film. There are elements of visual invention here, but it’s all so…

(Dir: Jason Reitman, 92 mins) Adapted from a savagely satirical novel by Christopher Buckley, this confident debut feature from writer-director Jason Reitman casts the handsome Aaron Eckhart as Nick Naylor, an amoral…

(Dir: Tom Hanks, 107 mins) Slight, trite, but likeable, Tom Hanks’ directorial debut is everything you’d expect, set as it is in rock’n’roll’s pre-sex’n’drugs era (1964) when fictitious Beatles-influenced Pennsylvanian…

(Dir: John McTiernan, 103 mins) A troubled and a frankly loony effort, based on a Michael Crichton novel ('Eaters of the Dead') which is itself a skewed rewrite of the old English saga 'Beowulf', casting a kohl-eyed…

(Dir: Spike Lee, 134 mins) It’s a tale of one New Yorker’s doomed search for redemption and has been hailed as the first film to address the aftermath of September 11. The prospect of nearly two-and-a-half hours of…

(Dir: Joe Carnahan, 2010, 119 mins) Joe (‘Smokin’ Aces’) Carnahan’s noisy update of the cheesy 80s TV show comprises macho swagger and explosions strung together with wisecracks, catchphrases and the thinnest of idiot…

Release Date: 1989 Remember those great post-War submarine dramas, in which sweaty seafarers spend a suspenseful 90 minutes plugging holes in their little tin tubs to stave off asphyxiation? Now imagine a catastrophe in…

(Dir: Griffin Dunne, 91 mins, 2008) Colin Firth does his starchy, irritable and rather cross turn once again opposite statuesque Uma Thurman, whose strengths, one might tentatively suggest, do not lie in the field of…

Release date: 1989 William Hurt is the author of guidebooks for 'Accidental Tourists' - businesspeople who want to know where they can find big macs on every continent. When his wife Kathleen Turner leaves him for being…

(Dir: Paul McGuigan, 1999, 112 mins) A C4-backed adaptation of three short stories from Irvine Welsh's eponymous collection, Paul McGuigan's taste-free triptych has the small screen feel of a made-for-TV special. If…

(Dir: Conor McPherson, 2003, 91 mins) While playing the lead in a low-budget Dublin production of Richard III (given a Nazi setting in parody of Ian McKellen’s version), hammy thesp O’Malley (Michael Caine) persuades…

(Dir: Abel Ferrara, 1997, 82 mins) Sombre philosophy student Lili Taylor is given a good necking by an urban vampire and promptly starts regurgitating blood, losing her appetite and feasting on others without conscience…

Release Date: 1989 Mendacious 18th century Baron Munchausen (John Neville) bursts into an amateur theatrical recreation of his greatest porkies to tell everyone all the stories were for real, and that he's responsible…

(Dir: Gary Halvorson, 2000, 72 mins) Sesame Street's reddest, most orange-nosed denizen gets his very own movie: a 'Wizard of Oz'-style primary-coloured adventure aimed at 2-6-year-olds and adult acid casualties, who…

(Dir: John Henderson, 2006, 103 mins) This doggie-themed kidflick set in a chocolate box Scotland makes much of its historical authenticity, though stroppy Jocks will be quick to observe that several plotlines are pure…

(Dir: Steve Barron, 1996, 83 mins) Wisely seeking to avoid comparisons with the Disney version, the creators of this Pinocchio have returned to Carlo Collodi’s source novel for their reasonably realistic adaptation.…

(Dir: Des McAnuff, 2001, 91 mins) Rocky, the flying squirrel who can't fly, and his sidekick Bullwinkle the dumb moose were apparently big cheeses in the world of US kids' TV back in the mists of time (1959-1964) and…

(Dir: Robert Rodriguez, 2005, 293 mins) The Racer Rodriguez who gets the ‘story by’ credit is indeed director Robert Rodriguez’s seven-year-old son. Actually, it’s hard to believe that Rodriguez Jr came up with anything…

(Dir: Franny Armstrong, 2009, 92 mins) It’s hardly the most elegant of documentaries, bolting the obligatory ‘human stories’, news footage, and a bunch of short animations of varying quality onto a shaky framing device…

(Dir: Jonathan Demme, 2000, 90 mins) Jean Dominique did indeed train as an agronomist, but it’s as a radio broadcaster and tireless free-speech advocate that he’ll be remembered. Compiled from archive footage and…

(Dir: John Lee Hancock, 2004, 137 mins) This box office flop cost Disney $80m, but those who stayed at home didn’t miss much. John Lee Hancock serves up a full 100 minutes of plodding and needlessly confused battle…

(Dir: Cory McAbee, 2001, 91 mins) Written, directed by and starring Cory McAbee, this is a planet-hopping sci-fi musical shot in high-contrast monochrome on a budget of about 15p in what appears, for the most part, to…

Release date: 1995 As one might expect from a team that comprises Hollywood’s liberal first division, Rob Reiner’s Capra-esque fairytale has its big old marshmallow heart very much in the right place. Eminently decent…

(Dir: Andrew Douglas, 2005, 89 mins) Hard on the heels of the ‘Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ remake comes another update of a 70s horror flick. Like Stuart Rosenberg’s 1979 original, Andrew Douglas’s version is adapted from…

(Dir: Luke Greenfield, 2001, 82 mins) Fresh from the success of 'Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo', comedian and actor Rob Schneider returns to redefine the lowest common denominator as we know it. Produced by Schneider's…

(Dir: John A Davis, 2006, 89 mins) Based on a 1999 children’s book by John Nickle - a favourite read, apparently, in the household of producer Tom Hanks - this computer-animated fable has as its protagonist a speccy…

(Dir: Robert Duvall, 1998, 148 mins) Writer/producer/director/actor Robert Duvall’s pet project for 15 years, eventually made with $5 million of his own money, this is a gently absorbing tale about a Pentecostal…

(Dir: Samira Makhmalbaf, 1998, 85 mins) Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf was just 17 when ‘The Apple’ was made, providing the media with the requisite sexy angle. But this gently subversive if ethically dodgy…

(Dir: Paul Provenza & Penn Jillette, 2005, 90 mins) A man goes into a talent agency to pitch his family act. "What do you do?" asks the agent. "My wife and I come out and shit on the stage and each other." "What do you…

(Dir: Christian Duguay, 2000, 117 mins) The last millennium eve action movie we should have to put up with for the next thousand years or so, this opens in Hong Kong at one of those big New Year's Eve parties that wound…

(Dir: John Daly, 2006, 119 mins) Producer-turned-director John Daly fails in all departments with this second-rate Holocaust flick, which wheels out all the clichés and hopes to scrape by on its honourable intentions…

(Dir: Andrew Dominik, 2007, 160 mins) Australian director Andrew (‘Chopper’) Dominik’s adaptation of Ron Hansen’s demythologising novel will be seen by enthusiasts as an elegiac, poetic western on a par with the best…

(Dir: Niels Mueller, 2005, 95 mins) However much writer/director Niels Mueller may object, there’s no getting away from those ‘Taxi Driver’ references when describing this true story of Nixon’s forgotten would-be…

Dir: Donald Petrie, 1997, 113 mins) Every bit as predictable as her last effort, the grim baseball comedy ‘Eddie’, this latest Whoopi Goldberg movie as least allows for an enjoyable riff on a serious theme - that of a…

(Dir: Rand Ravich, 1999, 108 mins) This is a slick, up-market exercise in domestic paranoia rooted in a formulaic, patently absurd science fiction situation. Modelled too closely on 'Rosemary's Baby', it follows the…

(Dir: Jeremiah Chechik, 1998, 90 mins) Warner Brothers famously didn’t want the critics to see this before the public, and it retrospect that was a wise decision. Our lone star’s for Uma Thurman’s cat-suited leg…

(Dir: Martin Scorsese, 170 mins) Martin Scorsese resists the familiar depiction of Howard Hughes as an obsessive-compulsive recluse, and the tyranny of the rise-and-fall biopic format, by concentrating on Hughes’s life…

(Dir: Uli Edel, 2008, 150 mins, subtitles) Uli Edel’s masterly account of the rise and fall of Germany’s Red Army Faction is an intelligent, multi-faceted film that isn’t afraid to depict the allure of armed revolution…

(Dir: Gary Sinyor, 2000, 102 mins) A remake of an old Buster Keaton classic in which the plot more or less does the same service it did back in 1925. Thanks to the stipulations in the will of an eccentric relative (here…

(Dir: Alan Poul, 2010, 104 mins) Jennifer Lopez returns to the screen for the first time in four years for a recycled romcom with just the one original idea. Her character is that modern romcom staple: the career woman…

(Dir: Rebecca Miller, 2006, 112 mins) It’s somewhat overwrought in places and shot through with heavy-handed snake/sex symbolism, but Rebecca Miller’s hippy hangover drama has been unfairly trashed in some quarters. Not…

(Dir: Eran Kolirin, 2006, 87 mins, subtitles) An Egyptian police band gets stranded in a remote Israeli town in this charming comedy-drama that tackles the thorny issue of Arab-Israeli relations from a slyly oblique…

(Dir: Bob Dolman, 2003, 98 mins) Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon were once inseparable groupie buddies who “rattled” just about every musician to pass through LA. Sixteen years on, Goldie – a disorganised tangle of…

(Dir: Andrei Zvyagintsev, 2007, 157 mins, subtitles) Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev’ follow-up to his accomplished debut ‘The Return’ runs for nearly an hour longer than its predecessor, going heavy on Biblical…

(Dir: Roger Donaldson, 2008, 111 mins) Nimbly scripted by veteran duo Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, this fantastically improbable, 70s-set ‘true’ crime flick opens in caper territory with Jason Statham as a kind of…

(Dir: Denys Arcand, 2004, 99 mins) The concept of revisiting fictional characters at a later stage in their lives has plenty of creative potential. Alas, Denys Arcand has chosen to go back to the boorish intellectuals…

(Dir: Danny Boyle, 2000, 120 mins) Alex Garland’s cult bestseller requires us to believe that a gang of armed drug growers would allow a bunch of self-centred, hedonistic, New Age trustafarian types to share their…

(Dir: Agnes Varda, 2009, 113 mins, subtitles) The opening scene of this autobiographical documentary, in which 80-year-old Agnes Varda arranges a bunch of mirrors on a beach, raises the heart-sinking prospect of two…

(Dir: Jacques Audiard, 2005, 117 mins) French director Jacques (‘Read My Lips’) Audiard reverses the usual cultural trend by remaking an American film - James Toback’s largely forgotten 1978 directorial debut,…

(Dir: Denis Dugan, 2006, 80 mins) This ‘comedy’ from the Adam Sandler stable supplies 150% of your recommended annual allowance of fart, snot, piss and poop gags. The plot does the old ‘Revenge of the Nerds’ thing for…

(Dir: Malcolm D. Lee, 1999, 120 mins) Malcolm D. (cousin of Spike) Lee's likeable buppie 'Big Chill' is a little over-familiar but boasts a sharply written script. In the ill-matched wedding of the year, promiscuous…

(Dir: Marco Tullio Girodana, 2004, 383 mins) Italian epic following two brothers and various peripheral characters over 40 tumultuous years of Italian history. The film opens in 1966 with an event that will shape the…

(Dir: Kirk Wong, 1999, 91 mins) Another of those action-comedy-thrillers which owes much to the Hong Kong action factory and aspire to the level of sophistication of ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’, this stars Mark Wahlberg as a…

 (Dir: Joel Coen, 1998, 113 mins) Imagine the pitch: it’s ‘Kingpin’ meets ‘The Big Sleep’, directed by the Coen brothers! Just as you might have been expecting another cold and calculatedly clever drama ripe for…

(Dir: Niall Johnson, 1998, 122 mins) A quintet of thirtysomething West Country yuppie couples decide to embark on a partner-swapping adventure. But as the underwear and inhibitions come off, so previously concealed…

(Dir: Mark Mylod, 2006, 100 mins) Snow, quirky characters, kidnap, a corpse and a devious insurance scam. Haven’t these people ever seen ‘Fargo’? Actually, it would appear that they’ve seen ‘Fargo’ rather too often. But…

Release Date: 1996 Mike Nichols’ remake of the classic French farce ‘La Cage Aux Folles’ managed to annoy right-wing Republicans and the gay community alike in America, but despite being a broad, knockabout and…

(Dir: Brian DePalma, 2006, 121 mins) In theory, James Ellroy’s blistering novel – a blend of Los Angeles gutter history and labyrinthine whodunit, inspired by a 1947 murder case – ought to be ideal material for Brian…

(Dir: Abel Ferrara, 1998, 90 mins) Ever-inconsistent Abel Ferrara delivers the most woeful load of old bollocks of his entire career. Matthew Modine is a self-obsessed bigshot Hollywood star with a prodigious drug…

(Dir: Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez, 1999, 87 mins) From the outset, this wonky 'mockumentary' comprises video diary-style footage as students Heather, Josh and Michael prepare for their journey into the woods to…

(Dir: John Lee Hancock, 2009, 128 mins) Mysteriously Oscar-winning, unwisely blonde Sandra Bullock plays a hugely annoying southern mom, y’alling away in the role of Noble Whitey coming to the assistance of a sullen,…

(Dir: Auraeus Solito  2005, 100 mins, subtitles) Twelve-year-old ladyboy Maximo (Nathan Lopez) minces through the back alleys of Manila’s slums without anyone so much as batting an eyelid. Like much of this…

(Dir: Richard Curtis, 2009, 135 mins) Richard Curtis’s personal project about 60s pirate radio stations battling government killjoys is as overlong as its indulgent, baggy predecessor, ‘Love Actually’. Curtis himself…

(Dir: Pihllip Noyce, 2000, 118 mins) An identikit serial killer movie that lifts its set-up from 'Copycat' and its taunting murderer's modus operandi from 'Seven'. Denzel Washington's paraplegic forensics expert is…

(Dir: Allen and Albert Hughes, 2010, 118 mins) Initially, the Hughes brothers’ post-apocalypse flick promises to be more fun than the over-praised, broadly similar ‘The Road’, not least because Denzel Washington’s…

(Dir: Peter Hewitt, 1997, 86 mins) Crooked lawyer John Goodman attempts to evict the hapless Lenders family from their home to make money out of property development, but unbeknown to him he’ll also be evicting a second…

(Dir: Lars Von Trier, 2006, 99 mins, subtitles) What do you get when the prankstering founder of the Danish Dogme movement takes an unlikely left turn into high-concept comedy? Pretty much what you’d expect, as it turns…

(Dir: Andy Tennant, 2010, 110 mins) A romantic action comedy that combines the talents of lithe ex-Friends comedienne Jennifer Aniston and beefy action man Gerard Butler must have seemed like a sure-fire winner,…

(Dir: Doug Liman, 2002, 118 mins) Doug (‘Swingers’) Liman teams up with boy wonder Matt Damon for a shameless assault on the mainstream with this generic, old-fashioned spy thriller adapted from a thick-ear airport…

(Dir: Paul Greengrass, 2004, 108 mins)  Paul (‘Bloody Sunday’) Greengrass’s sequel to ‘The Bourne Identity’ a little darker, and its camerawork correspondingly a little shakier, but sticks firmly to the formula that…

(Dir: Paul Greengrass, 2007, 115 mins) A rare threequel that proves to be better than its predecessors, the relentlessly exciting ‘Ultimatum’ dumps us in the middle of the action in Moscow, where we find amnesiac…

(Dir: Richard Kelly, 2009 116 mins) Richard (‘Donnie Darko’) Kelly adapts Richard Matheson’s 1970 short story ‘Button, Button’, which was previously filmed as one of the most chilling episodes of the ‘80s incarnation of…

(Dir: Jim Sheridan, 1998, 114 mins) Irish director Jim Sheridan and English actor Daniel Day Lewis join forces again with a topical tale about an ex-IRA man returning to his old Belfast neighbourhood after serving 14…

(Dir: Mark Herman, 2008, 94 mins) But for the swastikas all over the shop, the opening scenes of Mark Herman’s adaptation of John Boyne’s bestselling Holocaust children’s book could be lifted from a jolly BBC period…

(Dir: Scott Hicks, 2009, 104 mins) To say that Scott (‘Shine’) Hicks’ loose adaptation of Simon Carr’s bestselling dad memoir starts badly is something of an understatement. At first we’re plunged into terminal cancer…

(Dir: Ken Hughes, 1954, 83 mins) Another lost gem from the BFI National Archive screened in the ‘shed’s ‘Projecting the Archive’ Sunday brunch season. This ‘50s oddity introduces begins as science fiction and then turns…

(Dir: Neil Jordan, 2007, 122 mins) Erica Bain (Jodie Foster), a New York City radio broadcaster, is badly battered in Central Park by three thugs who kill her fiancé (Navin Andrews).  Recovering from the physical…

(Dir: Peyton Reed, 2006, 105 mins) Vince Vaughn has high aspirations for ‘The Break-up’, which he originated, produced and stars in, envisaging it as a kind of ‘Scenes From a Marriage’ with gags. Trouble is Danny DeVito…

(Dir: Nicholas Mastandrea, 2006, 87 mins) Reviving the terror-by-beast quickies that came out in the 1970s, this has a bunch of teens landing on a remote island populated by a pack of vicious (and, as it turns out,…

(Dir: Eric Steel, 2006, 93 mins) Inspired by a New Yorker article entitled ‘Jumpers’, documentarist Eric Steel trained his cameras on San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge for the whole of 2004. This wasn’t a Warhol-esque…

Release Date: 1995 Meryl Streep gives directions to photographer Clint Eastwood when he arrives in Madison County to take pictures of the local covered bridges. Thus begins a four-day romance that changes her life and…

(Dir: Sean Ellis, 2008, 85 mins) ‘Mirrors’ meets ‘Invasion of the Bodysnatchers’. Sean Ellis’s second feature is certainly heavy on the stylish atmospherics and movie references, including a rather heavy-handed bash at…

(Dir: Greg Berlanti, 2001, 95 mins) If the dialogue in writer-director Greg Berlanti's debut suggests an American relationships sitcom-drama, maybe that's because Berlanti is a co-creator of 'Dawson's Creek'. Basically…

(Dir: Christophe Gans, 2001, 140 mins) Is it a monster movie about a rampaging werewolf? A sumptuous period drama involving dangerous political and religious intrigues? A 'Last of the Mohicans'-style adventure with an…

(Dir: Gary Hardwick, 2001, 104 mins) In this patchy serio-comic survey of modern manhood, the prospect of wedding bells threatens to shake the firm friendship of four long-time African American buddies. Writer-director…

(Dir: Rian Johnson, 2009, 114 mins) Rian (‘Brick’) Johnson’s Difficult Second Movie is an oddly unsatisfying affair, coming across like a latterday Wes Anderson flick crossed with a twisty-turny Ocean’s-style…

(Dir: Terry Gilliam, 2005, 118 mins) Despite being a seemingly perfect fit for his imagination, this is very much a minor Terry Gilliam film. One can only imagine how much better it might have been were he not saddled…

Release Date: 1995 Edward Burns' star-free Sundance Grand Prize-winning debut tells the no-frills story of the amorous adventures of three Irish-American brothers from New York. But if it draws you in gently, this…

(Dir: Bob Odenkirk, 2007, 93 mins) Come on, then: who ordered a hybrid of a Farrelly brothers flick and one of those terrible post-‘Napoleon Dynamite’ losercoms? The relentlessly lame ‘The Brothers Solomon’ gives US TV…

