Thanks all!

Next up is an adaptation of the Neil Gaiman fantasy novel Stardust, with a supremely impressive cast that includes the likes of Peter O’Toole, Ian McKellen, Rupert Everett, Ricky Gervais, Sienna Miller, Michelle Pfeiffer and Clare Danes. Then there’s New Orleans, a thriller about police corruption, with De Niro investigating with the help of his new partner, played by rapper 50 Cent, before hooking up with the rather more talented George Clooney for the crime drama 36.

Then it’s back to comedy for Hollywood expose What Just Happened?, based on the book by Heat and Fight Club producer Art Linson (who also wrote the screenplay), with De Niro playing a film producer having a tough time getting funding, with co-stars including the likes of Bruce Willis, Sean Penn and John Turturro. After that it’s more drama, starring alongside his erstwhile Taxi Driver co-star Jodie Foster for her latest directorial effort, Sugarland, about two lawyers fighting to end the exploitation of migrant sugar labourers.

Then more drama – and a return to familiar territory – for The Winter of Frankie Machine, with De Niro playing a retired mob hit man, lured back into his former profession for one last hit. Finally, he’s set to star as the husband of Meryl Streep female President of the United States in the political comedy First Man, which sounds promising – as does the computer game version of Heat, assuming De Niro, Al Pacino and Val Kilmer all sign on to do voice duties, as they’re currently only in negotiations.

She’s next up doing full-on “proper” acting in A Mighty Heart, following the efforts of the wife of murdered Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl to find out precisely how her husband ended up being beheaded on camera by Islamist fanatics back in 2002. then she’s on voice duties as the voice of the mother of the monster Grendel in the much-anticipated adaptation of the Dark Age poem Beowulf, starring Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins and a host of other top-notch actors, with more voice duties following in the animated comedy Kung-Fu Panda, alongside Jack Black, Jackie Chan, Dustin Hoffman and Lucy Liu, before switching back to drama for the Ayn Rand adaptation Atlas Shrugged, possibly alongside her real-world lover and father of her ultra-famous baby, Brad Pitt.

He’s already finished filming Margaret, revolving around Anna Paquin’s young girl who witnesses a bus crash, though it is not yet set for release, and has also wrapped Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Thirteen – promising that it’ll be much better than the last sequel to the fun Ocean’s Eleven when it’s released in June. Then, in August, we can expect to see him in another sequel, this time in his really rather superb Jason Bourne franchise, with The Bourne Ultimatum promising to answer all sorts of questions about his amnesiac assassin.

He’s also lined up to star aongside Tim Roth in Francis Ford Coppola’s inter-war period piece Youth Without Youth, and alongside his The Departed co-star Mark Wahlberg in 1980s-set boxing drama The Fighter, as well as providing the voiceover for the documentary Running the Sahara, following three men who want to be the first to run coast to coast across the Sahara desert.

Next up for 76-year-old Eastwood is, erm… a well-deserved rest, by the look of things. Having just done two highly-praised films back-to-back, he’ll be taking a bit of time off to work on his golf. He has, however, lent his distinctive voice to the computer game version of his cult 1971 film Dirty Harry, set to be released for the Xbox360 and PS3 sometime later this year, and he has supposedly bought the film rights to the authorised biography of Man on the Moon Neil Armstrong, which could be a nice follow-up to 200’s Space Cowboys.

Next up, and shown at Cannes last month, is A Dream of Red Mansions, a love story set during China’s vicious Cultural Revolution and co-starring Kate Hudson, which could prove intriguing (despite this ongoing obsession of America-backed films of casting Japanese actors as Chinese and vice versa). Then there’s (possibly) another Chinese epic, this time for Hong Kong master John Woo’s much-anticipated ancient Chinese epic The Battle of Red Cliff. Watanabe’s casting has yet to be 100% confirmed, but if he does join the cast it’ll be pretty impressive, including as it does Hong Kong megastars Tony Leung and Chow-Yun Fat, in their first joint venture since Woo’s 1992 classic Hard Boiled. Finally, Watanabe is rumoured to be cropping up as the Silver Samurai in the X-Men spin-off Wolverine, due out next year.

Also on the way – completed, just not yet set for release this side of the pond, is drama The Astronaut Farmer, with Billy Bob a retired astronaut who decides to build his own rocket on his farm in his desperation to get into space. Early reports are promising – assuming you don’t mind such sentimental premises, that is… After that he’ll play a father whose family face off against a gang of local thugs in an adaptation of the Leif Enger novel Peace Like A River, which should shortly be going into production.

Next up is speed-skating comedy Blades of Glory, due 6th April, where he’s starring alongside Will Ferrell as one of a pair of arch-rival ice skaters stripped of their Olympic medals for cheating who find a loophole allowing them to compete as a team. Then there’s more sport – albeit animated – as he goes on voice duties for the penguin-based comedy Surf’s Up, revolving around (as if you can’t guess) a penguin surfing championship.

After that it’s back to slacker/loser territory for Mama’s Boy, with Heder as a 29-year-old living at home with his mother (played by the tip-top Diane Keaton), whose life of ease looks set to be ruined by the arrival of a new suitor, the excellent Jeff Daniels. Heder’s also completed a supporting turn in low-budget romantic comedy Moving McAllister, but that is as yet not set for release.

Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright — the team behind zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead — return for this gleeful pastiche of American action movies. Pegg stars as a top London policeman transferred to a crime-free village where all is not as it seems.

What begins as a very funny, very British murder mystery eventually mutates into an ironic action spectacular that blows up half of Somerset. Armed with a Who’s Who of home-grown acting talent and a surfeit of gags, Hot Fuzz also showcases the continuing comic partnership of Pegg and co-star Nick Frost. Their mismatched cops play out every buddy movie convention imaginable while discussing subjects as diverse as ice-cream “brain freeze” and the homoeroticism of action thriller Point Break. More smart than silly, this is self-confident comedy that’s proud to be British.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 15

Review by Jamie Russell

He’s certainly got a fair few more in the works – from a planned new sitcom about a pub quiz team (with his Spaced, Shaun and Hot Fuzz co-star and real-world best buddy Nick Frost), La Triviata, due some time this year through to the animated stoner comedy Free Jimmy, for which Pegg wrote the English screenplay (it was originally Norwegian) about a junkie elephant on the run and provides voice duties alongside the likes of Woody Harrelson, Kyle MacLachlan, Samantha Morton, David Tennant, Emilia Fox and Phil Daniels.

But there are also some bigger projects on the way, like the romantic comedy The Good Night, with Martin Freeman, Penelope Cruz, Danny DeVito, Gwyneth Paltrow and Michael Gambon, or former Friends star David Schwimmer’s directorial debut Run, Frat Boy, Run, with Pegg starring alongside Thandie Newton and The Simpsons‘ Hank Azaria.

By far the most promising, however, is Pegg’s starring role in a big screen adaptation of Toby Young’s bestselling memoir of life at a high-end New York magazine, How to Lose Freinds and Alienate People – to be directed by Robert B Weide, best known for his work on the cult comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm. That could well be enough to get Pegg into the Hollywood comedy A-list…

Then come two comic book adaptations – though not quite the standard superhero fare that has so inundated our cinemas in recent years. First comes Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life, from the cult 2004 comic about a slacker twentysomething who ends up in supernatural kung-fu battles with the ex-boyfriends of the girl he has a crush on. Could be intriguing… And after that will come an adaptation of Marvel’s Ant-Man – sort of like Spider-Man, only not as well-known. Or good. But considering Wright is also penning the screenplay – with The Adam and Joe Show‘s Joe Cornish – it’s a fairly safe bet that this isn’t going to be a straight-faced take on the character. With the little information currently available, this could show promise as well…

Less accessible than his Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, director/screenwriter Michel Gondry’s pretentious sci-fi vanity production is an overly whimsical, infantile affair.

Gael García Bernal plays a graphic artist who returns to Paris after his father’s death. Will he ever realise his neighbour Charlotte Gainsbourg is the soul mate he’s been searching for? Or will he continually dream he’s the host of a one-man TV chat show starring a swirling melting-pot of his desires?

With its makeshift “Blue Peter”-style special effects (constructed from egg boxes, clay and cellophane), the consistently juvenile approach soon becomes wearing and the whole self-indulgent mess is a complete waste of Bernal and Gainsbourg’s charms. Resembling Gondry’s Bjork rock videos strung between surreally presented concepts of romantic angst, this fey fantasy is frustratingly hollow. The “one second time machine” is the single clever laugh.

Radio Times rating:

**

UK cinema certificate 15

Review by Alan Jones

Next up is the movie reference-laden Jack Black-starring comedy Be Kind Rewind, set in a video store run by one of Black’s friends where all the tapes get wiped by Black’s magnetised brain, forcing the pair to recreate such Hollywood classics as The Lion King, Robocop and Back to the Future for the shop’s clientelle. With co-stars including Mos Def, Danny Glover and Mia Farrow, it should prove at the very least interesting, much like Gondry’s other work, and with Black in the lead should prove another Eternal Sunshine-style hit.

After that it looks like a leap back into Gondry’s personal obsession of space, time and human perception for Master of Space and Time. Based on the novel of the same name by Rudy Rucker, it revolves around a couple of (as yet uncast) mad scientists who find a way to control – as if the title isn’t clue enough – space and time. rumours are circulating that Jack Black could again be set to star, but it’s still early days, and isn’t due until next year anyway. Could be fun, though…

Argentinian flick El Pasado will see Bernal play a man who, on splitting from his wife and hooking up with another woman, can’t seem to shake off his ex, while Mexican movie Rudo y Cursi, his latest team up with the director of Y tu mamá también, Alfonso Cuarón, looks set to revolve around the world of football, giving Garcia Bernal a chance to go a bit more physical than his usually philosophical roles allow. After that, it’s time for the young actor to make his directorial debut, in which he will also star, with Déficit, revolving around a family reunion in Mexico in which the two family branches are of decidedly different social backgrounds. He’s certainly on the up, this chap.

First up is Nuovomondo (known as The Golden Door in English), which won a bunch of awards at last year’s prestigious Venice Film Festival. Gainsbourg takes the lead in this tale of Italian immigration to the United States at the turn of the 20th century, and has received much praise – but whether this will be enough for this little Franco-Italian-German production to get a proper release is anyone’s guess. After that there’s more foreign language frolics in the French farcical comedy Prête-moi ta main (or I Do: How to Get Married and Stay Single in English), where Gainsbourg plays a woman called in to pretend to be a friend’s girlfriend to stop his family from forcing him into marriage.

Then it’s back to English language roles in cult director Todd Haynes’ intriguing and much-anticipated experimental Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There (alongside the likes of Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Julianne Moore and Adrien Brody), before cropping up in City of Your Final Destination for director James Ivory (of Merchant Ivory fame), alongside Anthony Hopkins and Laura Linney. She’s doing well.

Author EB White’s classic animal fable gets the full Babe treatment in this warm, live-action family fantasy. Gently introducing younger viewers to the natural cycle of life, it explores how a clever spider called Charlotte (tenderly voiced by Julia Roberts) ingeniously uses her web-spinning talents to save a small pig from the chop.

While originally filmed as an animated feature in 1973, here the tale combines genuine critters and CGI effects, with delightful visual results. Like Charlotte herself, piglet Wilbur is so endearing that you can understand farmer’s daughter Fern (a likeable Dakota Fanning) begging for the runty porker’s life — though sadly the other crass creatures that inhabit Wilbur’s barnyard home don’t share this charm. Voiced by the likes of Robert Redford and Steve Buscemi, their tone-lowering flatulence and constant wisecracking dilutes the story’s central magic, making the finale less poignant than it should have been.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate U

Review by Sloan Freer

Nonetheless, she found time amidst all the pregnancies and childcare to star alongside Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman in what looks set to be a pretty major movie (as if the three stars – with nine Oscar nominations between them – aren’t indication enough…). Charlie Wilson’s War is due out in December in the States, just in time to qualify for the 2008 Oscars, and it’s a pretty likely contender for a slew of big nominations. Directed by the rather good Mike Nichols (with five Oscar nominations under his belt), who directed Roberts in 2004’s Closer, it is based on the true story of Texas Congressman Charles Wilson (Hanks) who, soon after the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, was the man who realised that the United States needed to get subtly involved in the conflict. The upshot? The funding of covert CIA operations and training of local tribesmen – including a number of Islamic fundamentalists who would go on to form a little group by the name of Al-Qaeda. Topical, political, and plenty of scope for epic storytelling. It has Oscar written all over it.

The only other film Roberts has in the works is The Friday Night Knitting Club, a rather more low-key affair, based on the novel by Katie Jacobs about a group of women who make friends in a knitting shop in New York. Roberts is the only name currently attached – though whether it will happen now she’s pregnant again is anyone’s guess.

Next up he’ll be returning to directing for the first time since 2000’s cheesy disappointment that was The Legend of Bagger Vance with another typically Redford schmaltz-fest along the lines of his earlier The Horse Whisperer and The River Runs Through It, in which he’ll also star. Aloft follows a couple of men who track a peregrine falcon across America, so looks to be more of the same.

This is the man who’s pretty much single-handedly responsible for the success of the Sundance Film Festival, for God’s sake, and so in turn for the careers of the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, Jim Jarmusch and Kevin Smith – he should know quality when he sees it, so why hasn’t he directed a decent film since 1994’s excellent Quiz Show?

Well, with any luck, his other upcoming directorial project, Lions For Lambs, could finally indicate that he’s got his film sense back. He’ll again star – alongside Tom Cruise (in his comeback flick after the world decided he was certifiably potty) and Meryl Streep – though this time the material looks both far more interesting andfar more promising, set as it is around the events in modern day Afghanistan, and how they have impacted on United States society. It could well prove to be the first major War on Terror-era movie to join the “Vietnam Vet” genre, of which the impressive likes of The Deer Hunter and Tom Cruise’s best film Born On The Fourth Of July are but two of the most well-known. It’d be nice to see Redford do well again at any rate – even if a side-effect would be the revival of Cruise’s career…

Next up she’ll be going dramatic again, taking the lead in Hounddog as a troubled teenager who escapes from the world via the music of Elvis Presley – and featuring one particular scene that has been the cause of much tabloid outrage and controversy, considering Fanning’s age.

After that she’ll lend her voice talents to the lead character in Coraline, based on the children’s novel by cult comic book writer Neil Gaiman, about a girl who discovers a portal to another world. Teri Hatcher, Ian McShane and Jennifer Saunders fill out the cast.

Finally it’s back to yet more deep drama with The Secret Life of Bees, exploring racism and bereavement in the 1960s Deep South. She looks to be going for an Oscar, this one. But does she have the talent? Unsurprisingly, at her age it’s rather too early to tell…

Next up it’s a return to directing for Buscemi – who’s put in some impressive, low-key efforts with his directorial efforts to date – for Interview. This time he actually could have hit on something that’s not only interesting for its own sake, as his indy-tinged outings have all been to date, but could also have the potential to make some money. Buscemi himself stars as a fading political journalist, forced to go and interview the hottest soap star of the moment – played by our very own rising starlet Sienna Miller (who looks all set to do a post-Tom Cruise Nicole Kidman and prove amply to the world that she’s not just the bit of stuff on the arm of a pretty-boy actor). It’s just played at Sundance, and is getting rave reviews so far.

Then its back to his usual small part in Adam Sandler’s latest, I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry (Buscemi’s been in six Sandler films to date, and has generally been the best thing in all of them), before getting to take the lead for a change in stoner comedy We’re The Millers, as an aging pot dealer who decides that all he needs for his last big score is a pretend wife and kids and a motor home. Finally, he’ll be once again lending his distinctive voice to a somewhat ugly character in the animation Igor – although oddly not the hunchback assistant to John Cleese’s mad professor of the title, as that part’s being taken on by the somewhat less vocally dextrous Christian Slater. But still, might be fun, and is due at some point in 2008.

Next up he’ll reprise his role as the pompous King Harold in the much-anticipated Shrek the Third (due 29th June in the UK), alongside pretty much all the cast of the last two. Then he’ll be re-teaming with his Charlotte’s Web co-star Steve Buscemi to voice the potty professor Dr Glinkenstein in animated comedy Igor, due 2008.

Also coming up is a writing project, with Cleese co-scripting the prehistoric comedy Crood Awakening, all revolving around the discovery of fire. It was originally planned to be produced as a stop-motion effort by Wallace & Grommit’s Aardman Animations but, since Aardman and US animation studio Dreamworks parted company after the release of the collaborative effort Flushed Away, it looks rather like it might end up being CGI instead. Either way, it’s not expected until at least 2010, by which time Cleese will be happily in to his seventies.

Come the end of the year she’ll be cropping up in two more movies where voice work’s all important, with Jerry Seinfeld’s much-anticipated The Bee Movie being followed by the decidedly less anticipated “musical family adventure comedy” Christmas Is Here Again. But – just to make sure no one thinks she’s getting lazy – she’s also going to be cropping up in the decidedly less cheesy Vince Vaughn / Paul Giamatti comedy Fred Claus around the same time.

