Reviews

Superficially, Unbreakable is much like director M. Night Shyamalan's previous film, his breakthrough smash-hit The Sixth Sense. It stars Bruce Willis and another cute kid (Gladiator's Spencer Treat Clark), it's set in wintry Philadelphia and there's some strange things going on – with a twist at the end. Fortunately, that's where the similarities stop and a rather original, unsettling film begins.

The story opens with a train wreck, from which only one person survives. Miraculously, David Dunn (Willis) is completely unharmed. This is intercut with scenes of a young Elijah Price, who suffers from a genetic disorder which gives him extraordinarily brittle bones, a disease that earns him the nickname 'Mr Glass.' The grown up Elijah (Samuel L. Jackson with absurd hairdo) contacts Dunn and proposes that he is the exact opposite – someone who never breaks their bones, who never gets sick. Dunn dismisses him as a crackpot, but the idea sticks – he doesn't remember ever being ill and he discovers that he is much stronger than he thought possible. Price doesn't give up and reveals his full idea – that Dunn is a real-life comic-book hero with super powers, including a kind of extra-sensory evil-doer perception.

If this all sounds too far fetched, it is very well executed, despite the obvious flaws – surely he would have known he was that strong, that the ESP thing wasn't normal, surely his mother would have noticed that he was never ill. The idea of such extraordinary abilities being dulled and unnoticed in his mundane world is convincing, as is his family's reaction – his wife (Robin Wright Penn) does not believe it and his son (Clark) is in awe. As a normal man in bizarre circumstances, Willis is excellent, as is Jackson as the brooding comic-book collector. Ultimately, the ending is pleasingly low-key and the twist not as shocking or revelatory as in The Sixth Sense. Shyamalan creates an atmosphere that holds the attention and tells his story very well, even if he never quite manages to suspend the audience's disbelief.

In 1996, unconventional-looking actor Jon Favreau set out to make a film he had written with $250,000 director Doug Liman had access to and a cast comprising his similarly oddly-visaged actor buddies. The rest, as they say, is history. The shoot went brilliantly, Liman did a better job than anyone could have hoped and the film was very well received all over the world. Nearly five years on and people are still discovering it, watching it and loving it. Why is that? Why does Swingers deserve to become an all-time classic?

For starters, the characters are fantastic. All exaggerated versions of the actors who play them, they instantly ring a bell – you know people just like them, you even identify with one or two. Favreau plays Mike, a stand-up comic struggling to find work and get over his girlfriend. He's under-confident, but his friends know he's money. His best friend, Trent (Vince Vaughn), is the ûber-ladies' man – so confident it's like the Jedi mind s***. The boy can talk, what can I say? There's Sue (Patrick Van Horn), a wannabe bad dude, Rob (Ron Livingston), who's just moved out to L.A. and Charles (Alex Desert), the coolest cat west of New Orleans.

The story, if you can call it that, follows Trent's attempts to get Mikey back in the game. They start by going to Las Vegas to find some beautiful baby cocktail waitresses. This serves to introduce us to the two central characters and their world- view, which is fine. It gets better when they go back to L.A. and hang out, playing golf and Sega hockey, partying and going to bars and clubs. It's all very sharply observed, with some great little homages to Tarantino and Scorsese. It paints a great picture of a very cool town, with the dialogue just drawing you in. Let Swingers into your life – watch it a few times with your best mates and I guarantee you'll love it forever. Or your money back.

Touted as one of the films of the decade by critics across the USA, directed by acclaimed (and now Oscar winning) theatre director Sam Mendes (who did 'The Blue Room' with Nicole Kidman) and with Oscar-winning cinematographer Conrad Hall ('Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid') on board, 'American Beauty' was always going to be something special.

Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) is a very bored suburban husband. His job sucks, his wife (Annette Bening) and daughter (Thora Birch) think he's a joke. He is sedated, impotent, powerless to change his joyless life. Then he finds a hero – the weird kid next door. Eighteen-year-old Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley) films things with his video camera, deals high-quality dope and lies to his bizarre parents. He has everything Lester wants - most of all, he is free. He inspires Lester to spectacularly quit his job and work at a burger bar instead. He buys a new car, smokes hash, works out and listens to some superb music. He develops a crush on his daughter's best friend (Mena Suvari), who comes to represent all the beauty in the world that he is missing out on.

This film is truly remarkable. Defying classification by genre, it is a drama, a social commentary, a whodunnit thriller, a romance, a philosophical discursion on life, but most of all it is a comedy. The humour ranges from pitch-black to American Pie style, but always produces laughs. Plot twists are thrown up every two minutes – it is incredible how it can pack in so much material, while retaining a tight focus on Lester and his increasing freedom. Breathtaking images of rose petals and white steam contrast sharply with the staid suburban backdrop, showing Lester's innermost thoughts. The writing (by Alan Ball, who deservedly won an Oscar for this) is razor-sharp and, when combined with awe-inspiring performances by every member of the cast (particularly Spacey – this is his best yet, which is saying a great deal), produces some of the most memorable dialogue of the decade.