(Dir: Rob Reiner, 2007, 97 mins) This disingenuous and manipulative feelgood chalk’n’cheese buddy cancercom does nothing to suggest Rob Reiner’s increasingly sickly career is in remission. He takes 30 minutes to…

(Dir: Nick Love, 2005, 98 mins) ‘Football Factory’ director Nick Love returns with a Costa Crime flick lovingly recreating its Fatcher’s 80s period setting. Nonetheless, one cannot help but wonder whether enough time…

(Dir: Patrick Stettner, 2002, 84 mins) At a time when decent roles for women are at a premium, Patrick Stettner has come up with two terrific ones. You'd expect an under-used talent like Stockard Channing to inhabit the…

(Dir: Neil Jordan, 1998, 105 mins) Neil Jordan’s adaptation of Patrick McCabe’s novel is a heart-rendingly comic tale of childhood depravity set in an Irish town during the Cuban missile crisis. With the assistance of…

(Dir: Eric Bress/J. Mackye Gruber , 2004, 113 mins) Ashton (‘Dude, Where’s My Career?’) Kutcher’s time travel flick is his latest attempt to move from untaxing comedy roles to Serious Acting. He even signed on as…

Release Date: 1996 Ben (‘Reality Bites’) Stiller’s twisted, often nasty black comedy attempts to satisfy two audiences: multiplexers who want to see Jim Carrey doing his usual frenetic thing, and those who demand more…

(Dir: Alex De Rakoff, 2004, 89 mins) Like ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ never happened, Orlando Bloom delivers a semi-skimmed performance as a South London milkman and amateur boxer who's matched against middleweight world…

(Dir: Benoit Mariage, 1999, 94 mins) In a nondescript, decaying Walloon mining town, Roger Closset (Benoit Poelvoorde - the psycho in 'Man Bites Dog') works as an ambulance-chasing photographer for the local rag. Cute…

(Dir: Rob Sitch, 1998, 86 mins)  A low-budget Australian comedy telling the simple, sentimental tale of the Kerrigan family’s legal fight to prevent the compulsory purchase and demolition of their unusual abode next to…

(Dir: Bo Welch, 2004, 82 mins) Producer Brian Grazer’s second energetic polka on the grave of Dr. Seuss sticks to the money-spinning ‘Grinch’ formula: take a big star, stick him inside a barely mobile costume, and pad…

(Dir: Hiroyuki Morita, 2005, 75 mins) A lovingly hand-drawn if relatively straightforward, kid-oriented fantasy from ‘Spririted Away’ director Hayao Miyazaki’s celebrated Studio Ghibli. When clumsy schoolgirl Haru…

(Dir: Peter Bogdanovich, 2001, 114 mins)  Adapted from Steven Peros’s stage play, Peter Bogdanovich’s latest is based on a Hollywood scandal of the 20s, which was hushed up for more than 40 years. Nobody knows what…

(Dir: Bruce Hunt, 2005, 97 mins) A standard-issue ‘B’ monster movie with an uninspiring second-string cast - Cole Hauser, Morris Chestnut, Piper Perabo, Lena Headey – and a distinctly second-hand plot. Although set in…

(Dir: Byambasuren Davaa, 2005, 93 mins) Despite the simple little-girl-and-her-dog storyline and ‘U’ certificate, Mongolian director Byambasuren Davaa’s follow-up to her Oscar-nominated ‘The Story of the Weeping Camel’…

(Dir: Tarsem Singh,  The Cell (18) *** (Dir: Tarsem Singh, 2000, 107 mins) Jennifer Lopez is miscast as a psychologist who uses a futuristic machine to penetrate the psyche of comatose serial killer Carl Stargher…

Release Date: 1996 Like a deliciously queer ‘That’s Entertainment!’, ‘The Celluloid Closet’ packs clips from over 100 films from the century of cinema into its good-natured if occasionally unconvincing argument about…

Release Date: 1994 Fearful of being taken into care when their mother dies, vigorously masturbating sullen youth Andrew Robertson and his teenage sister Charlotte Gainsbourg do a Wayne Lomas on her, stashing the…

(Dir: Wayne Wang, 86 mins) Geeky, dissatisfied dotcom millionaire Peter Sarsgaard becomes obsessed with stripper Molly Parker. But she initially rejects his indecent proposal to whisk her off to Las Vegas for a weekend…

(Dir: James Foley, 1997, 117 mins) Yet another dreary John Grisham  legal thriller, this has a rookie lawyer  preparing the final appeal of a Death Row inmate - a plot with only two conceivable outcomes. Poorly cast,…

(Dir: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2005, 96 mins)  Euro-feelbad titans the Dardenne brothers’ best film to date boasts all their social realist trademarks: wonky, hand-held, verite style-camerawork and scrupulous…

(Dir: Tom Shankland, 2008, 84 mins) Sensitive parents should probably steer clear of Tom Shankland’s follow-up to the pretentious ‘Waz’, but the target audience of bloodthirsty teens and smugly childless horror…

(Dir: Christine Edzard, 2001, 115 mins) Does what it says on the box: this is Shakespeare's play as performed by schoolchildren from various Southwark primary schools. Not a 'Tales From Shakespeare' simplification, but…

Dir: Christophe Barratier, 2004, 95 mins) Strip away the subtitles and this arthouse audience-pleaser is every bit as formulaic as its predictable Hollywood equivalents, from the dedicated Mr. Chips figure who changes…

(Dir: Andrew Adamson, 2008, 144 mins) The ‘Railway Children go to Harry Potterland’ vibe continues in this second instalment of the C.S. Lewis god-bothering allegory about a quartet of posh English kids who are serially…

(Dir: Andrew Adamson, 2005, 140 mins) A blatant attempt to expand a thin Christian allegory into a ‘Rings’-sized epic action-adventure franchise, complete with the big CGI battles that its author inconveniently forgot…

(Dir: David Twohy, 2004, 118 mins)  Four years ago, David Twohy launched Vin Diesel upon a grateful world with the low-budget sci-fi B-movie ‘Pitch Black’, which eventually found its audience on video. Now they’re back…

(Dir: Arie Posin, 2005, 108 mins) Arie Posin’s feature debut boasts a ‘teen kidnap in Californian suburbia’ storyline with neglectful parents and druggy overtones that you may recognise from the Justin Timberlake…

(Dir: Lasse Hallstrom, 1999, 125 mins) After some dodgy previous experiences, John Irving has adapted his own novel to become a big, prestigious and rather stodgy movie. At St Cloud's orphanage in the 1940s, Dr Michael…

(Dir: Jafar Panahi, 2000, 91 mins) ‘The Cirle’ opens with an elderly Iranian woman, her back to the camera, knocking on a metal door. A hatch opens and a smiling nurse tells her that her daughter has had a baby girl.…

Release Date: 1995 Jeunet and Caro's $14 million follow-up to 'Delicatessen' conjures up an altogether darker fantasy world filled with memorably grotesque characters. On his sinister oil rig HQ, surrounded by a sextet…

(Dir: Michael Winterbottom, 2001, 120 mins) It’s 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' meets 'McCabe and Mrs Miller'! The ever-excellent Peter Mullan is perfectly cast as Daniel Dillon, a typically sullen Hardy anti-hero, whose…

(Dir: Christopher Miles, 1999, 91 mins) England, 1776. Fanny Sterling is secretly married to and pregnant by Lovewell, her preening nouveau riche father's clerk. Devious Sterling and his snobbish sister Heidelberg, who…

(Dir: Laurent Cantet, 2008, 130 mins, subtitles) Refreshingly sparing us the clichés of the ‘inspirational schoolteacher’ flick, ‘The Class’ takes a peek inside an inner-city classroom, with flawed, recognisably human…

(Dir: Francis Veber, 2001, 85 mins) Peerless French farceur Francis Veber’s small but perfectly formed satire on political correctness casts Daniel Auteuil, in a rare comic role, as a nerdy, anonymous little condom…

(Dir: Marcus Dunstan, 2010, 90 mins) Although ‘Saw’/‘Feast’ co-writer and debuting director Marcus Dunstan equips himself with all the necessary tools, and plenty of them, he brings nothing new to the torture porn…

(Dir: Majid Majidi, 1999, 88 mins) Oscar-nominated Iranian director Majid Majidi’s latest film slots comfortably into what is fast becoming a familiar genre: simple fables, sensitively told without emotional…

Release Date: 1991 Despite its dodgy premise that an Irish band could demonstrate artistic integrity by playing soul covers, Alan Parker's latest is a sharp, funny and generally entertaining piece.  Robert Arkins…

(Dir: Robert Altman, 2003, 112 mins)  More ‘Pret-a-Porter’ than ‘Short Cuts’, this latest Robert Altman dud shines a light on the world of hoofing in his familiar multiple-narrative, overlapping dialogue, ensemble style…

(Dir: John Wells, 2011, 104 mins) If you can empathise with the plight of downsized US business executives and aren't expecting angry, finger-pointing polemic, US TV veteran John Wells's film functions as an effective,…

(Dir: Radu Mihaileanu, 2009, 123 mins, subtitles) A tear-jerking arthouse audience-pleaser that shamelessly pushes middlebrow liberal buttons, this French-Romanian confection is as calculated as the most machine-tooled…

(Dir: Alex de la Iglesia, 110 mins) Infelicitously named Angel Berriatua is an inoffensive-looking professor of theology who has concluded that the Antichrist will be born on Christmas Day in Madrid. Trouble is, it’s…

(Dir: Burr Steers, 2010, 99 mins) Personable tweenage heartthrob Zac Efron re-teams with Burr (’17 Again’) Steers for this adaptation of a sub-Nicholas Sparks bestseller. Alas, gloopy supernatural melodrama is clearly…

(Dir: Ron Howard, 2010, 112 mins) Drily witty and more serious than one expects, versatile Ron Howard's comic ‘bromance’ starring Vince Vaughn and Kevin James also eschews the dodgy vein of atavistic sexism that runs…

(Dir: J Blakeson, 2010, 100 mins)  An archetypal ‘calling card’ movie by an ambitious young director eager to show off his talents on the tiniest of budgets with just three actors and one main set, J Blakeson’s debut…

(Dir: J Blakeson, 2010, 100 mins)  An archetypal ‘calling card’ movie by an ambitious young director eager to show off his talents on the tiniest of budgets with just three actors and one main set, J Blakeson’s debut…

(Dir: Kevin Macdonald, 2011, 114 mins) Kevin ('The Last King of Scotland') Macdonald's version of the alleged disappearance of the Roman Empire's entire Ninth Legion in the mountains of Scotland back in 117AD should, on…

(Dir: Lee Tamahori, 117 mins) Scripted by David Mamet, this curious blend of stirring action-adventure and cerebral mind games defies easy categorisation, but it’s inevitably swallowed up by the breathtaking elemental…

(Dir: Fatih Akin, 2007, 121 mins, subtitles) Turkish-German writer/director Fatih (‘Head-On’) Akin takes another left turn with this bold drama on a much larger canvas that adopts the now familiar Haggis/Inarritu…

(Dir: John Maybury, 2008, 110 mins) One suspects there’s disappointment in store for fans of Keira Knightley’s period ‘Atonement’ turn John Maybury’s film about Dylan Thomas and the two women who loved him, which is…

(Dir: Hans Weingartner, 125 mins) Daniel (‘Good Bye Lenin!’) Bruhl stars in this enjoyable Austrian thriller, which achieves a rare balance between political provocation and nail-biting tension before a half-time…

(Dir: Shohei Imamura, 117 mins) Shohei Imamura’s Palme D'Or winner is something of a hard sell. This is, after all, a two-hour subtitled film about a bloke whose bestest mate is his pet eel. The chap in question is…

“The Belgian ‘Rain Man’” may not sound like an especially enticing prospect. And indeed this excessively saccharine confection isn’t, especially when measured against the standard set by director Jaco van Dormael’s…

(Dir: Chen Kaige, 161 mins) The most expensive Asian film ever made, Chen Kaige’s Kurosawa-esque epic is a sumptuous visual feast that engages the brain as well as the eye with a drama of Shakespearian proportions, a…

(Dir: Mark Dindal, 78 mins) A Disney animation about a cocky emperor who gets turned into a llama might not sound enticing, so it's all the more surprising that this should turn out to be one of the best movies the…

(Dir: Alan Taylor, 106 mins) This slight and whimsical little period romantic comedy boasts Ian Holm as the emperor Napoleon – a role he’s played so often that he’s in danger of being typecast. The conceit is that…

(Dir: Neil Jordan, 108 mins) At the risk of enraging Graham Greene purists, there's something faintly risible about 'The End of the Affair' which even that titan of romantic torment Ralph Fiennes cannot quite surmount.…

(Dir: Rupert Murray, 2009, 83 mins) Adapted from Daily Telegraph investigative journalist Charles Clover’s expose, this eye-opening documentary exposes modern fishing as a high-tech multinational industry, which hoiks…

(Dir: Wim Wenders, 117 mins) Wim Wenders returns to America for a meditation on movie violence. Sounds promising, eh? Except that he’s got nothing to say beyond a lot of not-especially-novel guff about high-tech…

(Dir: Anthony Minghella, 166 mins)  A sweeping Wartime epic of love and tragedy, with passionate, cultured women, stiff-upper-lipped Colonial chaps in khaki shorts, an Oscar-friendly disability/disfigurement motif, and…

(Dir: Robert Harling, 129 mins) Writer-director Harling, who wrote the similarly sentimental ‘Steel Magnolias’ and  ‘The First Wives Club’, delivers a belated sequel to ‘Terms of Endearment’ that is less a cynical…

(Dir: Robert Harling, 129 mins) Writer-director Harling, who wrote the similarly sentimental ‘Steel Magnolias’ and  ‘The First Wives Club’, delivers a belated sequel to ‘Terms of Endearment’ that is less a cynical…

(Dir: Sylvester Stallone, 2010, 103 mins) There’s so much leathery hide on display in Sly Stallone’s thick-eared macho action flick throwback that it might as well be set in a tannery. But while there are wisecracks…

(Dir: Oliver Hirschbiegel, 115 mins) Amazingly in these days of ever-more-absurd reality TV shows, no one thought to go back to the notorious 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment until now. Oliver Hirshbiegel takes a risk in…

(Dir: Gary Fleder, 2008, 129 mins) An ultra-formulaic meat’n’potatoes film about US college football star Ernie Davis. Directing with his usual uninspired competence, Gary Fleder whisks us through early scenes set in…

(Dir: Oxide & Danny Pang, 99 mins) A creepy genre ghostie flick from the fabulously named Pang twins, that risks but easily survives comparisons with ‘The Sixth Sense’. Completely blind for all but two of her 20 years,…

(Dir: David Moreau & Xavier Palud, 2008, 96 mins) French duo David Moreau and Xavier Palud, hot from impressive spooker ‘Them’, remake the Pang brothers’ Asian horror classic. But the result could have been churned out…

(Dir: Robert Rodriguez, 117 mins) Post-modern horror specialiast Kevin Williamson  hybridises 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' and 'The Breakfast Club', stripping out the McCarthyite paranoia of the former and giving…

(Dir: Tarsem, 2006, 117 mins) A classic audience-divider, this extraordinary, uniquely bonkers, visually stunning film was shot at enormous expense over four years in more than 18 countries and, it’s claimed, contains…

(Dir: Tarsem, 2006, 117 mins) A classic audience-divider, this extraordinary, uniquely bonkers, visually stunning film was shot at enormous expense over four years in more than 18 countries and, it’s claimed, contains…

(Dir: Paolo Sorrentino, 2006, 109 mins, subtitles) Misanthropists of the world rejoice! Here’s a film with a relentlessly low opinion of mankind, in which every hint of redemption is crushed as the pieces of its…

(Dir: Brett Ratner, 108 mins) Nic Cage is a high-powered Wall Street wolf on the verge of cementing a huge deal over the Christmas holidays. He wonders what his life would have been like if he hadn't broken up with his…

(Dir: Thomas Bezucha, 103 mins) Meredith Morton (Sarah Jessica Parker, as irritating as ever) has been brought home to meet the folks at Christmas by boyfriend Everett Stone (Dermot Mulroney). That’ll be waspish mom…

It’s hard to imagine what an actor of Bob De Niro’s calibre saw in the script for this hateful, mean-spirited Tony Scott film that merely requires him to reprise, in cruder form, two of his best-known roles: Rupert…

(Dir: Rob Cohen, 107 mins) Fabulously stupid and perversely entertaining, this is every inch the movie 'Gone in 60 Seconds' failed to be. Blond hunk Paul Walker is an aspiring illegal street racer who hangs out in the…

(Dir: Justin Lin, 104 mins) First Vin Diesel dropped out and now even Paul Walker can't be arsed to turn up for the second sequel. Instead you get Lucas Black as rules-bucking high school Southern boy Sean Boswell who,…

(Dir: David O. Russell, 2010, 116 mins) David O. Russell's arthouse 'Rocky' benefits from an authentic Jerry Springerland setting and true story credentials, plus strong performances from a sinewy, methody Christian…

(Dir: Jonathan Lynn, 123 mins) Cuba Gooding Jr hooks up with Brit hack Jonathan Lynn and remakes ‘Snow Dogs’ with a gospel choir instead of huskies. Cuba’s a slick adman and inveterate liar who returns to his Georgia…

(Dir: Julien Temple, 107 mins) Julian Temple's Sex Pistols history lesson acts as a corrective to his earlier 'The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle': a bunch of bollocks clearly steered by Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, who…

(Dir: David R. Ellis, 2009, 82 mins) The ‘Final Destination’ franchise trumps ‘Saw’ by distilling exactly what we want from a modern horror series: anonymous American teenagers dying as unpleasantly as possible. Each…

(Dir: Nick Love, 2009, 90 mins) In his most mature film to date, the ‘Daddy’ of British geezer movies pays tribute to the “authentic British working class film-making” that inspired him to become a writer-director. But…

(Dir: Remi Bezancon, 2009, 113 mins, subtitles) Fancy a Richard Curtis movie without all the cheap emotional manipulation? Well if you don’t mind squinting at subtitles, this somewhat sudsy, atypical French flick does…

(Dir: Hugh Wilson, 102 mins) Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Diane Keaton are three comfortably well-off, middle-aged women whose husbands’ libidos have wandered towards younger and firmer flesh. Determined not to suffer…

 (Dir: Brian Levant, 91 mins) Probably the least eagerly-anticipated prequel of all time. First appearances are not promising, since the main cast members give the impression that they're happy enough to be in a big…

Fortysomething romantic fiction writer Marisa Parades’ mid-life crisis is exacerbated by the continued absence of her NATO officer hubby. Her sister and mother  are constantly fighting, her best pal seems strangely…

(Dir: Wash West/Richard Glatzer, 94 mins) Bisexual aspiring filmmaker Sean McGinnis rents a copy of 'Citizen Kane' from his local video store. But when he gets home and slots the tape into his VCR, he finds he's…

(Dir: Douglas Mackinnon, 2007, 102 mins) It’s another of those plucky underdog yarns, this time with Jonny Lee Miller as champion Scottish cyclist Graeme Obree. But there’s something off about director Douglas…

(Dir: Rupert Wainwright, 99 mins) ‘The Fog’ was always the lost gem in John Carpenter’s oeuvre. It certainly deserves a whole lot better than the mediocre remake treatment dished out here by hack director Rupert…

