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J. Michael Straczynski is someone best known to me as the creator and driving force behind Babylon 5, a series that was almost certainly ahead of its time.

Now comes Changeling, a superb new film directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Angelina Jolie. Straczynski dug up the story - infamous at the time - based around a mother who's son disappears. The police, in the shape of Jeffrey Donovan's Captain Jones, return a different boy, and then try to shut up Jolie's Christine Collins when she complains.

Then there's the powerful Rev. Briegleb played by John Malkovich, who is pretty much her supporter. But he has a radio station to continually berate the corrupt Los Angeles Police Department.

There are more elements to the story, but I won't mention them here as the really spoil it.

Eastwood does a fine job directing it in his usual manner, and the 30s period is depicted in a way that never detracts from the story. But it's lovely to see the operator manager using rollerskates to move swiftly around the office. Eastwood also composed the music.

A lot has been made of the lack of jokes and seriousness of the film, but I don't think that's fair. So it's not always especially pleasant, but it's always watchable and the incredible story just keeps you going as you want to discover what happens.

A fine cast fills out all the minor roles, but again I don't want to highlight anyone in case I give away plot details. The film certainly headed off in a direction I seriously wasn't expecting although I'm not familiar with the history of that part of California in that period.

I know a lot of people find Angelina Jolie annoying, but just when you begin to think she is, up she pops with something like this to make you forget.

Eastwood, it seems, pretty much used the script as it came without changes, and his next film, hot on the heels of this - Gran Torino - also uses the script as it came to Eastwood. Unchanged. The guy's got class.

Another year - another Ridley Scott film. Scott is responsible for some of my favourite ever films. They tend to be earlier films like Blade Runner and Alien than later ones, but American Gangster last year was superb, while 2006's A Good Year (also starring Russell Crowe) was abysmal.

So where does Body of Lies fit? Well it's not had wonderful reviews, and while it feels a little workmanlike at times, the story is interesting and it certainly feels contemporary. Crowe plays the Hoffman, a CIA director who runs Leonardo DiCaprio's Ferris - an agent in the Middle East. When we first meet him he's based in Iraq, but he moves on to places such as Jordian, Dubai and Syria at various points during the film.

Ferris is trying his best to nurture agents on the ground, but Hoffman, who inhabits a suburban Washington DC lifestyle and seems to permanently have a mobile headset wired to his ear, is in a rush to find the operator of an Al Qaeda cell currently causing misery in Sheffield, Manchester and Amsterdam.

The real intelligence of the piece turns out to be the Jordanian head of intelligence, Hani (Mark Strong), who's men are everywhere and really understand the geopolitics of the region.

We continually see surveillance imagery taken by drones high in the sky, although the Al Qaeda operatives know how to stop the drones tracking them, with a clever desert manoeuvre.

Others have taken against the immorality of most of the film's characters, including the otherwise likeable Ferris. But that's not really a problem in a spy film. I suppose the bigger problem is the speed with which the conclusion of the film's reached. It's all a little too neat and tidy - but then a film has to have some kind of resolution.

So worthwhile? Undoubtedly. But like the Coen's and Burn After Reading, it's not as good as the film that came before it. I just hope that the next film Scott makes is The Forever War and not Monopoly The Movie.

I must admit that I managed to turn down two sets of free tickets for screenings I couldn't make before finally paying to see the new Bond today.

First the good things: Craig is still excellent as Bond, the premise of the story might not have been especially dwelt upon, but it was relevant, and the product placement was far more subtle than last time.

Sadly these are outweighed by a plot that was really pretty lacking. We just had A to B to C. When M tells Bond to stop killing the next person, time after time, we realise that this is indeed all that he's doing. The film really drags in places, and the reasons for travelling to film's various locations are thoroughly random. The set piece at the Viennese opera was fascinating, but ultimately a waste of time.

A few people questioned the title, but we hear the name of the criminal organisation - Quantum - at least a couple of times before the denouement. If anything, it's the rather pointless criminal organisation lapel pin that all members get given as part of their gift packs that seems more questionable. Quantum, it seems, is supposed to be the new SMERSH or SPECTRE.

The action sequences were a little pedestrian really. They were perfectly well done, but there wasn't the horror of the Aston Martin flip in Casino Royale, or some of the more inventive chase sequences of previous Bond films. On the other hand, the Bourne films have done the more realistic car v car chase better - especially the Moscow sequence in the Bourne Supremacy. The opening chase was fine although ultimately baffling since we basically joined the action mid-flow. I was most disappointed with a sequence in which Bond leaps out of plane without a parachute. He has an accomplice in Camille (Olga Kurylenko) who has a parachute to share with him, but it felt much less real than a similar stunt performed at the start of Moonraker. That time around, it was done "for real" by a stuntman (you can see that the stuntman must have had a parachute under his shirt). This time we clearly see Craig's face, but CGI has obviously been employed.

The film really could have done with a few wider shots giving the audience a broader perspective on the action. The Bourne films, and to an extent Saving Private Ryan or Ronin have increased the verisimilitude we expect from action films. But sometimes the wide shot giving us a clear picture of what's happening makes the stunts look better.

While overall, there weren't the crashing product placement bits that we saw in Casino Royale, driving around Haiti in a Ford Ka seemed a little odd compared with the island's other vehicles.

I'm sure that people who suggest that the script ran out of time before the writers' strike are pretty much on the money. The plot really wasn't there, and you begin to wonder how many expository sequences ended up on the cutting room floor. Gemma Arterton's agent Field was woefully under-written. While she jumped into bed with Bond instantaneously, and that should always happen with a Bond film, it does rather reduce the amount of empathy we have with Bond over the death of Vespa, who he's supposed to be avenging even though she'd double crossed him. Aside from that, she had nothing to do aside from reprising a death last seen in Goldfinger.

As much as anything this film is very much setting up the next film. Quantum is surely going to be the cloudy terror organisation of at least one more film. I suppose that Al Qaeda or the like could never work, because there'd be no opportunity for Bond to swan around in a dinner jacket at a casino or similar.

It's not the worst Bond film of recent times - that prize has to remain Die Another Day with its invisible car. But let's hope that next time, the producers spend some time getting a script together first. The habit today of knowing the exact date a film is due to open before the script is finished and the first day's shooting has taken place is reckless. And I think that's why Quantum of Solace is so poor after we'd had such a good re-start with Casino Royale.

Finally, a small addendum. The print we saw was prefaced by a slightly different FACT anti-piracy ad to the usual. We had a Daniel Craig voiceover informing us that thousands of people are employed by the film industry as we saw a few seconds of behind the scenes footage from Quantum of Solace. He implored us not to record the film.

On the way into the cinema, a security guard was searching bags to stop precisely this, although an HD camcorder would easily have fitted in my jacket pocket without the need for a bag.

But it's probably a nicer thing to do than just tell the audience that you'll go to prison (v. unlikely). It should still be pointed out that everyone in the cinema had paid to watch the film on the big screen and not download it. But it was the least bad anti-piracy warning I've seen yet. FACT still need to note that their number is actually (020) 8xxx xxxx not 0208 xxx xxxx. That really annoys me for some reason.

I must admit that I've been pretty poor at writing about films of late, and you might think it was because I hadn't seen any. To be honest, I haven't been to the cinema this year as frequently as I have in the past and it's not solely because the experience is so dreadful these days. But then who, besides the cinema in question, should be responsible for the fact that the digital screening I saw of The Dark Knight seemed to flicker the whole way through because there was a problem with the projector.

Speaking of projectors, I actually got to peer into a projection booth a week or so ago (we were showing some ads at a plush London cinema), and there's a fascinating amount of kit in there. It was also obvious that the projectionist who ran all four of that cinema's screens from a single corridor, was a big Jessica Alba fan with a variety of life-size cut-outs and posters in the room.

Anyway - to the films. Jar City is based on Arnaldur Indriðason's novel of the same name. Well - I say the same name - but in the UK, the book was published as Tainted Blood. The film seems to have had a release in the UK mainly because it's directed by Baltasar Kormákur who previously made the only other Icelandic film anybody might be able to name - Reykjavik 101. But it's still taken its stately time to cross the stretch of the Atlantic to reach us, having been made back in 2006. Of course, we barely have diplomatic relations with Iceland these days, but this is very much a worthwhile film.

As Indriðason's novels have begun to gain ground in the UK, it's worth saying up front that this film is an incredibly good dramatisation of the novel. Iceland as we usually see it, is filled with dramatic scenery, yet here we have a somewhat bleaker portrait of the country. Well worth seeing, although disappointingly, I can't find news of any further books being filmed. A US remake does seem to be on the cards though.

Gomorrah is simply fantastic. The praise it has received in the press is fully deserved. I've always hated films like the Al Pacino version of Scarface (which has nothing on the original) that essentially glamourise gangsters. In Gomorrah, two of the characters - a pair of youths - re-enact scenes from that very film before they find a stash of the Camorra's weapons. When you see them playing with the guns in a river estuary, you genuinely fear for them as they mess around with these very dangerous armaments.

The film is a series of stories that don't so much interlock as take place in the same milieu. The squalid setting of the Naples suburb which feels utterly lawless. While some stories reveal the pettiness of it all, as the various factions of these mafia break up causing tensions, and inevitably deaths, others are more revealing. I think many are aware of the dreadful waste industry scandals that have hit Naples. This film makes it clear, as we see a seemingly respectable businessman heading to places such as Venice to sign deals to get rid of waste. In turn it's buried, mostly illegally, with little regard for safety, in farmers' fields. The land becomes toxic. Nobody cares.