Then its a switch back away from comedy for P.S. I Love You, with Hilary Swank as a young widow whose husband has left her messages to help her cope with his death, before some heavy-duty drama in First Comes Love, set amidst the 1980s AIDS epidemic. But still, that’s not due until late 2008 – a long time to wait for a dramatic performance from one of the most subtle dramatic actresses currently working. Nonetheless, considering Hollywood’s sexist ageism, the fact that an actress in her fifties can manage to have so many films on the go is pretty impressive…

Still, although she may have another film in the works, it doesn’t look like fans of daytime TV need worry that she’s going to abandon them just yet. It looks to be merely a small voice cameo in Jerry Seinfeld’s upcoming animated comedy The Bee Movie – and I doubt yet get odds worth bothering with if you were to bet that she’ll be playing herself.

Still no sign of her running for President, though…

Should it ever get a release on this side of the pond, his next outing will be the apparently dire Code Name: The Cleaner, where he plays a man with amnesia who ends up thinking he’s a spy. Then he’ll crop up in a smallish role in the decidedly more promising Talk To Me, alonside Martin Sheen, Don Cheadle and Chiwetel Ejiofor, based on the life of 1960s radio and TV personality Ralph “Petey” Greene (Cheadle), before reprising his voice role as Maurice the Lemur in Madigascar 2, before heading off for the famly musical Caught On Tape, about a boy with a video camera who starts spying on his mother’s dodgy boyfriend.

Not much chance of any real entertainment from Cedric any time soon, in other words…

Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore fail to hit any high notes in this humdrum romantic comedy from writer/director Marc Lawrence (Two Weeks Notice).

Grant plays washed-up 1980s pop idol Alex Fletcher, who’s competing for the chance to contribute a song to hot young star Cora Corman’s (Haley Bennett) new album. Sadly, lyrics aren’t his forte, but his “plant carer” Sophie (Barrymore) proves to have a way with words.

After a chucklesome opening that sees Grant doing polite pelvic thrusts à la George Michael in his Wham! heyday, Lawrence runs out of funny ideas. Grant gets his share of snappy one-liners, but his incessant glibness becomes so tiresome that you’ll begin to tune him out. His budding relationship with Barrymore is largely unconvincing and it doesn’t help matters that she’s in constant danger of being upstaged by the vegetation surrounding her. And frankly, the less said about the Stock Aitken Waterman-inspired soundtrack, the better.

Radio Times rating:

**

UK cinema certificate PG

Review by Stella Papamichael

First up is the latest from L.A. Confidential director Curtis Hanson, with Barrymore the love interest to Eric Bana’s troubled professional poker player in Lucky You. It’s due out in the UK on 27th April – unusually for an American film a week before it hits cinemas in the States. It was originally meant to be out last year, so make of that what you will…

After that she’ll be staring alongside Jessica Lange in Grey Gardens, based on the lives of the dotty aunt and cousin of Jackie Kennedy, both named Edith Bouvier Beale and both one time society beaus, but who ended up living together as oddball recluses before a major tabloid scandal forced their First Lady relative to come to their aid. Could be good, but it’s from a first time writer/director whose only previous cinematic experience was as production assistant on the rather poor Deep Impact and The Seige, so don’t hold out too much hope.

Poor Drew. Where did it all go wrong? Oh yes… The drugs – that’d be it…

He currently appears to have no film projects definitely on the go, seemingly being too busy appearing in gossip rags with his new girlfriend Jemima Kahn. He is, however, apparently in talks to lend his voice talents to the forthcoming Disney animation American Dog, alongside John Travolta, Bernie Mac and Woody Harrelson, though nothing is certain as yet.

Showered with Oscar nominations and winner of the best musical Golden Globe, this backstage drama from Chicago screenwriter Bill Condon fulfils the glamour and glitz expectations in spades.

Jennifer Hudson excels as the lead singer of 1960s backing group the Dreamettes, who is sidelined by their new manager, Jamie Foxx, when he decides to promote Beyoncé Knowles to head up the trio.

Plot sound familiar? It is, of course, the thinly disguised story of the rise to fame and fortune of Motown supergroup Diana Ross and the Supremes, with Beyoncé as “Deena Jones”, the statuesquely striking backing singer who catches Foxx’s eye, and American Idol contestant Hudson, a deserved winner of the Golden Globe for best supporting actress, as the rejected and dejected Effie White (think Florence Ballard).

Although uplifting and moving by turns, the tale — based on the hit Broadway musical — too closely follows its real-life equivalent to make any sense as fiction. And, for fans of the Supremes, the admittedly rousing score is simply a frustration and even slows the action in places. However, keeping pace with Hudson, Eddie Murphy (the other Golden Globe winner) is a revelation as a James Brown-style showman, revealing a dramatic depth and maturity previously only hinted at.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 130mins

Review by Sue Oates

The end result? One of those rare acting debuts which has attracted the attention of the Academy, and a Best Supporting Actress nomination – alongside nominations for 20 other awards from around the world. Not only that, but having already won the Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe, she’s considered by most to be the Oscar front-runner, despite being up against the A-list likes of Cate Blanchett. Not bad going for a reality show runner-up… She has, however, got no other films currently in the works.

Judi Dench reunites with Iris director Richard Eyre to give one of the most intense performances of her career in this gritty, observational drama based on Zoë Heller’s bestselling novel.

The Oscar-nominated Dench injects malignant spite into the role of Barbara Covett, a lonely London teacher who develops a dark obsession with her spirited new colleague Sheba (fellow nominee Cate Blanchett). After catching Sheba in a compromising position with an underage student, Barbara’s fixation reaches skin-crawling levels.

Dench and Blanchett really sink their teeth into their meaty characters, clearly relishing Closer scribe Patrick Marber’s deliciously acerbic script. Yet what makes Dench’s performance the stronger of the pair is her skilful manipulation of the audience’s emotions — eliciting initial sympathy, despite Barbara’s sharp tongue, so that her subsequent behaviour hits even harder.

The film’s melodramatic climax packs less of a punch, but this is still deeply satisfying adult viewing, complemented by a mood-enhancing Philip Glass score.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 91mins

Review by Sloan Freer

Nominations to date include for Best Actress at the Academy Awards (her 6th nomination), BAFTAS (her 21st), Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards, Chicago Film Critics Association Awards, Golden Globes (her 7th), London critics Circle Film Awards, Online Film Critics Society Awards, Satellite Awards, and the Screen Actors Guild Awards (her 9th). Her only real problem is that in pretty much all of them she’s been up against her fellow Dame, Helen Mirren, who’s cleaning up for her performance in The Queen.

With nothing other than Bond 22 on the cards, when will Judi get herself another award? It’s become pretty unusual for her to go a year without one these days…

Then Blanchett will go back further in time to take on the role of Queen Elizabeth I once again for The Golden Age – a sequel to 1997’s Elizabeth that reunites much of the same cast and crew to look at the queen’s reign a few years down the line, and her relationship with Clive Owen’s Sir Walter Raleigh. Another to look forward to is the experimental Todd Haynes look at the life and work of Bob Dylan, I’m Not There, where different actors – including Blanchett, Christian Bale, Richard Gere and Heath Ledger – will play different aspects of the musician. It’ll be decidedly odd, but could well prove odd in a good way, based on Haynes’ past outings.

Finally – and sadly potentially her last film for a while, as she has recently announced plans to go back to her native Australia to run a theatre – is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, for director David Fincher. Based on an F Scott Fitzgerald story, it revolves around the relationship between a 30-year-old woman and a man (to be played by Brad Pitt) who, at the age of 50, begins to grow younger again. After what he managed to pull with Fight Club, it’s just possible Fincher could pull that off…

This mordantly amusing tale of family dysfunction from the creator of TV’s Nip/Tuck is so outrageous that it’s hard to believe it’s based on a real-life memoir. Charting the 1970s upbringing of US writer Augusten Burroughs (who appears as himself in the closing titles), the highly stylised movie is a patchwork of his formative childhood experiences, held together by juicily idiosyncratic performances.

Joseph Cross is sweetly engaging as the adolescent Augusten, who struggles with identity issues after his wannabe-poet mother (Annette Bening) sends him to live with her madcap psychiatrist (Brian Cox) while she finds her creative voice. The shrink’s own clan — including dog snack-munching wife Jill Clayburgh and alleged telepath Gwyneth Paltrow — are hilariously unconventional, camouflaging the film’s lack of emotional depth with their eccentricities.

It’s only in the downbeat final third that the narrative’s overall lack of structure becomes apparent, though fortunately the dialogue retains its enjoyable sharpness amid the gloom.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 121mins

Review by Sloan Freer

Dirty Tricks, due out in 2008, is looking increasingly like a must-see. Set in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal which saw US President Richard Nixon forced to leave office in disgrace, it will star some of the best screen actors currently working, including Running With Scissors stars Annette Benning (as Washington journalist Helen Thomas), Jill Clayburgh (as former First Lady Pat Nixon) and Gwyneth Paltrow (as the wife of Watergate cover-up mastermind John Dean), through Meryl Streep (as the notoriously outspoken wife of US Attourney General and Watergate conspirator John Mitchell), Jim Broadbent as Nixon himself, with Sharon Stone and Brad Pitt making up the cast, though their roles are as yet unknown.

Next up – on 23rd February – is Robert De Niro’s intriguing-sounding tale of the birth of the FBI The Good Shepherd, starring Matt Damon with the likes of Angelina Jolie, De Niro himself, Joe Pesci and Michael Gambon in support. That will be followed by the less promising, yet potentially interesting, 1980s-set coming of age gangster drama Brooklyn Rules, starring Freddie Prinze Jr, Mena Suvari and Scott “son of James” Caan.

Speaking of Freddie Prinze Jr, Baldwin’s next film after that will be Suburban Girl, a romantic comedy of relationships with age differences where he gets all loved up with Freddie’s real-world better half, Sarah Michelle Gellar – who at 29 is a good 20 years younger than him. Nice work if you can get it…

Then there’s another 1980s-set coming of age flick, Lymelife, though this time it’s a family-based comedy, with Baldwin as the patriarch of a family that includes Jennifer Jason Leigh and Rory “brother of Macaulay” Culkin, before Baldwin heads back to the war film genre that has served him so well in the past for The Forbidden City, based around the post-WWII Sino-American hunt for Japanese war criminals. Could be good…

After that she’s likely to be taking a more major role in a new adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s classic play A Woman of No Importance. Whether this will be a period-set costume drama or a modern update is as yet unknown, but her co-stars will include Sean Bean and Lindsay Lohan.

Fair play to him, The Rock — or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as he is billed here — is doing his best to avoid the usual action hero clichés. At this stage in his career he should probably be emulating Arnold Schwarzenegger and Vin Diesel by appearing in some family-friendly action comedy. Instead, he’s starring in this gritty urban drama — based on a true story — as an idealistic youth probation officer and former American football player attempting to establish a “gridiron” team made up of inmates at a maximum-security detention centre.

There’s an “against all odds” predictability in the way the story unfolds, but the action is skilfully directed by Phil Joanou. And while The Rock is effective enough playing the troubled kids’ mentor, his performance isn’t likely to win him any acting awards.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 120mins

Review by John Ferguson

Next up is another American Football-themed film, albeit one with an added touch of family drama and comedy. In The Game Plan he’ll play a star quarterback, happily living the bachelor life, who suddenly discovers he’s got a 7-year-old daughter from an old relationship. Could this be his Kindergarden Cop? If it gets a release on this side of the pond (it’s due in October in the US), maybe we’ll find out.

More hopeful is the more traditional, hugely silly-sounding action fare of Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run – the computer game version of which is already out – featuring The Rock as an over-the-top ex-fighter pilot (quite how someone his size fitted into the cockpit, ho knows) turned super-spy, complete with a gadget-laden car that can turn into a motorbike. Yes, really…

Most promising, though, is another spy film – this time the Steve Carrell and Anne Hathaway-starring comedy Get Smart, due 2008 and looking to have the near-legendary Terrence Stamp as a suitably over-the-top villain. Could be fun.

After that he’ll return as Donkey in the surefire smash-hit that is Shrek The Third, out 29th June, a role he will reprise alongside the other big-name voice stars Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz and Antonio Banderas for the half-hour TV special Shrek the Halls, due to hit the small screen in the US this Christmas, and the UK in 2008.

He’ll then be teaming up with the modern Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, for an as-yet untitled comedy about a couple of regular Joes planning a robbery, for Rush Hour director Brett Ratner,before heading into space for the Sci-Fi comedy Starship Dave for Norbit director Brian Robbins. Then it’ll be back to earth for an as-yet untitled comedy take on Romeo and Juliet, before he heads into a fantasy world as a down-on-his luck executive who gets sucked into his daughter’s imaginary land for the comedy NowhereLand.

In other words, don’t expect him to be picking up any more Oscar nominations for the next couple of years, at least…

A mercenary Zimbabwean diamond smuggler might seem a stretch for the once impossibly baby-faced Leonardo DiCaprio, but this thought-provoking action thriller offers a superb showcase for his growing talents, despite an occasional lapse into Hollywood sentiment.

For a time it seems the film will be as good as DiCaprio, starting with the surprisingly savage opening scenes of a tiny fishing community being torn apart by guerrillas in war-torn Sierra Leone in the 1990s. A wonderfully low-key Djimon Hounsou plays survivor Solomon Vandy, whose discovery of a rare and priceless stone while working in the diamond fields attracts the attention of chancer Danny Archer (DiCaprio). Archer agrees to help Vandy find the family from which he was taken in return for recovering the diamond from its hiding place and, along with a crusading journalist (an effective Jennifer Connelly), they set off on a perilous quest.

Unfortunately, it’s here that a once provocative, uncomfortable film turns into a predictable and disappointing morality tale that does a sad disservice to its impeccable players.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 143mins

Review by Damon Wise

In the meantime, DiCaprio is also signed to star in Blink, based on a series of short stories about how first impressions
affect people’s judgement, for Syriana writer/director Steven Gaghan, which sounds both interesting and promising, and looks all set to start his own action franchise by taking on the mantle of Peter Chancellor in the big screen adaptation of Robert “The Bourne Identity” Ludum’s political thriller The Chancellor Manuscript. Looks rather like DiCaprio is going from strength to strength at the moment.

Teaming up with Hotel Rwanda writer/director and two-time Oscar nominee Terry George for Reservation Road, it looks like this drama about the aftermath of a hit and run accident, and how it affects two families, could provide plenty of scope for the kind of acting that always gets the attention of the people who decide on award nominations. Joining Connelly to vie for acting acclaim will be fellow Oscar-winner Mira Sorvino, plus two-time Oscar nominee Joaquin Phoenix, and rising star Mark Ruffalo. It’s set for a US release in November – just in time to qualify for the 2008 Academy Awards…

Despite the title, this is not a biopic of US presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy but a snapshot of a precise time and place in history. The drama unfolds in a single momentous day in 1968 at the Los Angeles hotel that acted as Kennedy’s campaign headquarters.

Director Emilio Estevez personalises the story with glimpses into the lives of hotel staff, guests and members of the senator’s campaign team, played by a starry ensemble cast that includes Anthony Hopkins, Demi Moore and Elijah Wood. But it’s Sharon Stone who impresses the most, barely recognisable as the hotel stylist whose manager husband (William H Macy) is having an affair with a switchboard operator (Heather Graham).

With so many characters on show, the movie tends to lack a little in narrative drive (and the dialogue sometimes seems heavy and self-important), but what it does brilliantly is re-create the mood of the time. The real Bobby Kennedy is seen in archive footage and while he’s seemingly reduced to a supporting player in the film that bears his name, the promise he represented infuses everything. Of course most viewers will know how it ends, but that does not make those final scenes any less heart-rending

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 116mins

Review by Brian Pendreigh

After that, it’s back to more familiar fare for Hopkins with Fracture (due in the Spring), where he’ll play a Hannibal Lecter-style intelligent murderer, as the wise older man in academia-set drama The City of Your Destination, and as yet another Butler, opposite Morgan Freeman, in Harry and the Butler (both due 2008).

Initially likely to attract most excitement, however, is the big budget adaptation of Dark Age classic Beowulf, where Hopkins will take on the put-upon King Hrothgar opposite Ray Winstone’s Beowulf and a monstrous Grendel voiced by Crispin Glover. And, in terms of full-on Hopkins-acting-his-guts-out potential, his turn as novellist Leo Tolstoy, opposite Paul Giamatti and Meryl Streep, in biopic The Last Station could prove one to excite the awards panels in a year or two, as the aging writer frets over combining his wealth and fame with his high principles. Not something, on the evidence of Slipstream, that Hopkins has much difficulty in doing.

Assuming any of these get released on this side of the Atlantic, Graham will next be seen in romantic comedy Gray Matters, depressing-sounding drama Adrift in Manhattan, gritty LA-set thriller Broken, and 1960s-set family drama A West Texas Children’s Story, where she’ll play the high-profile-sounding character “Cassie’s Aunt”, with fellow former A-listers Val Kilmer and Matthew Modine in the leads.