(Dir: Errol Morris, 107 mins) Subtitled ‘Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S McNamara’, this latest slice of Americana from maverick documentary film-maker Errol Morris is a wry, penetrating and timely study of the…

(Dir: Errol Morris, 107 mins) Subtitled ‘Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S McNamara’, this latest slice of Americana from maverick documentary film-maker Errol Morris is a wry, penetrating and timely study of the…

(Dir: Jody Hill, 2006, 83 mins) Shot in 19 days on a budget of jack-shit, this rough and ready strip mall martial arts comedy boasts a career-making performance by Danny McBride, whose casting subsequently became…

(Dir: Nick Love, 91 mins) Young writer/director Nick Love whacks every penny of his meagre £500,000 budget up on screen, extracts excellent performances from a fine cast, and never betrays his subject by imposing a…

(Dir: Rob Minkoff, 2008, 104 mins) This together-at-last, kiddie-oriented teaming of aging chop-socky heroes Jackie Chan and Jet Li references sundry Chinese legends and novels, but the plot sticks to the tried and…

(Dir: Joseph Ruben, 91 mins) Telly Paretta (Julianne Moore) is stricken with grief after the death of her nine-year-old son in a plane accident. But then he starts to disappear from the family photographs and videos she…

(Dir: J.S. Cardone) A road/vampire movie with teen leads, this feels a lot like a sexed-up pilot for a TV series crossbreeding 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' with 'Gary and Mike'. Kerr Smith, a Los Angeles film editor,…

(Dir: Darren Aronofsky, 96 mins) Some will see Darren Aronofsky’s audience divider as a transcendent meditation on mortality. Others will suspect that he’s has bitten off considerably more than he can chew, his…

(Dir: Shekhar Kapur, 130 mins) This seventh screen version of A.E.W. Mason’s imperialist novel set in the Sudan campaign certainly seemed intriguing enough, directed as it is by Indian-born Shekhar (‘Elizabeth’) Kapur.…

(Dir: Olatunde Osunsanme, 2009, 98 mins) Watch out, people: the Ancient Sumerian alien owls are coming to abduct us! “Fact or fiction – it’s up to you to decide,” intones Milla Jovovich solemnly as she breaks the fourth…

(Dir: Luc Jacquet, 2007, 95 mins) French wildlife film-maker Luc Jacquet’s follow-up to ‘March of the Penguins’ takes a further step into the treacle swamps with a semi-autobiographical fairytale-esque narrative…

(Dir: Peter Jackson, 110 mins) ‘Brain Damage’ and ‘Heavenly Creatures’ director Peter Jackson changes tack again with this undemanding but entertaining comedy-horror in the ‘Ghostbusters’ mode. Michael J. Fox is a…

(Dir: Peter Cattaneo, 91 mins) A film about unemployed Sheffield steelworkers forming their own Chippendales-esque strip troupe may seem unpromising, but the real surprise here is how much director Peter Cattaneo…

(Dir: Abel Ferrara, 99 mins) Shot back-to-back with his contemporary vampire yarn ‘The Addiction’, Abel Ferrara serves up the second great gangster movie of 1997 after ‘Donnie Brasco’. When a young mafioso is gunned…

(Dir: John Boorman, 130 mins) Winner of the best Director award at Cannes, John Boorman’s biopic of Martin ‘The General’ Cahill – criminal rogue and scourge of the Dublin police – has the versatile Brendan Gleeson in…

(Dir: Simon West, 116 mins) Timothy Hutton, James Cromwell, Clarence Williams III) After the stupid, explosive fun that was 'Con Air', Brit director Simon West demonstrates his total Hollywood assimilation with one of…

(Dir: Roman Polanski, 2010, 128 mins) Roman Polanski’S slick and stylish political suspense flick, adapted from Robert Harris’s novel, offers lefties and conspiracy theorists all the excitement of a tautly plotted…

(Dir: Stephen Hopkins, 110 mins) Hemingway meets ‘Ripping Yarns’ in this occasionally exciting but all-too-often unintentionally hilarious true tale of colonial derring-do, shamefully scripted by William Goldman. Val…

(Dir: Sam Raimi, 112 mins) Sam Raimi switches to autopilot, delivering merely adequate minor-key supernatural spookiness in the 'Sixth Sense' vein. Down in swampy Georgia, psychic welfare mom Cate Blanchett gives…

(Dir: Robert Altman, 114 mins) Back in saddle as a jobbing director, Robert Altman tackles a John Grisham yarn, casting Ken Branagh as a Clinton-esque, serial-shagging Southern lawyer who gets mixed up with young…

(Dir: Christian Carion, 103 mins) Fed up with big city life, single, 30-year-old Parisian internet lecturer Sandrine (Mathilde Seigner) decides to retrain as a farmer. Down in the idyllic Rhone-Alpes, grumpy,…

(Dir: Luke Greenfield, 109 mins) Straight arrow high schooler Matthew (Emile Hirsch, resembling a junior Brad Pitt) starts dating the babe next door (Elisha Cuthbert) only to discover that she’s a retired porn star. If…

(Dir: Patrice leconte, 90 mins) Patrice Leconte returns to the acquired-taste sensualism of 'The Hairdresser's Husband' for this slight yet luminously photographed and enjoyable romantic fantasy. Gabor (Daniel Auteuil),…

(Dir: Andre Techine, 2009, 105 mins, subtitles) Inspired by the true story of a French woman who faked an anti-Semitic attack, Andre Tachine’s skilful, unsensationalised character study boasts an outstanding central…

(Dir: Daniel Alfredson, 2009, 147 mins, subtitles) A gripping and exceedingly satisfying conclusion to the Swedish adaptations of Stieg Larsson's bestselling trilogy, 'Hornets' Nest' continues to betray the sequels'…

(Dir: Daniel Alfredson, 2009, 129 mins, subtitles) It feels a bit cheaper than ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ and looks more like a made-for-TV thriller, because that’s pretty much what it is. And those somewhat…

(Dir: Roberto Bangura, 98 mins) Thirteen-year-old Joanna Ward is the only visible black girl in early ‘70s Leicester. She’s just had her first period, her unmarried mother is prone to abusive outbursts and unexplained…

(Dir: Niels Arden Oplev, 2009, 153 mins, subtitles) An utterly gripping adaptation of the first volume in Stieg Larsson’s bestselling ‘Millennium’ trilogy. Director Niels Arden Oplev takes his time with the story and…

(Dir: Daniel Sackheim, 107 mins) The title invites critical stone-throwing, but this glossy slice of trash does a pretty good job of disintegrating without our help. When the parents of 16-year-old Ruby Baker (Leelee…

(Dir: James Ivory, 135 mins) Completing an unofficial trilogy of Henry James stories with this sumptuous, turn-of-the-20th-century drama, Merchant-Ivory have, in the process, made one of their most enthralling and…

(Dir: Chris Weitz, 2007, 113 mins) Chris Weitz’s adaptation of ‘Northern Lights’ tones down the atheist perspective of Philip Pullman’s novel in deference to that lucrative middle-American audience who cling to…

(Dir: Steven Soderbergh, 2007, 105 mins) Steven Soderbergh attempts a studied formal exercise in recreating the style and grammar of monochrome 40s noir, while striving for contemporary political resonance. But while…

(Dir: Jake Paltrow, 2007, 93 mins) For his peculiar feature debut, Jake (brother of Gwyneth) Paltrow has obviously made use of all his family contacts to pull in acting favours. The film starts off in mock rockumentary…

(Dir: Robert De Niro, 2007, 167 mins) Bob De Niro’s sombre, overlong and occasionally rather plodding lightly fictionalised account of the murky early years of the CIA, with Matt Damon in the buttoned-down, internalised…

(Dir: Neil Jordan, 108 mins) While never less than enjoyable, Neil Jordan’s reworking of Melville’s black and white ‘50s noir ‘Bob le Flambeur’ starts out as a novel, superbly played character study, giving peerless…

(Dir: Kim Ji-woon, 2008, 130 mins, subtitles) Neither especially good nor particularly bad, this certainly has its moments of weirdness. Eclectic South Korean director Kim Ji-woon’s beautifully photographed and expertly…

(Dir: Neal Brennan, 2009, 90 mins) Don Ready (Jeremy Piven) is being sold to audiences as a comedy cousin of Ron Burgundy (‘Anchorman’) and Ricky Bobby (‘Talledega Nights’) from the hit’n’miss Adam McKay/Will Ferrell…

With ringside attendance, public interest and pay-per-view satellite subscriptions all on the slide, flamboyant boxing promoter Samuel L. Jackson decides to introduce some racial tension into the sport  by giving middle…

(Dir: Michel Gondry, 2011, 119 mins) For his first big-budget Hollywood blockbuster, fashionable expat French director Michel Gondry joined forces with co-writer/star/executive producer Seth Rogan for a long-gestating…

(Dir: Frank Darabont, 189 mins) A discursive, laboured religious allegory, Frank Darabont’s second Stephen King adaptation is told in flashback from the present day. Crumbly old Tom Hanks recalls the events of the…

(Dir: Phil Joanou, 120 mins) Based on an Emmy-winning 1993 TV documentary of the same name, this is a hybrid of two genres that traditionally fail to cross the Atlantic with any great success: the American sports movie…

(Dir: Ron Howard, 105 mins) If you feel queasy every time a big, expensive Hollywood movie presumes to lecture you on the over-commercialisation of Christmas, you may want to give Ron Howard's adaptation of the Dr.…

(Dir: Takashi Shimizu, 90 mins) Few Hollywood remakes of ‘foreign’ originals stick as closely to what worked the first time round as ‘The Grudge’, by original director Takashi Shimizu. Though the ghosts are home-grown,…

(Dir: Takashi Shimizu, 102 mins) Having neglected to polish off Sarah Micelle Gellar in the first US ‘Grudge’, vengeful ghost Kayako rectifies her oversight in double-quick time at the start of the sequel. Naturally,…

(Dir: Andrew Davis, 136 mins) Kev Costner dives back in the briny for a film that plays like an overblown, parodic hybrid of ‘Top Gun’ and ‘Men of Honor’, taking the role of grizzled mentor figure to Ashton Kutcher’s…

(Dir: Daisy von Scherler Mayer, 95 mins) Transparently pitched at the ‘East Is East’/‘Bend It like Beckham’ market, with one eye on the US box office, this fish-out-of-water romcom squanders its delicious premise. But…

(Dir: Thom Fitzgerald, 91 mins) When splendidly vulgar Rosemary (Kerry Fox, in the film’s best performance) gets married, a ghost from the past appears in the form of her brother, Sweet William (Chris Leavins). Things…

(Dir: Todd Phillips, 2009, 100 mins) Todd Phillips returns to the territory of his breakthrough hit ‘Road Trip’ with a film that boasts potentially actionable echoes of Peter Berg’s ‘Very Bad Things’ and is every bit…

(Dir: M. Night Shyamalan, 2008, 91 mins) Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan painted himself into a corner with the breakthrough success of ‘The Sixth Sense’, and has been ticking off various paranormal sub-genres in a…

(Dir: Miike Takashi, 113 mins) An unemployed Japanese shoe salesman moves his extended, dysfunctional family to the mountains, where he opens a guesthouse. Trouble is the guests have a habit of coming over all dead. So…

(Dir: Scott Roberts, 103 mins) This rough-around-the-edges, blackly comic crime flick from Down Under atones for its clumsy plotting and lack of originality with some impressive performances and an agreeable streak of…

(Dir: Rob Minkoff, 86 mins) A haunted house flick so feeble that it makes Jan de Bont’s sterile remake of ‘The Haunting’ seem like a masterpiece, the perfunctory, mechanical plot of this theme park adaptation seeks to…

(Dir: Jan de Bont, 112 mins) A remake of Robert Wise’s effective 1963 ghost story, directed in loud, obvious, hectoring style by Jan De Bont, whose post-'Speed' career ('Twister', 'Speed 2', this) suggests his smash hit…

(Dir: Peter Cornwell, 2009, 102 mins) Yet another Amityville-style haunted house flick which is – yeah, right – “based on a true story.” Fortunately for the film-makers, this is one of those true stories that conforms…

(Dir: Lucrecia Martel, 2008, 89 mins, subtitles) Argentinean director Lucrecia Martel’s grotesquely over-praised film promises much but delivers virtually nothing. The set-up is intriguing enough to keep you wondering…

(Dir: Lucrecia Martel, 2008, 89 mins, subtitles) Argentinean director Lucrecia Martel’s grotesquely over-praised film promises much but delivers virtually nothing. The set-up is intriguing enough to keep you wondering…

(Dir: Peter and Bobby Farrelly, 2007, 115 mins) The Farrelly brothers’ raunchy marital mix-up comedy fails to match their best work. Ben Stiller tears it up as confirmed bachelor Eddie Cantrow, whose chance meeting with…

(Dir: Stephen Frears, 115 mins) An elegiac western bestriding WWII, with lots of rootin'-tootin', mildly homoerotic male bonding and a performance by Woody Harrelson as big as those widescreen cattle country landscapes…

(Dir: Yoji Yamada, 132 mins)  Whoa! A 19th century Samurai yarn whose central character is the keeper of a secret, deadly technique known as the “devil’s claw”. Any Taranteenies feeling the uncomfortable necessity to…

(Dir: Alexandre Aja, 107 mins) Mercifully, this re-working of Wes Craven’s 1977 cannibal shocker was made, with his blessing, by die-hard genre fan Alexandre Aja. Craven’s grainy, low-budget horror movie was shot with a…

(Dir: Martin Weisz, 2007, 89 mins) A sequel to a remake of something that already had a sequel, this Wes Craven-scripted flick doesn’t revisit the storyline of his original or Alexandre Aja’s remake but opts instead to…

(Dir: Nicholas Hytner, 112 mins) This second collaboration between Alan Bennett and Nicholas Hytner has already bagged a heap of Tony and Olivier awards. It certainly helps that the original stage cast have reunited for…

The Hitcher (15) **(Dir: Dave Meyers, 2007, 84 mins) Script tinkering on this pointless update of a film that was made just 20 years ago is minimal at first, but the perceived demands of jaded teens lead to a risible…

(Dir: Garth Jennings, 110 mins) Whereas the much-derided TV series had the feel of an epic adventure, the disappointing long-gestating film version of Douglas Adams’ classic charges through a Reader’s Digest condensed…

(Dir: Lasse Hallstrom, 2006, 115 mins) Veteran treaclemeister Lasse Hallstrom teams up with Richard Gere for a project that appears tailor made for the Soderbergh/Clooney dream team. Against expectations, it’s…

(Dir: Joe Dante, 2010, 92 mins)  A single mom moves her unwilling brood – including Surly Teen and Cute Moppet – into a new house in a small town and obligingly goes to work for long periods, leaving them to encounter…

(Dir: Nick Hamm, 102 mins) Adapted from the novel 'After the Hole' by then-teenage novelist Guy Burt, this is a creepy Rashomon-style tale of public school dastardly deeds. It opens with Thora Birch stumbling bloodied…

(Dir: Nancy Meyers, 135 mins) ‘Love, Actually’ meets ‘Wife Swap’ in this festive screwball romcom with Kate Winslet as a Telegraph hackette with a messy love life who exchanges houses with Hollywood career women Cameron…

(Dir: Marshall Herskovitz, 111 mins) This supposedly true story set in 17th century Venice recounts the life of young Veronica Franco (Catherine McCormack). Her humble origins mean she can never marry the man she loves,…

(Dir: Karl Golden, 89 mins) What if you were to use Dogme techniques to make an utterly conventional romantic comedy? That seems to have been the idea behind Karl Golden’s micro-budget debut ‘The Honeymooners’, which…

(Dir: John Schultz, 90 mins) A dire ‘re-imagining’ version of a 1950s American TV classic, starring Cedric The Entertainer. Blowhard bus driver Ralph Kramden (Mr. Entertainer) is a kind-hearted, if bone-headed soul, who…

(Dir: Robert Redford, 168 mins) For much of ‘The Horse Whisperer’s extravagant running length, you yearn to turn the sound down and simply luxuriate in the gorgeous, richly textured imagery that Robert Redford has so…

'Cyrano' director Jean-Paul Rappaneau's epic, big-budget 19th century costume drama, full of intrigue, adventure, repressed love and lots of sick people - all spectacularly shot in cinemascope. Olivier Martinez is the…

(Dir: Bong Joon-ho, 120 mins) Fancy a big, dumb, funny, old-school Far East monster movie, with a pleasing streak of anti-American satire? Look no further than South Korea’s biggest-ever box office hit, which is based…

 (Dir: Tom Brady, 101 mins) A lowbrow comedy that may seem strikingly original to anyone who didn’t live through the great body-swap glut (‘Big’, ‘Vice Versa’, etc) of the late 80s. Blonde high-school cheerleader bitch…

(Dir: Tom Putnam, 2007, 91 mins) A lame copy of the Farrelly blueprint, airhead heiress Paris Hilton’s first vehicle is yet another ugly duckling tale about inner beauty. Dumped by his latest girlfriend, geeky loser…

(Dir: Stpehen Daldry, 115 mins) Adapted by David Hare from a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, with weighty roles for a trio of classy actresses, Stephen Daldry’s follow-up to ‘Billy Elliot’ is this year’s most blatant…

(Dir: Fred Wolf, 2008, 97 mins) Anna Faris finally gets the sort of showcase movie ‘Legally Blonde’ (which was written by the same team) was for Reese Witherspoon, and deserves to step up to solid stardom. She plays…

(Dir: Terence Davies, 140 mins) Funereally slow and glacially passionless, veteran Brit glumster Terence Davies's adaptation of yet another of those Edith Wharton yarns about turn-of-the-century New York toffs being…

(Dir: William Malone, 96 mins) This hugely entertaining re-make of schlock merchant William Castle's 1958 original is faithful to the tradition of the finest horror bollocks: warped theme park creator Steven Price…

(Dir: Tom Six, 2009, 92 mins) This certainly delivers on the gimmicky grossout front, although it’s less explicit than you might imagine. But the film is also surprisingly well made, making excellent use of its…

(Dir: Robert Benton, 107 mins) When 70ish Jewish New England classics professor Coleman Silk (Anthony Hopkins maintaining clipped English accent) loses his job and wife in quick succession, he embarks on an affair with…

Disney’s 34th full-length animated feature is definitely one of the studio’s better efforts and happens to be a good deal darker than usual, despite a series of comic turns from the cathedral gargoyles (two of whom are…

(Dir: William Friedkin, 94 mins) Another stinker from the once-great William Friedkin, ‘The Hunted’ bears all the hallmarks of a film that’s had all its non-action sequences pared away to leave one huge chase that…

(Dir: Norman Jewison, 140 mins) Norman Jewison would have us believe that boxer Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter (Denzel Washington) was wrongfully convicted of murder after being framed by nasty racist cop Vincent Della Pasca…

(Dir: Kathryn Bigelow, 2009, 131 mins) Kathryn Bigelow plunges us into a relentlessly tense couple of hours in the company of the US army’s elite Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) squad operating in Iraq. The absence of…

(Dir: Ang Lee, 112 mins) The astonishing thing about this adaptation of Rick Moody’s acerbic novel is how expertly Taiwanese director Ang Lee captures its many culturally specific textures and nuances. It’s 1973 and the…

(Dir: Lars Von Trier, 117 mins) Under the ascetic auspices of Dogma 95, 'Breaking the Waves' director Lars Von Trier delivers a complex and involving piece of film-making with ambitions that go beyond cosy reinforcement…