The other fascinating story is of a tailor who tries to escape the Comorra, by teaching Chinese workers how to produce garments to the quality required by the Italian fashion industry. At one point a Milanese fashion house representative seeks bids for a batch of haute couture outfits. The various tailors outdo themselves to underbid one another and offer to complete the outfits in faster times. Nobody in charge really cares about the workers who will literally have to work around the clock to meet the deadlines they've been signed up for.

A Coen brothers film is always worth watching - well with the singular exception of their remake of The Ladykillers - which I only finally saw when it was on TV. Burn After Reading's their latest, and it seems to have disappointed an awful lot of people after last year's No Country For Old Men.

To be honest, I went in knowing exactly what I was going to get, and I got it. This comes from someone who found Intolerable Cruelty to be entertaining in its own way, and The Hudsucker Proxy to be an under-appreciated classic. So a nonsense tale of some supposed lost CIA secrets on a disc, is perfectly fine.

Is there much to be said about society in this film? Not really. There are gags aimed at much slighter subjects, but that's not really the point. Everyone here is just having fun. There are brief moments of violence, but that's par for the course in a Coen brothers film.

The showing I saw was the first packed, paid-for showing of any film I've seen in years. And that was for a 6.30pm screening (albeit in Islington). While it's not joke after joke, I came out feeling that I'd had value for money. George Clooney's goofy; John Malkovich's supercilious; Brad Pitt is dumb; Tilda Swinton is overbearing; and Francis McDormand is insecure - at least initially. And the conversations between CIA officer David Rasche and his superior JK Simmons are fantastic. Well worth a trip to your local cinema - assuming it's not too terrible.

Back in 2003 one of my favourite directors, Ang Lee, gave us Hulk, a film that I never saw. It's not that I don't like superhero films - I've probably seen most of them. But I'd heard so much negative press about it that I just couldn't bring myself to see it.

Anyway, it didn't do especially well at the box office, but now we've got a "reboot" of the series with The Incredible Hulk. From the opening sequence, which in many ways mirrors the old TV series' intro, you realise that we're not going to get a slow build up to the hows and whys of Bruce Banner getting experimenting on himself with gamma radiation. All the backstory you need is basically covered during this opening sequence.

We then see Banner (Edward Norton) in a Brazilian slum trying to live in secret. He still loves Liv Tyler's Betty Ross, but he's trying to blend in with the locals working in a soft drink bottling plant. Unfortunately some of his blood gets into a drink, and when an old American gentleman (no less than Stan Lee in a customary cameo) falls ill, that gives William Hurt's General Ross all the information he needs to chase after Banner. His crack team of commandos are led by Tim Roth's Emil Blonsky, who for some reason is Russian but was educated in the UK - hence his no attempt at a Russian accent. There were a few titters in the audience when Blonsky announces that he's 39 (Roth's 47).

And so the chase is on, with Banner returning to the US where he's still trying to find the serum that will reverse his changes. We get a massive battle on the green lawns of an Ivy League university, and it all leads to a rather inevitable showdown.

Overall, it's all quite good fun, but more so than with most recent superhero films, you simply feel at times that you're watching an animated cartoon. I mean you are watching animation - CGI animation. But it always feels like that another really reaches reality. Now obviously when you're a ten foot tall green muscled green thing, you're never going to look real, but actually I was really disappointed with the CGI, and it doesn't feel as real as Gollum or even King Kong - two other CGI characters who we've felt empathy for. There's one scene between Ross and the Hulk which feels like a direct lift from Kong as Ross calms the beast it some sheltered rocky outcrop.

Add to that the fact that helicopter gunships are also routinely CGI without ever feeling real, and some poor and unrealistic green-screen work, and you feel that for all the reported rough edges of the previous Hulk film, not a great deal's been learnt.

There are some nice cameos. As well as the aforementioned Lee, there's a scene where Banner is flicking TV channels, and briefly the original Banner, Bill Bixby, is seen. And there's Lou Ferrigno, the original TV Hulk, getting a couple of lines as a security guard (IMDB tells me that he got a similar cameo in the previous Hulk film).

There are also two very clunky product placement deals. We all know that the operating systems in films are never usually Windows or OS X - they're some clever different OS that usually involves not using the mouse, but using the keyboard quite a lot (perhaps because the users know keyboard shortcuts really well?). Anyway in this film at one point somebody logs into a system to find some data, but first we see Norton 360 protecting this non-Windows/non-Mac computer. Clunky. Then later Ross takes a photo of Banner using her Panasonic Lumix camera. There's no real reason for it. She just does. Later we see the camera battery go flat and her picture disappear in another scene that makes no sense since who leaves their cameras in playback mode? And anyway, even if your battery is flat, it's not as though you lose the picture.

The opening for the sequel is so wide that you could drive a truck through it. But there is one nice little scene right at the very end that sits alone from the main film. It works alongside a very similar scene at the end of Iron Man - although it's interesting that they didn't put it post-credits this time around. Anyway, the idea that two of the summer's superhero films are somehow linked and might be involved in an ongoing story is interesting, but I'll say no more (even though there'll be spoiler ahoy all over the net, and if you were brought up on Marvel comics, you might have a good idea).

Overall, a disappointing film. Not bad, but by no means good. Iron Man was much better.

In a turn up for the books, I've now seen two of the summer's blockbusters, and you know what, Iron Man's not too bad at all (this week's major title is Sex and the City, and having not seen a single episode of the TV series, I'm certainly not bothered about the film). Iron Man came out a few weeks ago now, but I've only just got around to seeing it, and I really was pleasantly surprised.

I suppose the best thing about it is Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark, a brilliant engineer and head of Stark Industries. We see him captured by an outfit in Afghanistan who aren't the Taliban, and aren't Al Qaeda. But they're a bit like both, except they're armed to the teeth and are going around killing villagers in Afghanistan for no discernible reason. Downey plays the character in a relaxed manner, and he just does what he wants.

Anyway, before you know it, Stark's modelled himself on MacGyver, and has built a flying rocket man. Back in the US he develops it and is a changed man. Unfortunately for him, his business partner is an evil Jeff Bridges. We're tipped off pretty early that he's evil because he's bald and has a beard. Stark's aided and abetted by Gwyneth Paltrow who plays his long suffering PA.

The plots implausible, but the action sequences are good, and the big set pieces largely don't go over the top. There's no unnecessarily enormous SF spectaculars that just bore the audience (cf. the third X-Men film), and what there is feels pretty visceral, aside from some slightly dubious flying sequences.

As a piece of cinema it's pretty good. And it's really worth staying through all the credits right until the very end where there's a great coda, which sets up the sequel very nicely indeed.

Just one thing to note. This film's a 12A, which the BBFC defines thus:

Suitable for 12 years and over. No-one younger than 12 may see a ‘12A’ film in a cinema unless accompanied by an adult. No-one younger than 12 may rent or buy a ‘12’ rated video or DVD. Responsibility for allowing under-12s to view lies with the accompanying or supervising adult.

Now that doesn't stop children younger than 12 going in, but it's down to parents to determine whether their kids are mature enough for the film. I wouldn't pretend that this is easy unless you pre-screen the film yourself. But you should be aware. The film is not going to be PG rated. Iron Man has a nasty opening sequence which sees soldiers shot, there's a torture scene, Robert Downey Jr's character is shown to be something of a playboy and all told there are more than a few scenes that younger children will find scary.

I know this because the lady in front of me had brought her kids along, the oldest who must have around 12 or 13, and the youngest being 5 or 6. Unsurprisingly the youngest girl was pretty scared on multiple occasions and her mum had to take her out of the cinema several times. This film is simply not suitable for such children and she really shouldn't have taken her youngest to this title.

I must admit that I had to go away and double check that title. Perhaps, in the fullness of time it'll come as second nature, but it's unnecessarily complicated it for you ask me.

Anyway Indy's back, and it's been a while. We first meet him having been kidnapped and brought to that secret warehouse we saw at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark all those years ago. Time has moved on to 1957, and the enemy now is Commie rather than Nazi. This particular gang of Soviet citizens are led by the rather wonderful Cate Blanchett playing Irina Spalko in a severe cropped haircut and carrying a sabre. Some might suggest that she has a dominatrix look about her.

Indy soon escapes, and there's a chilling sequence in which he realises that he's in the middle of the desert at the scene of an imminent nuclear test. Things have rather moved on from the fear of Nazis.

The reds under the bed theme is nicely played out as the FBI becomes suspicious of him, despite his impeccable record suggesting otherwise.

And so we're led on a journey around Latin America, as the chase gets underway looking for the secret kingdom of the title. There's a gaggle of British character actors en route including an entertaining if slightly underwritten Ray Winstone, Jim Broadbent filling in for the late Denholm Elliot (who's character still gets a knowing nod via a university statue), and a great mad turn from John Hurt. We also get to re-meet Raiders' Marion (Karen Allen) and are introduced to Shia LaBeouf's Mutt, who's obviously been lined up to continue the franchise into the 60s should Lucas and Spielberg decide to continue.

The story's tosh of course, but then they always have been. This time, perhaps, it's a little more tosh than usual, but you put that to one side and get on with the action.

There's been a certain amount of criticism of this film which is as much as anything due to the high standards of those that came before it, the affection that many of us hold the originals - in particular Raiders (although I still love the opening of Temple of Doom - I suspect I'm alone in that) - and the knowledge of what we've seen since then.