Just shown at the Sundance Film Festival is another grown-up movie, Chapter 27, which revolves around the life of Mark David Chapman, played by the often rather good Jared Leto, in the days leading up to his murder of ex-Beatle John Lennon in 1980 (a mere six years before Lohan was born), and she’s getting ready fortaking the lead in serious thriller I Know Who Killed Me, about a girl who develops twin personalities after avicious kidnapping.

She’ll also be going literary in her bid to be taken seriously, first cropping up alongside Sean Bean and Annette Benning in Oscar Wilde adaptation A Woman of No Importance, before starring alongside Keira Knightley in The Best Time of Our Lives, about Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, and opposite Oscar nominees David Strathairn, Ellen Burstyn and Ann-Margaret in The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, from a screenplay by Tennessee Williams – not to mention Cyrano de Bergerac-based romantic comedy Speechless.

First of all, though, she’ll star opposite Jane Fonda as yet another rebellious teenager in teen comedy/drama Georgia Rule – during the filming of which the youngster immitated her character by getting so out of control she was officially reprimanded by the production company for failing to turn up to shoots thanks to her all-night partying. Tut tut…

Much more promising is the post-Watergate political drama Dirty Tricks, in which she’ll star alongside Jim Broadbent (as disgraced President Richard Nixon), Annette Benning, Gwyneth Paltrow, Brad Pitt and Meryl Streep. With a cast like that, it should prove something special – but will it be enough to get her career going on the right track again?

You wait years for a film about ancient Mayans and then, like proverbial buses, two movies come along at once. Like Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto, The Fountain is one of the most original and extraordinary films of recent times — though a story that features not only ancient Mayans but also a bald man living on a little planet inside a snow globe with just a tree for company is bound to attract accusations of pretentiousness as well as claims of genius.

This third feature from director Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream) stars Hugh Jackman as a man on a thousand-year odyssey to save his beloved (Rachel Weisz, in multiple roles). In the 16th century, Jackman plays a conquistador searching for the fountain of youth in the Mayan Empire in order to save the Spanish queen from destruction. In modern-day America, Jackman seeks a cure for the cancer that’s killing his wife, and in the 26th century he sits like Buddha beneath his cosmic tree, trying to figure out what it all means.

Some of the audience may be doing the same, but those who stick with the movie will be rewarded with a profoundly rich experience about the meaning of life, death, love and immortality. The performances and music brilliantly complement Aronofsky’s philosophical musings in one of the most haunting, perplexing and visually stunning films since Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey.

Radio Times rating:

*****

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 96mins

Review by Brian Pendreigh

As such it should come as no surprise that he’s got no definite directorial projects in the pipeline – he is, however, currently peening an adaptation of Lone Wolf and Cub, the cult Japanese manga series about a rogue samurai single father. It has already made it to the big screen as Shogun Assassin in 1980 – notably featured in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill – although that was merely a re-edit of the first two of a trilogy of Japanese films made from the comics in the early 1970s. A proper big screen adaptation could prove interesting, especially with someone like Aronofsky on writing duties.

Before that, though, it’s back to comedy, with a part in the Paul Giamatti and Vince Vaughan-starring festive bit of fun Fred Claus, due Christmas 2007, as well as another return to Africa following Weisz’s superb, Oscar-winning turn in The Constant Gardener. This time it’ll be a period piece, with Weisz playing the object of Colin Firth’s affections in the 19th century historical drama The Colossus,covering the final years of Cecil Rhodes’ regime in what is now Zimbabwe. Sir Ian McKellen will take on the role of the imperial hero/scoundrel.

Of Jackman’s other upcoming projects, most interesting are likely to be The Tourist, where he’ll play a lawyer who leads Ewan McGregor into a hidden world of sex and kidnapping, genius Chinese director Wong Kar-Wai’s 1930s-set The Lady From Shanghai (again opposite Rachel Weisz), and weirdo Aussie director Baz Lurhmann’s ambitious-sounding epic Australia, in which Jackman will star alongside fellow antipodean Nicole Kidman.

There’s also The Amateur, with Jackman playing a geeky CIA code cracker who turns himself into a killing machine when his wife is killed by terrorists, a small role in period piece A Plumm Summer, full-on action thriller Drive, with Jackman as a Hollywood stuntman trying to escape a hitman, romantic comedy Rebound Guy, and supernatural musical romance If You Could See Me Now – and that’s before you even start on the rumours of a remake of Oklahoma! with Jackman reprising the role that brought him such success on the London stage before Hollywood came a-calling.

Busiest man in Hollywood? He’s certainly a top contender. Does the guy even know how to say “no”?

Acclaimed Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, working with regular co-writer Guillermo Arriaga, once again fashions an ambitious, harrowing narrative from seemingly unconnected stories. As if to top his debut Amores Perros (set in Mexico City) and English-language follow-up 21 Grams (shot in Memphis), Babel crosses three continents and employs a number of languages, including sign.

Two young goatherds fire a newly-acquired rifle from a Moroccan hillside, precipitating trouble for an American tourist couple (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett) and a risky trip from San Diego across the Mexican border for their nanny (a formidable Adriana Barraza). Meanwhile, a deaf-mute teenager in Tokyo (Rinko Kikuchi) experiences familial, social and sexual frustration.

Deftly moving between these four strands, the film is grainily handsome, naturalistically acted (the Moroccans are non-professionals) and throws up assorted themes to chew on. But with one of the links predictable and another arbitrarily contrived, the whole isn’t quite as profound as it appears.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 143mins

Review by Andrew Collins

Then, of course, there’s Ocean’s Thirteen – which will see all the usual suspected added to by Al Pacino, and which all involved have promised will be much, much better than the really rather dire Ocean’s Twelve, before he goes from frivolous to serious and political for Dirty Tricks, set in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, and State of Play, based on the tip-top BBC political drama that aired back in 2003. He’ll be taking on the John Simm role as a crusadingjournalist trying to uncover a major scandal – although it’s somewhat likely that the action will relocate from Westminster to Washington.

Then there’s a bit more frivolity with Chad Schmidt – where Pitt will play both himself and the title character. Why? Because it’s set in 1980s Hollywood, just as Pit’s rise to fame began, and the Chad Schmidt of the title is a Brad Pitt lookalike – who rather resents his doppelganger’s success.

But keep your eye on Pitt in the run-up to the 2009 Oscars – he could be worth a flutter for Dallas Buyer’s Club, due next year, where he’ll play an AIDS victim in the late 1980s forced to experiment with black market drugs in the hope of finding a cure. If they play it right – which looks likely as they’ve got Monsters Ball director Marc Forster in to direct – it could well be one for the awards.

Then Blanchett will go back further in time to take on the role of Queen Elizabeth I once again for The Golden Age – a sequel to 1997’s Elizabeth that reunites much of the same cast and crew to look at the queen’s reign a few years down the line, and her relationship with Clive Owen’s Sir Walter Raleigh. Another to look forward to is the experimental Todd Haynes look at the life and work of Bob Dylan, I’m Not There, where different actors – including Blanchett, Christian Bale, Richard Gere and Heath Ledger – will play different aspects of the musician. It’ll be decidedly odd, but could well prove odd in a good way, based on Haynes’ past outings.

Finally – and sadly potentially her last film for a while, as she has recently announced plans to go back to her native Australia to run a theatre – is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, for director David Fincher. Based on an F Scott Fitzgerald story, it revolves around the relationship between a 30-year-old woman and a man who, at the age of 50, begins to grow younger again. After what he managed to pull with Fight Club, it’s just possible Fincher could pull that off…

Coincidentally made at the same time as the Oscar-winning Capote, this rival project also focuses on the events surrounding the writing of In Cold Blood — Truman Capote’s bestselling account of a shocking mass murder in a remote Kansas farmhouse in 1959.

Where Capote went for understatement, however, Infamous turns up the volume. It boasts a terrific performance from Toby Jones in the lead (one part Deputy Dawg, two parts Oscar Wilde) and punctuates the drama with stylised talking heads from the likes of author Harper Lee (Sandra Bullock) and society maven Babe Paley (Sigourney Weaver).

More bothersome, though, is the heavy-handed portrayal of Capote’s relationship with killer Perry Smith (Daniel Craig) and the foregrounding of the homoerotic tension that underscores his prison visits. If Capote didn’t exist this would be a fascinating failure, but next to it Infamous is mostly entertaining but somewhat superfluous.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 117mins

Review by Damon Wise

A leading role for this top-notch character actor is rare, but he’s got a fair few supporting turns in the works, like playing the Duke of Clarence (aka the future King William IV) in Michael Apted’s Amazing Grace, looking at the efforts of reformer William Wilberforce to end slavery in the British Empire during the early 19th century. It’s due to hit our screens in March.

Then it’s shift forward to the 1920s for Somerset Maugham adaptation The Painted Veil, a romantic drama set in Shanghai during a cholera epidemic, before leaping back to the 17th century for notorious director Peter Greenaway’s Nightwatching, based around the life of Rembrandt – to be played, somewhat implausibly, by The Office‘s Martin Freeman.

Then there’s yet another historical drama – A Harlot’s Progress – but this time with Jones in the lead as artist William Hogarth, whose relationship with a prostitute helps inspire one of his most famous works. It’s due out in November.

Along the way she’ll team up with Kate Bosworth for The Girl in the Park, with Weaver a woman whose daughter went missing while a toddler, who thinks Bosworth could well be her little girl – it could sound a bit like a remake of Vertigo from that, but other details are as yet unclear. There’s also The TV Set, a comedy based around the creation of a TV show pilot (which makes the title a truly unforgivable pun), co-starring David Duchovny and Ioan Gruffudd, before she tries her luck at another fairy tale-based animation next year, The Tale of Despereaux, alongside the voices of Robbie Coltrane, Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Kline, Christopher Lloyd, William H Macy, Justin Long and Tracey Ullmann.

Next up – out in the UK on 2nd February – is the quirky comedy drama Running With Scissors, about a teenager from a troubled household who ends up living with his psychiatrist’s bizarre family for a year. Alongside Paltrow are some big and up-and-coming names, from her Shakespeare in Love co-star Joseph Feinnes through Alec Baldwin, Annette Benning, Evan Rachel Wood and Patrick Wilson. Could be good.

She’ll keep up the family theme with The Good Night, directed by her brother, Jake. Starring Martin Freeman asa former popstar turned advertising jingle writer who’s having a mid life crisis, the impressive cast includes the likes of Penelope Cruz, Danny De Vito and Simon Pegg. Another British-based movie – unsurprising as Paltrow now lives pretty much exclusively in London – is Love and other Distaters, a romantic comedy revolving around an American intern at the British version of fashion mag Vogue, and co-starring the likes of Orlando Bloom and Stephanie Beacham.

Then come her two biggest projects, bothe decidedly more American. She has just signed on to star alongside Robert Downey Jr in the big screen adaptation of comic book superhero Iron Man, due out next year and sure to be huge. But more interesting is Dirty Tricks – a drama set during the fallout from the Watergate affair, with Jim Broadbent brilliantly cast as disgraced President Richard Nixon, and co-starring the likes of Brad Pitt, Annette Benning, Sharon Stone and Meryl Streep. That could prove very promising indeed.

Yes, she may never have been a full-on acting star, but nonetheless you’d think someone as well known and distinctive as Rossellini would have few problems getting bigger parts.

In the sixth entry in the Rocky series, 60-year-old Sylvester Stallone returns to the franchise that launched his career back in 1976. Writing, directing and starring, Stallone offers an affectionate, nostalgic take on this iconic character, imbuing Rocky with a lived-in pathos.

A long first half sees the washed-up fighter back on the streets of Philadelphia, surveying his life as a widower. Tear-jerking clichés eventually give way to the main event, as Rocky is tempted out of retirement to exorcise his demons in an exhibition bout against the current heavyweight champ (played by real-life former light heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver).

Hokey and appallingly sentimental, Rocky Balboa should be risible. Yet as Bill Conti’s timeless score gathers on the soundtrack and Stallone rolls with the punches, this old warhorse proves it still has what it takes to be a contender.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 102mins

Review by Jamie Russell

Paul Verhoeven’s first film made in his native Holland since 1983’s The Fourth Man — after which he left for Hollywood and the likes of RoboCop and Basic Instinct — returns to the subject of the Dutch Resistance, which he first tackled in 1977’s Soldier of Orange.

Based loosely on a real character, Rachel (Carice van Houten) is a Jewish singer who, after seeing members of her party of escaping Jews massacred, joins the underground and infiltrates the local Nazi HQ, via the bed of officer Ludwig Müntze (Sebastian Koch). Verhoeven delivers a rollicking yarn that’s surprisingly traditional, if convoluted, and, as usual, nudges happily at the boundaries of sexual imagery. The performances are universally good and the bloody action is typically well handled, but while Black Book certainly entertains it lacks the cultural tensions and mischievous satire that characterise the best of his American films.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 145mins

Review by Adam Smith

Forest Whitaker delivers an electrifying career-best performance as 1970s Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in this powerful, true story-inspired thriller. Based on the novel by Giles Foden, the movie portrays the relationship between one of the 20th century’s most notorious despots and fictional Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy).

Switching effortlessly from eccentric charmer to brutal megalomaniac, Amin plunges his young protégé into an escalating nightmare after persuading him to become his personal physician. It’s a morally ambiguous turn that gives a daringly human face to Amin, but “Touching the Void” director Kevin Macdonald paints his entire picture in shades of grey, drawing on his documentary-making past to raise disturbing and deeply resonant questions about ethics and the corruption of the soul. Also, McAvoy’s naive yet self-centred Nicholas is not always sympathetically portrayed, which makes the horrific disintegration of his initially idyllic lifestyle all the more fascinating.

While some of the plot developments do stretch credibility, there’s a subtle tonal shift from vibrant excitement to claustrophobic terror that intensifies the overall emotional impact.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 18
Running time 138mins

Review by Sloan Freer

Unsurprisingly, given all the praise, he’s got a fair few more – typically varied – projects in the works, from animated baseball family comedy Everyone’s Hero (the last directorial effort of former Superman Christopher Reeve) to a return to the world of fashion that he last visited in Pret a Porter for the drama Ripple Effect, about a fashion designer going through a crisis of confidence.

Then there’s more typically quirky, Indy-fick Whitaker fare, like The Air That I Breathe, based on an old Chinese proverb and starring Kevin Bacon as “Love”, Brendan Fraser as “Pleasure” and Sarah Michelle Gellar as “Sorrow” – Whitaker will play “Happiness”. Or perhaps another big budget potential blockbuster, like Vantage Point, a thriller about an attempted assassination of the American President told from five different perspectives (in a deliberate attempt to mimick the classic Kurasawa pic Rashomon).

Most worth looking forward to, though, is the next outing from screwball director Spike Jonze – Where the Wild Things Are. Based on the popular children’s story about a young boy who creates his own forest world inhabited by fabulous creatures, if they can get the animation right, this could prove to be something very special indeed. If you know the books, Whitaker will be voicing Wild Thing – which could well work very nicely.

Meanwhile, although McAvoy has claimed to have little interest in big Hollywood blockbusters, it looks like his first action role could also be on the cards. Set to star opposite Morgan Freeman, McAvoy will play the son of a super-powered assassin who takes on his father’s mantle in this big screen adaptation of Mark Millar’s comic series Wanted. Shooting is set to start this month for a 2008 release – and could well see McAvoy really hit the big time.

Anderson currently has two films in the pipeline, both British. First, due in April in the UK, Straightheads revolves around a middle-class couple who, after being attacked by a vicious gang, decide to have their own bit of violent fun – if you want to find out more, check out the film’s rather fun blog. After that, she’ll be cropping up alongside the very British likes of Brenda Blethyn, Jane Horrocks and John Hurt in the comic tale of blackmail in a seaside town that is No One Gets Off In This Town. Sounds decidedly Carry On – which may or may not be a good thing…

Will Smith reins in his customary exuberance to deliver a beautifully understated performance as real-life San Francisco father Chris Gardner, who, in the 1980s, battled against astonishing adversity to achieve his American dream. When his wife Linda (Thandie Newton) leaves him, Gardner takes custody of their five-year-old child (played by Smith’s delightful real-life son, Jaden) and then faces a catalogue of disasters as they become homeless and he tries to pursue a new career.

Smith’s restraint works wonderfully here and he makes every facial flicker count. Yet while Gardner’s spirits surprisingly never droop despite his tribulations, the same cannot be said for those watching this noble rags-to-riches drama. The overall message may be a positive one, but it’s agonising to watch such a decent man suffer, with Italian director Gabriele Muccino (The Last Kiss) seemingly determined to keep his English language debut as unsentimental as possible. Ultimately the film is expertly constructed with faultless central turns, but it would have benefited from being more uplifting.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 117mins

Review by Sloan Freer

We’ll have to wait a while though – his next movie isn’t due out in the UK until December. It does, however, promise to be a return to his sci-fi and action-packed best, as he plays the last man alive, desperately battling off the rest of the Earth’s bloodthirsty inhabitants, in I Am Legend. After that, 2008 will see Smith return to comedy, first playing a superhero who’s fallen out of favour with the public in Tonight, He Comes, before teaming up with Nic Cage for Time Share – a comedy about two fathers desperately trying to secure the rights to a holiday home for their families. The latter doesn’t sound overly promising, it must be said, but still – I Am Legend could be good, brainless fun.