(Dir: Sylvain Chomet, 2010, 80 mins) French animator Sylvain (‘Belleville Rendez-vous’) Chomet delivers a love letter to Edinburgh, where he’s now based, and to Jacques Tati, who is clearly his greatest influence.…

(Dir: Terry Gilliam, 2009, 123 mins) It’s hard not to think of this latest hymn to the power of imagination as a Terry Gilliam greatest hits remix. There are grand eye candy set-pieces (‘Baron Munchausen’), fantastical…

(Dir: Oliver Parker, 97 mins) Where Oliver Parker’s ‘An Ideal Husband’ had spark, this Oscar Wilde revamp splutters. It’s one of Wilde’s wittiest plays and all of his bon mots are present and correct. So where did this…

(Dir: Mary Lambert, 104 mins) Barking teen sexpot Lori Heuring is unleashed from the nuthouse to work at a posh South Carolina beachside country club, also populated by toned models wearing virtually nothing and tanned…

(Dir: Andrew Fleming, 98 mins) A remake of the 1979 Peter Falk/Alan Arkin movie, upping the ante and budget for a new generation, this utterly mainstream piece of studio tosh passes the time reasonably well. Albert…

(Dir: Louis Leterrier, 2008, 112 mins) Pare away all the pompous guff that’s been spouted by Edward Norton and others about this, ahem, ‘reboot’ and you’ll find it’s the same old crap: much hardware is trashed, feeble…

(Dir: Brad Bird, 121 mins) Previous Pixar offerings were kids’ films that grown-ups would like. ‘The Incredibles’ is almost the opposite; witty action-entertainment from which you must not feel excluded if you don’t…

After a chance meeting, seventeen-year-old New Jersey high school outcast Randy Dean falls for Evie. The two girls couldn’t be more dissimilar: Evie’s black, rather naïve, has a wealthy professional mom and enjoys…

The Hollywood version of Lynne Reid Banks's popular children's story is best suited to the kind of pre-teen audience whose demands extend no further than a film being in colour, in focus and over quite quickly - but…

(Dir: Josh Appignanesi, 2010, 105 mins) It’s not hard to see the appeal of the story. Mahmud, a modern British Muslim, discovers that – before his adoption – he had been born a Jew. With Omid Djalili in the lead, and…

(Dir: Josh Appignanesi, 2010, 105 mins) It’s not hard to see the appeal of the story. Mahmud, a modern British Muslim, discovers that – before his adoption – he had been born a Jew. With Omid Djalili in the lead, and…

(Dir: Steven Soderbergh, 2009, 108 mins) Steven Soderbergh takes an important if dry price-fixing scandal and turns it into entertaining black comedy. He also slathers on swinging sixties stylings and a jaunty Marvin…

It's not often you see a British film as handsomely staged as this. Sweeping dolly shots and lustrous widescreen cinematography signal an admirable determination to put every penny of the meagre #1.5 million budget up…

(Dir: Michael Mann, 155 mins) Michael Mann's controversial film takes the odd liberty with the facts, but there’s is no doubting the essential truth of his account. Broadly, the story goes like this: tenacious…

(Dir: Tom Tykwer, 2009, 118 mins) Inspired by revelations about the Bank of Credit & Commerce International, this topical thriller arrives after that scandal has been eclipsed by more bad news and audiences know more…

(Dir: Sydney Pollock, 119 mins) Sydney Pollock’s strongest suit has been the political thriller. His third go at the genre is in many ways evocative of ‘The Manchurian Candidate’, but keeps you so tightly wound in to…

(Dir: Claire Denis, 126 mins)  Those who were charmed by lauded French director Claire Denis’s most acclaimed film, ‘Beau Travail’, should be warned that ‘The Intruder’ achieves new levels of wilful opacity, or, if you…

(Dir: Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2007, 99 mins) Oliver (‘Downfall’) Hirschbiegel’s troubled reworking of ‘Invasion of the Bodysnatchers’ was called in for rewrites and reshooting before being released without any press…

(Dir: Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson, 2009, 99 mins) In an alternate universe, the human race has not evolved the ability to tell an untruth – which means there’s no such thing as religion. Then some synapse sparks…

(Dir: Brad Bird, 86 mins) Witty, sophisticated and determinedly retro, unsullied by comedy animals or crap songs, and even boasting a good old-fashioned, mildly subversive pacifist message, Warners’ animated adaptation…

(Dir: Michael Bay, 136 mins) A pair of residents of a highly regimented future society smell a rat and decide to flee the safety of their cocoon to find out what the supposedly contaminated outside world is really like.…

(Dir: F. Gary Gray, 110 mins) If you’re going to derive any pleasure from this sacrilegious remake of the revered sixties Brit caper flick it’s probably best to forget all about the original. Its American producers seem…

(Dir: Michael Caton-Jones, 125 mins) Although based on the same screenplay as ‘The Day of the Jackal’, this updated version has an abbreviated title because of complaints from author Frederick Forsyth. The bare bones of…

(Dir: John Maybury, 102 mins) Arthouse director John (‘Love is the Devil’) Maybury tackles a science fiction staple, but seems so embarrassed by the genre’s reputation among his upmarket peers that he holds it…

(Dir: Robin Swicord, 2007, 105 mins) If the title sets your teeth on edge, be warned that it’s the least grating thing about this adaptation of the chicklit bestseller, which hijacks the novels of Jane Austen to wallow…

(Dir: Steven Woodcock, 90 mins)  Plucky Manchester-based indie North Country Pictures’ brave manifesto asserts that it is “putting the quality back into British drama”. Who wouldn’t applaud that? Alas, the cold, hard…

(Dir: Derrick Borte, 2009, 96 mins) A seemingly-perfect family – handsome Dad Steve (David Duchovny), beautiful Mom Kate (Demi Moore), high school princess daughter Jenn (Amber Heard), cool teen son Mick (Ben…

If you saw ‘Trial By Jury’, in which single mom Joanne Whalley-Kilmer was threatened by bent cop William Hurt to return a not guilty verdict on a mafia boss or see her son get hurt, this may seen very familiar. Here,…

(Dir: Harald Zwart, 2010, 140 mins) • That’s right: two bloody hours and twenty minutes. For a kids’ film! To all but teary-eyed ‘80s nostalgics, the original 1984 hit was more than flatulent enough, but this big-budget…

(Dir: Nick Moran, 2010, 115 mins) Actor-turned-director Nick Moran adapts the book credited with kicking off the Misery Memoir fad in the UK back in 2003. Rupert Friend does a good impersonation of Kevin Lewis, the…

(Dir: Brett Morgen & Nanette Burstein, 93 mins) Robert Evans is a Hollywood legend, and, boy, does he know it. That’s the main thing you’ll take away from this self-serving, but not unentertaining documentary. He…

(Dir: Michael Winterbottom, 2010, 109 mins) Jim Thompson’s dark 1952 pulp novel is controversially adapted by unpredictable, multi-talented Brit Michael Winterbottom. Casey Affleck assumes soft-spoken voiceover…

(Dir: Andrew Piddington, 2006, 106 mins) Brit film-maker Andrew Piddington has made a point of using the exact words spoken by John Lennon’s killer Mark Chapman, which have been culled from interviews, depositions and…

(Dir: James Marsh, 104 mins) This steamy, violent slice of southern gothic will be way too rich for many tastes, being an ambitious, transgressive drama that’s prepared to risk losing its audience with some audacious…

(Dir: Richard Rich, 87 mins) Poorly drawn, unimaginatively scripted, clumsily directed, and performed with little real conviction by either the vocal or singing cast, this is as poor an animated feature as we have ever…

(Dir: Kristian Levring, 108 mins) Dogme 95 co-founder Kristian Levring offers a set-up that takes advantage of the movement’s self-denying, hair-shirt ordinances while chiming perfectly with the 'Big Brother'/'Survivor'…

(Dir: Gerard Corbiau, 105 mins) Those who enjoy their costume drama on the ripe side will find this lavish feast of hoofing and sodomy set in the court of Louis XIV one of the more entertaining romps featuring decadent…

(Dir: Tom Hooper, 2010, 118 mins) Skilfully scripted by David Seidler, sympathetically directed by Tom Hooper and brilliantly played by its well-chosen cast, with Colin Firth surely due the Oscar that eluded him for 'A…

(Dir: Peter Berg, 2007, 110 mins) Jamie Foxx puts on his cool shades and whups serious quantities of Saudi towelhead ass in what might be characterised as ‘The War on Terrrr: The US Wish-Fulfilment Cut’. Not since…

(Dir: Marc Forster, 2007, 127 mins, subtitles) Talk about a film of two halves. The opening hour or so of Marc Forster’s adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s semi-autobiographical bestseller feels like classic awards bait.…

(Dir: Bernard Rose, 2008, 100 mins) Veteran Tolstoy enthusiast Bernard Rose delivers a cheap, grotty-looking reworking of the 1889 novella which was inspired by Beethoven’s music and censored by the Russian authorities.…

(Dir: Eric Rohmer, 125 mins) At the age of 82, French film-maker Eric Rohmer - best known for his visually restrained moral tales and witty comedies of manners - has embraced computer-generated imagery to create a…

(Dir: Ethan and Joel Coen, 104 mins)  The Coen brothers were always on a hiding to nothing with their transposition of this classic Ealing comedy from post-War London to Mississippi. Those who are able to get over the…

(Dir: Alejandro Agresti, 98 mins) Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock reunite for a sappy romantic fantasy that perversely fails to exploit their chemistry. A remake of the 2000 Korean film ‘Il Mare’, it opens with…

(Dir: David Leland, 111 mins) A syrupy and predictable drama about the volunteer army of women who tilled the soil during WWII so that farmers’ sons could go and fight. In 1941, three young ladies in uniform are…

(Dir: M. Night Shyamalan, 2010, 103 mins) A strong contender for the dubious accolade of Silliest Film of 2010, M. Night Shyamalan’s latest duffer is a boring, clumsy, badly acted adaptation of a Nickelodeon animated…

(Dir: Rod Lurie, 131 mins) An uproariously bad prison movie, which offers some entertainment value thanks to the face-off between the worn granite handsomeness of Robert Redford and the flabby, prissy, whiny villainy of…

(Dir: James Moll, 87 mins) The 1999 Best Documentary Oscar-winning 'The Last Days', co-produced by Steven Spielberg and the Shoah Visual History Foundation, boasts a familiar mix of personal testimony and archive…

(Dir: Whit Stillman, 112 mins) Whit Stillman’s films are populated by smug, self-obsessed Ivy League twerps, whose unwieldy, arch exchanges make a feeble bid for qualification as dialogue, the twist to this painfully…

(Dir: Daniel Stamm, 2010, 86 mins) This enjoyable shakycam mockumentary is at its best in the clever, satirical set up. By the third act, however, it seems to have forgotten altogether that it’s supposed to be a…

(Dir: David Mackenzie, 96 mins) Rising Brit director Mackenzie’s troubled first film, shot on wobbly digital video and ambitiously setting out its stall as a ‘Wicker Man’ for the new millennium. It starts intriguingly…

(Dir: Dennis Illiadis, 2009, 110 mins) Every classic low-budget horror must have its glossy Hollywood remake. It’s the law. Given that Wes Craven’s grungy 1972 debut, a loose remake of Ingmar Bergman’s ‘The Virgin…

(Dir: Kevin Macdonald, 123 mins) Kevin Macdonald’s adaptation of Giles Foden novels stands out from the Whitey Goes to Africa genre for two reasons. The fictional young Scottish doctor through whose experiences Idi…

(Dir: Tony Goldwyn, 104 mins) American audiences aren’t keen on tampering with the romantic ideal and don’t like endings in which love rats get away with their misdeeds. Working from a blackly comic Italian source,…

(Dir: Doug Lefler, 2007, 102 mins) This flat and episodic old-school Dino De Laurentiis sword’n’sandals production attempts to draw a line between the fall of Rome and the origins of Arthurian legend. When solemn nipper…

(Dir: Robert Shaye, 2007, 90 mins) Finally, some relief for parents fed up of fart gags, animated talking animals and interchangeable pop princesses posing as children’s cinema. Infused with an endearing retro feel,…

(Dir: Robert Guediguian, 117 mins) Imagine that, say, Ken Loach were to make a largely admiring film about Harold Wilson that chose to overlook his character faults in favour of a grand, self-important meditation on the…

It’s the summer of 1977, and 17-year-old Dublin teenager Jared Leto is convinced he’s just failed his exams and will never get to university. He has just six weeks to wallow in the music of his beloved Thin Lizzy and…

(Dir: Edward Zwick, 154 mins) Ed Zwick sure gives great battle and ‘The Last Samurai’ is bookended by two of them. The problem is all the stuff in between, which is liable to make sensitive cinemagoers feel distinctly…

(Dir: Julie Anne Robinson, 2010, 107 mins) Yet another adaptation of one of those formulaic Nicholas Sparks novels aimed at making tweenie girls blub. This one is also a vehicle for ruthless pocket money thief Hannah…

(Dir: Michael Hoffman, 2009, 113 mins) Michael Hoffman’s adaptation of Jay Parini’s novel is an enjoyable middlebrow prestige flick whose tasteful bawdiness recalls his earlier ‘Restoration’. Barnstorming roles are also…

(Dir: Stacy Title, 88 mins) An American variation on ‘Shallow Grave’, this blackly comic tale has five grad students in Iowa, each liberal to the core, becoming committed to some very illiberal actions after an…

(Dir: Neil Hunter and Tom Hunsinger, 99 mins) Incredibly, this is a classy new Britflick set in Essex. Stuart’s died and friends and relatives are gathered to say their goodbyes. There's grieving lover Nick (Tom…

(Dir: John Duigan, 99 mins) All them acting lessons Mr. Bon Jovi has been taking in between Givin’ Love a Bad Name in stadia across the world seem to have paid off handsomely in this, his first major role: a demanding,…

(Dir: Stephen Norrington, 110 mins) Alan Moore’s graphic novel ‘The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’ is revered because of its quality of artwork and complexity of storyline and characters. James Robinson’s screenplay…

(Dir: Stephen Norrington, 110 mins) Alan Moore’s graphic novel ‘The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’ is revered because of its quality of artwork and complexity of storyline and characters. James Robinson’s screenplay…

(Dir: Robert Redford, 126 mins) Robert Redford’s dreary mystical golfing flick whisks us back to the early years of the Great Depression, where a contrivance brings together two of America's foremost golfers for a big…

(Dir: Martin Campbell, 130 mins) It’s 1850, and California's set to vote on becoming the 31st state of the Union. However, there are forces at work determined not only to prevent this happening but to destroy the…

(Dir: Luchino Visconti, 1963, 205 min, subtitles) • Return of Visconti’s masterpiece, originally butchered by Fox but now restored to its full glory and regularly acclaimed as one of the finest Cinemascope movies ever…

(Dir: Laurence Dunmore, 120 mins) An authentically bawdy, sweary romp through the life of the debauched John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, featuring yet another magnificent, gleefully enthusiastic performance from…

(Dir: Stephen Hopkins, 126 mins)  Stephen Hopkins’ flawed biopic manages to cram an awful lot into two hours, while still finding room for some audacious narrative trickery intended to offer insight into his subject’s…

(Dir: Wes Anderson, 118 mins) Insomuch as there’s a theme developing in Texan director Wes Anderson’s increasingly wry and stylised oeuvre, it is of the wilful, tactless, unreliable father and his dysfunctional brood.…

(Dir: Alan Parker, 130 mins) Alan Parker’s ludicrous film boasts a last reel twist which tips into abject preposterousness what had, until then, been just a tiresomely overwrought death penalty drama foghorned from the…

(Dir: Steven Soderbergh, 89 mins) Steven Soderbergh's slight-yet-enjoyable low budget follow-up to his slick 'Out of Sight' is not only about two nations divided, as Bernard Shaw famously remarked, by a common language,…

(Dir: Jim Jarmusch, 2009, 116 mins, subtitles) Those who saw 2005’s ‘Broken Flowers’ as a sell-out will be delighted to learn that this is arguably Jim Jarmusch’s most tedious, self-consciously ‘enigmatic’ film to date.…

(Dir: Brad Furman, 2011, 118 mins) Having tried his luck as an action hero ('Sahara'), a romantic lead ('Ghosts of Girlfriends Past') and a comedy star ('Failure To Launch'), Matthew McConaughey returns to the courtroom…

(Dir: Piet de Rycker/Thilo Graf Rothkirch, 77 mins) A rudimentarily drawn feature-length version of the animated TV series based on the books by Dutch author Hans der Beers, this feels like three stories bundled…

(Dir: Thilo Graf Rothkirch, 81 mins) Sequel to the episodic, feature-length animated adaptation of Dutch author Hans der Beers' pre-schooler books, whose German creators have at least made an effort to come up with a…

(Dir: Uli Edel, 95 mins)  Jonathan (‘Stuart Little’) Lipnicki plays the young hero of this oddly macabre story aimed at family audiences. He’s a bored nine-year-old American kid living in Scotland whose one escape is…

(Dir: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006, 137 mins, subtitles) Writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s brilliant,Oscar-winnng feature debut is the finest surveillance drama since ‘The Conversation’. East…

(Dir: Jim Fall, 90 mins) The intention of this tweenage flick seems to be to rebrand perky Hilary Duff as an identikit bland teenpop star while cashing in on her starring role in the popular Disney TV show. Lizzie is…

(Dir: Renny Harlin, 120 mins) After the disaster of husband and wife team Renny Harlin and Geena Davis’s previous flick, ‘Cutthroat Island’, this play-safe ironic escapist fantasy scripted by Shane (‘Lethal Weapon’)…

(Dir: Peter Segal, 113 mins) A lame remake of Robert Aldrich’s 1974 comedy-drama with Adam Sandler in the Burt Reynolds role. Yes, you may want to read that sentence again. Weedy Adam Sandler attempts to fill the manly…

(Dir: Peter Segal, 113 mins) A lame remake of Robert Aldrich’s 1974 comedy-drama with Adam Sandler in the Burt Reynolds role. Yes, you may want to read that sentence again. Weedy Adam Sandler attempts to fill the manly…

(Dir: Scott Frank, 2007, 99 mins) Screenwriter Scott (‘Out of Sight’, ‘Get Shorty’) Frank’s directorial debut is a slowburning noir welding the chilly locale and folksy cops of ‘Fargo’ to the potentially tricksy…

(Dir: Peter Jackson, 178 mins) Peter Jackson's jaw-droppingly original adaptation of Tolkien's 'The Lord of the Rings' blends spectacular images with credible characters, complex moral ambiguities, exhilarating action…

(Dir: Peter Jackson, 201 mins) The final instalment of Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth-shattering trilogy drives the violent fantasy epic towards its denouement, introducing new challenges and fearsome creatures for the…

(Dir: Peter Jackson, 179 mins) Plunging us headlong into the action, the second part of Kiwi director Peter Jackson’s epic Tolkien trilogy picks up exactly where ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ left off. Frodo and Sam are…

(Dir: Sylvain White, 2010, 97 mins) You’ve heard this one before: the Losers are a unit of multi-ethnic, hard-as-nails, mostly good-humoured covert military types with enough wardrobe and character quirks apiece so you…

(Dir: Chris Menges, 102 mins) An intelligent scratch at the surface of the child sex business, this sends Daniel Auteuil's French private dick from Soho to Suffolk to Mexico on the trail of a missing smack-addict: a…