While I don't think that any of the films that have tried to carry the mantle of Indy have done so in the intervening years, I think that perhaps this film could have been a little rawer. There is still plentiful CGI, not that there ever wasn't lots of special effects in Indy films. I could have perhaps done with a swifter denouement that wasn't quite as "showy-offy".

But I still really enjoyed the film. The pace was good at the start and the end - perhaps only slipping in the middle. The film still felt true to the spirit of the originals. The John Williams music was all present and correct, and the stunts felt pretty real, although I'd have liked to have seen less CGI employed in the clifftop chase sequence. Yet this film is so superior to many of effects-laden tentpole blockbusters that have filled the cinemas in most of the recent summers.

So in the end, is it as good as Raiders? No. Does it matter that Harrison Ford is at a pensionable age? Not really in fact, and you can completely buy his action sequences. But the film is as good as the other two in the series. It's had love and affection placed on it. Lucas has not been allowed to sully his own previous reputation as he managed with the Star Wars prequels. It'll be really interesting to see if anything this coming summer matches or beats it (and from the trailer, that won't be Hancock).

Right - I'm off to rewatch Raiders on DVD...

...But before I go, I couldn't help but notice the three minute BBC Radio 1 ad that was shown ahead of Indy. That must have been a cheap use of my licence fee! It was very good, and it was to promote the variety of music Radio 1 plays post 7pm, but I'm not sure that with audiences at a record high, the BBC needs to be spending quite so much advertising the second most popular station in the country. Perhaps Radio 3 could do with the promotion? Probably not in the most expensive cinema ad-reel of the summer though...

Here's a bit of an oddity. Heartbeat Detector is a French film focussing on the headquarters of the French division of a German company. We follow Simon, a psychologist employed by the firm. He's recently overseen the downsizing of the company - it's into fuel in some way, but we never hear a great deal more about it - and has now been told to investigate the CEO who's number two thinks is having a breakdown.

What follows is a strange and disturbing journey as we learn more about the CEO's life, what's really going on, and learn more about Simon too who's got some pretty strange behaviours and compulsions of his own. At a certain point, the film takes a different direction, although I suspect that you're supposed to have read the runes and seen this telegraphed in advance (Top tip: for once, don't read Philip French in advance).

The film is very leisurely, with long takes often with fixed cameras that barely seem to react even if characters walk "off stage". At times this can be intensely frustrating as seemingly little is happening. There's also an extended scene featuring two songs that, quite frankly, I found utterly interminable. Interesting though the story is, it really didn't need to take two hours and twenty minutes to get to the end.

Simon, is an a very odd character, but then so are both his girlfriends. He seems to be going through some serious difficulties of his own, most strangely in the aftermath of some very strange kind of company retreat which ends in a fairly riotous rave. Is this really what French company away weekends are like?

I could believe the male domination of the company though. I once attended a conference at a hotel in France which was being shared with a Peugeot conference. I didn't see a single woman amongst the very smartly turned out French managers.

If you've read that this film is in some way a French Michael Clayton, then think again. It's not. It's also not really very satisfying in the end, and you're left a little uncertain why you've made the journey.

I went to see The Orphanage today, and I'll get onto that shortly.

But first, can I just highlight what a joyless experience Cineworld made it for me. It began when I phoned the cinema's automated ticket booking line. As is the way with these things, it's all voice activated these days, which invariably means saying "No" repeatedly when the system thinks that you're trying to book tickets to "The Hottie and the Nottie" or worse.

Eventually the system drops away from the pointlessly flawed voice activation system when it gets my clear instructions wrong and reverts to the somewhat more sensible button system. If my mobile phone supplier believes that's the smarter way of doing things, why do cinemas insist in continuing to use these voice systems?

Maybe it's the cynic in me who thinks that it's all a ploy to get a bit more cash from the 0871 phone number. It eventually takes nearly five minutes to find out what films are on and what time my selection is showing at.

I didn't book the film over the phone incidentally, as I thoroughly object to paying a "booking fee" for the privilege of buying my ticket automatically rather than paying a (more expensive to employ) person. In any case, it seems that half the time, the collection machines are out of action meaning that you don't miss out on queuing anyway.

I began to regret my principled stand when I got to the cinema with just a few minutes to go before the film was scheduled to start and saw a long and trailing queue. There are only two ticket windows open out of a possible six. And despite someone putting their head into the ticket office, they don't bother opening a further window, preferring to leave their lonely colleagues to cope with the hoardes.

I purchase my tickets (the cinema hasn't bothered with chip and pin devices - too expensive?) and with a couple of minutes spare, I think that maybe I'll buy some over-priced popcorn and a Diet Coke. I know why the prices are high, and to an extent accept them. So I head over to the concession stand ready to hand over many pounds. There are two long queues, but a further five people are standing behind the counter talking to another but not serving. When I approach one of them, I'm politely told that they're not on duty and that I need to stand behind the ten kids. If staff are on a break, can I suggest they retire to a staff room rather than annoying queuing patrons?

Needless to say, Cineworld lost out on my purchase. I headed into the screen.

The adverts had just started, and I couldn't help but notice a giant stain right down the middle of the screen. It's right in the centre, and it's enormous, running well over half the height of the screen. Every time we see a well lit bright scene in one of the ads, I can't help but stare at the stain which looks like it might have been made by someone throwing a soft drink at the screen.

Fortunately The Orphanage is fairly dark, so I'm not distracted too much during the feature, although the stain is staring out at me in well lit parts of the film. But there's one final little surprise in store. During the screening, a security guard traipses through the cinema on no less than three separate occasions. At one point (and bear in mind that this is horror/thriller film that works by building quiet suspense) his radio actually goes off and he starts to have a conversation with a colleague while he's still inside the screen. Orange spend millions on their excellent campaigns to have customers switch their mobile phones off. But security guards can wander around the screen talking on their radios as much as they like.

The question must be asked: why do I bother going to see films in such surroundings?

Well you know what, I'll be thinking long and hard before I go back to this particular cinema. If I'm to pay a premium price for the experience of seeing a film on the big screen, then cinemas need to actually make the whole thing an easy and pleasant experience. Today, that wasn't the case. With large widescreen high definition TVs becoming the norm, alongside digital surround sound systems, I get a better quality experience at home. And the DVD will end up being cheaper than the price I paid to watch the film. I suggest that Cineworld and others who mismanage their multiplexes had better buck their ideas up.

So what about the film itself? Well it's excellent. I need to be really careful about what I say about it, because it could really affect your enjoyment of the film. Suffice to say that two parents and their young son move into a large house on the Catalan coast which was once an orphanage that the mother lived in.

But their son has his some unusual friends. Are they imaginary? Are they real? I'm not going to tell you, and I'm not going to say any more about the plot except to say that it's tone is very reminiscent of The Others. It's well worth hunting down.

I'm not quite sure why, but I always treat a Daniel Day Lewis film with some trepidation; he doesn't exactly produce films at the same rate as Samuel L Jackson. But There Will Be Blood has been talked about with such great praise, that I was really keen to see it.

The distributors have gone for a limited release in the first week that seemingly builds word of mouth, so that next week when it opens nationally, I'll have told all my national friends (well those who don't read this blog) that it's wonderful and that they should rush out to see it.

It'd be a shame to say much about the plot, involving the birth of the oil industry, but so much more than that. The two key performances are those of Daniel Day Lewis who plays Daniel Plainview, a man who is driven to succeed, paying lip-service but perhaps not much more, to those around him as he strives for success, and Eli Sunday, upon whose family's land oil is found. Eli is a preacher, and he and Daniel continually fight and strive against one another as each somehow needs what the other has.

At 158 minutes, the film might seem long, but when the end finally comes, you know that you could have easily watched another thirty minutes.

As it is, the film opens with a long sequence in which no dialogue is spoken, but we do get to hear Jonny Greenwood's incredible score which is like no other, and yet is completely appropriate. For some reason it's not eligible for an Oscar because some of it predates this film. Just another reason why I don't like the Oscars (actually, the more I think about, the more I hate all awards ceremonies).

Anyway, you need to go and see this film, you really do.

I must admit that I hadn't been looking forward to Cloverfield with quite the same enthusiasm that some on the internet had been. But the teaser trailer was good fun, as did the idea of a film with no stars, and all that it brought with it. I will just mention that having two brothers look quite so similar meant that I could barely tell them apart towards the beginning of the film.

Cloverfield's premise is that the whole thing is seen through the eyes of a video camera that begins videoing a going-away party and continues as the attack on New York begins.

I do have a couple of issues about how they did it. Unlike The Blair Witch Project, this isn't shot on a video camera. It may have been shot digitally - it looks like film - but it's certainly not made with any kind of consumer camera. Somehow, that detracts from the idea. And I suppose it would be a little unfair to note that the beginning of the film - colour bars and a timecode - the contents are labelled as coming from an SD card, when the premise of the film, with bits of previous footage being recorded over, requires a tape. The characters also refer to a tape.

But I'm being a little disingenuous since I think that this is a pretty good monster attack film. The characters' point of view as we run around New York at first trying to escape, and then looking to save a girlfriend, means that we never really find out what's going on, how the monster was unleashed, or even ultimately how the end comes. Instead it's bits of TV news in apartments and in a looted electrical store.

The monster itself is interesting and dinosaur like, although it also has a certain post-Lord of the Rings element to it, with the skin not dissimilar to Gollum.

The film has a devil may care attitude that I quite enjoyed, and the unknown cast meant that like Starship Troopers, you didn't know who was going to live or die, or what would happen. That's just so refreshing, as heroes being invulnerable can be no fun.