What could prove a bit more fun is another comedy, the feature directorial debut of ex-Friends star David Schwimmer, Run, Frat Boy, Run. OK, so the title doesn’t promise much, but it does star the likes of Shaun of the Dead‘s Simon Pegg and The Simpsons‘ Hank Azaria – always amusing in pretty much whatever they appear in – and the plot of an unfit guy trying to run a marathon to win back the love of his life could just be silly enough to work. You never know..

Still, you have to wonder – why is an actress of Newton’s looks and abilities only appearing in supporting roles? What are Hollywood’s casting directors thinking of?

After his thoughtful and engaging cop thriller Narc (2001), writer/director Joe Carnahan wildly misses the mark here with this Tarantino-style black comedy.

When Las Vegas showman Buddy “Aces” Israel (Entourage’s Jeremy Piven) agrees to turn FBI informant, his former Mob cronies put out a hit on him. Enter a motley assortment of assassins ranging from Ben Affleck to singer Alicia Keys (who should stick to the day job), with Ray Liotta and Ryan Reynolds thrown into the mix as Federal agents out to protect their asset.

However, instead of crafting characters to laugh with (or even at), Carnahan indulges in a sniggering schoolboy obsession with casual mutilation and silly wigs. It’s safe to say the director has played his joker here — and lost.

Radio Times rating:

*

UK cinema certificate 18
Running time 108mins

Review by Stella Papamichael

He’ll next be seen in The Kingdom, a somewhat topical thriller revolving around a US investigation into a spate of bombings in the Middle East, alongside the likes of Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner and Chris Cooper, and lending his voice talents to the animated comedy Igor, alongside Christian Slater, Steve Buscemi and John Cleese.

The film most likely to get him into the big time, however, is as yet untitled – he will play an estate agent planning a lucrative development in an unspoiled forest who finds that the area’s animals have decided to conspire against him. As he’s proved time and again with Entourage, he can do unlikeable but entertaining with the best of them, so an estate agent could be the ideal role…

Then, due out in June, he’ll be returning to his sleazy role for the third Danny Ocean movie, Ocean’s Thirteen, alongside many of the A-listers of the previous two outings, including George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Elliott Gould and Don Cheadle, as well as newcomer to the series Al Pacino, with whom he last appeared in 1990’s frequently underrated The Godfather: Part III.

Finally, he”ll be opting for a change of pace – but an equally star-studded list of co-stars – for The Last Full Measure, based on the true story of a group of Vietnam veterans who campaigned to have their long-dead comrade’s heroism recognised by the United States Congress. Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburne, Morgan Freeman and Bruce Willis will make up the rest of the cast, so it should be good stuff.

At first sight, writer/director Mel Gibson’s Mayan epic seems intimidating. It’s 140 minutes long, has subtitled Yucatan dialogue and is set in pre-Spanish Mexico. Yet despite appearances it’s no pretentious arthouse film but a thrilling chase movie in which Mayan warrior Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) is pursued through the jungle by a vicious rival tribe eager to use him as a blood sacrifice.

Stocking up on sadistic violence, Gibson matches The Passion of the Christ‘s bloodsoaked tableaux with a catalogue of astonishingly gory beheadings and impalements, all set against the forbidding backdrop of Mayan pyramids and lush tropical undergrowth. He directs the set pieces with style, creating an exciting, exhausting action adventure that’s like a strangely compelling hybrid of Mayan mythology, 1980s video nasty Cannibal Holocaust and Tarzan.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 18
Running time 138mins

Review by Jamie Russell

He currently has no other directing projects in the works, but does have a brace of movies as actor set for a 2008 release, both of which he will doubtless hope can regain him some of the public’s affection.

He will be starring in the undercover cop drama Under and Alone for Buffalo Soldiers director Gregor Jordan (taking over the project from King Arthur‘s Antoine Fuqua) as the real life Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives officer Billy Queen, whose infiltration of the notorious Mongols Motorcycle Club (a rival to the better-known Hell’s Angels) led to more than three dozen arrests on drugs and firearms charges back in 2000. He’s also set to re-team with Lethal Weapon series director Richard Donner for Sam and George as – wait for it – a man convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, who reunites with an old friend to rebuild his shattered life. Art immitating life as Gibson tries to rebuild his reputation? Who can say?

Beatrix Potter (Renée Zellweger) didn’t just write and illustrate world-famous children’s books, she was a protofeminist — making a fortune in a man’s world — and an early environmentalist — saving her beloved Lake District from property development. That’s the spin of Babe director Chris Noonan’s heart-warming but overly sentimental costume drama, in which Zellweger gurns a lot through her portrayal of the creative Victorian free spirit.

What makes the film work is Ewan McGregor’s effortless charm as the timid publisher who shares her vision of The Tale of Peter Rabbit and becomes her first romance in the bestselling process, and a sparkling Emily Watson as his spinster sister, who eventually befriends Beatrix.

Directed in picture-postcard style, with occasional flashes of cartoon animation depicting Potter’s creations and inner emotions, this is a sweet and lightweight treat.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate PG
Running time 92mins

Review by Alan Jones

First up, due for release in the US in August, is Case 39 – seemingly one of those Oscar-hungry “message” pics, but with a turn towards something a bit darker, as Zellweger plays a social worker trying to rescue a young girl from apparently abusive parents, only to discover there’s more to the situation than meets the eye.

Then, due out in the States in November, comes the film that billionaire comic Jerry Seinfeld is hoping will give him yet another big cheque, animated comedy The Bee Movie. Zellweger plays the New York florist who saves Seinfeld’s bee’s life and shows him that humans are not as bad as he thinks – until he discovers that we eat honey and decides to sue us. The all-star voice cast also includes the likes of Chris Rock, Matthew Broderick, John Goodman, Kathy Bates, Alan Arkin, Eddie Izzard, Larry King and Oprah Winfrey.

Finally, and due for a 2008 release, she will crop up in George Clooney’s next effort as writer/director/star, 1920s-set American Football-based romantic comedy Leatherheads. Little information is as yet available, but it looks likely that she and big George will be hooking up on screen – and based on Clooney’s previous outings as director, it should be one to look out for.

There’s action thriller The Tourist, alongside the equally prolific Hugh Jackman, animated adventure Agent Crush, alongside the voices of Neve Campbell and near-legendary Sir Roger Moore, comic fantasy I, Lucifer, as man whose body is taken over by Daniel Craig’s Satan, and sci-fi thriller Franklyn, about which little is as yet known other than that McGregor is set to star, and The Great Pretender, where he will play a Hollywood star playing Bonnie Prince Charlie in a film as well as the lookalike extra who is roped in to taking over when the hotshot actor goes missing.

On top of all that, he’ll be cropping up in Woody Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream – as yet not set for release on either side of the Atlantic, but likely to be out this year – and the intriguing-sounding Number 13, based around the set of genius director Alfred Hitchcock’s last, never completed, movie, where love triangles and murder abound just as much as they ever did in Hitch’s own flicks. A fair array of different types of films there, and not a lightsabre in sight – which must come as a blessed relief…

The final film from one of Hollywood’s best-loved mavericks, the late Robert Altman, is a gentle, affectionate salute to Garrison Keillor’s equally gentle and affectionate radio show of the same name.

Keillor plays himself, the genial, unflustered host of a long-running live public radio show that is about to be closed down. Ruthless Texan millionaire Tommy Lee Jones has bought the theatre, and it will be demolished after the final performance. The film shows the action on and off stage, although not a lot actually happens and a sub-plot involving a mysterious woman (Virginia Madsen) is just daft.

However, the joy comes from the relaxed interplay between the show’s troupe of regulars and some great country music performances from the likes of Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson, Lily Tomlin and John C Reilly. A fine way for Altman to bow out.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate PG
Running time 105mins

Review by John Ferguson

Amongst the numerous flicks in the pipeline are animated stoner comedy Free Jimmy, alongside British faves Simon Pegg, Phil Daniels, Samantha Morton, David Tennant and Emilia Fox, as well as Indy flick hero Kyle MacLachlan. Not yet set for release on either side of the Atlantic (perhaps because it involves the search for a junkie elephant, hardly good for the kids), it nonetheless has received favourable reviews on the festival circuit.

Also promising is his starring role as a middle-aged gigolo in The Walker from writer/director Paul Shrader – a thematic sequel to his 1980 Richard Gere-starring American Gigolo, as well as his turn in the Coen brother’s latest, No Country For Old Men (alongside his A Prairie Home Companion co-star Tommy Lee Jones).

Another flick likely to catapult Harrelson back into the limelight is the intriguing thriller Transsiberia where, alongside Emily Mortimer and ben Kingsley, he will play one half of an American couple caught up in comspiracy and murder while travelling the Trans-Siberian Railway through China and Russia – although the Will Ferrell baseball comedy Semi-Pro is most likely to earn him mega-bucks.

Nonetheless, he’s not avoiding the smaller and more controversial flicks, with the entirely improvised poker comedy The Grand doubtless an interesting experience (for the actors, at least), and an ideal film for someone so associated with his political activities in the real world, The Battle in Seattle – set around anti-World Trade organisation demonstrations that descend into riot and violence. Despite the lefty politics – still unpopular in the US, though likely to be coming to the fore a bit more by its December Stateside release with the excitement of the Presidential primaries – the likes of Charlize Theron, Susan Sarandon and Ray Liotta on the poster could well see it do well.

Less hard-going are likely to be First Man, where Streep will play a female President of the United States whose husband – to be played by Robert De Niro – sets aside his successful business to help run her campaign, and thriller Wanted, where she’ll star alongside Jennifer Aniston as two convicts who stage a breakout to prove that Aniston’s former cop has been framed for drug trafficking.

Despite the high chances of success of any project with Streep attached, the one most likely to make mega-bucks is surely Lions for Lambs, due out in the UK on 2nd January 2008. Directed by and starring Robert Redford, it is set around a platoon of soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, a Congressman’s dealings with a journalist, and an idealistic university professor attempting to inspire his students. The main reason for its likely success (bar the sure-fire hit-making team-up of Redford and Streep)? It will be Tom Cruise’s first film since his bizarre pre-nuptual antics, and he’s bound to do everything he can to make sure both it – and he – are as good as they can be.

He’s got three more comedies in the works: Quebec, as a grocery store clerk vying with his colleague Seann William Scott for a promotion; Step Brothers, another bit of comedic rivalry with his real-world buddy and Talladega Nights co-star Will Ferrell; and Walk Hard, a spoof of Oscar-winner Walk The Line, in which he’ll star as a singer on the road to music superstardom.

eta 12th January – The Last King of Scotland – at last a proper release for the film everyone raved about at the London Film Festival back in November. Forest Whitaker does Idi Amin in a tale of dictatorship and disillusionment, based on the prize-winning novel by journalist Giles Foden.

eta 26th January – Blood Diamond – Leonardo DiCaprio makes another bid for an Oscar as diamond smuggler teaming up with Djimon Hounsou’s poor local in a bid for a rare pink diamond amidst civil war-torn Sierra Leone. Political, topical – and coming out over here just a month before the Oscars…

eta 16th February – Hot Fuzz – Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg team up once more after the success of Shawn of the Dead and superb sitcom Spaced, this time with a spoof cop movie. Set in rural Somerset… How could this be anything other than genius?

eta 23rd February – The Good Shepherd – This Robert De Niro-directed tale of the birth of the CIA, with Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie (as well as Bob himself), looks set to be packed with political intrigue – much of which may well be relevant to our own times…

eta 23rd February – Letters From Iwo Jima – The second part of Clint Eastwood’s World War Two epic, this time the Japanese side of the story. By all accounts a far better film than Flags of Our Fathers, the American side of the tale that’s currently on release.

eta 9th March – The Good German – Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney team up yet again, this time for a noirish tale of intrigue set at the close of World War Two, with Tobey Maguire and Cate Blanchett in support. Initial reports from the other side of the Atlantic are that it’s not as good as it should be, but we still can’t wait to see for ourselves.

eta 30th March – 300 – Another overly stylised adaptation of a Frank Miller comic book after the success of Sin City, this time set in Ancient Greece (well, Sparta, to be precise). Looks like it should be visually stunning, but will it hold up as a film?

eta 27th April – Takeshis’ –  Japanese icon “Beat” Takeshi Kitano does his own version of Being John Malkovich as, playing himself, he happens across a lookalike. For fans of the cult actor, this could be something rather special, especially as it shows a side of the guy rarely seen outside of his Japanese TV appearances.

eta 4th May – Spider-Man 3 – Spidey goes evil (or does he?), so looks to build on the success of the first two in this top-notch franchise with yet another darker turn. Top stuff – especially for comics geeks who know who/what Venom is…

eta 25th May – Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End – Finally, a decnt conclusion to Dead Man’s Chest. Hopefully… Either way, another chance to see Johnny Depp do his thing, so hurrah!

eta 8th June – Ocean’s Thirteen – Yes, we know what you’re thinking – Ocean’s Twelve was horrendous. The good thing is, everyone involved seems to have realised, and have promised that this next outing is going to be the film the last one should have been. With Al Pacino added to the already star-studded cast, let’s hope they get it right this time…

eta 29th June – Shrek the Third – the team are all back, and what more could you want? Bound to be a crowd-pleaser.

eta 13th July – Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix –  The films have been getting progressively better as the series has progressed, though whether new director David Yates – best known for his TV work, including the tip-top political drama State of Play – will be able to continue the trend is anyone’s guess…

eta 27th July – Transformers – Yes, a live-action version of that 80s toy classic. Giant robots beating each other up for two hours? How could you not be interested? Oh, yes – it’s directed by Michael Bay, the man responsible for the likes of The Island and Pearl Harbor… But even so – giant robots!

eta 27th July – The Simpsons Movie –  Eighteen years after the funny yellow family hit the small screen, they finally make it to the big. Will they make the transition though? Fingers crossed, eh?

eta 3rd August – The Bourne Ultimatum –  The third in the insanely good spy series looks all set to be just as good as the last two, with Paul Greengrass returning as director and Matt Damon set to do his thing once again as the amnesiac spook still trying to uncover his murky past.

eta 26th October – The Golden Age –  Nine years on, a sequel to director Shekhar Kapur’s magnificent historical biopic Elizabeth, reuniting much of the original cast to explore the relationship of an older Queen Elizabeth I (Cate Blanchett) and the adventurous hero/pirate Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen). Should be superb.

eta 9th November – American Gangster – Sir Ridley Scott teams up once again with Russell Crowe, with Denzel Washington also in the mix, in this 1970s-set drug-running thriller. Could be an overdue return to form for Scott after recent lacklustre outings.

eta 30th November – Beowulf – Ray Winstone stars in this epic version of the Dark Age classic, adapted by comic book favourite Neil Gaiman, and with a pretty damned impressive supporting cast. Potentially a new (one film) Lord of the Rings…

eta ? – The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford – Brad Pitt stars as near-legendary gunslinger Jesse James in this much-anticipated second feature from Andrew Dominik, who brought us 2000’s compelling (if occasionally horrifying) Chopper.

And then, of course, in 2008 we have Tim Burton’s Sweeny Todd,  Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo IV, comic book adaptation Iron Man and the next Bond film to look forward to, amongst others.

So then, what are you looking forward to the most?

Ben Stiller heads a cast of A-list comedy actors that ranges from the likes of Mickey Rooney and Dick Van Dyke to Robin Williams in this raucous romp through history. Stiller plays the patsy once again as night watchman Larry Daley, who has to run for his life when an ancient curse causes the exhibits in a museum of natural history to come to life at sundown.

Stiller does a sterling job here and there’s a witty use of visual effects such as when Larry is terrorised by a T rex skeleton or when he tries to negotiate peace between a miniature Old West gunslinger (an uncredited Owen Wilson) and an equally tiny Roman general (Steve Coogan). Meanwhile, Ricky Gervais pops up as an officious museum director who’s not a million miles away from David Brent.

Director Shawn Levy is not always in control of his storyline as he desperately tries to string various subplots together through Larry’s faltering relationship with his son (Jake Cherry). Fortunately, there are enough exciting stunts and larger-than-life performances to provide entertainment for kids and old relics alike.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate PG
Running time 108mins

Review by Stella Papamichael

Novelist Patrick Süskind’s so-called “unfilmable” story of obsession and murder in 18th-century France gets a ravishing big-screen adaptation courtesy of Run Lola Run director Tom Tykwer. An offbeat and sensuous adult fairy tale, it revolves around a chilling turn by Ben Whishaw (Enduring Love) as the Parisian perfumer’s apprentice, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. Born with an exceptional sense of smell, Grenouille becomes monstrously fixated on preserving the aroma of young women — particularly the only daughter of merchant Antoine Richis (a poignant Alan Rickman). The tragic horror that unfolds has a seductive quality reminiscent of German Expressionist cinema, which gives Grenouille’s crimes and motivations a darkly romantic edge. But it’s the extraordinary visuals and evocative soundtrack that are the movie’s greatest strengths, re-creating a pungent era so vividly that every frame conjures up mental fragrances. This really is a mesmerising experience, though the faithfulness to the source material makes the film excessively long and occasionally sluggish.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 147mins

Review by Sloan Freer

In this likeable addition to the body-swap comedy genre, rising young stars Kevin Zegers (Transamerica, the Air Bud franchise) and Samaire Armstrong (TV’s The OC) play chalk-and-cheese next-door neighbours and sworn enemies, who get an unexpected taste of each other’s lives when a magical Aztec statue causes them to exchange bodies. They then set out to destroy each other’s high-school reputations — he’s the star quarterback with the cheerleader girlfriend, she’s the bookworm heading for a top college.