(Dir: Steven Spielberg, 134 mins) When dear old Dickie Attenborough says to Jeff Goldblum, “You mean you didn’t know about Site B?” Jeff doesn’t burst out laughing and demand that they can surely do better than that for…

(Dir: Marco Schnabel, 2008, 87 mins) The character names in Mike Myers’ woeful, genitally fixated gurucom tell you all you need to know: Dick Pants, Guru Satchabigknoba, Guru Tugginmypudha (played shamefully and…

(Dir: Peter Ho-Sun Chan, 87 mins) This romantic comedy of errors has its moments but they are few and far between, as various characters in a small American town (played by Kate Capshaw, Blythe Danner, Tom Everett…

(Dir: Peter Jackson, 2009, 135 mins) Peter Jackson has succeeded in upsetting an awful lot of people with this adaptation of Alice Sebold’s revered ‘70s-set, post-9/11 bestseller. God-botherers continue to decry the…

(Dir: Jamie Thraves, 96 mins) Shot in suitably wobbly verite style, this fractured, largely improvised feature debut from pop video director Jamie Thraves follows a bunch of twentysomething North London friends as they…

(Dir: Marleen Gorris, 110 mins) Set in 1920s Italy, Marleen Gorris’s Nabokov adaptation introduces us to Alexander Luzhin (John Turturro), an obsessive chess Grand Master with the interpersonal skills of a startled…

(Dir: Brad Anderson, 102 mins)  Much has been made of Christian Bale losing a third of his body weight to become cadaverous Trevor Reznik. Was it worth the effort? Well, Brad Anderson is certainly a promising director,…

Alan Bennett's adaptation of his own play is remarkable for combining a topical freshness with authentic period detail while rarely betraying its stage origins. The film condenses history to the period 1788-89, when…

(Dir: Peter Mullan, 119 mins) Set in 1964 Dublin, Peter Mullan’s fictionalised true story follows three young girls who are taken from their homes for such ‘crimes’ as being raped, having a child out of wedlock and…

(Dir: Dave Borthwick/Frank Passingham/Jean Duval, 82 mins) A big-screen adaptation of the kids’ teatime classic was always going to be hard to pull off, as it has to reconcile the conflicting demands of nostalgic baby…

(Dir: Frederick du Chau, 86 mins) This latest offering from the Warner animation team who gave you ‘Space Jam’ is a PC take on the Arthurian legend. Bar a handful of digital sequences, it serves up a familiar selection…

(Dir: Frank Darabont, 153 mins) Frank Darabont’s celebration of mythical '50s smalltown life is so wholesome, saccharine and calculatedly uplifting that its only value as entertainment would be in prompting a projectile…

(Dir: Les Mayfield, 83 mins) A lead-footed, lumberingly unfunny mismatched buddy botch job of the ‘Midnight Run’/‘48 Hrs’ formula. Rehashing his familiar affable sad sack, Eugene Levy plays Andy Fiddler, a talkative…

(Dir: Randall Wallace, 122 mins) France 1660: young Louis XIV (Leonardo DiCaprio) is on the throne, the peasants are revolting and the muskateers are a little concerned that he doesn’t appear to represent the values and…

(Dir: Jose Enrique Fonseca, 113 mins) Mild-mannered, unemployed Maiquel shoots dead a man who taunts him in a Rio de Janeiro bar. Luckily, the dead man was widely loathed and everybody was glad to see the back of him.…

(Dir: Jon Amiel, 95 mins) Dim-witted Iowa tourist Bill Murray is in London to see his brother, who buys him the hottest ticket in town: ‘Theatre of Life’, who let each punter be the star of their very own drama. All he…

(Dir: Mark Joffe, 102 mins) This starts out promisingly enough with Billy Connolly cast as a fisherman whose boat is destroyed in a storm, leaving him homeless. When the insurance company wriggles out of coughing up by…

(Dir: Joel Coen, 116 mnis) The Coen brothers’ self-conscious tribute, in both tone and structure, to the work of James M. Cain, this relies heavily on a mannered performance by Billy Bob Thornton, who appears in…

Mel Gibson took quite a commercial risk with this, his directorial debut, by playing a reclusive man whose badly scarred face is a physical manifestation of the bitter torment that rages inside him. A former teacher,…

(Dir: Jonathan Demme, 129 mins) If it remains fundamentally rather silly, Jonathan Demme’s taut update of John Frankenheimer’s 1962 film tweaks the plot in all the right places. Desert Storm replaces the Korean War, the…

(Dir: Tony Grounds, 86 mins) Lee Evans, on unusually restrained form, is Robert Martin, a career dole-wallah, fantasist and terminal loser, who lives with his long-suffering wife Angie (Kathy Burke), heavily pregnant…

(Dir: Martin Campbell, 116 mins) Old Zorro (Anthony Hopkins) has spent a couple of decades contemplating revenge on his adversary Don Rafael Montero (Stuart Wilson), who killed his wife and nicked his baby daughter…

(Dir: Perry Andelin Blake, 80 mins) A shockingly awful comedy vehicle for Mike Myers’ former ‘Wayne’s World’ sidekick Dana Carvey. As joke after joke falls painfully flat and Carvey mugs away desperately, it’s hard to…

(Dir: Richard Shepard, 96 mins) Former bond star Pierce Brosnan has always been at his best playing unscrupulous characters. Writer/director Richard Shepard’s decidedly odd comedy-thriller buddy flick casts him as a…

(Dir: The Wachowski Brothers, 139 mins) Who’d have guessed this Keanu Reeves vehicle would turn out to be a cutting-edge turn-of-the-millennium cyberpunk flick? Keanu is Neo, salaryman by day and hacker by night, who’s…

(Dir: the Wachowski brothers, 138 mins) After the first of many impressive stunt/fight scenes turns out to be a (perhaps prophetic) dream, this first instalment of the two-part sequel takes a half hour of whirring and…

(Dir: Andy and Larry Wachowski, 129 mins) Fortunately, this final instalment is nothing like as boring, humourless and pretentious as ‘The Matrix Reloaded’. True, it suffers from the same Repetitive Action Syndrome, but…

(Dir: Simon West, 2011, 92 mins) Although it's safe to say there was no great critical or public clamour for a remake of the 1972 Michael Winner flick, Simon ('Con Air') West has refashioned the original thick-ear yarn…

(Dir: Gordon Chan, 88 mins) If you saw Jackie Chan’s ‘The Tuxedo’, you can save yourself a fiver because ‘The Medallion’ has exactly the same plot. There’s a ludicrious maguffin (then a tuxedo, now a medallion) that…

(Dir: James Honeyborne, 2009, 84 mins) This is billed as the first collaboration between the Natural History Unit and BBC Films, co-financed by the pugnacious Weinstein company. Clearly, the idea was to turn out a…

(Dir: Grant Heslov, 2009, 93 mins) This adaptation of Jon Ronson’s book about the wacko, self-styled ‘Jedi Warriors’ of the US Army’s top secret First Earth Batallion, who sought to adapt new age nonsense for military…

(Dir: Michael Keaton, 2009, 96 mins) A slow, lugubrious downer of a festive movie, anybody? Michael Keaton’s directorial debut, in which he also has a vanity-free starring role as a suicidal hitman, is so studiedly…

USA 2009 113 mins Dir: Oren Moverman Starring: Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson, Samantha Morton, Jena Malone, Steve Buscemi Based on an idea so simple and obvious it's a wonder that nobody thought of it earlier,…

(Dir: Oxide and Danny Pang, 2007, 84 mins) For their US debut, the Pang brothers (‘The Eye’) have been landed with a generic, half-baked script, which they gamely attempt to jazz up using all the atmospheric tools in…

(Dir: Gore Verbinski, 123 mins) Those who crave this pairing of Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt for a bizarre, hybrid mix of romantic comedy, road movie and freewheeling, whimsical Western may be disappointed to find that…

(Dir: Peter Chelsom, 101 mins) Maxwell (Eldon Henson) is having a hard time at school because he is absolutely huge for his age, and his dad is in jail for killing his mother. Kevin (Kieran Culkin) has it even worse,…

(Dir: Wim Wenders, 122 mins) Wim Wenders unwisely gets his great pop star mate Bono to contribute a story that must have left a great deal of empty space on the back of that fag packet. The result is a truly ghastly,…

(Dir: Derek Hayes & Stanislav Sokolov, 91 mins) 'The Gospel According to Luke: The Animated Motion Picture', anybody? Quite why anyone thought such a prospect would appeal beyond an ever-declining constituency of…

(Dir: Barbra Streisand, 126 mins) A syrupy, self-indulgent adaptation of a French comedy hit in which Babs grabs a fistful of credits - including star, director and co-producer. A variation on the ugly duckling tale,…

(Dir: Ron Howard, 137 mins) A revisionist, PC western inspired by ‘The Searchers’ and directed by Ron Howard, with Tommy Lee Jones as some kind of Old West ‘wigger’ figure who hangs with the injuns and speaks their…

(Dir: Frank Darabont, 2007, 126 mins) Suppose you’re trapped in a smalltown convenience store, surrounded by a sinister mist that seems to be teeming with bloodthirsty alien monsters. Who would you least like to share…

(Dir: Paul Mayeda Berges, 96 mins) The husband and wife partnership of Paul Mayeda Berges and Gurinda Chadha has come something of a cropper with Berges’ directorial debut, which openly aspires to the ‘Like Water For…

(Dir: Michael Traeger, 96 mins) Writer-director Michael Traeger's debut film is that rarity: a feel-good movie about porn. Compounding the improbability, it's also rather chaste, which may disappoint smut-hounds. The…

Ooo-err missus! It’s not Just a German sex comedy, but also the country’s all-time box office record-breaker. Axel is a dim-yet-hunky, philandering waiter who spends a drunken evening at a gay club after being thrown…

Cool and sullen Masatoshi Nagase - the long-suffering Japanese abroad in cult indieflick ‘Cold Fever’ and Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Mystery Train’ - is low-rent Yokohama private eye Mike Hama (think about it), who becomes…

 (Dir: Roger Michell, 111 mins) For his erstwhile ‘Buddha of Suburbia’ collaborator Hanif Kureishi’s grandmotherfucker drama, ‘Notting Hill’ director Roger Michell returns to a London quite unlike that celebrated by…

(Dir: Mark Pellington, 118 mins) As its title implies, 'The Mothman Prophecies' is a film about a man-sized moth who appears to people prophesying doom. Worse, it's "based on true events". Now this will either have you…

(Dir: Walter Salles, 126 mins) A road movie and biopic rolled into one, this warmly perceptive film from the Brazilian director of ‘Central Station’ depicts a defining episode in the life of the revolutionary leader…

(Dir: Stephen Sommers, 124 mins) A rollicking '90s adventure yarn that doesn't take itself too seriously and delivers where it counts in the special effects and relishable bad dialogue departments. Back in the 1920s, we…

(Dir: Stephen Sommers, 120 mins) From the ridiculous prologue - in which the Scorpion King (The Rock), an ancient warrior hulk, conquers Egypt with a tribe of jackal-headed sandmen - it's clear that this sequel, in…

(Dir: Rob Cohen, 2008, 112 mins) A textbook example of the law of diminishing returns in action. This time they’ve even forgotten to bring a proper mummy, and belatedly attempt to rectify this fatal shortcoming in the…

Jim Henson’s furry creations return to take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic, with all the old characters, many of the old jokes, and a stage villain with a Bristolian accent. This is a pantomime-style fiesta that…

(Dir: Peter Hyams, 104 mins) Veteran hack Peter Hyams' expensively staged if ill-judged downsizing of 'The Three Musketeers' is an entertainingly forgettable slice of popcorn pleasure. Don't even bother comparing this…

(Dir: Simon Hunter, 2008, 111 mins) Set in a post-apocalyptic 2702 but shot on the Isle of Man and at Bray and Shepperton Studios, this stylised Poundstretcher steampunk action flick is relentlessly daft but pleasingly…

(Dir: Bart Freundlich, 90 mins) In their huge, sprawling New England house, grouchy, somewhat creepy Roy Scheider and long-suffering matriarch Blythe Danner await the arrival of their four attractive offspring for a…

(Dir: Mira Nair, 2007, 122 mins) Based on Jhumpa Lahiri's decades-spanning best-seller, this marks a welcome return to ‘Monsoon Wedding’ form for Nair after the misfiring ‘Vanity Fair’. Investing an overly familiar…

(Dir: Robert Pulcini & Shari Springer Berman, 2007, 105 mins) Adapted from a chicklit bestseller, this banal and rather grating film invites us to care about the prah-blems of the super-rich and idle of Manhattan’s…

(Dir: Catherine Hardwicke, 101 mins) The unlikely figure of Catherine (‘Thirteen’) Hardwicke got to direct this Biblical yarn, which earned the distinction of becoming the first film to receive its premiere at the…

(Dir: Ed Decter, 93 mins) Remember D.J. Qualls – the lovable, streak-of-piss virgin from ‘Road Trip’? Well, somebody decided he could carry a grossout movie of his very own. Here to prove them wrong is the sorry,…

(Dir: Terrence Malick, 149 mins) Arriving in Virginia,1607, rebellious Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell, with ever-wandering accent) is sent to form an alliance with the local top dog Powhatan, only to have his party…

(Dir: John Schlesinger, 109 mins) One of those vanity projects in which exceedingly rich people tell the rest of us VERY LOUDLY INDEED about how politically correct they are, this is Rupert Everett and Madonna’s way of…

(Dir: Paul Haggis, 2010, 133 mins) Paul Haggis's slick but unnecessary remake of Fred Cavaye's excellent 2008 Eurothriller 'Anything For Her' does pretty much what you'd expect of a morally ambiguous drama transposed…

(Dir: Patrick Stettner, 81 mins) Adapted by Armistead Maupin from his semi-autobiographical novel Patrick Stettner’s downbeat drama stars Robin Williams back in buttoned-down ‘Insomnia’/‘One Hour Photo’ mode as radio…

Somewhere in the Netherlands, 1960. On an isolated terrace next to a forest, Jacob the butcher yearns to play hide the salami, but his devout Catholic wife spurns him as she becomes increasingly fanatical in her faith.…

(Dir: Nick Cassavetes, 124 mins) Nick Cassavetes directs this earnest tearjerker, adapted from the novel by Nicholas Sparks. It tells twin tales of love: of a young guy from a poor background who falls for a gorgeous…

(Dir: Mary Harron, 91 mins) Mary Harron’s biopic of legendary 50s pin-up Bettie Page follows the tradition of jolly, innocent, unthreatening, fuddy duddy-ribbing nudie flicks in the ‘Mrs Henderson Presents’ mould.…

(Dir: Joel Schumacher, 2007, 98 mins) When his wife gives Jim Carrey’s humble dog-catcher a paperback, he begins to feel like the writer’s speaking directly to him, telling the tale of a private detective whose latest…

A crude re-working of Jerry Lewis’s 1963 comedy in which Eddie Murphy dons a foam rubber suit to play corpulent Professor Klump; a 28-stone geneticist who, after discovering a revolutionary “fat gene” formula, changes…

(Dir: Nicholas Hytner, 111 mins) Former National Theatre director Nicholas Hytner follows up ‘The Madness of King George’ with this venture into romantic comedy territory, which falls rather short of his usual high…

(Dir: Francois Dupeyron, 135 mins) The story of Adrien, a handsome young officer who is hideously disfigured during WWI, Francois Dupeyron's moving adaptation of the French bestseller by Marc Dugain eschews the usual…

(Dir: John Moore, 110 mins) As pointless exercises go, this opportunistic, mechanical retread is right up there with Gus Van Sant’s ‘Psycho’. ‘Flight of the Phoenix’ director John Moore doesn’t bother updating – or…

(Dir: James Wong, 87 mins) The preposterous premise of the latest star vehicle for fun-sized martial artist Jet Li is this. The multiverse comprises 124 parallel universes, which are configured in such a way that if one…

(Dir: Simon Cellan Jones, 91 mins) From the producer of ‘East Is East’ and the blokes who gave us ‘Our Friends in the North’ comes the kind of feeble, low-rent romcom with a fetishised regional setting (Newcastle’s…

(Dir: Don Roos, 107 mins) Southern jail-bait on a stick, pregnant already, and off to Indiana to sponge from her gay brother Bill (Martin Donovan), DeDee Pruitt (Christina Ricci) has her eyes on the money he inherited…

(Dir: Juan Antonio Bayona, 2007, 100 mins, subtitles) Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona’s feature debut is a handsomely staged, slow-burning and emotionally resonant haunted house flick, elegantly scripted by Sergio…

(Dir: Justin Chadwick, 2008, 115 mins) Despite gallivanting around the nation’s heritage sites at breakneck speed, this second BBC-backed adaptation of Philippa Gregory’s bestseller is an oddly stodgy affair whose…

(Dir: Adam McKay, 2010, 107 mins) There’s something rather odd about this latest collaboration between writer/director Adam McKay and star Will Ferrell. Ostensibly a send-up of the cop-buddy genre, it is, as usual,…

(Dir: Alejandro Amenabar, 101 mins) Young Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar’s old-fashioned, atmospheric and unflashy haunted house flick boasts virtually no special effects and is almost supernaturally quiet. Nicole…

(Dir: Sam Weisman, 90 mins) A remake of the 1969 Neil Simon comedy, casting Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn as Ohio empty-nesters at a crossroads in their marriage. Adman Steve has just been fired, but doesn't have the…

(Dir: Adam Shankman, 95 mins) Like ‘Mr. Nanny’ never happened, Vin Diesel takes the role in a family comedy that is now mandatory for every action lunk as a rufty-tufty Navy SEAL who’s assigned to babysit a dead…

(Dir: John Curran, 2006, 125 mins) Posh 20s bird Kitty (Naomi Watts) is staring spinsterhood in the face when she meets and swiftly agrees to marry starchy bacteriologist Dr. Walter Fane (Edward Norton), who takes her…

(Dir: Nacy Meyers, 125 mins) Having established this tale of separated siblings as a money-spinning classic back in 1961, Disney shouldn’t fail to cash in with the remake. It’s nothing more than a child-oriented, light…

(Dir: John Duigan, 100 mins) Rather than treating us to 'Alan Partridge and Paul Calf Go Large', Steve Coogan has come up with an Ealing-style crime caper shaped around an inept, irritating but cheerily well-meaning…

Philip ‘The Reflecting Skin’ Ridley’s  second feature is a slow-burning fable that builds inexorably towards a shocking climax that is part apocalyptic religious vision, part intellectual slasher movie. Found…

(Dir: Mel Gibson, 126 mins) As subtle as a spear jabbed under the ribs, and more tedious than a lifetime of sanctimonious sermons, Mel Gibson’s sado-fetishistic account of the last twelve hours of Christ’s life is a…

(Dir: Roland Emmerich, 160 mins) This American War of Independence flick must have seemed an obvious opportunity for Mel Gibson to get mad again in English-hating 'Braveheart' style, and for director Roland Emmerich to…

(Dir: Mimi Leder, 126 mins) Amidst the shabby anarchy of the former Soviet bloc, ten nuclear warheads are hijacked and it’s down to pragmatic action man George Clooney and insecure White House boffin Nicole Kidman to…

Former Disney animator Don Bluth’s greatest successes, ‘The Land before Time’ and ‘An American Tail, were made in collaboration with Spielberg’s Amblin company, but much of his work has been uninvolving if well-crafted.…