The whole thing comes in at under an hour and a half which is thoroughly refreshing. So well worth a brief diversion.

By now, if you're like me, you'll have bought the 5 DVD boxset of Blade Runner with every version known to man including this new "Final Cut."

But before Christmas I did actually see the film projected in the cinema, and it really was a sight to behold. This film does have a bit of history having originally been released in 1982 in a version that famously had a deadbeat Harrison Ford voiceover. It ended with some outtakes of footage of a green valley that was taken from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.

Then in 1992 having gained something of a cult reputation, the film reappeared as The Director's Cut. That was before every film ever produced came out with a "Director's Cut" DVD a year or so after the original release.

But this wasn't quite the cut that Ridley Scott had hoped for, and he couldn't spend either the time or the money that was really neeeded. But the voiceover went, and a couple of scenes reappeared including, famously, a scene involving a unicorn.

Now we've got the real director's cut - or the "final cut" - which has seen the film getting a proper clean and spruce up, as well as few more subtle edits and changes. It must be said that the changes really are quite subtle. There's no really obvious new CGI introduced George Lucas-style. New technology has been employed, but the film still feels true to itself. And that's not surprising as it still feels like a thoroughly believable dirty future. So many other films and adverts have taken their lead from the stylings of Blade Runner that it's sometimes hard to realise quite how revolutionary this film and 1979's Alien were.

I haven't really touched upon the full story of the making of Blade Runner and its many incarnations. For a fuller picture, can I commend Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner which has just had a new edition published in time for this film.

One way or another, now is a good time to revisit this classic.

Now I hear that there's a new edition of the soundtrack out too...

Gone Baby Gone is the directorial debut of Ben Affleck and stars his brother Casey. When you learn that, you're probably thinking that things don't bode well for this film. Well in fact that's not the case. Based on novel by Denis Lehane, and set in a very realistic feeling working class Boston, it involves the disappearance of a little girl from a family. Affleck's character is called in to investigate by the family since the police don't seem to be getting anywhere.

And so begins a very murky story that doesn't necessarily turn out well for anyone involved. It'd be a shame to hint at any of the twists and turns, but this is a worthwhile effort and makes a change from the standard middling thriller fare that Hollywood can produce by the yard.

Casey Affleck is very watchable, and I hear he's also been getting good reviews for his appearance in The Assassination of Jesse James. To be honest, it's been a while since I really enjoyed a film by his brother, but there's undoubtedly some talent in that family.

Sadly, I can't see a release for this film in the UK which, given some of the dross that gets released here, is a bit sad.

Michael Clayton is another film I saw a while ago, but didn't note at the time. George Clooney is a bit of a fixer for a law firm who ends up in a convoluted story involving a major class action lawsuit.

It's another one of those films that's constructed in a non-linear fashion as we start near the end of the tale before jumping back to what happened.

I quite enjoyed this legal tale, although perhaps the ending was a little forced, and I'm not entirely sure that I believed in Tilda Swinton's character who was so insecure despite her meteoric rise to the top.

Having now seen the opening episode of TV series Damages, there are obviously some similarities between the two.

Since it's long disappeared from cinemas, you'll probably need to wait for the DVD which I'm sure is coming any day now.

I saw this on a recent trip to New York, and I've been meaning to write about it for a while (I saw a few other films there that'll I try to note in the next week or so).

The Coen brothers are always worth watching, although recently their run of form has gone off the boil a little. Intolerable Cruelty wasn't wonderful (and hasn't been worth another viewing for me), while The Ladykillers remains their only film that I haven't seen.

Well No Old Country For Old Men is a fantastic return to form. It's based on a Cormac McCarthy novel that I've yet to read, and details what happens when Josh Brolin's character stumbles across a drugs deal gone wrong. With men dead and dying everywhere, he simply walks away with the cash.

This leads off what effectively is a chase movie; but a chase with one of the nastiest and most vicious film villains you've seen for a long time. Javier Bardem's character is someone who kills for fun. Literally.

Everytime he's on the screen your heart is in your mouth wondering what he's going to do, and who the innocent victim is likely to be.

Tommy Lee Jones is the local sheriff who gets an idea what's going on but has his own issues to face.

The rest of the cast is good; I liked Woody Harrelson's brief appearance as someone else searching for the missing money. He was cocksure of himself. And I realise that I've not seen Kelly McDonald in anything recently, although he she has a nice turn as Josh Brolin's wife, who's kept out of the loop.

I want to go and see this film again. It's a great piece with a fascinating ending.

In my review of Juno the other day, I mentioned that I hadn't seen the film that I understood to be Ellen Page's breakthrough film, Hard Candy. Well now I have, having picked up a copy of the DVD.

Wow - what a film. In essence, it's about a paedophile played by Patrick Wilson, who tries to tempt Ellen Page's character into meeting him having groomed her via the internet. So far, so sleazy. But it quickly becomes apparent that this girl is not quite all she seems, as she turns the tables and drugs her prospective attacker.

What plays out is sometimes painful to watch and very well written. Sometimes the piece feels as though it could have been written for the stage, with nearly all the action taking place in a single home. There are twists and turns and the piece even has some very definite acts.

The film is the feature debut of David Slade, who has since produced a zombie movie - 30 Days of Night. It looks fantastic with some fabulous focusing at times.

The DVD also comes with a superb "making of" documentary that's way ahead of the usual rubbish that you get on DVDs. If you're interested in the process of how this film came to made and indeed how a small independent film is put together, then this is invaluable. Slade also talks us through some of the technical aspects of movie making meaning that you end up learning things.

Overall a fantastic little package and I thoroughly recommend a viewing.

You've got to love Ang Lee don't you? He consistently makes some fabulous films. The first of his that I saw was The Wedding Banquet, but before you knew it, he'd turned his hand to Jane Austen and made Sense and Sensibility (now re-appearing in a new "sexed up" Andrew Davies TV production). Then there was the wonderful Ice Storm set in a remarkably real feeling seventies. Ride With The Devil followed - another period drama but this time against the backdrop of the American Civil War. Then he went back to the Far East to make a phenomenally successful Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Next he turned to The Hulk - the only Lee film I've yet to see, before returning to form with Brokeback Mountain.

Now we have Lust, Caution which is drawing lots of attention because of its sex scenes.

Wei Tang plays Wong Chia Chi who is part of a student group who decide that they must kill Tony Leung's character - a Chinese sympathiser with the Japanese during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan.

The murder attempt goes wrong and we jump forward a few years where the resistance takes Wei Tang's character into its heart to have another go at killing the politician.

The film jumps around a little as it tells its wonderful little tale at a stately pace. It was quite surprising to walk out of the cinema and discover that I'd been in there for well over two and a half hours.

As ever with Lee, you really feel that he's got the period detail spot on. The students are naive yet believable in their hatred of the Japanese oppressors. While Shanghai is beautifully rendered during the second world war, with English speaking establishments that somehow wouldn't have been out of place in England during the war.

The relationship between the two key characters is what's at the heart of this film, and it's crushingly believable. This is an exceptional piece and well worth seeing. I can't wait to see what Lee turns his hand to next!

Oh, and I don't understand the rules of mahjong, so the opening scene took me a while to get into.

Like books, I'm behind in writing about which films I've seen recently. So lets try to catch up in reverse order, starting with the film I saw last night - Juno. I know quite a few bloggers saw it at a special screening that I couldn't make before Christmas and the reaction to it was pretty positive.

I'm going to agree with them because I thought it was a wonderful little film. Juno is a 16 year old girl who's a bit of an outcast at school, but who's managed to become pregnant. A visit to Women Now doesn't inspire her to have an abortion - perhaps less for moral reasons than the general awfulness of the place. A classmate acting as a lone picket outside the clinic tells her that her baby already has fingernails. This doesn't really make a great deal of difference to her.

Having decided to keep the baby, she and her friend go through the freesheet newspapers looking for a likely set of adoptive parents. The perfect couple turns out to be Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner who are desperate to have a baby.

That's the bare bones of the plot, but it doesn't really scratch the surface. The dialogue is punchy, fizzing with aphorisms, lending it a very "quirky" humour. Sorry. I like to avoid that word. But it's pretty appropriate here. Indeed it'll definitely be worth seeing again on DVD for the dialogue alone.

And the casting is exceptional. Ellen Page plays Juno, and I've not come across her before, although I do know that I need to see Hard Candy. Her maybe-boyfriend is played by Michael Cera who's best known as George-Michael in Arrested Development. Filling out the cast are JK Simmons and Alison Janney who play Juno's father and step-mother.

A subtle comedy like this could easily become schmaltzy if it wasn't careful, but this has a deft lightness of touch that keeps you smiling all the way through.

Thoroughly recommended. It opens in a month's time.

I must admit that I'm a bit behind on my film reviews. There are as many as half a dozen that I've still to write about. Anyway, without further ado, here's the latest - Beowulf.

There are currently three versions of this film available to see: the bog standard 2D version; a traditional red/blue glasses 3D system; and an IMAX 3D system which uses polarised glasses. It was this latter version that I saw.

Technically it looks spectacular on the enormous IMAX screen, with the film evidently designed to solely be seen in 3D. Swords constantly get pointed in your direction and bits of exploding wood or rocks constantly come flying straight towards you.

But what of the story and the film itself. Well first I have to admit something. Years ago - 1999 to be precise - I bought a hardback version of Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf. I've still not gotten around to reading it.