This role-reverse romantic comedy may not be original, but it’s engagingly done and there are charming performances from the two leads. Watch out, too, for the feature film debut of X Factor judge Sharon Osbourne as Zegers’s mum.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 94mins

Review by David Aldridge

Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photograph of US servicemen raising the Stars and Stripes above the Pacific island of Iwo Jima is the starting point for Clint Eastwood’s Second World War epic. Part war movie, part deconstruction of heroism, it follows three of the group — Marines Rene Gagnon and Ira Hayes (Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach), and Navy corpsman “Doc” Bradley (Ryan Phillippe) — as they’re sent home to bolster the fundraising effort. While these men struggle to cope with post-traumatic stress and their reluctant status as heroes, Eastwood reveals the complex interaction of war, propaganda and real lives behind the famous image.

Based on a bestselling memoir by Bradley’s son, this is a technically accomplished yet ponderously worthy film that quickly abandons its probing remit to fall back on misty-eyed platitudes about war as hell and the camaraderie of soldiers under fire. Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima, which depicts events from the Japanese perspective, is due for release in February.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 131mins

Review by Jamie Russell

Also out next year – and doubtless of interest to some – is the computer game version of the Eastwood classic Dirty Harry, complete with the man himself on voice duties, along with the talents of the likes of Gene Hackman and Lawrence Fishburne. It’s the first new Dirty Harry outing since the rather shoddy 1990 Nintendo Game Dirty Harry: The War Against Drugs, and the first time Clint will have played the character since the fifth (and so far final) sequel to the 1971 original, 1988’s The Dead Pool. Here’s hoping it’s not as bad as that travesty was…

Set for release next year, In the Valley of Elah will tackle the difficulties faced by soldiers returning from service in Iraq, potentially reviving a genre that prompted numerous superb movies – everything from Rambo to Born on the Fourth of July – when the war veterans concerned were returning from Vietnam. Tommy Lee Jones will star as a career officer desperate to find out what has happened to his son, AWOL after serving in Iraq, aided by Charlize Theron’s detective.

After that will come Honeymoon With Harry, a “blackly comic drama” (apparently) about a man who, when his fiancee is killed two days before their wedding, decides to take her father on the honeymoon to scatter her ashes. Even though they hate each other. No actors have yet been attached – but don’t be too surprised if it ends up being renamed “Meet the Maker” and starring Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro as a slightly more morbid sequel to Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers…

Next up, he’ll be starring opposite top-notch character actor Chris Cooper in Breach, a true story tale of a young FBI man’s clashes with his boss who, it turns out, was a Soviet spy.

He’ll then be taking the lead in an as-yet untitled drama about a soldier returning from the war in Iraq who decided to take on the US government in court to prevent them from sending him back for another tour of duty.

Finally, and keeping on the political theme, he’ll also be starring in Tlatelolco: Mexico 68, alongside John Leguizamo, as an American journalist who gets caught up the 1968 student revolts, which ended in the massacre of hundreds of students by government forces. Politics being big in Hollywood at the moment, this new-found activist streak could well prove profitable for the young actor.

Whether his one upcoming role in which the fact that he’s got “Red Indian” blood hasn’t played a factor in his casting will buck the trend, who can say? But as it’s a remake of the rather poor 1972 zombie horror/comedy Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, anything could happen – it could be another Shaun of the Dead, or merely another Snakes on a Plane. Let’s hope for the former, eh?

Time to shed a little tear – even if nothing Hana-Barbera ever produced was even close in quality to the work of the mighty Tex Avery, they still managed to keep generation upon generation of children entertained with their slapstick and light comedy. We can even forgive them the Flintstones…

Denzel Washington reteams with his Crimson Tide and Man on Fire director Tony Scott for this sci-fi thriller about manipulating the past to save lives in the future.

Washington plays Doug Carlin, a New Orleans federal agent investigating a huge bombing, who is given access to a top-secret government “time window” that lets him see into the past. He then tries to solve the crime, and also prevent it from ever happening.

The screenplay provides some provocative commentary on surveillance, home-grown terrorism and the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive strikes, but Scott is far more interested in crash, bang, wallop pyrotechnics — in particular, a freeway car chase that occurs simultaneously in both the past and the present.

This is a gloriously dumb thriller that occasionally teases with some serious themes, but doesn’t quite follow them through.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 126mins

Review by Jamie Russell

If, of course, he can ever get it made…

He’s not been put off just yet, though, with a whole bunch more in the pipeline, from 1960s-set family drama A West Texas Children’s Story, surrealist rejected orphan revenge tale Coin Locker Babies and animated fantasy adventure Delgo (alongside the voices of the late Anne Bancroft, as well as other near-legends like Burt Reynolds and Eric Idle).

Most promising, however, are likely to be Alpha Numeric, a gangster drama in which Kilmer will star alongside Winona Ryder and Dennis Hopper, and The Dirt – assuming the rumours of his casting are true – which promises to be the story of rock group Mötley Crüe’s rise to fame. Kilmer is supposedly playing Van Halen singer David Lee Roth, alongside Chrstopher Walken as – get this – Ozzy Osbourne. Now that really WOULD rock…

He is also, supposedly, set to take the lead in live-action comic book adaptation The Yellow M, based on the French comics series La Marque Jaune. Of course, this project – effectively a sci-fi spy pastiche revolving around a 1950s prototype James Bond – has been in pre-production since at least 2000, with Rufus Sewell originally pegged for the lead, so quite what its status is, and whether Miami Vice star Gong Li is still attached, remains unclear.

It’s set in a world of dragons and sorcery, but Eragon fails to conjure the magic of Christopher Paolini’s bestselling book.

Newcomer Ed Speleers stars (with some initial uncertainty) as the titular farm boy who becomes a “dragon rider”, threatening the tyrannical rule of King Galbatorix (a gnashing John Malkovich). Jeremy Irons employs a dry sense of humour as Eragon’s mentor Brom, which helps to alleviate some of the tedium as the kid struggles to decide what his true mission is. Rachel Weisz voices Saphira, the winged beast that carries Eragon into battle, although getting there proves to be a dizzying ride.

First-time director Stefen Fangmeier provides occasional distraction from the dithering script with adrenaline-fuelled flying scenes. But sadly the CGI effects aren’t good enough to make Saphira an emotionally engaging character, so the relationship between her and Eragon fails to spark.

Radio Times rating:

**

UK cinema certificate PG
Running time 103mins

Review by Stella Papamichael

Due in January, after a perhaps appropriately insanely long wait, is oddball director Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain – a much-delayed, hugely ambitious sci-fi/fantasy romance spanning 1,000 years and three separate, if linked, storylines revolving around Hugh Jackman’s efforts to find Weisz, his one true love. It has been slated at least as much as praised by those who have seen it so far, so could prove interesting.

Then will come more standard fare, with Weisz’s turn in the comedy/romance Definitely, Maybe, written and directed by the writer of Bridget Jones 2 and Wimbledon. But then it’s back to the experimental, with a role in cult director Wong Kar-Wai’s My Blueberry Nights, starring Norah Jones as a woman taking a road trip across the US, and co-starring the likes of Jude Law, Tim Roth, Natalie Portman and Ed Harris. She’ll be teaming up with Wong Kar-Wai again in 2008 for a remake of Orson Welles’ classic The Lady From Shanghai, with Weisz set to take the Rita Hayworth role.

Before that, though, it’s back to comedy, with a part in the Paul Giamatti and Vince Vaughan-starring festive bit of fun Fred Claus, due Christmas 2007, as well as another return to Africa following Weisz’s superb, Oscar-winning turn in The Constant Gardener. This time it’ll be a period piece, with Weisz playing the object of Colin Firth’s affections in the 19th century historical drama The Colossus,covering the final years of Cecil Rhodes’ regime in what is now Zimbabwe. Sir Ian McKellen will take on the role of the imperial hero/scoundrel.

Also likely to do well is The Great Buck Howard, also due next year, where Malkovich will play the titular illusionist who takes on young Colin Hanks as his assistant – much to the consternation of the boy’s father – played by Hanks’ real-life dad, perennial favourite Tom. Still on a fantasy bent, though rather less promising, Malkovich will also be appearing in sci-fi actioner The Mutant Chronicles – which, no doubt, will be great fun if you like that sort of thing…

In more “serious” film news, somehow the top-notch Colour Me Kubrick, based around a real-life fraudster who pretended to be reclusive uberdirector Stanley Kubrick to get star treatment and made nearly two years ago now, has still not been picked up by a UK distributor, despite receiving unanimously good reviews. Also unlikely to see a proper cinema release is art flick Drunkboat, co-starring John Goodman, which seems to have hit some editing trouble.

Most promising of the non-fantasy flicks, though, is likely to be Disgrace, due out next year and based on the novel of post-Apartheid politics by Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee. If Malkovich plays it right, it could have just the right mix to finally win him that Oscar…

But potentially most interesting in terms of Carlyle’s career revival, is The Meat Trade. Taken from a screenplay by Irving Welsh, the man responsible for Trainspotting, which kick-started Carlyle’s film career, the Scotsman will star alongside Colin Firth in a tale of body-snatching and mayhem on the streets of contemporary Edinburgh. It could be bonkers, by the Welsh brand is still just about strong enough to sell…

Despite all this success, Hounsou so far only has one other film in the pipeline, The Trunk, in which he’ll play a young pianist from the ghetto, desperate to get out but held backby his friends. It’s rather low budget, and seems likely to do little business. But who knows? If Oscar comes calling for Blood Diamond, anything could happen…

George Miller, the co-writer of Babe, does for penguins what he did for pigs in this fabulous family adventure. Playing like March of the Penguins: the Musical, it combines jaw-dropping computer animation with contemporary and classic tunes to bring to life a simple but eloquent story of an outcast emperor penguin’s struggle for acceptance.

Moral and ecological messages abound as avian cutie Mumble (voiced by Elijah Wood) hatches without the ability to sing — a terrible misfortune in an Antarctic community where penguin couples find their mate through song. What he can do however is tap dance brilliantly, leading to social rejection that prompts him to embark on an exciting quest to prove his worth.

Every element of this heart-warming tale is delightful, from the astonishing visuals and imaginative song and dance numbers to the relentlessly paced (and occasionally scary) action sequences. The voice talent is also seriously classy, with Robin Williams in dual roles a highlight in a cast that also includes Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman as Mumble’s parents.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate U
Running time 108mins

Review by Sloan Freer

Frodo – sorry – Wood’s next few projects are yet more deliberately eclectic, yet decidedly interesting, movies, that should once again show that there’s much more to this chap than furry feet, wide blue eyes, and a tendency to look a bit pathetic while evil ghost-like things on massive flying dragons whizz around the shop.

Though it came out in France in May this year, and is scheduled for a US release in April 2007, sadly no UK distributors seem ready to put out Paris, je t’aime – a quirkily ambitious project that counts cult favourites the Coen brothers and Gus Van Sant, Scream‘s Wes Craven, French superstar Gerard Depardieu, Children of Men‘s Alfonso Cuarón and Wong Kar-Wai’s cinematographer of choice Christopher Doyle amongst its many directors. Broken into 18 five-minute segments, each overseen by a different directorial team, Wood appears as a young American tourist in “Quartier de la Madeleine”, written and directed by Cube‘s Vincenzo Natali. Co-stars include the likes of Bob Hoskins, Steve Buscemi, Marianne Faithful, Willem Dafoe, Miranda Richardson, Juliette Binoche, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Emily Mortimer, Rufus Sewell and Natalie Portman – so quite why this has yet to hit our screens is anyone’s guess.

Wood will also be cropping up in the hugely impressive ensemble cast of former brat-pack actor turned director Emilio Estevez’s Bobby, revolving around the 1968 assassination of US presidential hopeful (and brother of the assassinated President JFK) Robert Kennedy. Due out in the UK on 26th January, the cast is padded out with the likes of Estevez’ father Martin Sheen, as well as Lawrence Fishburne, Heather Graham, Anthony Hopkins, Harry Belafonte, Helen Hunt, Joshua Jackson, Ashton Kutcher, William H Macy, Lindsay Lohan, Demi Moore, Freddy Rodriguez, Christian Slater and Sharon Stone. Nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival this year, it’s definitely one to look forward to.

As for Wood’s other projects, again they are typically diverse and interesting. He’ll voice the young dragon Spyro in the latest in the popular computer game series – alongside Brit favourite Gary Oldman – The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning, and take on the role of a young man forced in to the US army as the draft is re-introduced in the timely exploration of duty in time of war that is Day Zero. Then, due for release in 2008, he’ll play Albert Einstein in the film adaptation of comic Steve Martin’s successful play Picasso at the Lapin Agile, alongside another impressive cast that includes the likes of Martin himself, Kevin Kline, Juliette Binoche, Sienna Miller, Jason Biggs and Ryan Phillipe. Pretty soon Wood’s going to beat even Kevin Bacon for a Hollywood six degrees of separation…

Next year will see three interesting projects for the Aussie beauty. The Invasion, starring alongside new Bond Daniel Craig, will see her play a psychatrist who uncovers an alien invasion – and the key, lying in her critically ill son. Then will come the highly promising – but as yet untitled – new film from Noah Baumbach, the writer/director responsible for brilliantly quirky outings The Squid and the Whale and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Little is yet known other than that it is a comedy drama revolving around a weekend family reunion, and will star Kidman alongside the likes of Jack Black, Jennifer Jason Leigh and John Turturro.

Kidman will also be re-teaming with directos she’s had some success with before. First up is Headhunters, from a script from Birthday Girl writer/director Jez Butterworth, following a group of women from New Jersey who head to Monte Carlo to land rich husbands. Then – and almost certain to have more potential – will come the latest project from Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann, Australia. Set during World War II, Kidman will play an Australian heiress who sets out on a cattle-drive roughneck rancher Hugh Jackman, only to get embroiled in a Japanese invasion.

Most likely to buy a few more fancy designer dresses, however, is bound to be the His Dark Materials triology, the first instalment of which, Northern Lights (or The Golden Compass if you’re in America), should be out around Christmas 2007. Adapted from the bestselling (and really rather good) Philip Pullman novels, Kidman will play the scheming Miss Coulter in all three movies, again alongside Daniel Craig as the dashing Lord Asriel.

Up next will be another of Williams’ partial departures from his comedy roots, with the fantsy drama August Rush, due around spring 2007. The comedian will play a mysterious stranger – who may or may not be a wizard – who helps young musical genius Freddie (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) Highmore track down his birth parents from the rough streets of New York.

Then it’s a return to more familiar Williams territory with his typically eccentric turn as a priest/marriage councillor in License to Wed, putting a couple – one half of which is made up by pop princess and budding Hollywood starlet Mandy Moore – through a series of insane relationship tests prior to their wedding day. Finally, with typical Williams material, he’ll play a psychiatrist whose emotions start taking on zany physical form in the abysmally-titled The Krazees. As much as he does “nutter” very well indeed, it’d surely be nice if he could do head-cases of the Insomnia or One Hour Photo variety a bit more often than these crazy-by-numbers re-hashes of his old Mork and Mindy routine?

After her trip to the Land of the Rising Sun, Murphy will be off to even more exotic territory in surreal comedy/fantas/drama The Other Side, pitched as a cross between Beetlejuice, Amelie and Alice in Wonderland. Based around a scientist’s exploration of strange goings on on a remote island, Murphy joins a cast that includes the impressive likes of Jim Broadbent, Tim Roth, Anjelica Huston, Giovanni Ribisi and Jason Lee – if they do it right, it could prove in interesting Tim Burton-style slice of weirdness.

Finally, Murphy will be going back to the role that first brought her to many people’s attention, that of Clive Owen’s girl Shellie in Sin City 2. Owen will return as well, alongside another impressive cast that includes actors old and new like Rosario Dawson, Michael Madsen, Jessica Alba, Michael Clarke Duncan, Devon Aoki, Mickey Rourke and – rumour has it – possibly also Angelina Jolie. Either way, if you liked the last slice of ultraviolent, super-stylised noirish action, it’s pretty certain that the wait until its release (possibly Spring 2007, possibly not) will be a long one.

Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet headline this romantic comedy for the festive season. Watching it is like unwrapping an attractively packed gift only to discover it’s socks again.

Writer/director Nancy Meyers should have observed the advice of her previous film, Something’s Gotta Give, and let a few scenes go. She spends far too much time lingering on humdrum episodes such as Diaz and Winslet emailing each other to arrange a house swap for the holidays. They’re both fleeing the fallout of broken relationships, but inevitably hopping across the pond leads both of them to unexpected romance.