As we enter a new Millenium, this is a truly great exploration of modern life. Everyone should see this – it will give you a fresh perspective on movies and quite possible on life as well.

Based on a true story (words that usually strike fear into the hearts of critics and audiences alike), Boys Don't Cry is the tale of Brandon Teena (Hilary Swank), a young man from the tiny town of Lincoln, Nebraska, who is, in fact, a woman. Born Teena Brandon and in and out of trouble with the law his whole life, Brandon had a serious problem with his sexual identity, which led to a life on the run from irate and confused people. The girls he seduced described him as the best boyfriend they ever had, and this film, the result of extensive research by director and co-writer Kimberley Pierce, tells his story.

Kicked out by his brother, Brandon goes on a drinking binge and ends up going off into the night with the kind-hearted Candace (Alicia Goranson) and her big brother John (Peter Sarsgaard). He ends up staying with them and their friends in the backwater of Falls City. There he falls for a depressed local girl, Lana (Chloë Sevigny), who is similarly enchanted by Brandon's dreams and romantic nature. Their innocent love affair is beautifully drawn against the endless skies and ramshackle houses of the American Mid-West, with Pierce's hypnotic time-lapse photography capturing perfectly the lack of a sense of time passing. Inevitably, though, with the law and Lana's family getting closer to Brandon's true identity, events spiral towards a horrible, harrowing conclusion.

Pierce has undoubtedly created something exceptional here. Her camera never turns away from the terrible events it witnesses and this makes the touching central relationship even more affecting. The entire cast are brilliant, portraying the bored frustration of small town teenagers with intense commitment. It is Swank and Sevigny that stand out, though, their characters giving warmth and beauty to a cold, hard landscape.

Martin Scorsese returned to the mean streets of New York that he paced with such flair in the Seventies with this film, an adaptation (by long-time collaborator Paul Schrader) of a semi-autobiographical novel by Joe Connolly. Nicolas Cage plays Frank Pierce, an ambulance driver in Hell's Kitchen (this is the early ‘90s), close to nervous breakdown and haunted by the ghosts of dead patients.

Bringing Out the Dead charts 56 hours in Frank's life as he speeds through the darkened streets of America's greatest metropolis. We see his increasing desperation at not being able to save people's lives and not being able to block it all out any more. As always, Scorsese emphasises this morass of emotion with massive visual flair – New York is speeded up, blurred and skewed – but this is not the same city as in 'Taxi Driver' and the director knows it. All his love for the city and his anger at what it did to the young contrasted so violently in that film that it brought forth real genius in Scorsese's direction. The genius is still there, but after over two decades the city is not any better, and so the love and anger have both subsided and enmeshed, creating an all-enveloping sadness embodied in the darkness draped over the run-down buildings.

Frank, assisted by John Goodman's slowly ambitious optimism, Ving Rhames's faith in God and women and Tom Sizemore's sheer lunacy, slowly begins to come out of his depression. His boss refuses to fire him and he strikes up a friendship with a lonely woman (Patricia Arquette, Cage's real-life wife when this was filmed) whose father is in a coma. Yet he cannot shake the ghost of a homeless girl who died in his arms and desperately searches for release from her. Cage perfectly captures Frank's desperation and terrified wonder at his hallucinations. Giving the sort of performance that won him an Oscar in 'Leaving Las Vegas', he eschews his usual histrionics without losing any intensity. Arquette, too, is subtle but effective, while the rest of the cast have a field day – Rhames, in particular, is superb.

While this may not be Scorsese at the top of his form, this is a fine, intelligent film, at once a eulogy for the lost innocence of New York and a prayer of hope for its salvation. I can only wish all films were this enthralling.

The ever-so-slightly odd director Tim Burton and his favourite actor, the similarly bizarre Johnny Depp, returned to the silver screen in this retelling of Washington Irving's literary classic.

Depp plays Constable Ichabod Crane, a methodical detective from New York. He is sent to the backwater of Sleepy Hollow in upstate N.Y. in the year 1799, in order to investigate a series of decapitations. When the culprit turns out to be the headless ghost of an evil mercenary (Christopher Walken with head, Ray ‘Darth Maul' Park without) Crane is forced to re-evaluate his scientific principles. His detective skills are still relevant as a pattern to the supernatural murders emerges with a conspiracy not far behind. In the meantime, Crane falls for local beauty Kristina (Christina Ricci), daughter of the wealthy Baltus Van Tassel (Michael Gambon).

Johnny Depp turns in a predictably idiosyncratic performance as the squeamish Crane, giving him an infectious enthusiasm and a silly accent. The rest of the cast camp it up, as you would expect – it is hardly stretching for the likes of Ian McDiarmid or Miranda Richardson. Christina Ricci has a strange, elfin quality that Burton obviously admires, but she seems out of place – too old to be playing Wednesday Addams again, perhaps.