Then a few years later, while shopping in the Norwich branch of Waterstones, I heard some students from UEA talking about the book which they were obviously studying. They were looking for the audio version of the book which their tutor had said was a good way of tackling the book. So I got hold of the audio version of it. I ripped it to my iPod. And I've not listened to it.

I do know the story of course, and there was the, uh, interesting version of the film - The 13th Warrior - back in the late 90s which was pretty poor but evidently based on the book.

What of this version. Well it took me a little while to get through the computer animation. I guess I was expecting something a little closer to Sin City where the actors were effectively real, but the backgrounds all green-screened in. But the actors in Beowulf have been motion captured and digitally touched up (quite a lot in Ray Winstone's case) before being rendered in a full CGI world. It'd actually be interesting to know to what extent the actors "acted." Were they recorded making the motions or were they animated after the event. I suspect that there's a little of both, and perhaps when the DVD comes out, we'll know.

But overall I liked it. The action sequences were good, and there was plenty of tension when you knew that an attack was imminent.

The film's pretty violent throughout, but like Zatoichi from a couple of years ago, CGI blood somehow lessens the impact. I couldn't quite draw a comparison with a Looney Tunes cartoon, but something you know is CGI means the realism is not as much of an issue.

The story's not the most complicated tale, but it's well told, and the 3D definitely gives it impact. I had an enjoyable time watching it.

Ridley Scott is back with a new film which stars Russell Crowe. Now, those with long memories may recall that these two have made films before. First there was the enormously successful, and very good, Gladiator.

And then there was A Good Year. That's 90 minutes of my life I won't get back.

Well this time, we're back to drama, which Scott does rather better, and also onboard is Denzel Washington.

American Gangster tells the true story of Frank Lucas, a black gangster based in Harlem, who took on the Mafia to run his own major drug ring.

Crow plays Detective Richie Roberts, a cop who's almost too good, who takes on the job of tracking down the drug dealers.

The film takes place over a period from the late sixties through to the mid seventies, and reminds me most of a Martin Scorcese film like Casino or Goodfellas, taking a long look at a particular criminal family. The setting is wonderfully realised, with a dirty Harlem that reminds you of old cop shows.

It's actually very easy to empathise with Washington's character, since as well as the Mafia families, there are corrupt cops to take on, as well as the racism of the period. But he's not good. He might look after his mum, but there's a vicious streak engendered into him by his previous boss. In one shot, over the Christmas period, we see a junkie having overdosed and died with her baby crawling around her fly-infested body.

And this film has more black characters in it than any film I've seen since early Spike Lee films, which is a pleasant surprise. Maybe Scott's watched some episodes of The Wire.

In many respects this is not the usual fare for Scott. With very few exceptions, there are not glorious vistas for the eye to wander across; instead, much of the action takes place in rooms and in close up. There are no fancy camera shots, and the only CGI in the film is likely to have been employed to remove modern buildings.

I suppose I'd like to see Crowe not play an outsider, but he gives a strong performance. And Washington's is even better, as the very calm and measured Lucas. The rest of the cast are excellent including Josh Brolin's nasty New York cop, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Carla Gugino.

Despite the film's length, the story is fast and you're never distracted. Thoroughly recommended.

This evening I saw Stardust, the film based on Neil Gaiman's novel. The film has already had its US release, and it's fair to say that it didn't perform outstandingly there. But is that a fair reflection of the film?

I'd say not.

The problem is that it's a really hard film to market. The closest comparisons are either the wonderful The Princess Bride or perhaps The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. It's a fantasy tale set just the other side of the village of Wall, as Tristan goes in search of a fallen star to give to his true love.

Much as Charlie Cox gives a great performance as Tristan, and Claire Danes is lovely as the star - Yvaine. The real scene-stealers are Michelle Pfeiffer as the evil witch Lamia, and a brilliant turn by Robert De Niro as a camp sea captain. De Niro is great at comedy.

The film doesn't take itself enormously seriously, and you'll recognise just about every person in the film. As I suspected, Ricky Gervais is a relatively minor character, over-used in the trailer.

But overall it's a cracking film.

It doesn't open in the UK until October 19, but it'll be worth searching out when it does.

Just one small other point. In the past I've been known to moan about preview screenings where the distributors insist that you hand over your mobile phones before the screening, leading to inevitable bunfights afterwards when several thousand people all try to get them back simultaneously. After tonight's experience, I beginning to think that maybe they've got it right after all, and I've got it wrong. Because this film opened in US some time ago, security was relaxed and nobody asked me for my phone. Naturally I turned it off. Not so, the woman in the row just in front of me who arrived late to sit with her friend. Even though the film had started, she fired off a text. I gave her the benefit of the doubt. But ten minutes later she was still texting and even phoning. In a darkened cinema, the effect was akin to someone waving a torch around in front of me. Eventually, with no end in sight, I leant forward and asked her very kindly if she would turn it off. She did, but five minutes later, she and her friend left the cinema. Good. People like that deserve to be kicked out of cinemas. It's relatively common for security guards to peer at audiences during early releases to check we've not somehow smuggled a camcorder into the cinema. I wish that they'd instead deal with anti-social mobile phone users. That way, I might actually begin to enjoy the cinema experience some more.

Well here's a film that's not likely to get shown in Saudi Arabia - The Kingdom of the title.

The Kingdom is the first of a series of films set in a post 9/11 world with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan fairly bogged down.

It begins with a skilfully edited credit sequence that uses smart graphics and archive footage to tell a potted history of the United States' involvement with oil in Saudi Arabia following its unification in 1932. It runs right through to the identification of 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers being Saudi.

The film proper begins with life in a Western compound being savagely interrupted by a series of murders and explosions that kills over a hundred. Then we meet a small and elite FBI team run by Jamie Foxx with Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman and Chris Cooper, who all want to travel to the kingdom and investigate the attack on the ground. But it's politically sensitive, and they're warned off.

Foxx doesn't take no for an answer and soon they're on the ground, and trying to work with a Saudi government who's suspicious of them and doesn't necessarily want to help either. There are one or two good guys, but effectively it's an uphill battle, not helped by Jeremy Piven's US government official locally based.

The politics of the piece are quite interesting, with an explicit understanding made that the only reason the US is involved is because of oil, yet the whole of Saudi Arabia is made to feel incredibly dangerous.

Whenever the characters are out and about, the close-cut camera work is constantly finding suspicious cars and people for our eyes to fall on. Could any one of these contain a bomb or harbour attackers? The Steadicam-free handheld camera work makes us feel more uncertain. You never quite know what's around the corner. While it's not quite of the same calibre as Greengrass's, it all adds to the general unease.

The performances are superb, and although a couple of action sequences feel a little too "Hollywood", it's really well made. Ashraf Barhom and Ali Suliman are good as the two assisting Saudi police officers. There are couple of things that remind me of a John Sayles film - obviously the presence of Chris Cooper in the cast, but also Danny Huston's Attorney General. Could Sayles have script doctored this film? Actually I note that writer Matthew Michael Carnahan is now working on the big screen remake of State of Play which possibly isn't a bad thing.

And although the ending begins as being a little too twee, there's a wonderful little coda, that makes you think about everything that's gone before.

The only tiny thing I'd have changed is to rename the arch villain of the piece - he's named Abu Hamza, the same as the infamous hook-handed cleric from the Finsbury Park mosque.

But well worth a viewing when this film opens in October.

The Bourne Ultimatum is the final* part of the Bourne trilogy which bears little to no resemblance to the Robert Ludlum books. Incidentally, Ludlum is one of those masterful authors who manages to publish new titles despite being long dead.

Anyway, back to the film which is once again directed by Paul Greengrass. What can I say? It's superb. It begins seconds after the previous film, The Bourne Supremacy has finished, with Bourne on the run in Moscow. He's getting ever closer to finding out who he is, but he's still against some mean CIA black-ops who will stop at nothing to get rid of him. The action moves from Italy to Paris to London to Tangiers to New York. And along the way we get some fabulous visceral set pieces.

In London there's a frightening CCTV sequence set in Waterloo Station as Bourne tries to rendezvous with a Guardian journalist.

In Tangiers, there's a great sequence set on the rooftops with Matt Damon's Bourne and Julia Stiles' Nicky. You really don't know what's going to happen, and although Bourne is always likely to survive, the same is not true for anyone else around him.

Once again, there's an awful lot of handheld work here, with fast-cutting meaning that you're really in the midst of the action. It's done superbly well, and the action and pace just never lets up. It really is like a skillfully designed roller-coaster with the occasional chance for you to gather your breath before the next thrilling element.

I came out absolutely full of admiration for all concerned.

*Paul Greengrass jokingly told Simon Mayo that if Spurs finished in the top 4, he'd make another one. This is obviously unlikely in the extreme (Greengrass himself is a Crystal Palace fan), but even then, with Mayo taking his joke too seriously, he found himself backing out of it in the course of the interview. Not that Spurs is going to manage it, with Martin Jol surely counting the days not until he's out.

I had a bit of a hangover, and despite being one of the few sunny days, I thought I'd go and see one of this week's big movies. I don't normally talk about films as movies, but I think these two count.

So it was either The Simpsons Movie or Transformers. My local multiplex was basically just showing those two films and the latest Harry Potter, so you don't have to worry about start times, as they all basically get a screening every half an hour all day long.

Now knowing me, some might be surprised by my choice - the title above kind of gives it away. And it's not that I don't like The Simpsons. It's just that I really don't watch it all that much. When I do watch it, it's funny, but, it's not the most important thing on TV.

So why Transformers?

