21 Grams
Drama/US, Mexico/English (Japanese subtitles)/125mins
Starring: Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Naomi Watts
Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Focus Films

21 Grams is the first English language film by excessively talented Mexican Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. A fatal car accident connects three strangers, the wife of the victim, the transplant recipient of his heart and the driver of the car. We learn that the accident is not the only connecting thread: they are all fragile and troubled people, all burdened by addictions and lack of meaning in life. The film is shot in a non-chronological, cut up kind of way that makes for challenging viewing, but is nonetheless gripping.

The Day after Tomorrow
Disaster/US/English (Japanese subtitles)/124mins
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum
Director: Roland Emerich
20th Century Fox

It is the end of the world as we know it. Humanity has finally broken the only planet it has. Short-sighted governments fail to heed the warnings of earnest boffins and now the sky is falling. Giant storms over the northern hemisphere drag super-cooled air from the troposphere to create a new ice age and lots of snowmen. Meanwhile, climatologist Dennis Quaid takes time out from knowing everything to walk across snowy America to rescue his son from ice-bound New York. Gripping stuff as a disaster movie, but misrepresents the equally scary consequences of global warming.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Fantasy/US, UK/English (Japanese subtitles)/136mins
Starring: Daniel Radclifffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson
Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Warner Bros.

Harry and his chums are back with more fun and magical capers. Sirius Black, implicated in the deaths of Harry’s parents has escaped from the dreaded Azkaban prison and may be headed for Hogwarts to finish the gruesome task of ridding the world of Potters. Scary soul sucking prison guards or Dementors ring the school. Harry is of course not easily intimidated and with Ron and Hermione set about comprehensively upsetting the baddies’ plans. Neat plot tricks involving rearranging time and some spot on acting deliver what we expect from these films, but now the vision darkens …

Secondhand Lions
Drama/US/English (Japanese subtitles)/107mins
Starring: Michael Caine, Robert Duvall, Haley Joel Osment
New Line Cinema

Walter has the funkiest uncles ever. They sit on their Texas porch like two articles of American gothic, take potshots at unwanted visitors, spin fabulous tales of adventure and riches, and keep a secondhand circus lion. The young lad Walter is dumped on this crusty pair for the summer while mum is improving her life in Las Vegas with her new beau. Actually she is convinced that the two old men are sitting on a fortune and she wants to know where it is. The film is steeped in whimsy and sentimentality and familiar home-spun themes.

Spider-Man 2
SF, action/US/English (Japanese subtitles)/127mins
Starring: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Alfred Molina
Director: Sam Raimi
Sony Movies

Spidey’s back! And no need for sequel-phobia, because this film delivers. There is no need for laborious setting up in Spider-Man 2, that’s all out of the way in the first flick, so it’s straight into the action. This time the wannabe nemesis is the multi-tentacled Otto Octavius, aka Doc Ock whose megalomania will destroy New York. And he might succeed because Spidey is not even sure if he wants to be Spidey any more, so who will save the day? Darker and pacier than the first film, and with more plot and character. A film to get caught up in.

Lost in Translation
Comedy drama/US/English (Japanese subtitles)/105mins
Starring: Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Giovanni Ribisi
Director: Sofia Coppola
Focus Features

Bill Murray is an aging actor who agrees to appear in some Japanese whisky commercials more for the chance to get away from the wife as for the money. There he bumps into young newlywed Scarlett Johansson whose workaholic husband has left on her on her todd and they strike up a friendship: he middle-aged and jaded, she young and just learning what jaded is. Bitter-sweet and wise dialogue, exceptional acting, no sentimentality and more heart and compassion than is decent in a modern film. Oh, and possibly Murray’s best performance ever.

Calendar Girls
Comedy/UK/English (Japanese subtitles)/108mins
Starring: Helen Mirren, Julie Walters, John Alderton
Director: Nigel Cole
Touchstone Pictures

You know all about this British comedy already: it is based on the true story of those quaint middle-class, middle-aged ladies from the Women’s Institute who decide to make a nudy calendar to raise money for charity. Of course in the photos, all the naughty bits are well covered by strategic still life arrangements, but the calendar sold big time and made over a million quid for charity. Here is the story retold with some embellishments and lots of zest and laughs. A film designed for Julie Walters and Helen Mirren who make it an international must-see.

Veronica Guerin
True story/Ireland, US/English (Japanese subtitles)/98mins
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Gerard McSorley, Ciaran Hinds
Director: Joel Schumacher
Touchstone Pictures

Veronica Guerin, the Irish investigative journalist, was shot dead by the people she was exposing in 1996. This is the film of the work that lead to her death. Guerin became a household name in Ireland in the mid-nineties for delving into the world of the big money world of the Mr Bigs who governed Dublin’s drug trade. The success of her work led to become a household name and, eventually, assassinated. This telling ads some real depth to the popular character, and gives a disturbing ambiguity to her undoubted commitment.

The Missing
Western/US/English (Japanese subtitles)/135mins
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Tommy Lee Jones, Evan Rachel Wood
Director: Ron Howard
Columbia Pictures

Single mother Cate Blanchett is doing OK in the Wild West, providing for her kids and bonking the hired help when Injuns up and steal one of her daughters. Nothing for it but to enlist her estranged father, who is conveniently trained in the way of the native, to rescue her child. She takes along her other daughter — C’mon darling, button your coat properly, we may need you in a gunfight. All the implausibilities piled on top of each other would reach the moon, or at least the nearest box office.

Standing in the Shadows of Motown
Documentary/US/English (Japanese subtitles)/108mins
Featuring: the Funk Brothers
Director: Paul Justman
Artisan Pictures

The sound of Motown’s heyday is down to the legendary singers and producers … not quite, according to this documentary that tells the tale of at least some of the backing musicians. Whatever the big name, the band in the studio was likely to be the same one: the Funk Brothers, unsung heroes of a seminal phase in music history, whose story if iconic of the use and dispose attitude of big corporations — all unceremoniously dumped in the label’s big move to LA in 1972. Musical inspiration and exploitation … and beware explodingmyths.

Review by Chris Page