(Dir: Milos Forman, 130 mins) Although it describes a fairly conventional biopic career arc, Milos Forman’s account of the lewd life and high times of America’s foremost anti-censorship campaigner and/or vilest…

(Dir: Bobby & Peter Farrelly, 103 mins) Fox cunningly changed the title, but this is the US version of Nick Hornby’s ‘Fever Pitch’, with baseball taking the place of football. Hopes are raised marginally by the…

(Dir: Mark Rosman, 100 mins) One can’t help but wonder what message unhappy singles will take home from ‘The Perfect Man’. For this is a world in which even Heather Locklear can’t find herself a decent bloke, despite…

(Dir: Brian Robbins, 92 mins) Filmed before the ‘Lost in Translation’/‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ double whammy, this silly, forgettable MTV high-school caper flick sees Scarlett Johansson languishing among alumni of…

(Dir: Wolfgang Petersen, 129 mins) Wolfgang (‘Das Boot’) Petersen was an obvious choice to helm this adaptation of Sebastian Junger's riveting factual book about a swordfishing boat caught up in the most ferocious North…

(Dir: Simon Wincer, 100 mins) A likeable but feeble attempt to cash an almost-forgotten American comic character in as a matinee hero for our times. Here, the premise is even more idiotic than usual. Billy Zane is The…

(Dir: Joel Schumacher, 143 mins) Joel Schumacher’s screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s biggest stage hit hopes to repeat the repeat the crossover success of ‘Chicago’. But it’s hard to imagine Lloyd Webber…

Jane Campion's sensual, sumptuous, deeply erotic and almost literary Oscar winner. In the mid-19th century, New Zealand landowner Sam Neill's pale, mute mail-order bride Holly Hunter is dumped on an inhospitable beach…

(Dir: Michael Haneke, 127 mins) Contemporary cinema's Mr. Transgression, Michael ('Funny Games') Haneke, fashions a grimly compelling portrait of female sexual repression with a central performance by Isabelle Huppert…

(Dir: Stephen Quay/Timothy Quay, 99 mins) The second pretentious, largely incomprehensible and desperately dull feature-length blend of live action and animation from acclaimed animators the Quay brothers, who are…

(Dir: Peter Greenaway, 123 mins) Peter Greenaway seems to be attempting a fusion of literary and cinematic forms with this semi-Oedipal tale of fetishism: a visually dazzling barrage of multiple images, split screen…

(Dir: Shawn Levy, 93 mins) Always a dodgy prospect on paper, Steve Martin’s attempt to fill the late Peter Sellers’ shoes in this Pink Panther prequel is a bigger disaster than anyone could have feared. The desperately…

(Dir: Harald Zwart, 2009, 92 mins) How can this possibly be any worse than the misbegotten 2006 film, which saw Steve Martin’s first maladroit attempt to fill Peter Sellers’ shoes as inept, idiotic Inspector Jacques…

(Dir: Sean Penn, 124 mins) It's the retiring cop's last day on the force. Then a little girl is brutally raped and murdered. The cop promises the victim's distraught mother that he will not rest until the perp is…

(Dir: Robert Zemeckis, 99 mins) Given that it reunites 'Forrest Gump' director Robert Zemeckis with Tom Hanks (albeit it only in voice form), it's hardly surprising that there are moments in this much-vaunted festive…

(Dir: Karim Traida, 90 mins) Something of a treat for connoisseurs of long contemplative silences, Algerian director Karim Traida's subtly nuanced if dramatically unsatisfactory directorial debut conflates the Rural…

(Dir: Jane Campion, 144 mins) Jane Campion follows her acclaimed ‘The Piano’ with an intensely acted if gloomy adaptation of Henry James’s novel in which independent Victorian Miss Isobel (Nicole Kidman) is manipulated…

(Dir: Eugene Green, 2009, 127 mins, subtitles) Remember the bit in 'Invasion of the Bodysnatchers' where the protagonists decide that they need to blend in by walking around stiffly and speaking in a dull monotone?…

(Dir: Craig McKranen, 73 mins) Created in a lab by their dad Professor Utonium when Chemical X inadvertently got mixed in with sugar and spice and all things nice, Blossom (clever), Bubbles (giggly) and Buttercup…

(Dir: Christopher Nolan, 128 mins) Christopher Priest’s haunting, intricately constructed tale of the bitter rivalry between two 19th century stage magicians is a perfect fit for fellow countryman Christopher…

(Dir: Martha Coolidge, 110 mins) Despite the best efforts of feminism, republicanism and ‘Shrek’, the trad Cinderella-esque fairytale is alive and well in US multiplexes. This one packs Julia Stiles off to a Denmark…

(Dir: Brenda Chapman/Simon Wells/Steve Hickner, 93 mins) DreamWorks’ high-risk, merchandising-free challenge to Disney’s animation begins with the fortunate infant Moses (Val Kilmer) floating off downstream to be…

(Dir: Ron Clements and Ron Musker, 2009, 97 mins) There’s a lot of rather self-conscious looking back going on in Disney’s first hand-drawn animation in five years: a conspicuously multi-racial update of the venerable…

(Dir: Tom Tykwer, 135 mins) Short, snappy and inventive, if a little tricksy, German director Tom Tykwer's 'Run Lola Run' earned him a lot of admirers. Now he's back to disappoint them all with the anti-Lola: a slow,…

(Dir: Garry Marshall, 114 mins) Garry Marshall reworks 'Pygmalion' as a sickly Disneyflick set in an unrecognisably wholesome San Francisco. Ugly Ducking teenager Mia Thermopolis (Anne Hathaway) is alarmed to her regal…

(Dir: Garry Marshall, 120 mins) Having turned the familiar ugly duckling story into a long tedious slog in the first ‘Princess Diaries’, Garry Marshall now does the same for the fairytale wedding. It seems Queen Julie…

(Dir: Rebecca Miller, 2009, 98 mins) Rebecca Miller’s adaptation of her own novel has the air of an upmarket menopausal chick flick with a modish dysfunctional family vibe, delivering two generations of mad moms for the…

(Dir: Susan Stroman, 134 mins) A seamless transference of Susan Stroman’s Broadway stage version of Mel Brooks’ 1968 film to the big screen, with plenty of nostalgic pleasures: the over-ripe Nathan Lane is the closest…

Margarethe Von Trotta’s moving tale of lovers separated by the Berlin Wall, an examination of free will and weakness  in the context of a pervasively repressive regime. Separated when the wall went up in 1961, Konrad is…

(Dir: Anne Fletcher, 2009, 108 mins) Anne (’27 Dresses’) Fletcher delivers another rotten, formulaic compendium of romantic comedy clichés, opening with a direct steal from ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, performing a gender…

(Dir: John Hillcoat, 104 mins) This Nick Cave-scripted Australian Western’s tone of late 19th century outback frontier nihilism garnished with bursts of Peckinpah-esque violence is established with the visceral opening…

(Dir: Ismail Merchant, 113 mins) Ismail Merchant’s second offering as director is a story about an exiled author trying to make peace with her life by returning to the land of her youth and tying up a few of life’s…

(Dir: Jonathan Hensleigh, 124 mins) Of all the Marvel comicbook characters, Frank ‘The Punisher’ Castle is the one that lends itself most readily to adaptation as a cheapo, knuckleheaded, straight-to-video thriller.…

(Dir: Gabriele Muccino, 118 mins) This solemn, ponderous hymn to the nobility of pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps to become filthy, stinking rich exhausts all of Will Smith’s immense reserves of likeability, which…

(Dir: Stephen Frears, 2006, 104 mins) Treading a fine line between topical boldness and treasonous insolence, Stephen Frears’ witty, irreverent film uses news footage and dramatic reconstruction to capture the…

Release Date: 1996 (Dir: Jean-Claude Van Damme, 95 mins) Van Damme’s, uh, eagerly-anticipated directorial debut, in which he plays a Fagin-esque, ‘20s new York crook who winds up on a slow boat to China where he’s taken…

(Dir: Phillip Noyce, 2002, 101 mins) Phillip Noyce’s version of Graham Greene’s ‘The Quiet American’ sets out to re-instate the anti-American tone that Joseph L. Mankiewicz excised from his 1958 adaptation, enraging the…

(Dir: Katt Shea, 105 mins) More an updated remake than a sequel, this belated and formulaic follow-up to Brian DePalma's horror classic was always on a hiding to nothing. Emily Bergl is the obligatory surly school…

(Dir: Francis Ford Coppola, 135 mins) John Grisham’s bestsellers have usually become mediocre films This time he exercised more control, and it shows. The other factor is director Francis Ford Coppola, whose clear…

(Dir: Steven Daldry, 2008, 123 mins) The post-war love affair between 15-year-old German schoolboy Michael (David Kross) and 36-year-old tram conductress Hannah (Kate Winslet) consists of secret trysts at her modest…

(Dir: Steven Daldry, 2008, 123 mins) The post-war love affair between 15-year-old German schoolboy Michael (David Kross) and 36-year-old tram conductress Hannah (Kate Winslet) consists of secret trysts at her modest…

(Dir: Tom DiCillo, 110 mins) A high-gloss comedy about the New York entertainment industry with the kind of sharp edges and dysfunctional characters you’d  expect from Tom DiCillo. The delicious casting has Maxwell…

(Dir: Vadim Jean, 98 mins) Bristolian film-maker Vadim Jean bounces back with his most enjoyable film since ‘Leon the Pig Farmer’. Kelsey ‘Frasier’ Grammer is the eponymous down-on-his-luck, misanthropic hardboiled…

(Dir: Stephen Hopkins, 2007, 99 mins) Traumatised spoilsport Katharine Winter (Hilary Swank) tours the world debunking miracles. She’s called in by the Bible Belt town of Haven, Louisiana, which is afflicted by the Ten…

(Dir: Bart Freundlich, 2009, 95 mins) Another awful romantic comedy from writer/director Bart Freundlich – aka Mr. Julianne Moore. This time, Freundlich seems to have abandoned arthouse pretensions for formula all the…

(Dir: Roger Donaldson, 105 mins) As grizzled CIA recruiter Walter Burke, Al Pacino slips back into one of those grandstanding roles he used to enjoy before Christopher Nolan calmed him down: an all-knowing, omnipotent…

(Dir: Francois Girard, 130 mins) Tracking the history of a musical instrument as it passes through many hands on its epic journey through 300 years and five countries makes for a great literary conceit. Unfortunately,…

(Dir: Howard E Baker, John Fox, Kyung Ho Lee, 2006, 78 mins) What do you get if you cross a shark and a clownfish? Answer: a shameless cobbling together of ‘Finding Nemo’ and ‘A Shark's Tale’ that marries South Korean…

(Dir: Peter Hyams, 109 mins) Never more than functional, but never less than mindlessly enjoyable, this surprisingly nasty horror movie blends elements of the haunted house, serial killer and monster mayhem sub-genres…

Merchant-Ivory's greatest triumph: a haunting, sensitively scripted portrait of repressed emotion, showcasing Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson at their best. Hopkins is the  impeccably servile butler Stevens, who takes…

(Dir: Antoine Fuqua, 99 mins) Chow Yun-Fat, the iconic leading man from John Woo’s Hong Kong features, gets his shot at a big American movie in this virtual re-run of ‘The Killer’. Chow plays professional hitman John…

(Dir: Anti Jokinen, 2011, 91 mins) Regrettably - and purely to service the plot, you understand - it becomes necessary for Hilary Swank to take her clothes off a lot, oil her breasts, and masturbate in the bath during…

(Dir: Andrei Zvagintsev, 105 mins)  Russian director Andrei Zvagintsev’s striking drama throws up more questions than it answers. And yet this brooding mood piece remains utterly gripping all the way to its last frame.…

(Dir: Asif Kapadia, 85 mins) Bizarrely, the young British director of award-winning art movie ‘The Warrior’ decamped to Hollywood to make this anaemic, largely thrill-free, production-line, teen-oriented ghostie flick…

Dir: Hideo Nakata, 95 mins) An effective little chiller and massive cult hit in Japan, this begins with a creepy urban legend concerning a haunted videotape. As soon as anyone watches it, the story goes, the telephone…

(Dir: Gore Verbinski, 115 mins) Hopes were not exactly high when it was announced that Gore Verbinski – of ‘Mousehunt’ and ‘The Mexican’ infamy – was to remake the cult Japanese haunted videotape flick, ‘Ring’. But…

(Dir: Nakata Hideo, 95 mins) Adapted from a popular series of horror novels, the Ring flicks and their various spin-offs have become an enormous cultural phenomenon in the Far East. This sequel, from the same director,…

(Dir: Hideo Nakata, 110 mins) Original ‘Ring’ director Hideo Nakata takes over for the US sequel, which, confusingly, is not a remake but a new story by Ehren Kruger, retaining only the mother-and-son theme and that…

(Dir: Barry W. Blaustein, 94 mins) That Farrelly brothers formula in full. Take an idea, usually involving mental or physical disability, that’s certain to generate headlines for its apparent tastelessness. Then pay…

(Dir: Mikael Hafstrom, 2011, 114 mins) Expat Swedish director Mikael Hafstrom makes his contribution to Tinseltown's annual exorcism flick quota with this portentous crucifix-waver, risibly "suggested by" true events.…

(Dir: Tsai Ming-Liang, 115 mins) A young chap called Xiao-Kang  is recruited to play a corpse in a film, shags the director, and wakes up with an aching neck. Mum, meanwhile, is carrying on with a pornographer, and dad…

(Dir: John Hillcoat, 2009, 112 mins) This latest screen adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel takes on his big, important, Pulitzer Prize-winning post-apocalypse drama. There’s plenty to be admired about adopting a more…

(Dir: Bibo Bergeron/Will Finn, 90 mins) For an animation that's built upon half-a-dozen rubbish songs by Sir Elton John, it is perhaps appropriate that the plot seems to be about a pair of bickering old queens.…

Steely-eyed General Ed Harris is a Gulf War veteran gone bad who seizes the island of Alcatraz and a bunch of hostages, threatening to fire deadly poison gas at the mainland. But to sneak unfortunate FBI weapons…

(Dir: Peter Cattaneo, 2008, 102 mins) This amiable sub-‘School of Rock’ comedy casts Rainn Wilson in the Jack Black role as Robert ‘Fish’ Fishman, former drummer with Poison-esque Cleveland hair metallers Vesuvius, who…

(Dir: John Lee Hancock, 128 mins) A saccharine Disney true story comprising two-hours-plus of an old-timer realising the American Dream through the incomprehensible sport of baseball, optimistically pitched at young…

(Dir: Christian E. Christiansen, 2011, 91 mins) This slice of feeble tweenie pyjama party fodder is modelled so closely on the enjoyably trashy 'Single White Female' that it's a wonder it isn't billed as a remake. At…

(Dir: Wes Anderson, 109 mins) Wes Anderson's previous film, 'Rushmore', was deservedly acclaimed, but the ambitious 'The Royal Tenenbaums' is something else entirely. Golden Globe winner Gene Hackman stars as feckless,…

(Dir: Carter Smith, 2008, 90 mins) To the uninitiated, this killer vegetation flick promises to be another of those horrors in the recent tradition of ‘Hostel’ and ‘Paradise Lost’, which perform such a valuable service…

(Dir: Roger Avary, 110 mins) Roger Avary’s savagely funny adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s cult novel takes the campus comedy template, adds a matching wholesome young cast headed by James Van Der Beek and Shannyn…

(Dir: Floria Sigismondi, 2010, 106 mins) For all first-time director Floria Sigismondi’s arty flourishes, ‘The Runaways’ is at heart a nuts’n’bolts rise and fall rock biopic, with a dash of light lesbianism and…

(Dir: Guy Maddin, 101 mins)  A peculiar semi-musical tale of beer, miserable laments and bizarre love triangles, which is based, improbably enough, on a story by Kazuo Ishiguro. This is a mix that will prove too ripe…

(Dir: Philip Noyce, 118 mins) Paramount attempts to revive another ancient TV franchise, deploying the usual ingredients of camp, action and stupidity to hit that target 18-25 demographic. Val Kilmer is Simon Templar,…

Tim Allen (of ‘Home Improvement’ fame) is a divorced toy company executive who’s good at what he does, but hardly overburdened with compassion for his fellow man. All this changes one Christmas when he’s looking after…

(Dir: Michael Lembeck, 104 mins) It's eight years since Scott Calvin (Tim Allen) found himself landed with the red suit, white whiskers and big belly after he accidentally killed Santa and went off to live with elves…

Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (U) * (Dir: Michael Lembeck, 98 mins) Wringing the last drops of audience seasonal goodwill from a lazy yet lucrative franchise, this third instalment conjures up the disturbing image…

(Dir: Tamara Jenkins, 2007, 113 mins) Aside from featuring yet another outstanding Philip Seymour Hoffman performance, Tamara Jenkins’ sophomore outing sounds a resonantly poignant note about the way terminal illness…

(Dir: Stuart St. Paul) Based on a short story by Thomas Hardy, this flawed but entertaining independently made period romantic drama has a group of German soldiers drafted into the English army during the early 19th…

(Dir: Michel Gondry, 2006, 105 mins, partial subtitles) In the absence of regular collaborator Charlie Kaufman’s screenwriting skills, hip pop video director Michel Gondry allows his imagination free rein in this…

(Dir: Frank Oz, 123 mins) The first onscreen teaming of Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando turns out to be a old-fashioned, ho-hum heist flick. Directed by the bloke who was the voice of Fozzie Bear. Bob's the meticulous…

(Dir: Chuck Russell, 92 mins) Set 5000 years ago in biblical deserts, this ‘Mummy’ spin-off is the Conan-like tale of warrior Mathayus (American fake wrestler The Rock) who gets swept up in a fight against troublemaking…

(Dir: Tom Harper, 2010, 93 mins) Scripted by ‘Skins’/‘Shameless’ writer Jack Thorne and directed by Encounters veteran Tom Harper, making his feature debut, this British coming-of-age drama has much to commend it,…

(Dir: Alejandro Amenábar, 125 mins) A film about a paraplegic fighting for the right to a dignified death might sound like a gloomy prospect, but Javier Bardem’s extraordinary, Oscar-nominated performance lights up…

Nerdy toyshop owner and widower Hulk Hogan is a great source of embarrassment to his 12-year-old son, who also resents the old duffer for never having been around when his mom was alive. But - hey! -  Hulk just happens…

Polish director Agnieszka Holland makes her English-language debut with this intelligent, poignantly filmed version of Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1911 children's classic. Orphaned rich girl Kate Maberly is dispatched to…

(Dir: Juan Jose Campanella, 2009, 129 mins, subtitles) An hour into this superb Argentinean crime thriller, there’s a breathtaking, apparently unbroken shot worthy of DePalma or Scorsese. It’s a bravura scene that’s all…

(Dir: Juan Jose Campanella, 2009, 129 mins, subtitles) An hour into this superb Argentinean crime thriller, there’s a breathtaking, apparently unbroken shot worthy of DePalma or Scorsese. It’s a bravura scene that’s all…

(Dir: Gina Prince-Blythewood, 2008, 110 mins) Sue Monk Kidd’s 2002 bestseller, from which this saccharine chick flick has been adapted, is apparently well-regarded. One can only assume that something went missing as it…

(Dir: Gabor Csupo, 2009, 103 mins) A low-watt kid fantasy adapted from Wells-born god-botherer Elizabeth Goudge’s ‘The White Horse’. It’s directed with anonymous competence by Hungarian former animator Gabor Csupo, who…

