For such a macho title, this film offers very laid back alpha males.  This is the kind of drama that is associated with more up-market television channels, something of an old-fashioned British upper-class portrait.

This is a fine little film, little in the sense that it runs for only 80 minutes and that it confines itself to about 30 minutes of real time, confines itself to a small group of characters in a country town.  But, it is worth seeing.

Comic strip heroes come and go on the big screen.  The X Men came, returned and here for the third time.  A touch sexist in the title since several of the leading mutants are X Women.

In 2005, we had a group of animals in a New York Zoo (with comic voices by prominent stars) who were discontent with having to perform for humans and who yearned for getting away to the wild.

What is wah-wah?  Well we might ask.  We all know blah-blah.  So, why not wah-wah?

For a while, Laurence Cantet’s fans might be wondering whether he has forgotten his deeply social concerns in his previous fine films, Resources Humaine and L’Emploi du Temps (Time Out).  A moving prologue where a Haitian woman offers to sell her daughter to the proprietor of a hotel for tourists should have warned us.  Cantet has a lot to say.

This is a film mainly about adults and adult issues made for an adult audience.  It shows problems, even death and grief.  It shows people working towards forgiveness and healing.  It shows ordinary people and people at the margins of life.

A computer game transferred from a small screen to a big screen with all the style and action, plus pounding music – and the player becoming an active watcher rather than making choices at a console.  This means that Ultraviolet is aimed solely at videogame players.

A German production, filmed in Luxembourg and Venice, with a mainly British cast.  It is based on a popular book for children by Cornelia Funke.

No, this is not a misprint.  The tobacco industry does want to thank people for smoking and for keeping them in business. And, as filmgoers saw from The Insider some years ago, the industry has lobbyists sweet-talking  politicians and the media to win legal battles.  The Insider was a serious look at a whistleblower and the consequences concerning smoking and its harm to health.

Already the most popular Venezuelan film at the country’s box-office – and criticised by the government for giving a wrong impression of Venezuelan society and Caracas – this is a film which is on the move. 

Those of us who are not as young as we used to be may remember having an enjoyable time watching Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz going on a disaster-filled holiday in The Long, Long Trailer.  But, that was fifty years ago and more.

The director has humorously pre-empted reviewers making snide reviews by including in the end credits a comment about saying that his film is a ‘stinker’.  Sight and Sound were wittier in a caption for a still, ‘Smellsville’.

The young star of this rather acidic satire, Evan Rachel Wood, is pretty but the film’s themes are definitely not.

Many older people will remember seeing The Poseidon Adventure in 1972.  It was one of the big blockbusters of that year and drew in huge audiences who enjoyed this first of the major disaster movies.

It’s probably best to say first that this sequel to the popular Pirates of the Caribbean runs for two and a half hours.  In a cinema foyer recently I overheard two little boys (6 and 8 or thereabouts) standing by the giant poster for the film telling their father that they wanted to see Captain Jack Sparrow. 

It is the 6th of the 6th 06 – and, in fact, the screening of The Omen this afternoon finished at 6.06 pm – so it seems a suitable moment for a statement on the film.

Love + Hate was written and directed by Dominic Savage.  It is a BBC Films production. Savage has made quite a number of documentaries as well as music videos.  His main work prior to this film was for television and this is clearly seen in the style of Love + Hate.

Spanish cinema is still coming to terms with the Franco era, with dramas about the Civil War and its consequences and, more recently, films about the final years of Franco’s regime. 

This is certainly the case with Little Manhattan.  Some reviewers had mentioned that it was very nice.  The American Bishops Conference recommended it.  They listed it in their Top Ten Best Films for Families of 2005.  And they were right.