Diaz and Jude Law make a fairly engaging couple, although sadly the early stages of their relationship are clumsily knitted together, while Winslet and Jack Black remain an awkward pairing throughout. But the film’s funny moments are as thinly scattered as the English snow, which mysteriously keeps appearing and disappearing throughout the movie.

Radio Times rating:

**

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 135mins

Review by Stella Papamichael

Following in the footsteps of such movies as Being John Malkovich and I Heart Huckabees, which treat their outrageous scenarios as more drama than comedy, comes Stranger than Fiction.

The loopy premise here is that mild-mannered tax inspector Will Ferrell begins to hear voices — well, actually just one voice, which seems to be narrating his life. A visit to a literature professor (Dustin Hoffman, as enjoyably tick-riddled as ever) reveals that the author of his story is Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson) and she is indeed in control of his destiny. The trouble is that all her novels end in the death of the lead character.

In less talented hands, this kind of forced intellectual whimsy can be deeply irritating, but with the understated direction of Finding Neverland‘s Marc Forster, the decidedly odd is perfectly believable. And Ferrell, like Bill Murray and Robin Williams, proves that comic actors reined in can give surprisingly affecting dramatic performances.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 112mins

Review by Adam Smith

Next year will see just one Ferrell movie, the ice skating comedy Blades of Glory, following two rival Olympic skaters expelled from the games who find a loophole that might just see them able to get back in, while 2008 will see another Ferrell sport-s based outing with the basketball comedy Semi-Pro, in which Ferrell will co-star with Woody Harrelson.

Most promising for Ferrell fans, though, is likely to be Step Brothers – Ferrell co-writing with Talladega Nights and Anchorman director Adam McKay as well as starring in this broad comedy about two spoiled grown-ups, who – naturally – hate each other, who end up as step brothers when their aging parents decide to get hitched. Ferrell’s Talladega Nights co-star John C Reilly will co-star.

Next up is Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, based on the novel by Patrick Süskind. Set in 18th century France, the film follows a young man with an extraordinary sense of smell who, having apprenticed himself to Hoffman’s master perfume-maker, embarks on a killing-spree in pursuit of the ultimate scent. It is set for release on Boxing Day.

Due in July 2007, Hoffman will take the title role in the entertainingly-named Mr Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. As the 243-year-old owner of the world’s most wonderful toy store hands over his business to his nervous manager, played by Natalie Portman, there may well be a fair few Charlie and the Chocolate Factory parallels. But, directed as it is by the writer of the distinctly unusual Stranger Than Fiction, there’s bound to be more to it than that…

Then, in 2008, Hoffman will try his hand at animated comedy, providing voice duties on two big-budget, all-star cast extravaganzas featuring – as seems to be the rule with CGI films these days – a bunch of oddball talking animals. First will come Kung-Fu Panda, alongside Angelina Jolie, Jack Black, Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu and Ian McShane, and then The Tale of Despereaux, from Corpse Bride co-director Mike Johnson, alongside Robbie Coltrane, Kevin Kline, Christopher Lloyd, William H Macy, Tracey Ullman, Sigourney Weaver and Justin Long.

Hardly much that could land him another Oscar for the shelf, but still – not bad.

He currently has three films in the works: the small-scale tale of an Afghan-American’s return to his former homeland, The Kite Runner, based on the bestselling novel by Khaled Hosseini, is due out in the UK in January 2008, and will feature little in the way of big stars – quite a change from working with the likes of Dustin Hoffman and Johnny Depp on recent movies.

He is also attached to direct 36, a remake of the 2004 French action flick, starring Daniel Auteuil and Gerard Depardieu, 36 Quai des Orfèvres. No casting news has yet emerged, but rumour has it that one Robert De Niro may be interested…

Finally, and from the sound of things pretty much guaranteed to bring in a few Oscar nods on its release late in 2007, is Dallas Buyer’s Club. Brad Pitt will star in absolutely classic Oscar-winning material, as an HIV sufferer who develops full-blown AIDS and is told to go home and die by mid-1980s medics who were unable to cope with the then new disease, but who instead hunts down potential life-prolonging drugs via the black market in a desperate attempt to find a cure.

The first computer-animated feature from the Aardman brigade successfully replicates their Wallace & Gromit claymation aesthetic with convincing and entertaining (if less charming) results.

Hugh Jackman provides the voice of Roddy St James, a posh Kensington pet mouse who is flushed down the toilet into a vast rodent metropolis — a detailed mini-London constructed from rubbish. There he teams up with a streetwise rat (Kate Winslet) to foil the plans of a villainous toad (Ian McKellen) to flood the sewer city during half-time of the World Cup final. And along the way, Roddy finds genuine companionship for the first time.

Visually inventive and with a rich dose of British humour, directors David Bowers and Sam Fell’s film has thrilling adventure for the kids and droll wit for grown-ups. Jean Reno scores big laughs as stereotypical French mercenary Le Frog, but best of all are the singing slugs crooning pop hits as hilarious comment on the action.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate U
Running time 84mins

Review by Alan Jones

Dreamworks’ decision to ditch their British partners breaks a five-film deal the two studios had previously agreed, and puts the future of planned projects like Crood Awakenings, a John Cleese-scripted comedy set in prehistoric times and originally set for release in 2008, into doubt.

The current status of Aardman’s other big feature-length project, Tortoise vs. Hare (based on a script by the creators of the Mike Bassett football manager character) also remains unclear. It was originally scheduled for release way back in 2003, and set to star the vocal talents of Bob Hoskins, Brenda Blethyn and Lee Evans, before being put on indefinite hold as long ago as summer 2001, before being revived after the Dreamworks team-up for a 2007 release.

Following the fire at the Brisol-based Aardman’s studios soon after the release of last year’s Wallace & Grommit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, anyone would think that the release of a feature-length Aardman movie has attracted some kind of curse.

Sill, Aardman still seems to be doing OK on the back of last years Oscar-winning Wallace & Grommit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit – which, Dreamworks executives should note, also took a few weeks to really build momentum, but ended up pulling in $192.4 million worldwide… In any case, Aardman have landed at least one lucrative and high-profile project in the US to make up for the Dreamworks fallout: they have produced US superstore chain Wal-Mart’s Christmas advertising blitz, featuring a new double-act, renegade elves Wally and Marty.

The veteran Shakespearian actor has three more movies currently in the pipeline – as well as a bit more stage work lined up for Spring 2007, taking the lead role in King Lear and that of patriarch Sorin in Checkov’s The Seagull, both for director Sir Trevor Nunn, at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. Running from March to June, quite how Sir Ian will find time to make more movies is anyone’s guess.

On the film front, though, McKellen provided a voice-over for low-budget British sci-fi flick Displaced while filming for TV soap Coronation Street last year, and is apparently set to appear in the X-Men spin-off Magneto – a prequel that will explore how the supervillain became the evil metal-attracting mastermind that we know from the films (and comics), and his early friendship with X-Men leader Charles Xavier. The rest of the cast has not yet been announced, although Patrick Stewart is rumoured to be in talks.

McKellen’s biggest film role in the next year or so is therefore going to be as near-legendary (and somewhat controversial, to put it mildly) British imperial hero Cecil Rhodes in an intriguing-sounding adaptation of ann Harries’ complex historical novel The Collossus. Set at the end of the 19th century, it follows the travels of an Oxford professor – to be played by Colin Firth – to Africa during the latter days of Rhodes’ rule, and his gradual realisation of the inevitability of the impending Boer War. Rachel Weisz and Susan Sarandon will co-star.

To keep up with all his latest news, you could do a lot worse than bookmark Sir Ian’s excellent website.

By far the most anticipated, however, are two sequels. Actually,the first, West Country police comedy Hot Fuzz, isn’t really a sequel at all – but it does reunite much of the cast and crew behind the superb zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead, so is being anticipated nearly as much as if it were. Nighy may only be making a cameo appearance, but even so, its 16th February release date can’t come soon enough. The other sequel in which Nighy will be appearing – even if he is largely unrecognisable underneath a ton on special effects – needs no introduction: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, the final (for now) film in the insanely popular franchise.

In a superlative companion piece to 2001’s The Devil’s Backbone, director Guillermo del Toro uses his extraordinarily rich and detailed visual style to weave entrancing metaphorical fantasy horror through political allegory with stunning brilliance.

In 1944, in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) seeks refuge in a mysterious maze to escape the harsh realities of her life. There, satyr Pan (Doug Jones) sets her three perilous tasks. These mirror her soul-destroying existence and help her to cope with the perversions of innocence that fascism represents in this dark fable for adults.

Superbly acted (Sergi Lopez terrifies as the wicked stepfather who is one of Franco’s torturers), vividly beautiful (the fairy-tale landscapes are exquisite), and uniquely imaginative (a magical and sinister buffet sequence is astonishing), del Toro’s mesmerising phantasmagoria packs a real emotional punch. Coupled with Javier Navarrete’s glorious score, this grim spin on Alice in Wonderland is del Toro’s finest work to date.

Radio Times rating:

*****

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 119mins

Review by Alan Jones

Set for release in 2008, if you can’t wait that long, try to track down the made for TV cartoon spin-offs Hellboy: Sword of Storms and Hellboy: Blood and Iron – del Toro may only have acted as Consultant Producer, but pretty much all the stars of the first film – Perlman, Blair and even the top-notch John Hurt – have lent their voices to the two feature-length animations.

After Hellboy 2, del Toro seems to be set to return to Spain and the impact of the Spanish Civil War, the setting for both Pan’s Labyrinth and 2001’s The Devil’s Backbone, for 1990s-set 3993, described by del Toro as

“a movie that, if I do it, would close the trilogy of Spanish Civil War movies, because it’s about a character in 1993 who believes that civil war is a thing of the past. And something from 1939 comes to life and proves that it’s not — that it’s pretty much alive.”

Sounds interesting, at least, should it happen – but if it does, don’t expect it to arrive much before 2009.

Away from del Toro, Jones’ next big movie role will be in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer – as the titualar metalic wave-rider himself. Although, of course, as any true comics buff knows, the Silver Surfer doesn’t ride waves, but is instead the herald of the god-like, planet-eating alien Galactus, zipping about the universe on his surfboard looking for fresh globes for his master’s lunch. Which is, of course, far more sensible than someone made of metal trying to stay afloat on the sea…

Though it has all the hallmarks of a film noir — a gumshoe, a mysterious death and not one but two femmes fatales — Hollywoodland doesn’t quite fit the genre bill. Instead, it’s more a poignant love letter to the glory days of Tinseltown, personified by George Reeves (Ben Affleck), a struggling bit-part player who found fame in the 1950s as TV’s Superman.

The film takes liberties with the facts of Reeves’s life, starting with his apparent suicide in 1959 and telling his story in flashback through the eyes of private eye Louis Simo (Adrien Brody), who is hired by Reeves’s mother to look into her son’s death. Simo uncovers three possible alternatives, all hinged on Reeves’s involvement with a rich, powerful and married woman (Diane Lane).

Despite the convincingly dark, smoky atmosphere to Simo’s investigation, Hollywoodland works better when it’s evoking Reeves’s heyday — a cosmetically genteel world of zoot suits and jazz bands, in which the studio system protected its investments at any price.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 125mins

Review by Damon Wise

Likely to be more promising for Affleck’s future is his planned team-up with best buddy Matt Damon – with whom he won the Oscar for Best Screenplay for Good Will Hunting all those years ago. As yet untitiled, the pair will star as a couple of lawyers who toil for fifteen years to save the life of an innocent man on death row, and is apparently based on a true story. Quite when (or if) it will see the light of day is unclear, considerin Damon’s hectic schedule these days.

Also showing potential is Gone, Baby, Gone – written, produced and directed by Affleck, and starring his younger brother, Casey, alongside Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris. Based on the <a href=”https://www.dennislehanebooks.com/books/gone/&#8221; target=”_blank”>book</a> by Dennis Lehane, the author of the book Sean Penn got his Oscar-winner Mystic River out of. Set around the kidnapping of a four-year-old girl in Boston, it looks set to be rather more serious than most of Affleck’s recent outings – and could, if he’s as good a director as he used to be a writer, prove rather good.

It could instead be the upcoming biopic of Spanish bullfighter Manuel Rodríguez Sánchez, Manolete, for which he trained in southern Spain to get the full bullfighting experience, which garners Brody his next batch of nominations. Likely to be a controversial movie for its potential to laud such a cruel sport, and coming from Menno Meyjes, the same writer/director responsible for the John Cusack-starring Hitler biopic Max, word is that the chemistry with co-star Penélope Cruz could make this one to remember on its release in Autumn 2007.

Brody will also be appearing in the experimental director Todd Haynes’ equally experimental exploration of Bob Dylan I’m Not There, alongside a ridiculously impressive cast of the likes of Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett,Charlotte Gainsbourg, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Julianne Moore. Due out next year, Dylan’s life and work is explored through seven characters representing different aspects of the man and music.

In terms of the movies, Hoskins will take on a more challenging role than usual inthe low-budget Ruby Blue, as an elderly man whose friendship with an eight-year-old girl arouses all kinds of unsavoury local suspicioons when she goes missing. He will then appear alongside Sean Bean in British movie Outlaw, following a modern-day vigilante group out to right the wrongs of an unjust society, with another Brit flick, Sparkle, also due out next year, with Hoskins starring alongside The West Wing‘s Stockard Channing and Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s Anthony Head in a tale of a young Scouser who heads to London to become a rich woman’s toyboy. Perhaps most interesting, however, is Citizen Brando, about a young Tunisian boy’s search for the American Dream through the films of Marlon Brando, which Hoskins is co-producing.

She has a fair few more projects in the works, however, including the potentially promising action thriller Killshot, where she’ll play one half of a couple in a witness protection programme who are tracked down by hitmen Mickey Rourke and the insanely promising star of last year’s superb high school noir flick Brick, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, with additional roles for the likes of Rosario Dawson and Jackass‘ Johnny Knoxville.

Also sounding promising is Ed Harris’ directorial follow-up to his critically-acclaimed 2000 biopic Pollock. Other than Harris, who will star as well as write and direct, Lane will appear alongside Viggo Mortensen in the Western Appaloosa, based on the novel by Robert B. Parker about two friends appointed to police a small town, which is set to start filming in Autumn 2007. We need more Westerns these days – it’s amazing after the success of TV show Deadwood that more aren’t on the way.

Jack Black’s twin careers as actor and rock musician merge in this fantastical tale of his band’s humble beginnings and the search for the demonic guitar pick that will turn them into rock gods. He’s joined in the quest by fellow Tenacious D band member Kyle Gass, and ropes in cameos from real-life rock gods Meat Loaf (as his dad), Ronnie James Dio (as his heavy metal muse) and Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters (as Satan!).

If those names mean nothing to you, then this is probably a movie to miss. But if they do, or if you’re a Jack Black fan, then this may well float your boat. It’s an over-the-top and endearingly self-indulgent slice of Spinal Tap-style self-mythologising that sadly, after a wildly funny start, rather runs out of comic steam.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 94mins

Review by David Aldridge

Potentially promising is the as-yet untitled project from Noah Baumbach, writer of the superb The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and writer/director of Oscar-nominated The Squid and the Whale, which will follow a family reunion over the course of a weekend. With Baumbach in charge, it’s impossible to predict what the outcome might be.

Then will come the much-anticipated Be Kind Rewind from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director Michel Gondry, with Black desperately trying to re-make movies from Back to the Future to The Lion King for a friend’s video store after accidentally wiping his entire stock. And talking of talking animals flicks, Black will aslo voice the lead character in the upcoming Dreamworks flick Kung Fu Panda, alongside the vocal talents of the likes of Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Lucy Liu, Ian McShane and Jackie Chan. He is also attached to Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright’s Them, and adaptation of the non-fiction book by journalist Jon Ronson, exploring the wacky (and sometimes downright worrying) world of conspiracy theorists. With Wright and Black on board, it’s unlikely this is going to be a straight piece of reportage, however…

Meanwhile, his semi-spoof band Tenacious D seems to be continuing with its tours and occasional gigs – so keep an eye out, and you could catch a sight of Black in the flesh…

Fans of the MTV-spawned Jackass series will be delighted to hear that actor Johnny Knoxville and his daredevil pals haven’t calmed down with age. Instead, they’ve become even wilder since 2002’s feature-length Jackass: the Movie, hilariously raising the stakes for bad taste stunts and pranks with this superior and more darkly imaginative sequel.

The sick-puppy laughs come thick and fast as the adrenaline junkies combine agonising tests of human endurance with moments of utter grossness and juvenile stupidity. Whether it’s danger man Steve-O being used as live shark bait or The Ringer star Knoxville riding a giant rocket, this random procession of often life-threatening skits is a wince-inducing testament to just how far some people will go to amuse others.