I'm a bit too old to have every played with the toys, so it has no real heritage to me. Indeed, I'd no idea who the good guy was between Optimus Prime and Megatron (OK - the names do kind of give it away, but you know what I mean). But I've not really watched a major franchise film this summer with the exception of Die Hard - and that was a freebie. I didn't see Spiderman 3. I certainly couldn't bring myself to see Pirates 3. Fantastic Four means nothing to me, and I didn't see the first one. Yet, I was intrigued, so I went in.

I really really should have known better. Two and a half long hours later, I saw the four words that every real film lover should hate to read: "A Michael Bay Film."

Yes, I knew it was by him before I went in. And yes I've seen previous examples of his oeuvre. But I'll give the man a chance.

Let me first get out the one decent thing about the film. The effects are really good. It's kind of shame that you don't really get much of a chance to appreciate them, since the cutting and camera work means that everything goes by in a blur. Maybe they're actually terrible, and by not having the camera dawdle, you can't tell.

Everything else is pretty terrible. The script is too long, and is basically rubbish. It makes little to no sense, and while it's always pretty ropey the way that young kids are roped into the plot, in this case it's especially so.

The cast are inoffensive, but that's about the best you can say for them. They mainly come from TV aside from cameos-for-cash from John Tuturro and Jon Voight. Megan Fox is a particularly unlikely romantic interest for Shia LaBeouf, with the camera lingering a little too long on her body when it gets the chance. There's nothing wrong with that per se, except it some way shape or form, this is supposed to be a kids movie - albeit a 12A. She certainly doesn't seem like a high school student. And while we're at it, there's an American Pie moment that also feels like it should be in another film.

Basically, the whole thing just doesn't hang together. The plot makes no real sense, and there are holes all over the place. At various points different Transformers appear and disappear to meet the needs of the plot, but it's never quite clear why Optimus Prime has only just chosen to appear, apart from dramatic effect. And I even found telling the difference between them all problematical.

The dialogue was just about drowned out by the sound effects, although that might actually have been a good thing.

Overall, then, an awful film with very little redeem itself.

Taking Liberties is that rarest of things - a low budget British documentary released in the cinema. It covers a subject that's very close to my heart, the reduction of civil liberties we've seen under the premiership of Tony Blair over the last ten years.

It tells its tale using a combination of archive clips, illustrative pieces of old film, and fresh interviews and pieces.

The film takes turns in examining the loss of several liberties including the right to protest, free speech, privacy, detention without trial, extradition and torture. It does these in a clever and witty manner.

Right from the beginning, you're scared quite what the authorities are now able to do. We're accompanying three coach loads of middle aged people who want to protest at an American airforce base. There are a lot of police watching them. They decide to turn the coaches around. There's no discussion. These are peaceful people. The police force the coach to return all the way to London. The drivers aren't even allowed to stop at service stations.

Some of the areas it covers are obvious, but at other times, even someone who likes to think they're aware what's going on is shocked by what they see. So we meet someone who's basically a prisoner in his own home. He's a suspected terrorist, yet he hasn't been charged with anything. Instead, he's under virtual house arrest, with a tag preventing leaving an arbitrary area around his North London home.

And I never expected to feel sympathy for a member of the NatWest 3. These, you'll remember, are three ex-bankers who have been extradited to the US. The member in the film even acknowledges that he's not likely to be the most loved person. Yet, with no evidence whatsoever, the British Government is happy to ship him off to America, where he must sit around and await a trial.

Of course there are sections on ID Cards, and there are bits on Torture. They cheekily use a clip of 24 which does indeed tend to suggest that torture works. It probably does help the populace at large believe that torture really does work. It doesn't of course. I'll tell you anything you want to hear if you start to hurt me.

The only problem I have with this film is that it's not going to be seen very widely. I rather suspect that most of the people who go along and see it will be the converted. I watched it at an early-evening midweek screening that wasn't especially busy. And I can't see that it's going to be very easy to get shown on TV because it is enormously partisan.

That said, I hope the DVD is released nice and cheaply and passed around as much as possible. It really is scary what is happening while we sit back and let it happen. We really are letting the terrorists win and we lose our freedoms.

The film's website is here.

I'm sure earlier in the year, or perhaps late last year, I saw trailers for Live Free or Die Hard. But in the meantime, somebody noticed that Web 2.0 was a bit of a buzzword, and since this film is all about using the power of computers to bring down the state, it was renamed Die Hard 4.0. To be honest, it's a better title.

John McClane (Bruce Willis) is back, some twelve years after the last entry in the franchise. Relative new boy Len Wiseman takes on the directorial reigns, with John McTiernan who directed the first and third films getting a Producer credit. Who's Len Wiseman? Well he's directed those Underworld films and is married to Kate Beckinsdale. I'm not sure that thought thrilled me as I entered the cinema.

McClane's daughter is now a teenager and as soon as we meet her, we know that she'll be involved in the plot later on. McClane has to pick up a teenage hacker (they're all teenagers, right?) in a routine sweep for the FBI. But the fact that a hit-squad is trying to kill him alerts McClane to something more nefarious.

Bad guy Timothy Olyphant is leading a high-tech attack on the US, employing a group of skilled hackers to shut down transport, communications and power around the country with something called a fire-sale. Fortunately, while Homeland Security et al are left paralysed, McCane is able to get around with his young hacker accomplice to thwart their every move.

The production notes to the film explained that they wanted to do stunts with as much realism as they could before resorting to CGI. That seems to be true to a point, but there's also a lot of CGI as well, especially later in the film. A chase sequence where McCane, in a car, is being chased by a helicopter is good fun, and the denouement brings a cheer in the cinema. And a scene that ends with an SUV in an elevator shaft is also good.

But there's also a scene involving some kind of fighter jet and a truck. I won't say any more, but obviously CGI is used enormously, and the whole big budget sequence is terrible. It just doesn't work, and reminds you of that awful bit in True Lies that involved Arnie hanging onto a Harrier.

It's a shame really because overall the film's pretty good. Yes McCane keeps getting back up every time he's knocked down, which is a good effort considering Willis is now 52. But the story just about holds together, the villain is good, and the pace keeps up pretty well. But I suspect that for some visceral "real" thrills, we're going to have to wait for The Bourne Ultimatum later in the summer.

I'm not sure what the UK certificate for the film is going to be, but if my eyes and ears didn't deceive me, it looks as though a single strong swearword (inevitably added to ensure the film doesn't get too low a rating in the US) has been dubbed out for the UK - probably to get a 12 or 12A rather a 15. It's the first time I've noticed a dubbed word on a film soundtrack. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am.

I saw this film at a preview screening, and can I just say that however much you might just have enjoyed a film, there's nothing more of a downer than facing a bun fight of 2,000 people (approximately the capacity of the Odeon Leicester Square) all trying to retrieve their mobile phones simultaneously. I know that phones like the Nokia N95 have five mega pixel cameras on them these days, but is phonecam shot movie really going to a major piracy concern? There's got to be a better solution. All that happens is that 2,000 people end their evening a bit pissed off.

[UPDATE] It seems that in the US, this film is still called Live Free or Die Hard whereas in the UK (and much of the rest of the world) it's Die Hard 4.0. A very curious state of affairs.

I love stories set in newspapers. Evelyn Waugh's Scoop is quite probably my favourite ever book - riotously funny. TV has had its fair share of programmes set around plucky newspaper reporters; most recently State of Play, but I even remember Lytton's Diary! And then there are films. Another favourite is The Day The Earth Caught Fire set in the offices of the Daily Express (back in the sixties I should rapidly point out).

I also quite like the films of Woody Allen. I've not seen every film, and I've missed a couple of his more recent entries like Melinda and Melinda, and Match Point. I suppose that like many others, I was put off a bit by the little local difficulty he had in his personal life.

But when I heard he'd made another film in Britain (Match Point was too), and it was set in the newspaper world, I was intrigued and looked forward to it. The fact that it starred Scarlett Johansson was no bad thing either.

Woody no longer gets big releases. He makes films as regularly as clockwork and I guess the sums all add up because the same people go and see them, and the studios keep backing them. Big name actors love to work with him (for much reduced fees one suspects) and the whole thing ticks over nicely.

Scoop (nothing to do with aforementioned Waugh novel) was released in the US last summer, and has since opened in a number of countries around the world. But noticeably, not Britain.

This is unusual in that there's a reasonable following for Woody over here, and the film was actually made here. On top of that, many famous British faces have parts to lesser or greater extents (mainly lesser, but we'll come to that). The latest word I hear is that no British distributor is going to pick up the film. So aside from the odd festival screening, it's likely to first pitch up on DVD or TV. The latter is a dead cert. since BBC Films co-produced the film.

I picked up a North American copy of the DVD to see the film, getting impatient with obviously foolish distributors in the UK. It couldn't be that bad could it? I mean as well as Johansson, the film stars Hugh Jackman and Ian McShane as well as Allen himself!

Well, I'm sorry to report that it really is that bad.

Woody has something of a starring role in the film alongside Johansson. She plays a young American visiting her British friend (the thoroughly underused Romola Garai), and she also happens to be a cub reporter on her college newspaper. For very feeble characterisation reasons, she stalks a famous film director (Kevin McNally in practically a cameo) and immediately jumps into bed with him to get her story. She fails.