This is the first film indie maverick John Sayles has made specifically for children, although it comes as no surprise to find its ostensibly straightforward retailing of a beguiling Irish myth wreathed in a deeper,…

(Dir: Clark Johnson, 108 mins) This is one of those thrillers that seem to be constructed by taking bits of other, superior films and welding them inexpertly together, adding only a thoroughly preposterous twist. In…

(Dir: Eric Barbier, 2006, 121 mins, subtitles) French director Eric Barbier tackles ‘Plender’, a novel by the late Ted (‘Get Carter’) Lewis, turning out a gripping and stylishly directed if somewhat derivative vengeance…

(Dir: Brian Robbins, 98 mins) Disney’s 1959 live-action comedy gets a contemporary vivisection laboratory makeover. But it’s not long before the film settles in to those person/pooch transmutation antics craved by the…

(Dir: Neil LaBute, 96 mins) After his disappointing adaptation of A.S. Byatt’s ‘Possession’, Neil LaBute returns to what he does best – i.e. misanthropy - with this partial inversion of the themes of his controversial…

(Dir: Lasse Hallstrom, 117 mins) Veteran treaclemeister Lasse ('The Cider House Rules', 'Chocolat') Hallstrom puts E. Annie Proulx's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel through the feelgood blender, reducing its sparkling…

(Dir: Edward Zwick, 105 mins) How do you respond to terrorist threats when you don't understand what they want in the first place? This is the big dilemma for FBI/NYPD terrorist task force chief Denzel Washington, who's…

(Dir: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 2008, 105 mins, subtitles) At first, this looks like a refreshing departure for Belgian brothers grim, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. The camerawork is less wobbly and the plot rather…

Maybe it’s the “hilarious” ‘30th Century Wolf’ caption before the opening credits, or the moment Billy Zane (whatever happened to his career?) walks on playing a rookie detective called Jo Dee Fostar, but it quickly…

(Dir: Gustavo Hernandez, 2010, 86 mins, subtitles) The USP of this ultra-low-budget Uruguayan spooker is that it was shot in one continuous take, in the style of Hitchcock's 'Rope '. Oh, and it's allegedly based on a…

(Dir: David Silverman, 2007, 87 mins) Matt Groening and chums have certainly worked hard to avoid the obvious pitfalls of creating a film that feels like an extended TV show, or three episodes stapled together. The pace…

(Dir: Xavier Giannoli, 2006, 112 mins, subtitles) Gerard Depardieu gives his best performance in years as Alain Moreau, a well-preserved fiftysomething professional lounge singer and minor local celebrity who…

(Dir: Ken Kwapis, 119 mins) That is, of course, the US ‘pants’ as in ‘trousers’, and this is pitched at the neglected teen girl market. It certainly can’t be accused of failing to give value for money, packing four…

(Dir: Sanaa Hamri, 2008, 117 mins) Those well-travelled and much-worn girl pants (i.e. trousers) are off on their adventures again. The conceit of Ann Brashares’ popular tweenie novels is that said legwear is FedExed…

(Dir: Roger Spottiswoode, 124 mins) Set in a near future when human cloning is possible but illegal, this standard Schwarzenegger vehicle is yet another deliberate study in misinformation, pretending to address issues…

(Dir: M. Night Shyamalan, 114 mins) Bruce Willis is a successful child psychologist hitched to Olivia Williams and traumatised by the dramatic reappearance of a former patient, who shoots him in the chest before…

(Dir: Iain Softley, 104 mins) The set-up of The Skeleton Key has something of a 1970s TV movie feel about it. Caroline (Kate Hudson), a rational Northern nurse transplanted to hoodoo-haunted New Orleans, takes a job way…

(Dir: Joe Wright, 2009, 117 mins) An unlikely choice for ‘Pride and Prejudice’/‘Atonement’ director Joe Wright, this is one of those solemn, self-important stodgefests dealing with Big Ishoos in an uplifting kinda way…

(Dir: Nanni Moretti, 87 mins) Europe's most solipsistic director, Nanni Moretti, plays Giovanni, a mildly pompous and over-analytical middle-class smalltown shrink, with a frightfully nice family: lovely wife Paola,…

(Dir: David Mamet, 110 mins) Littering red herrings and clues in equal measure from its opening credits, David Mamet’s first PG-rated film returns to the territory of his magnificent directorial debut, ‘House of Games’.…

(Dir: Owen Carey Jones, 2009, 87 mins) This low-budget Britflick, based on an allegedly true tale of demonic possession, starts out promisingly enough with tastefully photographed buxom naked ladies performing a jolly…

(Dir: Mark Waters, 2008, 96 mins) We’re reaching a point with these kiddie fantasy flicks where you can’t help but tick off all the borrowings and stock themes on a mental checklist. Mark (‘Mean Girls’) Waters’…

(Dir: Frank Miller, 2008, 102 mins) Frank Miller’s debut solo outing as director is an adaptation of the 40s comic book series by Will Eisner. Like Miller’s own ‘Sin City’, which he adapted with Robert Rodriguez, it’s a…

(Dir: Lee David Zlotoff, 116 mins) One of those old-fashioned weepies they don’t make any more, mainly, one suspects, because nobody wants to watch them, this has Alison Elliot as an ex-con who winds up in a rural…

(Dir: Stephen Hillenburg, 87 mins) No idea what a SpongeBob is? Then you clearly don't know any kids and are neither student nor stoner. With little hype, Nickelodeon's animated TV series has become the world's most…

(Dir: Brian Levant, 2010, 94 mins) There comes a point in every aging action star’s career when he’s cast in a ‘family comedy’ opposite a bunch of annoying brats. Most of the time, these films have exactly the same plot…

(Dir: Amol Palekar, 108 mins) Escaping from a pair of thugs, a would-be brothelkeeper and a trio of rapists, sweet village ingenue Sonali Kulkarni is rescued by hunky travelling transvestite Nirmal Pandey, who lops off…

(Dir: Noah Baumbach, 81 mins)  Short but content-rich, without a single wasted frame, Noah Baumbach’s forensically observed, searingly honest and blackly comic autobiographical tale of divorce Brooklyn…

(Dir: Giuseppe Tornatore, 107 mins) Like Tornatore’s ‘Cinema Paradiso’, ‘Starmaker’ mixes the movies and early post-War Sicily, but this time dreams are exploited and there’s no happy ending. Sergio Castellito plays a…

(Dir: Tom McCarthy, 88mins) Tom McCarthy’s charming, character-driven audience-pleaser is a comedy-drama whose premise sounds like the opening line of a joke or a pitch for an Ealing comedy: there’s this dwarf who…

(Dir: Nelson McCormick, 2009, 101 mins) Skilfully scripted by Donald Westlake, the original 18-rated ‘Stepfather’ (1987) had at its heart a dark satire about the discontinuity between Norman Rockwell fantasy and the…

(Dir: Frank Oz, 93 mins) Frank Oz reworks Bryan Forbes’ 1975 adaptation of Ira Levin’s novel as a camp, sledgehammer comedy. Played by Nicole Kidman like an older, even more hard-nosed version of her character in ‘To…

A brilliantly observed drama, directed in neo-realist style by Gianni Amelio, this is both a powerful portrait of pre-teens robbed of their childhood and an unhectoring indictment of the society that allows it to…

(Dir: Byabasuren Davaa & Luigi Falorni, 90 mins)  This Oscar-nominated “narrative documentary” (i.e. part-staged) has the whiff of a New Agey variation on the traditional National Geographic ethnographic documentary.…

(Dir: Byabasuren Davaa & Luigi Falorni, 90 mins)  This Oscar-nominated “narrative documentary” (i.e. part-staged) has the whiff of a New Agey variation on the traditional National Geographic ethnographic documentary.…

(Dir: Rob reiner, 95 mins) One of those dreadful movies that attempt to flatter their ‘mature’ middlebrow audience with "that's so like us" observations about modern relationships. Except that no one has a sitcom…

(Dir: David Lynch, 111 mins) David Lynch’s relatively, erm, straight version of the true story of cantankerous old git Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) and his epic 300 mile journey across America to visit his…

(Dir: Bryan Bertino, 2008, 85 mins) Here’s one of a slew of English-language knock-offs of the imaginative 2006 French home invasion thriller ‘Them’. Initially, the mounting dread works rather well, but the jolts and…

Taken from a series of popular children’s books, this engaging family film is a broadly exaggerated pantomime pitching the blissfully innocent, unbelievably naïve Stupid Family against the forces of evil in the form of…

(Dir: Phil Alden Robinson, 124 mins) Any film about a terrorist attack on America is now guaranteed a post-Sept 11 resonance. Strip away the nuking of Baltimore, however, and this is a standard-issue Tom Clancy…

(Dir: Aleksandr Sokurov, 114 mins) The temptation is to treat this as a companion piece to Oliver Hirschbiegel’s brilliant ‘Downfall’. After all, here’s another WWII leader coming to terms with certain defeat in his…

An animated variation on 'Swan Lake' directed by Richard Rich, an emigre from the Disney organisation who co-directed 'The Fox and the Hound' and 'The Black Cauldron' in the Studio's hiatus between Walt's death and the…

(Dir; Atom Egoyan, 110 mins) Up in the snowy outback of British Columbia, tragedy strikes when a school bus veers of the road and plunges into a frozen river, with only the driver and teenage Nicole surviving – the…

(Dir: Roger Kumble, 84 mins) Why should blokes have all the fun? That seems to be the thinking behind this female-oriented grossout romcom, scripted by ‘South Park’ writer Nancy M. Pimental, which matches the Farrelly…

(Dir: Josh Gordon and Will Speck, 2010, 102 mins) Let’s just explore the premise of this latest appalling Jennifer Aniston romantic comedy for a moment. A man (Jason Bateman) is denied a sexual relationship by a woman…

(Dir: John Boorman, 109 mins) John Boorman takes John Le Carre's sour ‘Our Man In Havana’-styled novel about the sordid realities of the spy game and patches together an uneven but absorbing tonal mix of suspense,…

(Dir: Tony Scott, 2009, 106 mins) John Travolta adopts his gayest look since ‘Wild Hogs’ for this latest pointless remake, which announces itself as yet another loud, flashy Tony Scott movie from the outset. Needless to…

(Dir: Sam Fell & Robert Stevenhagen, 2008, 93 mins) Former Aardman animator Sam (‘Flushed Away’) Fell invites unfavourable comparisons to ‘Ratatouille’. But while this adaptation of Kate DiCamillo’s bestsellers boasts…

(Dir: Anthony Minghella, 139 mins) A very superior period thriller invoking obvious Hitchcock comparisons, Anthony Minghella's adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel boasts a great performance by Matt Damon as the…

(Dir: Sally Potter, 102 mins) A work of monumental narcissism from the director of the justly admired ‘Orlando’. The unintentionally hilarious storyline has a hugely talented, intelligent and sensitive film-maker who…

USA 2010 83 mins Dir: Eyad Zahra Starring: Bobby Naderi, Noureen DeWulf, Dominic Rains Crudely filmed, clumsily plotted and tiresomely iconoclastic, this Sundance-oriented indieflick does at least have originality on…

(Dir: Steven Speilberg, 128 mins) Spielberg takes the true story of Iranian refugee Merhan Nasseri, who has lived in Charles de Gaulle airport since 1988 and turns him into Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks), whose fictitious…

(Dir: Santosh Sivan, 95 mins) Veteran Bollywood cinematographer Santosh Sivan's directorial debut is a stunning achievement for a film budgeted at $50,000 and shot in just 17 days with a largely amateur cast. Sivan's…

(Dir: Marcus Nispel, 98 mins) Problem number one is that there was no point in doing another version of Tobe Hooper's 1973 horror classic. The shame of it is that the new TCM is a solidly okay film. It's not a hand-made…

(Dir: Jonathan Liebesman, 92 mins) A prequel to the 2004 remake, which in itself stands as a working definition of redundancy – the reason they didn’t just crank out another straight sequel is that the villain’s sawing…

(Dir: Pavel Chukhrai, 97 mins) In post-War Russia, single mother Katya encounters and falls for dashing young army officer Tolyan and they set up home in a small provincial town, sharing a communal flat under the…

(Dir: Richard Claus, 96 mins) This latest attempt to fill those gaps between Potters is adapted from the first in a series of tales by prolific kiddiefiction writer Cornelia Funke. Unfortunately, there’s an awfully long…

(Dir: Terrence malick, 170 mins) After a 20 year absence, Terrence Malick gives us two films wrapped around one another. The first is a taut, visceral 'War Is Hell' flick following a mixed bunch of US grunts as they…

USA 2011 103 mins Dir: Matthijs van Heijningen Jr Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen You can't help fearing that 'The Thing' is likely to go the way of the similarly themed 'Invasion of the…

(Dir: John McTiernan, 110 mins) A genuine rarity: the remake that’s superior to the original and a skilfully executed romantic thriller in which grown-up characters experience complex, contradictory emotions in the…

(Dir: Tommy Lee Jones, 121 mins) Tommy Lee Jones’s magnificent, elegiac modern-day Tex-Mex western carries some weighty themes - notably racism, immigration, smalltown frustration, and codes of honour and loyalty – but…

(Dir: David Yates, 98 mins) In a year that's seen more than its fair share of really shite British movies, it's comforting to be reminded that we can still knock out lightweight, well-crafted, audience-pleasing costume…

(Dir: John Boorman, 2007, 106 mins) Liam O’Leary (Brendan Gleeson), a Dublin property developer, has an apparently booming business, a man-of-the-year award, a luxury home, a slender sexpot wife (Kim Cattrall), an…

(Dir: Jun Falkenstein, 75 mins) Disney's stab at bringing the bouncy feline to life is totally faithful to the original Winnie the Pooh stories, which may be great news for purists but not so good for anyone uncharmed…

(Dir: Simon Wells, 95 mins) Simon Wells does a workmanlike job on his great-grandfather HG’s classic novel, churning out a jolly popcorn flick that's easy on the brain, heavy on the CGI, and doesn't detain us for long.…

(Dir: Elia Sulieman, 2009, 110 mins, subtitles)  Presumably working on the basis that those who’ve endured occupation and oppression are uniquely entitled to find absurdist humour in it, Palestinian writer/director Elia…

(Dir: Robert Schwentke, 2009, 107 mins) Thanks to a screenplay by ‘Ghost’ writer Bruce Joel Rubin, this increasingly gloopy science fiction weepie, adapted from the novel by Audrey Niffenegger, is likely to frustrate…

The concluding part of Bigas Luna’s loose trilogy which began with ‘Jamon Jamon’ and ‘Golden Balls’, this tells of breast-fixated young Tete, who prays to the moon for a tit, which promptly arrives in the comely form of…

(Dir: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2010, 103 mins) From the director of 'The Lives of Others', with a script co-written by the Oscar-winning screenwriter of 'The Usual Suspects', comes a comedy-thriller featuring…

(Dir: Ben Affleck, 2010, 125 mins) Apparently, the Charlestown district of Boston has the highest per capita population of robbers in America.  Among the larcenous residents is Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck), born to the…

(Dir: Cory Yuen, 95 mins) Jason Statham stars in a role written specifically for him by Luc Besson (basically just a variation of Leon) as ex-Special Forces strong silent type Frank Martin who transports dodgy cargo in…

(Dir: Louis Leterrier, 87 mins) As no-brainers go, ‘The Transporter 2’ certainly violates the laws of physics regularly enough and has sufficiently frequent shots of Kate Nauta shooting people while clad only in her…

(Dir: Olivier Megaton, 2008 ,103 mins) If you missed the first two Transporter films, no worries – all you need to know is that Jason Statham transports things and is well tough.  However, if you skipped them, you…

(Dir: William Boyd, 98 mins) The Somme, June 1916. There's a constant barrage of shelling and gunfire. The Germans are just 400 yards away. And in a British trench at the front, a platoon of teenage boys spend their…

(Dir: Beto Brant, 97 mins) A gritty morality tale of murder and betrayal in modern-day Brazil. Nervy Ivan and amoral Giba hire a hitman to kill their construction company partner Estevao. Control of the company then…

(Dir: Peter Weir, 103 mins) When insurance salesman Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) remarks that he feels the whole world revolves around him, he’s right on the nail. Ever since he was born, he’s been surrounded by actors…

Michael Lehmann directs an impressive modern riff on Rostand’s ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’. Diminutive Janeane Garofolo hosts a talk radio show advising owners about their pets. When  British photographer Ben Chaplin calls in…

(Dir: Jonathan Demme, 104 mins) A remake of Stanley Donen’s achingly chic, Paris-set, twisty-turny Hitchcockian thriller ‘Charade’ with Mark Wahlberg in the Cary Grant role, which bodes ill. Initially, the plotting is…

(Dir: John Hay, 2004, 100 mins) There’s enormous fun to be had here in spotting all the Bristol locations. Alas, this is a desperately feeble romantic comedy whose funding problems could be responsible for some of its…

(Dir: Kevin Donovan, 98 mins) Hollywood’s latest attempt to find a vehicle for the acrobatic and comedic talents of 48-year-old martial artist Jackie Chan sees him stuck in a spark-free romantic partnership with…

USA 2011 117mins Dir: Bill Condon Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner As we all know, Twilight is like Marmite, and ‘Breaking Dawn’ is no exception. Packed full of teenage angst, love and lust,…

(Dir: David Slade, 2010, 124 mins) Much of this third instalment of the chaste and anaemic ‘Twilight’ saga consists of its three principals emoting at one another as they fail to have sex. This bridging episode also…

(Dir: Chris Weitz , 2009, 131 mins) Part two of the anaemic, tweenie-targeted vampire saga and, as the certificate might suggest, Mormon author Stephenie Meyer’s subext remains one of restraint and chastity, the…

(Dir: Scott Reynolds, 91 mins) Ambitious young shrink Rebecca Hobbs arrives at the grim loony bin run by creepy, resentful Dr Roy Ward, whose tattooed psycho goons take great pleasure in brutalising softly spoken serial…

(Dir: Michael Hegner and Karsten Kiilerich, 2006, 88 mins) Expectations were pretty low for this revoiced Danish CGI animation, especially as the ‘inner beauty’ message of Hans Christian Andersen’s slight fairytale…

(Dir: Robert Luketic, 2009, 96 mins) A hideously misguided attempt to marry girly chick-flick sentiment with laddish Judd-Apatow-style raunch, with Katharine Heigl and Gerard Butler as the chalk‘n’cheese pairing. She’s…

(Dir: David S. Goyer, 2009, 87 mins) This shoddy assemblage of horror cliches filched from the likes of ‘The Exorcist’, ‘Mirrors’ and every Japanese Spooky Kid flick you’ve ever seen has hottie co-ed Casey Beldon…

(Dir: David S. Goyer, 2009, 87 mins) This shoddy assemblage of horror cliches filched from the likes of ‘The Exorcist’, ‘Mirrors’ and every Japanese Spooky Kid flick you’ve ever seen has hottie co-ed Casey Beldon…

(Dir: Heddy Honigman, 108 mins) Honigman's documentary about buskers on the Paris Metro, refugees of almost every nationality and many of them superb classically-trained musicians. While the subjects are remarkably…

A loose reinterpretation of the 1948 Burt Lancaster noir, this casts director Steven Soderbergh’s favourite actor Peter Gallagher as a reformed gambler who arrives back at the Texan family home he once fled leaving all…

(Dir: The Guard Brothers, 2009, 87 mins) This week’s remake of a Far East horror flick is supposedly based on Korean director Ji-woon Kim’s ‘A Tale of Two Sisters’. But it’s hard to see why the three scriptwriters…