Ultimately, if you didn’t get the concept before, you certainly won’t get it now, but if car-crash entertainment is your idea of fun, then this strictly adults-only film is hard to beat.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 18
Running time 92mins

Review by Slaon Freer

Next up, he’ll be appearing ain a small role longside Ben Affleck, Diane Lane, Mickey Rourke, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Rosario Dawson in hitman comedy caper Killshot, but it will be his film after that (assuming that rumours of his casting are true) which could finally give him his proper movie break. Based on an accalaimed series of graphic novels, Hawaiian Dick is set in a stylised 1950s version of the islands, with down-on-his luck detective Byrd trying to cope with the surprising amount of crime he finds himself surrounded by. If it goes ahead and Knoxville can pull it off, it could just see him hit the A-list…

Daniel Craig effortlessly makes James Bond his own, and the 21st movie in the series goes back to basics for this resoundingly entertaining spy adventure. GoldenEye director Martin Campbell has obviously been watching the Bourne franchise, and here he gives the superspy a gritty makeover, upping the violence content (the opening sequence, shot in grainy black and white, is particularly brutal). He also strips Bond of much of the slightly camp humour — thus no appearance from gadget-man Q.

The plot is essentially an origins story, as a rough-around-the-edges Bond gains his two zeros (the two authorised kills he needs for his infamous licence) before tackling villain Le Chiffre (a splendidly thin-lipped Mads Mikkelsen) in a game of high-stakes poker.

Craig’s humanised, more flawed interpretation of the role balances Campbell’s physical direction and co-writer Paul Haggis’s sparing wit, while Eva Green provides an alluring love interest. Apart from a chaotic and overlong last act, this is a triumphant new beginning.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 144mins

Review by Adam Smith

Already completed, and due for a US release in August 2007 (though no UK date has yet been set) is sci-fi thriller The Invasion, where Craid will star opposite Nicole Kidman, who plays a psychiatrist who uncovers the cause of an alien disease that threatens to destroy the whole of mankind.  Craig and Kidman will then be reunited in the first of the adaptations of Philip Pullman’s excellent philosophical fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials, pitched as The Golden Compass after the North American edition of the novel, but likely to revert to the book’s original title, Northern Lights, for its UK release, probably in December 2007. Amusingly enough, Craig is playing the mysterious Lord Asriel – a part played by former Bond Timothy Dalton in the London stage production.

After that, Craig will take on the ultimate in evil as Satan himself in I, Lucifer, Craig’s evil one posessing the body of Ewan McGregor after a bet with God, and taking full advantage of the freedom a human body can bring.

And then, of course, there’s the as-yet untitled Bond 22. Craig is currently contracted for two more films as 007 – but quite what direction they will take is anyone’s guess – even those involved most likely don’t know yet. Rumours, however, suggest that parts of the next Craig Bond movie will be inspired by aspects of the Bond novel – though not the Roger Moore-starring film – For Your Eyes Only…

Other than the next film in the series, the as-yet untitled Bond 22, she will be returning to work with Iris director Richard Eyre for Notes on a Scandal, set for release in the UK on 7th February 2007. Dench plays a teacher drawn to the new Art mistress at her school, played by the excellent Cate Blanchett, who gets swiftly entrapped in a web of illicit love, lies and deceit. She is also rumoured to be appearing in the next film from Shanghai Knights and The Wedding Crashers director David Dobkin, Fred Claus – unsurprisingly due Christmas 2007. Starring Paul Giamatti as Santa Claus and Vince Vaughan as his good-for-nothing brother Joe, it could well turn out to be a fun festive treat – though quite what part Dame judi will have in the proceedings is anyone’s guess.

Next up, she will be appearing alongside Daniel Craig once again in the first His Dark Materials movie, based on the Philip Pullman novels, as the witch queen Serafina Pekkala – a relatively important role in the books that should see her cropping up in all three films. Then she will take the title role in Therese Raquin, a tale of illicit love, murder, and the disintegration of relationships which will also star the intriguing Giovanni Ribisi and always superb Glenn Close.

With two other starring roles in projects still in the pipeline – including alongside French superstar Vincent Cassel in 1970s-set crime thriller L’Ennemi public n° 1, it looks like Green could well do well out of her stint as arm candy for the world’s best-known spy.

Nonetheless, Wright is hardly short of work. Next up will be another role alongside Casino Royale star Daniel Craig in the sci-fi thriller The Invasion, followed by a starring role in indy flick Blackout, set during the Brooklyn power cut of 2003. He will also be appearing in the abysmally-titled fourth Die Hard movie, Live Free or Die Hard, due out in the UK in July 2007, but only in a minor role.

Most promisiong for Wright’s future career, however, looks likely to be 1001 Nights, for tip-top The Graduate and Closer director Mike Nichols. Largely because of Nichols’ involvement, it must be said, as very little is known about the movie as yet – although it is supposedly in pre-production, due for a 2007 release, and Wright is set to star. Still, in the land of movies, anything can happen – as Wright’s failure to achieve global stardom is a sure testimony to.

What do you reckon? Is Casino Royale going to be a Goldfinger or a Moonraker – and is Craig going to end up a Connery or a Lazenby? Let us know in the comments…

Debates over favourite Bonds have long been an essential part of any gathering of film-lovers, with Sean Connery almost always coming out on top. Until, that is, the last decade or so in which Peirce Brosnan made the leap from ghastly television detective series to fill the shoes of one of the few men known as well by a number as by their name.

With Brosnan’s still largely inexplicable dismissal from the role a couple of years ago – either over creative differences or his pay demands, depending on whom you believe – it was always going to be a tough job to get a 007 who would satisfy enough of the fans. Especially considering the vast boom in competition for big screen action flicks with smart-talking, good-looking heroes – from the Bourne series to Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible flicks – the Bond team saw the need to take a risk to bring the films firmly into the 21^st century, a decade and a half after the end of the Cold War that gave birth to the character.

The casting of Daniel Craig was certainly a surprise to many, especially those who felt that the darkly quiet charms of Clive Owen would be better suited to the character. Yet it could just work. Ignore the fact that he’s blonde – so was Roger Moore, depending on which toupee he was wearing. Ignore the fact that he’s “not conventionally good-looking” – neither was Timothy Dalton, whose two films as Bond are still very unfairly underrated.

The single most important thing is that we know Craig can act genuinely well, and hold his own alongside the best in the business – something that none of the previous Bonds had really shown themselves capable of before taking on the role, all having spent most of their time either on television or in decidedly lightweight movies. For a series in which the big stunts and bikini-clad Bond girls have almost always come first over emotion and motivation (Blofeld wants to blow up London because he’s eeevil), the casting of a genuine thespian in the lead could herald a brave move – albeit one that owes more than a little debt to the producers of the Bourne films, with their top-notch lead of Matt Damon.

But, of course, you can’t throw it all away. A Bond film wouldn’t be a Bond film without gorgeous girls, fast cars, breathtaking stunts and huge explosions, and they’re here in spades. What has also returned – the first time they’re really attempted this since the misunderstood License to Kill, Timothy Dalton’s 15-rated last film as Bond – is the noirish darkness that so permeates the books. Bond is, after all, an assassin first and foremost. He’s a man who cold-heartedly kills for money, and will love and leave anyone he needs to to get the job done. He should never have turned into the hero he has become – he was always supposed to be an anti-hero.

Of course, for your average Bond fan, none of this will really matter. All they’ll care about is whether they personally connect with Daniel Craig’s performance, and whether he’s worthy of joining the pantheon of Bond greats, or destined to wallow beside the often forgotten Bond, George Lazenby, as the worst 007 of all time. Considering that even Lazenby has his fans, it is very hard to predict what Craig’s fate may be, despite the uproar over his casting when it was first announced.

So what do you reckon? Should Craig be given a chance, or will you need to see it first before passing judgement? In any case, let’s face it – it’ll be on telly every Bank Holiday for the rest of your life, just like the rest of them. There’ll be plenty of time to revise your opinion…

Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige manages to seem both highly original and slightly old-fashioned at the same time. Its Victorian English setting is familiar from Hammer horrors but, while there have been many films with an element of magic, few have been set in the world of the professional illusionist.

Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) are two magicians whose intense rivalry dates back to a time when they were both apprentices and Angier’s wife died after a trick went wrong. Fuelled by professional jealousy and personal hatred, they dedicate their talents to destroying each other.

The film is told largely in flashback, as befits a director whose previous work includes the reverse-ordered Memento. Nolan constructs a fascinating tale that twists and turns at every opportunity, although there is perhaps one twist too many in a slightly overbaked denouement. But the film is grounded by the seriousness with which he treats his material and by fine performances all round.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 130mins

Review by Brian Pendreigh

But Johansson’s far too canny to risk getting typecast, so it’s good to see her lending her help to the current revival of the period drama, with no less than four historical projects in the works. She is still attached to star as Betsy Balcombe, the daughter of Napoleon Bonaparte’s British jailer at the end of the French Emperor’s life, in Napoleon and Betsy – although the project seems to have been on hiatus for some months. More recently announced – though with little as yet known other than that it came from an idea by Johansson herself – is Amazon, which could well be a female version of Gladiator, with Johansson in the Russell Crowe role as an avenging warrior in 200BC.

Most interestingly, however, is a brace of British-based history pieces, both set in the Tudor era. First up, based on the bestselling novel by Philippa Gregory and directed by the man behind the BBC’s recent adaptation of Dickens’ Bleak House, is The Other Boleyn Girl. With Eric Bana lined up as Henry VIII and Natalie Portman as his ill-fated second wife Anne Boleyn, Johansson will play the “other” Boleyn of the title, Anne’s sister Mary, who was also having an affair with the King. After that, Johansson will take on royalty herself in Mary Queen of Scots, with her in the title role, based on a script by Cracker creator Jimmy McGovern. See? They always told you that history could be cool…

Of Jackman’s other upcoming projects, most interesting are likely to be The Tourist, where he’ll play a lawyer who leads Ewan McGregor into a hidden world of sex and kidnapping, genius Chinese director Wong Kar-Wai’s 1930s-set The Lady From Shanghai (again opposite Rachel Weisz), and weirdo Aussie director Baz Lurhmann’s as yet untitled next project, in which Jackman will star alongside fellow antipodean Nicole Kidman. And if that’s not enough, just this week another project has emerged, The Amateur, with Jackman playing a geeky CIA code cracker who turns himself into a killing machine when his wife is killed by terrorists.

At this rate, Jackman could soon see himself making a serious challenge to Russell Crowe and even Mel Gibson as Hollywood’s premiere Australian male – especially if Crowe keeps appearing in dross like A Good Year and Gibson keeps getting drunk and making sexist/racist remarks to police officers…

Next up for the veteran Knight of the Realm – before returning as Alfred in Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to Batman Begins, The Dark Knight – is Flawless, a 1960s-set heist movie in which Caine’s aging janitor teams up with high-flying American career-woman Demi Moore to rob his London-based diamond company employers of a few choice gems.

After that, he will be taking on the Lawrence Olivier role in the Kenneth Branagh-directed, Harold Pinter-scripted remake of 1972’s Sleuth, with the young Caine’s role taken on by Jude Law, who will hopefully be doing a better job of stepping in to Caine’s shoes than he managed with the remake of Alfie…

Bale has a number of other movies in the pipeline: the Werner Herzog-directed Vietnam War flick Rescue Dawn, where he plays a German-born US pilot shot down over the jungle, experimental director Tod Haynes’ exploration of the life and work of Bob Dylan, I’m Not There, with Richard Gere, Julianne Moore, Heath Ledger, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Cate Blanchett (see ComingSoon.net for more); and is set to star alongside Russell Crowe and Peter Fonda in a remake of the 1957 Elmore Leonard Western 3:10 to Yuma for Walk the Line director James Mangold.

Bowie has, however, already lent his considerable vocal talents to cult French director Luc Besson’s English language part-live action, part-animated childrens’ flick Arthur and the Minimoys. Bowie plays an evil creature in a magical realm (a bit like the camp 80s semi-classic Labyrinth) alongside Charlie and the Chocolate Factory‘s Freddie Highmore, as well as Mia Farrow, Snoop Dogg and Madonna. Set for release in the US in January, a UK date has yet to be confirmed.

Serkis is also set to make his feature film directorial debut with Freezing Time, based on the life of pioneering 19th century photographer Eadweard Muybridge and described as “The tumultuous life of the Godfather of Cinema, his collaboration and conflict with the Governor of California, his trial for the murder of his wife’s con-man lover, and his relentless pursuit of the art of motion pictures”. He will be follwing that with another directing project, an adaptation of the autobiography of Stephen Smith, Addict, a tale of 20 years of drug addiction, crime and a slow descent into poverty and madness.

Writer/director Anthony Minghella (The English Patient) has assembled an impressive international cast for this thoughtful adult drama. The film captures the cultural and social maelstrom of the King’s Cross area of London, while probing the emotional confusion of a young architect working on its regeneration.

After opening an office in the heart of the district, Will (Jude Law) is infuriated when two break-ins occur in quick succession. Meanwhile, his long-term relationship with his Swedish-American partner Liv (Robin Wright Penn) is in difficulty. He mounts his own night watch at the offices and follows one of the young thieves home — the rooftop acrobatics of the young thief are especially impressive, albeit that they are laboriously counterpointed with the gymnastics of Liv’s troubled daughter. Instead of reporting him to the police, Will begins a tentative relationship with the boy’s mother, Amira (Juliette Binoche), a Bosnian refugee who works at home as a tailor.

This is an intelligent and articulate drama, but it is weighed down by an excess of metaphors about breaking (and mending) things, and ultimately seems cold and overly contrived.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 118mins

Review by Brian Pendreigh

Likely to be Binoche’s most interesting upcoming project, however, is the film adaptation of comic Steve Martin’s successful stage play Picasso at the Lapin Agile, due in 2008. Based around a meeting between Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso in 1904 Paris, rumoured stars currently include not only Martin (who will also provide the screenplay), but also Kevin Kline, Jason Biggs, Ryan Phillippe and Elijah Wood. Should be interesting, at least – if only to see the ever-surprising Wood take on Einstein…

TV’s University Challenge provides a hilarious framing device for debut director Tom Vaughan’s spirited coming-of-age comedy. Adapted by David Nicholls from his own bestselling novel, it stars a charismatic James McAvoy as a gawky, working-class student navigating through his chaotic fresher year at Bristol University in the mid-1980s.

Bittersweet lessons about life and love follow, precipitated by two headstrong girls (a chalk-and-cheese Alice Eve and Rebecca Hall) and a dream opportunity to compete in his favourite academic telly quiz (whose opening phrase gives the film its title).

With its smart, pop culture-infused dialogue and evocative period soundtrack, this campus charmer has all the buoyancy of a John Hughes teen caper. But it’s the sharp, distinctly British humour and nostalgic warmth that have most appeal. Adroitly combined, they enhance an otherwise conventional plot and bring out the best in a collectively fine cast — especially in the delicious, climactic recreation of University Challenge.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 96mins

Review by Sloan Freer

Coming up in the next year or so, McAvoy will continue to add to his enviable leading ladies opposite Keira Knightley in the film adaptation of Ian McEwan’s bestselling Atonement, following that up with a role in the Anne Hathaway-starring Becoming Jane, about the young Jane Austen’s tragic romance with Tom Lefroy – who else but McAvoy? – the man who helped inspire her novels.

Meanwhile, although McAvoy has claimed to have little interest in big Hollywood blockbusters, it looks like his first action role could also be on the cards. Set to star opposite Morgan Freeman, McAvoy will play the son of a super-powered assassin who takes on his father’s mantle in this big screen adaptation of Mark Millar’s comic series Wanted. Shooting is set to start in January 2007 for a 2008 release – and could well see McAvoy really hit the big time.

Gregg Sulkin makes a likeable lead as Bernie and Eddie Marsan gives a solid performance as his dad, but the real revelation in this engaging coming-of-age comedy is Helena Bonham Carter, who’s nicely cast as an ordinary wife and mother.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 93mins

Review by David Aldridge

The one most likely to make them truck-loads of money is the Rowan Atkinson-starring Mr Bean’s Holiday, due out in the UK in March 2007. It has been a decade since the last time the mute, bumbling Mr Bean saw the light of day – a blessed relief, in some people’s eyes – yet the 1997 movie spin-off of Atkinson’s TV series met with such unprecedented global success that it’s amazing that it’s taken them this long to get around to a sequel.

Much more promising, however, is another sequel to an altogether different nearly decade-old film: The Golden Age, a follow up to 1998’s superb Elizabeth that will reunite director Shekhar Kapur with almost all the original cast, from Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth I through to Geoffrey Rush as the wonderfully Machiavellian Sir Francis Walsingham, with new roles for the likes of Clive Owen as Sir Walter Raleigh. For those history buffs among us it should very much be one to look forward to until its October 2007 release – even if the last movie took sizable liberties with the records…

Another promising new Working Title production is the adaptation of Ian McEwan’s bestseller Atonement, to star Keira Knightley and James McAvoy for a September 2007 release. But the real gem is bound to be Hot Fuzz, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s follow-up to the magnificent horror comedy Shaun of the Dead. With Pegg starring as a London supercop posted to the sleepy West Country, surrounded by a cast packed with British comedy talent, it looks all set to be version of Shaun using cop movies rather than zombie flicks as its inspiration – and should, from early reports, be truly brilliant. We’ll have to wait until 16th February 2007 to find out, though…

Bonham Carter does have a few more “serious” roles coming up in the next year, however. She’ll take on the role of Collette alongside Susan Sarandon’s Eleanor in Eleanor & Collette – a story of female bonding as Bonham Carter’s lawyer and Sarandon’s psychiatric patient come together to sue a mental hospital. She will also be taking on a spot of romantic comedy, as one half of a pair of ex-lovers who are reunited within the confines of a transatlantic flight, in Stand By Love.