Then she goes off with her friend to see a magic show being conducted by Woody Allen. I'm not quite sure where such magic shows are held, but they find one nonetheless. Allen's character is a hackneyed conjourer with a supposedly razor-sharp wit. But it isn't really. And Allen just plays Allen as he always does. Johansson is chosen from the audience to be made to vanish in a wooden box, but whilst inside she meets the ghost of legendary tabloid hack Joe Strombel (Ian McShane). Stay with me. He's been told in the afterlife that the renound "Tarot Card Murderer" who's killing prostitutes all over the streets of London is actually playboy rich-kid Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman).

Johnansson and Allen team up in the most unlikely manner to try to get close to Jackson and find out if he's the real murderer. This will be her big break after all!

What follows is a mess. The jokes are feeble, with more laughs in the average episode of My Family. The dialogue is poor, and the plot just freewheels along on its own without any care for logic.

Along the way, every incidental character our heroes run into is a famous face playing blink and you'll miss it roles. Especially bad is Charles Dance playing the editor of The Observer, and forced to say lines that he practically winces at on camera so terrible are they.

The end comes relatively quickly and you're not exactly surprised.

The only reason I stayed with this film is because I'd paid good money for it, and as I say, Johansson's not exactly unappealing on the eye. But the film is a stinker. Expect to see it cropping up sometime between Christmas and New Year on BBC2 without too much fanfair despite its stellar cast.

I see that Allen's next film, Cassandra's Dream, has also been made in Britain - it simply can't be any worse than Scoop.

I must return to Sunshine, which is now finally in cinemas.

First off, a bit of background. Back in May 2005, I accompanied a colleague at work on set-visit to 3 Mills Studios over in the East End to see the filming of this Danny Boyle science fiction epic. Now I've never been on a film set before, and it was a bit lucky that I went this time, but I wasn't about to say no.

Sunshine had just about taken over the 3 Mills studio complex. The only other production taking place at the time was the Sky TV series Dream Team. Danny Boyle's team had taken over most of the sound stages, and we were to be given a guided tour. First of all we assembled in the art department where there were incredibly detailed scale models of the various sets as well as the main spaceship, Icarus. Around the walls were various pictures and designs pinned up along with detailed posters of the solar system.

We met the films shy producer Andrew MacDonald. He's worked on all Danny Boyle's films to date as well as plenty of others including recent Oscar nominated films like The Last King of Scotland and Notes on a Scandal. Sadly the day we were there, there was a closed set where they were actually filming. But we were able to tramp all over the other sets. So we got to see the main crew area, the cockpit and area, the oxygen garden, and a massive green-screen where two airlocks were separated by a large gap. I won't say much more because it'll spoil the film, but suffice to say that there are reasons for all of these. I also won't say what condition the sets were in when we saw them.

Now as I say, I've never been around a film or TV set before. I've seen TV shows recorded, but they're very different. What was really unusual here is that the sets were 360 degrees. That is to say that there were four walls and a ceiling everywhere. Ordinarily sets are built to remove walls so that the camera crew can point into the set. Then for a different set-up the wall might be replaced, and another removed for a different angle. In this instance, to keep a fairly claustrophobic atmosphere on set, no walls were going to be removed; the camera operators et al were going to have to fit inside the set.

And the sets were so detailed. Everywhere you looked, the attention to detail was extraordinary. Nobody was ever going to see much of the detail, yet it was there. For example, each of the crew members had their own cabins fully decked out with things like family photos and books that they might be reading. In the final film, you simply don't see all this detail - but it's there. I guess that a real-feeling set gives you more from your actors.

The other really fascinating thing was that everything seemed to work. All the video screens were lit-up and had graphics displayed. Not only that, but a flip of the switch turned all these lights on at once. It was explained to us that although many films would have added this later in special effects, it was far easier and cheaper to do it at the time.

Anyway, after a couple of hours of trampling around the set, sitting in the captain's seat (yup - I got to fly Icarus II), and getting a good idea of the plot, it was time to go. And wait. For nearly two years.

Fast-forward to the film itself.

Everyone else has already explained that this film is not your run-of-the-mill SF shoot-em-up film. Some critics have taken issue with George Lucas and his original Star Wars trilogy for ruining what had been a very intelligent sequence of SF films with titles like 2001, Solaris and Silent Running having some really interesting ideas to impart. I think that's a bit unfair on Lucas since it's hardly his fault that after the stunning success of his SF-Westerns, nobody wanted to make anything else. But this film is certainly a much more grown up film than we've come to expect in recent years.

The crew are sent on an unlikely, and obviously doomed, mission to send a missile into the sun. We won't worry about why an unmanned spacecraft wouldn't be much more able to carry out the mission. Like the science in the film, it's not really relevant. Instead, we have a study in what happens when a group of people, is cooped up in small area. And there's the appeal of the sun - that single entity that literally ensures that we have life in our solar system.

It's ironic that the mission's shrink is the first to go mad, but things change some more when the crew finally come across a signal from the first Icarus - a ship that disappeared years before and hadn't been heard from.

Psychology takes quite an important role in the film as each of the oppression of the circumstances seem to drive each of the characters to some kind of logical conclusion.

The ending of the film is at once satisfactory and not-so. Yet it's the perfect ending.

The sun has quite simply never looked so beautiful, and the special effects are exemplary. Given that live-action filming finished so long ago, it's clear that the SFX have been slowly and carefully crafted. Sound too is important - see this film in a good cinema. I'm already on the look out for a nice sub-woofer to plug in for the film's DVD release.

But don't wait for the DVD - this is a film that demands to be seen on the screen. Go and see it on the biggest screen you can find. It'd look great on an IMAX screen because seeing this film is really immersive.

The film cost around $40m and it's wonderful that Fox Searchlight let Boyle, MacDonald and their team do whatever they wanted. So they haven't turned in some kind of all-action nonsense. That's probably why they don't know when or how to release it in the States. It doesn't fit into one of three or four different film genres. It's effects-laden, yet isn't a tentpole May/June film when every weekend sees one big blockbuster open after another (with the inevitable failure of many of the titles). But on the other-hand, it's not a breakout small indie film like Little Miss Sunshine or Sideways. Still - that's their problem, but if they give it a marketing push like the one it's had here, it should do just fine.

So am I biased when I write about this film? Undoubtedly. I was conditioned to like this film. But you know what? It doesn't matter. It's still a wonderful film. One that demands to be seen in cinemas.

And let me end with a plea. I've heard Danny Boyle in interviews claim that he won't be returning to science fiction. Please do Danny! Ridley Scott made Bladerunner and Alien, the latter certainly informing this title. I'm sure you could manage another in a couple of years!

So this weekend it was all things Spartan, and in particular the Battle of Thermopylae. Frank Miller, that doyen of graphic novels, wrote a five-parter called 300 some while back, and this morning, before seeing the newly released film, I read it.

It's a fictionalised telling of King Leonidas leading his 300 Spartan troops into a thankless - hopeless - fight against Xerxes' Persian Army numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

The comic version is very gritty and down and dirty. The only real backstory that we get is just enough to put the battle into some kind of historical context. There are only a very limited number of characters, and a certain stylised aspect to them. So the Oracle at Delphi is perched precariously at the top of a rock pillar and is just about impossible to reach. While Ephialtes, the Greek who'd betray that Spartans by telling Xerxes the whereabouts of a hidden goat path through the mountain and round the back, is depicted as some kind of monstrous hunchback.

But it's a thrilling tale that's told well - I wouldn't have wanted to wait a month between installments when it was first published.

This has now been turned into a film, 300, which is nearly a straight retelling of Miller's graphic novel. The sylised feel has obviously followed on directly from the manner in which the same sorts of techniques were used previously for Sin City - another Frank Miller set of graphic novels. Indeed, I did initially think that Robert Rodriguez must have been responsible for the film, so similar is the feel and SFX techniques employed to give an other worldly feel to the film. Indeed, nearly the entire film was shot against either blue or green screen and supplemented by effects.

The film does differ from the book in a few ways - most notably in the addition of a subplot involving Leonidas' wife Gorgo.

And the film features practically no known stars, vastly reducing the production cost, and meaning that it's likely to be enormously profitable given its success in the US to date. What this means is that you should expect to see more films such as these in the near future.

It's a film which is exactly what you expect. Nothing more - nothing less.

Both graphic novel and film are of course inspired by true events, recorded most notably by that original historian Herodotus. These in turn were fictionalised in a 1962 film, The 300 Spartans, which was on BBC2 yesterday. It's not a film I can remember seeing before, and falls squarely into the typical swords and sandals epic feel. It opens with a panoramic view of the Persian army on the march, which was undoubtedly made without special effects and probably employed thousands of members of the Greek army or similar. Unlike 300, The 300 Spartans takes a much more leisurely approach, with plenty of subplots involving wives and others, while the Spartan life seems much more comfortable. There are also far fewer bare-chested six packs on display in this older film.

Xerxes appears as an almost Ming the Merciless style bad guy, and the battle itself is limited to the end of the film rather than taking up most of it. Not the greatest epic of the period to be honest.

Sadly, I missed Discovery Civilisation channel's reshowing of The Spartans, Bettany Hughes' Channel 4 series!

Idiocracy is a film that never actually got a cinema release in the UK. Made by the creator of Beavis & Butthead, as well as King of the Hill, Mike Judge, this film was made after the cult success of Office Space - a film that only really did well on DVD.

Well this time Fox has pretty much forced success to come via DVD since it sat on the film for two years before opening the film without showing it to critics in a paltry six cities in the US. It comes to us straight to DVD here.