The Upside of Anger (15) *** (Dir: Mike Binder, 2005, 118 mins) This marital breakdown comedy-drama has a hugely ill-advised lest reel twist and boasts more sub-plots than a week of daytime TV. Joan Allen plays a…

(Dir: Stephen Frears, 105mins) The third part of the ‘Barrytown’ trilogy that began with Alan Parker’s ‘The Commitments’ and continued with Stephen Frears’ ‘The Snapper’, this broken-backed comedy reunites Irish…

(Dir: M. Night Shyamalan, 107 mins) The ‘surprise’ in twistmeister M. Night Shyamalan’s period flick becomes obvious very early indeed, leaving around an hour and a half to reflect on his uncanny ability to make wading…

(Dir: Sofia Coppola, 97 mins) A conservative US suburb during a sun-drenched mid-'70s summer. After their youngest daughter slits her wrists, an educational psychologist tells creepy, over-protective Christian…

(Dir: Thomas McCarthy, 2007, 106 mins) Widowed sixtysomething Connecticut economics lecturer Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) is bullied into attending a globalisation conference in New York, where he finds his apartment…

(Dir: Jonathan Levene, 2008, 99 mins) This Sundance Festival award winner offers a chance to see Ben Kingsley in a shaggy wig, chugging on a bong and bustin’ hip-hop moves while reciting misogynistic rap lyrics…

(Dir: Roger Goldby, 2008, 105 mins) In leafy autumnal Balham, sleazy, unemployed, stay-at-home dad George (Rupert Graves) is knocking off single mum neighbour Anna (Anne-Marie Duff) because he feels neglected by wifey…

(Dir: Paul Schrader, 2007, 108 mins) In a mannered performance that frequently threatens to overwhelm this minor and often self-referential Paul Schrader drama, Woody Harrelson gives it the full Capote as suavely camp…

(Dir: Lyndon Chubbock, 108 mins) September, 1940. Cocker-nee orphaned seamstress Lily (Anna Friel)  cops off with hunky Canadian airman Charlie (Aden Young), they get married and she’s soon up the duff. Then Lily and…

(Dir: John Pilger, 2007, 98 mins) For his first cinema documentary John Pilger makes no attempt to adapt his approach. What we have here is a telly documentary blown up to fit the big screen. Fortunately, the content is…

(Dir: Tim Roth, 99 mins) For his directorial debut, Tim Roth adapts Alexander Stuart’s controversial novel of sexual abuse in which the perpetrator is an otherwise ordinary family man. His daughter is no familiar victim…

(Dir: John Carpenter, 2010, 88 mins) Set in 1966, John Carpenter's first feature since the disastrous 'Ghosts of Mars' is an exercise in several fields of horror tilled often lately.  On one hand, it’s a peculiar insane…

(Dir: Asif Kapadia, 86 mins) Lafcadia (Irfan Khan), the eponymous warrior, beheads villagers who are disrespectfully late with their payments to the local tyrannical overlord and is mightily keen for his son Katiba to…

(Dir: D.J. Pooh, 96 mins) Only a man who styles himself D.J. Pooh (that’s Mark Jordan to his mum and the taxman) could produce something that stinks as badly as this “update” of ‘Car Wash’.  Charmless and…

(Dir: Joe Charbanic, 97 mins) Arriving late in the serial killer cycle, this has some flashy visual trickery in its treatment of urban locales but nothing new to add. FBI agent Joel Campbell (James Spader in hollow-eyed…

(Dir: Jay Russell, 2008, 112 mins) The biggest-budget Nessie flick to date boasts state-of-the-art Weta Workshop effects, though, bizarrely, just like last year’s cheapo knock-off ‘Mee-Shee’, it was filmed mostly in New…

(Dir: Frank Coraci, 90 mins) In a sketch stretched thinly to movie length, Adam Sandler adopts his most irritating persona to date: a stuttering, squeaky-voiced, virginal 31-year-old mummy's boy from the Louisiana…

(Dir: Dennis Gansel, 2008, 107 mins, subtitles) This follows in the footsteps of ‘The Experiment’ by relocating a real-life US social experiment from the swinging 60s to modern-day Germany, playing up its resonance in a…

USA 2010 128 mins Dir: Emilio Estevez Starring: Martin Sheen, James Nesbitt, Deborah Kara Unger, Yorick van Wageningen, Emilio Estevez • The road movie's rather more boring counterpart, the exceedingly long trudge…

(Dir: Peter Weir, 2010, 133 mins) So did plucky Pole Jim Sturgess, tattooed crim Colin Farrell, grizzled expat Yank Ed Harris and crew really flee a Siberian gulag in 1940 and make an epic journey on foot across the…

(Dir: Christopher McQuarrie, 119 mins) Apparently deriving from ‘Usual Suspects’ writer McQuarrie's disgust with the infantile morality of most Hollywood thrillers, 'The Way of the Gun' is an unremittingly dark and…

(Dir: Gore Verbinski, 101 mins) A big studio film from a big studio director who strives for a low-budget indieflick vibe, this melancholic comedy in the ‘American Beauty’ vein must rank as one of the year’s odder…

(Dir: David Dobkin, 119 mins) In something of a cocktail of ‘Meet the Parents’, the ‘American Pies’ and ‘There’s Something About Mary’, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn  are commitment-shy divorce mediators John and Jeremy…

(Dir: Clare Kilner, 88 mins) If ever there was any doubt that what scriptwriter Richard Curtis and director Mike Newell pulled off with ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ was a whole lot harder than it looked, then this…

(Dir: Adam Shankman, 103 mins)contrivance-driven piece of drivel starring Jennifer Lopez as a "wedding planner", who choreographs the nuptials of the rich and stupid by striding around looking severe while barking…

(Dir: Frank Coraci, 97 mins) Embittered Adam Sandler was dumped at the altar by his bride-to-be and now works as a nuptial crooner, which requires him to be happy at other people’s weddings. After a few incendiary…

(Dir: Rami Dvir, 94 mins) Promiscuous photographer James Purefoy is betrothed to the lovely Susan Vidler, but starts to get cold feet on his stag night with chums Tony Slattery, Neil Stuke and Adrian Dunbar. Meanwhile,…

Pouty seven-year-old Razieh wants a new goldfish and she wants it before the start of the Iranian New Year (March 21, fact fans!), which is exactly one hour, 28 minutes and 30 seconds away. Charging off to purchase her…

(Dir: James Ivory, 138 mins) What with Ralph Fiennes doing disability and almost the entire Redgrave clan adopting funny accents, you’d have thought ‘The White Countess’ would be a shoo-in for Oscars. Add the emotional…

(Dir: Michael Haneke, 2009, 144 mins, subtitles) It’s a tough sell: an austere, two-and-a-half hour monochrome drama set in a claustrophobic rural Protestant community on the eve of WWI, setting up an intriguing mystery…

(Dir: Jonathan Lynn, 98 mins) A lame comedy in which Bruce Willis reverts to his familiar smug persona. Here he plays a retired Mafia hitman who moves next door to nervy, hen-pecked dentist Nicholas 'Oz' Oseransky…

(Dir: Howard Deutch, 99 mins) Reuniting the unwinning comedy combo of Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry from ‘The Whole Nine Yards’, this miraculously mirthless plod grinds mechanically into gear with the kidnap of Cynthia…

(Dir: Neil LaBute, 102 mins) A screen original rather than an adaptation of a novel, Robin Hardy’s ‘Wicker Man’ is one of those films as memorable for its unique atmosphere (and folk-rock score) as its tightly-contrived…

(Dir: Steve ‘Spazz’ Williams, 94 mins) This latest lazy CGI animation from Walt Disney sees the law of diminishing returns kick in big time, and is likely to leave even the least-demanding child feeling short-changed…

(Dir: Werner Herzog, 2005, 81 mins) Werner Herzog expands to feature length a rather slight idea that might have made an entertaining short. Wild-eyed, straggly-haired Brad Dourif addresses the camera directly,…

A newly restored 70mm print of Sam Peckinpah's elegiac Western masterpiece from 1969, with ten minutes of original footage reinstated. Hugely controversial in its time for the bloody slo-mo finale, which would barely…

(Dir: Judy Irving, 83 mins) Nobody knows how the wild parrots of North Beach, San Francisco, got there. And until gentle, hippyish Mark Bittner started to take an interest in them, nobody cared either. Now the thriving,…

(Dir: Cathy Malkasian & Jeff McGrath, 85 mins) Another Nickelodeon kids’ TV spinoff means more mildly diverting, competently animated multiplex fodder featuring kids with weird-shaped heads and plots that feel like –…

Ex-Python Terry Jones pulls off the first ever live-action version of the Kenneth Grahame children’s classic, casting himself perfectly as Toad, his physical presence being suitably jocular, non-conformist, eccentric…

(Dir: Abbas Kiarostami, 118 mins) Aficionados of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami will find themselves in a rather more lush landscape than usual with ‘The Wind Will Carry Us’, which opens with one of his trademark…

(Dir: Ian Softley, 108 mins) A superior, mannered period costume drama adapted from a novel by Henry James with Helena Bonham Carter repressing her emotions in a variety of easy-on-the-eye locations. Spirited Helena is…

(Dir: Alan Rickman, 109 mins) A thoughtful adaptation of Sharman MacDonald’s stage play, Alan Rickman’s directorial debut conforms closely to the rigid structure of the theatrical experience. Both play and film follow…

(Dir: Andre Techine, 2007, 114 mins, subtitles) French writer/director Andre Techine’s period drama about the emergence of AIDS in the mid-80s has little new to offer, though it’s scrupulously unsentimental and…

(Dir: Joe Johnston, 2010, 98 mins) There’s howling at the full moon over the moors and muttering into the beer at the peasant pub as the Wolf Man prowls again in this heavily gothic remake of the 1941 movie, starring a…

(Dir: Diane English, 2008, 114 mins) For all its superficial updating of the roles available to modern women, this half-baked re-make of George Cukor’s sparkling 1939 movie is more sappy than sassy. The women in Cukor’s…

(Dir: Phil Agland, 97 mins) An accomplished adaptation of another slice of Thomas Hardy’s 19th century Dorset miserablism, this has Rufus Sewell as that stock Hardy hero the Sullen Horny-Handed Son of Toil, who’s in…

(Dir: Nicole Kassell, 87 mins) There’s no shortage of potential objections to ‘The Woodsman’. Since the film cannot show us what a predatory paedophile does to children, our response to a sympathetic portrayal of his…

(Dir: Michael Apted, 128 mins) Much has been made of 'Gorillas in the Mist' director Michael Apted's mandate to inject some emotion and human drama into the tired old James Bond franchise. He's certainly given the women…

(Dir: Roger Donaldson, 127 mins) Remember ‘The Straight Story’? This was the true tale of a codger who took a long, slow, picaresque journey by lawnmower. Now imagine the whole thing done at speed – yet, paradoxically,…

(Dir: Darren Aronofsky, 2008, 109 mins) Unrecognisable as a Darren Aronofsky flick, ‘The Wrestler’ wisely ditches all his trademark jump-cut hyperactivity in favour of a back-to-basics approach to soak up every nuance…

(Dir: Helen Hunt, 2007, 100 mins) Loosely adapted from the novel by Elinor Lipman, Helen Hunt’s directorial debut is a menopausal chick flick that promises more comedy and dramatic weight than it delivers, offering…

(Dir: Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007, 158 mins) Paul Thomas Anderson’s Huston-esque epic tale of oil, obsession, greed, corruption, madness and olde-timey religion, inspired by Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel ‘Oil!’ The…

(Dir: John Hay, 105 mins) Cheeky-faced newcomer Lewis McKenzie is the eponymous Jimmy, an aspiring football superstar who has to beat the bullies and his own lack of confidence when Mr Wirral (Robert Carlyle) sets up…

(Dir: the Farrelly brothers, 118 mins) The year’s biggest sleeper hit at the US box office, this gross-out romantic comedy from the creators of ‘Dumb and Dumber’ and ‘Kingpin’ boasts more politically incorrect and…

Dir: Robert Harmon, 89 mins) One of a blip of current films either directly remaking (‘The Ring’) orgenerally approximating (‘Feardotcom’) the Ring cycle of Japanese ghost stories, this feels protracted even at a brief…

Using stock situations and iconic character names, this chronically over-written crime thriller draws attention, in the most preciously self-conscious and would-be post-modern manner, to its genre trappings. Even the…

(Dir: Susanne Bier, 2007, 118 mins) Danish director Susanne Bier’s US debut is a solemn, downbeat star vehicle that feels like a cynical Oscar pitch. There’s the big feelgood aphorism for those who find themselves…

(Dir: Chris Browne, 98 mins) Ice cool, maverick career cop Capone (Paul Campbell) is transferred to his home town of Kingston, where this natty shades'n'beret-wearing enforcer immediately spots a shifty looking bunch of…

(Dir: Park Chan-wook, 2009, 134 mins, subtitles) Based on Emile Zola’s 1867 novel ‘Therese Raquin’, whose shortcomings in the bloodsucking and explicit sex departments are duly rectified, Park Chan-wook’s Cannes Jury…

(Dir: Catherine Hardwicke, 100 mins) Like a frothy ‘Clueless’-style teencom relocated to the real world production designer-turned writer/director Catherine Hardwicke’s hugely accomplished debut was co-written by…

(Dir: Roger Donaldson, 145 mins) It's difficult to go wrong with the true story of the closest the world ever came to all-out nuclear war. Kev Costner plays Kenny O'Donnell, old chum of, and political advisor to, JFK. A…

(Dir: Steve Beck, 91 mins) Producers Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis repeat their enjoyable makeover of William Castle’s ‘The House on Haunted Hill’ with a reworking of his lesser-known (and fairly shoddy) 1960 effort,…

(Dir: Preston A Whitmore II, 2007, 118 mins) In the tradition of the best family Christmases, the scene is set for conflict when LA African-American matriarch Ma’ Dere (Loretta Devine) gathers her clan for the holidays.…

(Dir: Kirby Dick, 97 mins) Veteran documentarist Kirby Dick explores the absurdities of US film censorship in this engrossing, disturbing and frequently hilarious film which, needless to say, no major studio would touch…

(Dir: Shane Meadows, 2007, 103 mins) Opening brilliantly with a nostalgic ‘I Love the 80s’-style montage which eventually settles on the less savoury side of that most unlovely of decades (Thatch, the Falklands, NF…

Iran 2010 75 mins Subtitles Dir: Mojtaba Mirtahmasb & Jafar Panahi There was much nose-thumbing from Iran after divorce drama 'A Separation' beat Israel's shortlisted 'Footnote' to win this year's Best Foreign Film…

(Dir: David Kane, 118 mins) Here’s a rarity: a British romantic comedy that's smart and funny, with recognisable, well-drawn characters and believable situations. It's necessary to swallow just a little 'La Ronde'-style…

(Dir: Britt Allcroft, 85 mins) There's trouble afoot on the Island of Sodor, where Thomas the Tank Engine and his happy steam-driven pals are being pushed around by the bullying Diesel 10. Into the midst of all the…

USA 2011 114 mins Dir: Kenneth Branagh Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Natalie Portman, Chris Hemsworth, Idris Elba, Tom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgard, Kat Dennings, Colm Feore Poor old Kenneth Branagh has been having a hard…

(Dir: Patrice Chereau, 122 mins) Bitchy Gallic emoters ahoy! Swapping the epic costume drama of 'La Reine Margot' for modern-day wobblecam intimacy, Patrice Chereau delivers an intense and often claustrophobic portrait…

(Dir: Jocelyn Moorhouse, 105 mins) Jocelyn Moorhouse’s adaptation of Jane Smiley’s Pultizer Prize-winning feminist re-imagining of ‘King Lear’ boasts just about every plot point known to weepiedom. All that lifts it…

(Dir: Stewart Raffill, 100 mins) When the luxury yacht she’s cruising on with a couple of mates goes up in flames and sinks during a flashback sequence, Jennifer (Kelly Brook) washes up on a desert island wearing…

(Dir: Jonathan Gershfield, 2008, 106 mins) This plucky Britcom played the advance publicity game to its advantage by enraging rail union Aslef and finding a role for new Bond girl Gemma Arterton. But there’s…

Krzysztof Kieslowski launches a new tricolour-coded trilogy with a film examining liberty or, more specifically, the restrictions placed on personal freedom by our attachments to others. Juliette Binoche is married to a…

Something of a disappointment after the edgy, sardonic pessimism of 'White', this conclusion to Krzysztof Kieslowski's trilogy begins once again with a web of coincidence. A young Swiss woman (Irene Jacob) accidentally…

The second bit of Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski's new colour-coded trilogy which equates the French tricolour with the themes of liberty, equality and fraternity. 'White' is offered as a comedy on the theme of…

(Dir: David O. Russell, 115 mins) The Persian Gulf, March 1991. The video game war is over and a fragile ceasefire is policed by bored grunts with itchy trigger fingers, who are biding their time before being shipped…

(Dir: Robert Cannan & Corinna McFarlane, 2008, 107 mins) While travelling the world, cynical, no-nonsense Australian rugby coach Nick arrives at the new age No Mind festival, which takes place in an idyllic lakeside…

(Dir: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2008, 109 mins, subtitles) When wealthy Turkish businessman and aspiring politician Servet nods off at the wheel and mows down a pedestrian, he asks his regular driver, Eyup, to take the rap in…

(Dir: Tony Bui, 108 mins) Beautifully photographed and utterly infuriating, 26-year-old first time director Tony Bui's glossy Suffering Peasant flick is the first US film to be shot on location in Vietnam since the war.…

(Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 135 mins)  A treat for arthouse traditionalists, this latest film from lauded Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien is a triptych of tales set in 1911, 1966 and 2005. They’re presented out of…

(Dir: Damon Santostefano, 98 mins) A lightly gay-themed, formulaic romcom miscasting the bloke from 'Friends' and the woman from the 'Scream' flicks - both desperate to broaden their horizons - alongside dependable…

(Dir: Abbas Kiarostami, 103 mins) ‘The White Balloon’ focused Western attention on Iran’s burgeoning film industry, as a result of which the concluding part of that film’s producer Abbas Kiarostami’s acclaimed trilogy…

(Dir: Mike Mills, 96 mins) Yet another offbeat US indie flick about a sensitive, misunderstood teenager, anyone? Fortunately, pop video director Mike Mills’s feature debut turns out to be quite enjoyable in a winsome…

(Dir: Jonathan Frakes, 100 mins) This live-action version of the wonky Gerry Anderson super-marionation TV series shunts Jeff Tracy (Bill Paxton) and four of his sadly-interchangeable sons off into orbit while Tracy…

(Dir: Pete Hewitt, 84 mins) A pant-warming tale of flatulence and ambition in a timeless comicbook world that recalls a cross between 'The Beano' and Roald Dahl's tales of pleasingly revolting children, Pete ('The…

(Dir: Ermanno Olmi/Abbas Kiarostami/Ken Loach, 109 mins) A portmanteau flick in which a trio of veteran arthouse directors take a leisurely train journey through Europe. Perhaps unwisely, we begin in Innsbruck with the…

(Dir: Terry Gilliam, 118 mins) Adapted from a cult novel, Terry Gilliam’s idiosyncratic slice of Southern Gothic is not for the easily offended. After her junkie parents (Jennifer Tilly, Jeff Bridges) die, precocious…