Aboriginal puissance pitted against Anglo effeteness, for the umpteenth time, with Alan Bates, back from the Outback to Mother England and in possession of a magical death shout that has a wipeout radius comparable to that of an atom bomb, representing the threat to English gentility. Jerzy Skolimowski's image of …

Dilapidated mansion in the bayou. Walls without mirrors. A secret room in the attic. Strange hoodoo rites. Long-ago deaths by violence. It's all there but the magic. Southern Gothic hysterics with no involvement. Kate Hudson, Gena Rowlands, John Hurt, Peter Sarsgaard; directed by Iain Softley.

An intricate condensation of John le Carré’s novel, previously a BBC sprawler starring Alec Guinness. As the very dry, very British spy master Smiley, Gary Oldman is nearly at Sir Alec’s level. Tomas Alfredson’s film is all micro-plot observation, with expert details that link, fester, and spin webs. Sad, brainy, …

British-accented Disney computer cartoon, concerned with the role of carrier pigeons in World War II, a factual basis abnormal for computer cartoons. It assumes a degree of grounding in the history, and the cinema, of the Battle of Britain and the French Resistance. In other words, parents and grandparents may …

Comic-book adaptation, or "graphic-novel" adaptation, about an avenging superhero hidden behind the stiff grin of a Guy Fawkes mask: a kind of Frankensteinian composite pieced together of Zorro (the black hat and cape, the revolutionary politics, the carving of his initial on his handiwork), Blade (the adeptness with cutlery, the …

Paul Cox undertakes, so to speak, to exhume Vincent van Gogh through his letters to his brother Theo, his artwork, the places on earth he haunted, and some costume-drama re-creations of the period. Fitfully successful though this is, the cinema may not be the happiest medium for it. There is …

Or "No Wonder the British Empire Folded," based on a true murder case (set in Kenya during the Second World War) that's a bit like Somerset Maugham crossed with a weekly gossip tabloid. The decadence ("You wouldn't by any chance have a chocolate-covered lobster?"), corruption, moral rot, and whatnot, are …

Walter Hill has gone to considerable lengths to make Westerns, putting them in modern dress (Extreme Prejudice) and even in the garb of other genres entirely (The Driver, The Warriors, Streets of Fire, Trespass), but in a sense he has never prior to this one gone to greater lengths. Never, …