Surely most anticipated, however – although probably not for the Harry Potter fans among you – will be the Johnny Depp-starring Sweeny Todd, based on the hit Broadway musical and directed by Bonham Carter’s quirky long-term boyfriend (and father of her son) Tim Burton. As Depp and Burton have – as yet – failed to make a bad film together after five joint projects, it should be something pretty special…

Ewan McGregor and Sophie Okonedo are part of an ensemble cast in this multi-stranded tale of Londoners indulging in relationship angst (and a bit of something else) on Hampstead Heath. Sexually-charged interactions add to the heat of a summer afternoon, but first-time director Ed Blum spares us the graphic details and instead focuses on the characters’ emotional dysfunctions.

Scenes work best when aiming for laughs, like Tom Hardy striving to be a cockney Casanova or Gina McKee in stilted conversation with Hugh Bonneville during a blind date. At other times, Blum shoots for a melancholy tone but given that he’s juggling over ten minor intrigues, there isn’t enough time to really feel for any of the characters.

That said, the performances are glowing all round and enhanced by lots of casually amusing dialogue. Overall there’s a free and easy ambience about the film that proves quite seductive.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 91mins

Review by Stella Papamichael

On the big screen, she’ll be cropping up alongside siblings John and Joan Cusack in The Martian Child before acting as the love interest for two very different stars – rapper Mos Def in the 1970s period piece Stringbean and Marcus, and Matthew Broderick in inter-racial dating drama Wonderful World – before taking on the action thriller genre alongside Kevin Bacon (somewhat implausibly stepping into the shoes of original star Vin Diesel) in Black Water Transit.

Other potentially interesting projects include the next – as yet untitled – film from Woody Allen, alongside Colin Farrell, Tom Wilkinson and (somewhat bizarrely) former Eastenders actress Tamzin Outhwaite, and The Tourist, in which McGregor will play a man implicated in a woman’s disappearance after being introduced to a sex club by X-Men‘s Hugh Jackman.

Most promising, however, is likely to be I, Lucifer, based on the novel by Glen Duncan in which a man has his body taken over for a month by Satan himself after a deal between the Evil One and God. McGregor will play the unfortunate vessel for the Devil, with new Bond Daniel Craig playing the fallen angel who posesses him. Could be entertaining – and is bound to cause a bit of religious controversy when it finally makes it to our screens.

With his debut feature, In the Bedroom, director Todd Field explored the darker side of middle-class suburban angst, and he’s still in the same territory for this follow-up.

The setting is a tight-knit American community, into which convicted sex criminal Ronald McGorvey (an extraordinary turn by Jackie Earle Haley) has been released. He fades into the background quickly, as we’re soon introduced to Sarah (Kate Winslet), a married mother who becomes fascinated with a charming — and equally married — father (Patrick Wilson) at the local playground.

Passions flare, but before you can say “American Beauty” McGorvey bubbles back to the surface as the stories mesh together, leading to an implausible finale that’s not quite as profound as it thinks it is. Though its production values are impeccable and its performances pitch-perfect, Little Children feels intellectually hollow and more than a little exploitative of a hot-button subject.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 136mins

Review by Damon Wise

First up is the much-anticipated Blood Diamond, an action-packed exploration of the evils of the African diamond trade starring Leonardo DiCaprio and fellow former Oscar-nominee Djimon Hounsou, hotly tipped again this year for his turn as a poor fisherman who hooks up with DiCaprio’s mercenary in pursuit of a rare pink diamond. It is due out in the UK at the end of January 2007.

Next will be another potential Oscar contender from Hotel Rwanda writer/director Terry George, Reservation Road. Based on the bestselling novel by John Burnham Schwartz, it revolves around the hit-and-run death of a young boy (road accidents seemingly popular after last year’s Oscar success of the similarly-themed Crash), and the fall-out experienced by his flawed friends and family. Connelly will be joined by a top-notch cast that includes Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo and Mira Sorvino, all arguably due for a little golden naked man to put on the mantlepiece.

For those unfamiliar with Borat, he is a leading Kazakhstani journalist who, for this project, travels America learning about its culture. He is also a complete fabrication, the work of Ali G creator Sacha Baron Cohen.

Thus his scatological but hilarious investigation includes a scene in which he attends a posh dinner party and returns from the bathroom with his excrement in a plastic bag and presents it to the hostess. He also destroys a Civil War memorabilia shop and lets loose a chicken on the New York subway.

A minor niggle is that close examination shows that at least a handful of the sequences might have been set up to some degree. And in cinematic terms it is absolutely nothing special: there’s no real reason for it to be a movie at all — its natural home may well be on DVD. But as an example of a comedian willing to take absurd risks for his art, it’s probably never going to be surpassed.

Radio Times rating:

****

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 83mins

Review by Adam Smith

More recently, Baron Cohen himself, rather than his character, has been making headlines for the vast sums of money being thrown at him by Hollywood for his next project, based around the extroverted homosexual Bruno character from Da Ali G Show. Universal finally won the bidding with a whopping $42million, putting Baron Cohen firmly in the comedy A-list.

In the meantime, Baron Cohen has several other projects on the go, reprising his voice role from Madagascar in Madagascar 2, possibly appearing in Tim Burton’s much-anticipated Sweeny Todd alongside Helena bonham-Carter and Johnny Depp, and is still attached to two other films: as a Hasidic Jew turned heavy rocker called Curly in Curly Oxide and Vic Thrill and an idiotic walking disaster in – yes, another comedy – Dinner for Schmucks. Whether any of these will still see the light of day after the success of Borat remains to be seen…

In his role as wily politician Willie Stark, Sean Penn does a lot of shouting and grand gesticulating, but fails to bring this remake of the 1949 Oscar-winning drama to life. Writer/director Steven Zaillian seems overawed by the task of adapting Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which shows Stark (a character inspired by real-life Louisiana governor Huey P Long) gradually being seduced away from his populist ideals by the lure of power.

Jude Law plays Stark’s right-hand man Jack Burden, who tries to avert scandal while battling his own inner demons. Unfortunately, Zaillian’s script becomes so tangled up in numerous subplots — Burden’s relationship with an old flame (Kate Winslet), to name but one — that supposedly significant revelations have little impact, and so Zaillian is forced to rely on endless talky scenes and a ponderous voiceover to explain the story. And the performances of the undeniably A-list cast, which also includes Anthony Hopkins, seem affected thanks to the ostentatious direction.

Radio Times rating:

**

UK cinema certificate 12
Running time 127mins

Review by Stella Papamichael

She will later crop up doing voice work on the Aardman rat-based animation Flushed Away – out on 1st December – and the animated Shakespeare adaptation Gnomeo and Juliet (due 2008), as well as in the flesh alongside Jude Law, Cameron Diaz, Rufus Sewell and Jack Black in The Holiday, due on 8th December this year.

Next up will be The Holiday, where Law’s King’s Men co-star Kate Winslett plays an unluck-in-love woman who does a house-swap with an equally unfortunate woman, played by Cameron Diaz, in an attempt to turn her life around. Law plays one of the bits of male eye-candy, alongside Rufus Sewell and, somewhat implausibly, scruffy tubster Jack Black.

After a small role in cult Chinese director Wong Kar-Wai’s American road trip movie My Blueberry Nights, hopefully due out in the UK sometime late next year, Law’s most promising – and at the same time most worrying – upcoming project is Sleuth. Starring alongside Michael Caine – who seems to have forgiven Law for destroying his classic character Alfie in the abysmal 2004 remake – this is yet another remake of a British classic, the 1972 flick of the same name in which the younger Caine entered a battle of wits with Laurence Olivier over a marital infidelity. We can but hope that yet more cinematic memories aren’t soiled in the process…

In terms of film work, Penn has only one acting project in the pipeline. Due out in 2008, In Search of Captain Zero will see him play a surfer and former drug-runner who heads off on a road-trip through Central America to find a long-lost buddy with whom to share his dream of an “endless summer”. Could be a return to Penn’s breakout stoner role in the 80s classic Fast Times at Ridgemount High, but with the Central American setting and Penn’s involvement, it’s pretty much guaranteed there’s going to be some critique of US policy in the region.

Penn is currently trying out his skills behind the camera again with Into the Wild, a self-penned adaptation of a 1997 book based on a true story about a university who suddenly gave up all his possessions, hitchhiked to Alaska and lived in a school bus in the forbidding wilderness. He’s got some decent talent on board, with Lords of Dogtown star Emile Hirsch in the lead role and the likes of Vince Vaughn and Catherine Keener in support. Could be worth keeping an eye on.

The one he’ll be most keen to see do well is Slipstream – largely because not only does he star, but also wrote and directed this surreal psychological exploration of a screenwriter (played by Christian Slater) who starts becoming unable to distinguish between fact and fiction. No release date has yet been set, but then again, it is still in post-production.
Next up, Hopkins looks to be moving back to his most commercially successful role as serial killer Hannibal Lecter. Only it seems that copyright has prevented the producers of Fracture from using that name, so instead Hopkins will be known as the altogether less sinister-sounding Ted, a psycho hounding a young assistant DA. Again, a UK release date has yet to be set, though it is out in the States in the Spring. Another familiar role will be in the recently-announced Harry and the Butler, where Hopkins will – following his acclaimed role in 1993’s The Remains of the Day – play a butler, this time hired by an aging blues man, to be played by Morgan Freeman.

Most promising of all, however, the Welsh national treasure will be cropping up as the beseiged King Hrothgar in Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis’s much-anticipated cinematic adaptation of the ancient epic poem Beowulf. With Ray Winstone in the title role and supported by the likes of John Malkovich, Robin Wright Penn, Crispin Glover and Angelina Jolie, it looks all set to be one of the biggest films of Christmas 2007.

Neither Russell Crowe nor his Gladiator director Ridley Scott are known for their comic touch, so this airy feel-good movie marks something of a departure for them both.

Crowe stars as Max, a city trader who inherits a vineyard in Provence from his Uncle Henry (Albert Finney, confined to flashbacks). Max hopes to sell it on quickly but his arrival in the French countryside causes him to reassess his life, particularly after a meeting with a lovely but cynical local café owner (Marion Cotillard).

Adapted from Peter Mayle’s novel, this escapist fantasy proves amiably diverting and gives Crowe a rare chance to test his comic mettle. His slapstick antics and French-baiting don’t always convince, but he still manages to produce a performance that’s delightfully good-natured.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 117mins

Review by Jamie Russell

Still, for his next three films he’s back on more familiar territory. First is Tenderness, for Swimfan director Jon Polson, where the burly Aussie will play a detective trying to work out if a violent teenager murdered his family – all highly topical in these days of ASBOs and hoodies, although I somehow doubt it’ll be set on the mean streets of Slough.

Then will come the remake of the 1957 Western 3:10 to Yuma, with Crowe taking on the Glenn Ford role of an outlaw betrayed by his gang, with Christian Bale now confirmed as the rancher forced to help him out of trouble. Fleshing out the cast are the likes of Peter Fonda and Gretchen Mol and, with Walk the Line director James Mangold overseeing things from behind the camera, it should be one to look forward to when it comes out towards the end of 2007.

Finally, filming has just started in New York for Crowe and A Good Year director Ridley Scott’s next project, American Gangster. Crowe will be up against Denzel Washington in this 1970s-set crime thriller which, so far, sounds a lot more promising than their most recent film to hit the box office…

Love blooms between unlikely dance partners in this teen romance from choreographer-turned-director Anne Fletcher, but the moves are achingly predictable. Co-writer Duane Adler lazily reworks his 2000 film Save the Last Dance here, with Jenna Dewan (Take The Lead) playing a privileged ballet dancer opposite Channing Tatum (She’s The Man) as a hip-hopping petty criminal.

You’re guaranteed to always be ten steps ahead of the plot, even in the closing scenes when the story takes a clumsy swerve into Boyz N the Hood territory. Despite the gunplay, Fletcher is unable to bring any tension to the mix, and the same goes for the leading couple. Dewan and Tatum may be full of energy on the dance floor, but their intimate scenes together are awkward and stiff.

Radio Times rating:

**

UK cinema certificate PG
Running time 103mins

Review by Stella Papamichael

Director Sofia Coppola’s modernist take on the life of the infamous 18th-century monarch who said “let them eat cake” plays like an extended 1980s pop video.

Although based on Antonia Fraser’s respected biography, hard fact gives way to a stylised portrait of the naive 14-year-old Austrian princess (a coquettish Kirsten Dunst) as she heads to Versailles to marry the shy Dauphin (a blank Jason Schwartzman). The seven years it took before the consummation of her marriage meant navigating ruthless court protocol, manners and diplomacy, and it’s the pressures of privilege that interest Coppola more than any revolutionary incident.

Historical authenticity is undercut further by bursts of anachronistic pop music (including a masked rave to Siouxsie and the Banshees’s Hong Kong Garden). The film is ravishing to look at, thanks to the production team’s unprecedented access to Versailles, but its frothy charm eventually wears thin.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 12A
Running time 122mins

Review by Alan Jones

This would mark a welcome re-teaming of the actor and director following their successful partnership on Anderson’s breakout 1998 flick Rushmore. Whether other Anderson favourites Bill Murray and Owen Wilson will also appear is unclear, but The Life Aquatic and The Royal Tennenbaums co-star Angelica Houston is also in talks.

We can still expect to see her on our screens again, however, with her return as Mary-Jane Watson in Spider-Man 3, due to hit our screens early in May next year. Whether she will appear in any subsequent sequels remains unclear, as does the status of the as-yet untitled project in which she was set to star about Marla Ruzicka, a relief worker who advocated for Iraqis and Afghanis in the wake of the recent US-led invasions who was killed by a car bomb in Baghdad last year at the age of 28.

Also in the pipeline for Coogan is a feature-length movie based around his Alan Partridge character, Alan Partridge: The Movie, although the production is currently on hold. Meanwhile, he will be appearing in the Ben Stiller vehicle Night at the Museum alongside the likes of Robin Williams, Owen Wilson, Mickey Rooney, Dick Van Dyke and Ricky Gervais – due to hit our screens on Boxing Day.

Coogan will also appear in a cameo role in Hot Fuzz – the British police comedy from the team behind cult favourite Shawn of the Dead – and is currently attached in the Roger Moore role alongside Ben Stiller in a movie version of 60s TV classic The Persuaders.

This CGI cartoon crosses the thematic conceits of The Lion King with the skewed world presented in Gary Larson’s Far Side cartoons, where animals stand up and talk whenever humans aren’t looking.

Kevin James voices fun-loving cow Otis, who must face up to his manly responsibility when his father (Sam Elliott, who does a mean Johnny Cash impression at one point) is killed by coyotes. Writer/director Steve Oedekerk, better known for his live-action films Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls and Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, brings a strong cinematic sensibility to the proceedings, and Barnyard brims with often laugh-out-loud sight gags and one-liners.

Younger children may be a little disturbed by the violence and the movie’s dark undertones, while the more literal-minded will just feel confused by the film’s muddled biology: all the cows, male and female alike, have udders.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate PG
Running time 89mins

Review by Leslie Felperin

Most promising, from advance buzz at least, is likely Dream Girls, due out in the UK at the start of February 2007, where Glover will appear alongside Afro-American Hollywood bigwigs Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy and pop princess Beyonce Knowles, set around a ficitional 1960s black female three-piece singing group based heavily on Diana Ross and the Supremes. The stage version has been running since 1981 – and it’s just possible that Dream Girls could immitate Chicago‘s successful transition to the big screen.

Glover has also got a role in the next film from Michel “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” Gondry, the Jack Black-starring Be Kind Rewind, following the travails of two movie store clerks who accidentally wipe their entire stock, and so have to recreate famous flicks for their most loyal customer. It could be genius, it could be nonsense. hard to say this early.

He will also crop up in the Marky Mark Wahlberg-starring actioner Shooter for King Arthur director Antoine Fuqua (due May 2007 in the UK), with Glover playing the lengthily-named Colonel Isaac Fitzsimmons Johnson. That is almost certain to be mindless nonsense, but could nonetheless make a packet from those of us who like our action flicks big and mindless…

Her next project is the Tim Allen “comedy” Zoom, where Allen shamelessly rips off last year’s mediocre Sky High as an ageing superhero teaching a group of kids how to take over his mantle. But ignore the plagiarism – the worst crime is the utter lack of any laughs. How long until Jennifer Aniston, with her string of so-so romantic comedies, is the only Friend with anything resembling a Hollywood career – and so how long until the increasingly inevitable reunion special?