Luke Wilson is a very average soldier who's put into a cryogenics chamber as part of an army experiment. The programme gets shut down and he's forgotten about for five hundred years. In the meantime, the stupid people have taken over, with evolution taking a downward spiral. It's into this world that Wilson's character arrives - where the president is a three-time Smackdown champion, where Starbucks no longer sells coffee in the manner we currently have, and where water has been replaced by a Gatorade type drink ("it's got electrolytes").

Basically this is an at times heavy-handed satire on the dumbing down of society. While it's not the funniest film of the year, and probably isn't as good as Office Space, it's a crying shame that something like this doesn't make it to the cinema while a travesty like Norbit does.

Blades of Glory is the latest Will Ferrell film, and if you're like me, you won't know if you're going to see a good Will Ferrell film (like Anchorman) or a bad one (like Bewitched).

Fortunately, Blades of Glory is in the former camp. Now you're going to have to suspend your disbelief a little as I explain the plot of this film. Ferrell and Napolean Dynamite's Jon Heder are two mens' figure skaters. They're rivals - similar to Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan (who has a cameo - indeed most recent US skating stars get one kind of cameo or another). When they share the gold medal at the Stockholm Olym... er... "Championships" they get into a fight on the medal podium. As a result, St Elsewhere star, and voice of KITT, William Daniels bans them for life from the sport.

Fast forward three and a half years (i.e. just before the next... er... "Championships") and both are plumbing the depths of the ice skating world, with Ferrell's character drinking his way through a kids ice show, and Heder's working in a skating shop. Then suddenly Heder's stalker (keep up) realises that there's a way back. As long as Heder partners up and goes into the ice dance pairs competition, he can get back into the tournament.

As it happens, he ends up pairing with Ferrell. Hilarious consequences ensue.

The best camera trickery in the world isn't going to make Ferrell look like an ice dancing champion, so they just don't really try that hard. There are a few doubles and some obvious special effects, but that's about it. Essentially the film has the feel of Ben Stiller's Zoolander, which isn't surprising since Stiller is one of the executive producers.

The film really doesn't care a great deal and just has gag after gag. The unlikely duo's mortal rivals are another American pair played by Arrested Development's Will Arnett and Amy Poehler. While The (US) Office's Jenna Fischer plays Heder's love interest - essentially reprising Pam from The Office. There are also cameo's from The Daily Show's Rob Corddry and other small screen stars. You get the feeling that everyone had a great deal time making this film.

If a comedy is judged simply on whether or not it makes you laugh then this success in spades. It's silly, it's throwaway, it's as camp as Christmas; but it's great fun.

If you ask me to describe the plot of Inland Empire, David Lynch's latest, I'm going to struggle. If you'd previously seen either Lost Highway or Mulholland Drive and thought that they were weird, then you ain't seen nothing yet.

The plot revolves around Laura Dern's character, who's trying to revitalise her film career with a remake of a strange Polish film, the making of which saw everyone die. Then there are excerpts from a sitcom involving people dressed as bunny rabbits wearing clothes. There are no discernable jokes, but the canned laughter makes up for it. Add in a strange coterie of hookers (I think), Jeremy Irons' film director, Harry Dean Stanton's strange hanger-on (can you spare some change), and you've got a heady mix.

Lynch has made this film on video tape - PD150s seemingly - and it does show. I thnk that that biggest criticism that I have of the film is that the camera work at times doesn't seem that great. People drop in and out of focus depending on how the look at the camera - it's a problem because Lynch uses some really extreme close ups and depending on whether the subject is looking face on, or in profile determines the extent to which they're in focus. The same problem also affects scenes shot in extreme darkness where theoretically the camera should cope, but it is struggling.

The film was projected digitally when I saw it, which is fine, but if it was shot on PD150s I'm surprised. Why didn't Lynch use an HD camera? Digital can look nice and be perfectly in focus. A good example might be Sex and Lucia which was made a few years ago now and still looks great. And obviously a lot of TV is being made in HD these days including things like Bleak House (looks good) and Torchwood (doesn't look so good). I guess that there's a learning curve for these new formats.

But back to the film. What to make of it? The person in front of me managed two hours of the three hour running time before eventually walking out, and plenty more people than normal availed themselves of toilet breaks. But it's certainly worth a watch if you know what you're going to see. I think you just need to let it wash over you. Seeing this kind of film is more of an experience than a normal cinema visit. I notice that Lynch currently has an art retrospective on display at Cartier Foundation in Paris. And to me, in some respects, this is a video installation (a phrase I hate) rather than a "normal" film.

It's just a shame that Lynch is unlikely to reveal all, and explain his thinking on, say, a DVD commentary track. He doesn't really believe in that sort of thing. Indeed Mulholland Drive didn't even have chapter stops as he didn't want people dipping in and out of the DVD. Watch the whole thing in order, or not at all is his view. Maybe we'll get something this time around? Not just a list of clues as we had last time out.

So here's a film I can talk about openly. I'm a bit of a sucker for films about magic, and Ricky Jay was a consultant on The Illusionist so I had to see it.

We've had quite a long for this film, since it's similar in story to The Prestige which came out around the same time in the States. I still haven't seen The Prestige (although I note it's released on DVD on Monday), although I did read the book.

And there's a similar problem with both stories in that although they're superficially about magic, they're really about magick, with unexplainable things that aren't performed so much as added-in in FX.

Edward Norton is an Austrian magician called Eisenheim who once fell in love with Jessica Biel' Sophie when they were kids. Now he's travelled the world studying magic and a chance encounter reawakens their feelings for one another.

Cue various seemingly impossible tricks performed in 19th century theatres. It's all passably entertaining, but I came away disappointed.

Thanks to Gia, I saw Sunshine last night at a bloggers' screening. There are strange rules coming down from Fox that say I can't "review" the film until March 26, but can say how much I liked (or otherwise) the film in the meantime.

So this is just a trailer of a review until I write the fuller version.

I've been looking forward to this film for ages, being something of a Danny Boyle fan (can we please have a UK release of the wonderful TV film Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise). I was also lucky enough to get a set visit to this film nearly two years ago. I did hint at this back in May 2005 but rather annoyingly that entry seems to have disappeared. Basically a friend at work took me with her down to Three Mills Studios for a set tour organised by Fox. But I shall say no more until the full review because some of what I saw does impact on the storyline - not that I'd spoil it.

In short, it's a great film that looks absolutely stunning. I also really enjoyed the soundtrack - I only found out that it was by Underworld who've got "history" with Boyle having contributed to both Trainspotting and The Beach.

What's it like? Maybe a cross between a Event Horizon and 2001. But it is different.

Well worth checking out.

Hot Fuzz is the new Simon Pegg/Nick Frost/Edgar Wright film. You know? The people who brought you Shaun of the Dead, and more importantly, Spaced.

This time around we have Simon Pegg's diligent Sgt. Angel being transferred from the Met, where he's showng everyone else up with his tremendous drive and arrest rates, to rural Gloucestershire, where things aren't conducted at quite as high pace as they are in London... Or are they?

Nick Frost plays PC Danny Butterman, in a station full of archetypes, including "The Andys" (a pair of CID detectives that have strolled in from the set of Life on Mars), Olivia Coleman's double entendre-laden Doris, Edward Woodward's citizen liaison (a nod towards The Equalizer with his character) and Jim Broadbent's inspector. Every face is recognisable, including various townsfolk ("Sandford" is described as a village, but feels more like a small market town to me. It does have a branch of Somerfield after all), not least of which is Timothy Dalton's pantomine villain. Such is this team's star in the firmament at the moment, it feels as though Pegg only has to pick up the phone and familiar faces sign up immediately.

A series of "accidents" happen around and about the place, but only Angel (or Angle as Adam Buxton's local journalist would have it) is seeing the real truth. There's something darker going on in Sandford than the possible threat of hoodies or the living statue that keeps appearing in the townsquare.

There are pop-culture references aplenty, and here's hoping that they'll get their own subtitle track on the DVD when it's released. But the film is probably just a bit slow for a comedy. It's one hour fifty-six minutes long which is just about half an hour too much. It's the middle bit that needs cropping where there's a fine line being trodden between knowing nods to melodrama, and attempts at, well, actual drama.

There are plenty of laughs, although they don't come as frequently as I'd have liked. And some of the cinematic devices used are little well-worn, like the fast-cuts used to indicate Angel's incredible work ethic.

The finale is great fun though, as we get what's essentially the finish to a film like Bad Boys II (referenced directly more than once) but in a quiet English village. It's a pistol packing sequence that's pastiching (the again referenced in dialogue) Straw Dogs as well as genre Hollywood fare.

Overall, it's absolutely worth seeing, but is perhaps a little off the best form I know that this team is capable of. That said, it's a level higher than most garbage that passes for comedy on our screens. Roll on La Triviata should it actually happen (Did Jonathan Ross mention it in his interview with Pegg before Christmas? I thought he did).

Pan's Labyrinth is one of those films that I just knew I'd like before I saw it. I could have been setting myself up for a fall, but it's safe to say that I didn't.

Set at the end of the Spanish Civil War, events take place in a mountainous region as Captain Vidal moves a garrison of his troops along with his new wife and stepdaughter into a remote retreat in order to take on the rebels living in the hillside. His wife is pregnant with a child he believes to be a son - something he's desperate for. His stepdaughter, Ofelia, has not taken to this vicious military man and takes solice in her books filled with fairy tales.

But things begin to come to life for Ofelia as she first meets a fairy and then is introduced to Pan (or the Faun as he is in the original Spanish title - El Laberinto del Fauno) in his labyrinth - an ancient stone construction that sits nearby. Pan sees that she has special powers bu