Speed Racer
	3:01pm Wed 7 May 08
	Go, Speed Racer, Go!" Based on the Japanese animated series, Speed Racer signals the return of Andy and Larry Wachowski, the publicity-shy brothers who pioneered 'bullet time' in The Matrix trilogy.

	Honeydripper, Un Secret and I Served the King of England
	2:58pm Wed 7 May 08
	Screen history is pocked with African-American musicals showcasing stars who were rarely allowed to exhibit their talents in mainstream pictures. Indeed, on the rare occasions when the likes of Lena Horne, Bill Bojangles' Robinson or the Nicholas Brothers were accorded guest slots in prestigious studio pictures, their numbers were invariably cut from prints destined for the Deep South for fear of offending supremacist audiences.

The Iron Man

5:37pm Wednesday 30th April 2008

The tug-of-war between altruism and materialism is at the heart of Iron Man, Jon Favreau's marvellous nuts and bolts realisation of the red and gold armoured Marvel Comics superhero, writes Damon Smith. Following the lead of the Spider-Man and X-Men franchises, Favreau devotes the majority of the opening hour to the characters. He fleshes out their personalities, insecurities and the underlying tensions (attraction, jealousy, irritation) which light the fuse on an action-oriented second half, awash with spectacular visual effects.

	The Oxford Murders
	5:33pm Wed 30 Apr 08
	John Hurt, the star of The Oxford Murders, recalled at its premiere in the city last week that he had last filmed here nearly 30 years ago on Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate. The vast sums lavished on this legendarily over-budget movie contrast sharply with the parsimony evidently practised over the new and rather disappointing film from Spanish director Álex de la Iglesia. Cimino spent weeks transforming Mansfield College into 1870s Harvard - thousands of leaves were stuck on trees to give the appearance of high summer - for a scene that lasted two minutes; de la Inglesia spent less than a week in Oxford (and infinitely tinier sums) on the making of a whole film.

Joy Division and Tovarisch I Am Not Dead

5:30pm Wednesday 30th April 2008

The Manchester music scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s has already been explored in Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People and Anton Corbijn's Control. But, for all the knowing irony of the former's profile of Factory Records boss Anthony Wilson and the grim melodrama of the latter's study of troubled singer Ian Curtis, the feeling lingered that the full story had yet to be told. However, director Grant Gee and screenwriter Jon Savage have gone a long way to putting the record straight in the documentary, Joy Division.

Persepolis and Death Note

9:26am Thursday 24th April 2008

Ollie Johnston died last week. He was one of the 'Nine Old Men' who helped Walt Disney establish an animation empire. Starting out on Mickey Mouse shorts, he was a member of the team that produced the studio's first feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in 1937. On its release, this landmark picture was known as "Disney's folly", as few thought that audiences would have the stamina for a full-length cartoon. However, the film was a triumph and Johnston went on to create key sequences in such enduring favourites as Pinocchio (1940), Bambi (1942), Cinderella (1950), Mary Poppins (1965) and The Jungle Book (1967).

	Three and Out
	9:22am Thu 24 Apr 08
	Screenwriters Steve Lewis and Tony Owen evidently disagree, contriving a comedy of errors about a beleaguered London Tube driver who can earn a sizeable compensation package if he can persuade someone to leap in front of his train. Even the most skilled scribes would struggle to navigate the thorny and sensitive moral dilemmas at heart of Three And Out and, regrettably, Lewis and Owen aren't up to thetask, clumsily melding a farcical opening 30 minutes with the heart-rending emotions of the downbeat finale. It's no wonder that rail union Aslef protested the premiere.

	Street Kings and In Bruges
	3:34pm Tue 15 Apr 08
	Writer-director David Ayer has certainly found his groove - gritty crime thrillers about morally tainted cops who bend the law to compensate for an imperfect legal system - but he's in danger of getting stuck in it. Having previously penned screenplays for Training Day, Dark Blue and Harsh Times, making his debut behind the camera with the last film, Ayer returns to the crime-infected streets of Los Angeles with Street Kings, a brutal journey into the city's underbelly.

Private Property, Hope, Protégé, Botched and Captain Eager and the Mark of Voth

3:29pm Tuesday 15th April 2008

Joachim Lafosse's Private Property is a masterly study of a Belgian family that is simultaneously held together and rent asunder by its dyfunctionality. Having used her twins against husband Patrick Descamps during their messy divorce, the haughty Isabelle Huppert now finds them obstructing her fresh start with chef Kris Cuppens. But, for all the twentysomething siblings' infantilisation, Huppert is no more mature herself and her inability to sell their rambling country home and move on with her life becomes as infuriating as younger son Jérémie Renier's indolent insolence. Quibbling slightly, Renier's resentful brat a touch too boorish. But, otherwise, the performances are laudably naturalistic and there isn't a wasted word in the compact screenplay. However, the real power comes from Lafosse's studied use of static, Ozu-like camerawork, which gives each scene a tangible intensity that makes the climactic tracking shot all the more disconcerting.

	THE LAST MISTRESS, THE BANQUET, THE 39 STEPS
	10:13am Thu 10 Apr 08
	Catherine Breillat is one of France's most consistently controversial film-makers. However, she reins in her genius for provocation in The Last Mistress, a handsome adaptation of a novel by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly that ventured into the Dangerous Liaison territory of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. In the vein of Jacques Rivette's recent Don't Touch the Axe, this meticulous picture combines a period aesthetic with a contemporary acuity to provide fascinating insights into both human nature and French society now and in the 1830s.

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