As you might expect from a Tim Burton film, style abounds. Burton invests the town of Sleepy Hollow with a low-key gothic look that adds immeasurably to the creepy appeal of the film. For this is not really a horror film, despite the obvious Hammer influences (Christopher Lee has a cameo as Crane's superior). The gory beheadings and action sequences feel out of place with the tone of the rest of the film, especially Crane's dreams. Rather, this is an eerie mystery with more than a touch of compassion and humour in which the subject matter of the plot does not fit particularly well. Well worth seeing, this nonetheless feels as though the director and the story are wrong for each other.

Mike Leigh would not be the first name that springs to mind when presented with a biopic of Gilbert and Sullivan. Possibly Anthony Minghella, or maybe Ang Lee, but never a director only known for gritty, unremittingly depressing working-class drama. However, in 'Topsy-Turvy', Leigh has not only directed, but written, a fine piece of period comedy-drama.

Leigh, it transpires, has always loved Gilbert and Sullivan and the love shows in his highly polished script. It not only exploits the music and words of the great nineteenth-century operettists but retains a feeling for the wit of their work throughout. W.S. Gilbert (Jim Broadbent) is more than annoyed at suggestions that he is becoming unoriginal and Arthur Sullivan (Allan Corduner) rather tired with working with him. He wants to produce great music and is uninspired by Gilbert's latest libretto.

A chance visit to an exhibition of Japanese customs and produce stimulates Gilbert to write 'The Mikado', one of his most witty works (and, it seems, Leigh's favourite). After a lengthy vacation, Sullivan is willing to write the accompanying music and rehearsals begin. This is where Leigh's brilliance as both writer and director shines through, creating enormously entertaining and dramatic scenes while underlining the partners' unceasing perfectionism.

A cast full of Leigh regulars, headed by the dreaming Corduner and wonderfully cantankerous Broadbent, are marvellous, with Timothy Spall and Kevin McKidd stealing the show as a pair of complete 'luvvy' actors. It is Shirley Henderson (also excellent in Michael Winterbottom's 'Wonderland') who gives the film a real emotional centre, however, as a widowed actress slowly turning to drink. Leigh's past, it seems, has not entirely been left behind.

When Bret Easton Ellis's novel American Psycho was first published in 1991, it was described as misogynistic and sadistic by the humourless idiots who decide these things, so it comes as something of a surprise to find it adapted to the screen by two women. It centres around Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), a Wall Street mergers and acquisitions man, who takes narcissism to levels even Robbie Williams couldn't imagine and kills people, mainly women, in his spare time.

Bateman simply has no soul, no real identity. He merely wishes to fit in and please himself – not be happy, he has no concept of it. Such a blank slate inevitably reflects its surroundings. Unfortunately, these are the 1980s and Bateman is at the top of the greedy tree. He obsesses about facial cleansing, Armani suits and business cards. After he is laughed at when asking for a table at an exclusive restaurant at the last minute, he lashes out at a helpless homeless man. A flood gate seems to have been opened in his psyche and he meticuluosly and savagely kills a fellow broker who believes he is someone else. The women follow, but we don't see them, we see Bateman's normal everyday life continue unaffected. A policeman (Willem Dafoe) arrives to investigate the disappearance of the broker, but he doesn't come back. In the end, Bateman, trying harder and harder to get caught, can take it no more, but his society will not let him take credit, will not grant him an identity.

Bale is utterly flawless as Bateman, exuding a cool that is superhuman. Chloë Sevigny is excellent as his dim but human secretary and Defoe fills the screen as the cop eerily similar to Bateman. As a satire of the awful '80s this is great stuff (Whitney Houston seriously deserved being taken down a peg or two), humorous and observant. You cannot help but feel, though, that the decade doesn't really merit such an intellectual mauling; the gentle humour of The Wedding Singer, for instance, was sufficient.

After two years of intense speculation over plot, cast and budget, James Bond returned, and more spectacular than ever. With a fifteen minute opening sequence, including a boat chase that reputedly cost more than £1 million per minute to make, locations stretching across Europe and Asia and innumerable huge set pieces, The World is Not Enough is certainly not going about the business of being the nineteenth Bond film in a half-assed way.

With the Cold War long since gone, Nineties Bond films have struggled to come up with good reasons for the superspy to leave the comfort of his ever-occupied double bed. Last time out, in the generally poor 'Tomorrow Never Dies', Pierce Brosnan was fighting a power-crazed media mogul, this time he's trying to protect the West's oil supplies from insane and superhuman ex-KGB agent Renard (Robert Carlyle). When a rich industrialist and friend of M's is killed, Bond is sent to protect his daughter, Elektra King (Sophie Marceau). The plot, as always, is ridiculous, but then you don't expect a great deal, especially when it gives director Michael Apted an excuse to have such an enormous amount of fun.

Several Bond regulars return, including Judi Dench as M, with an expanded role not really adding much to the film and Samantha Bond excellent as Moneypenny. Desmond Llewelyn, who sadly died earlier this year, returned for his seventeenth Bond film as Q and now with John Cleese as an assistant. Robbie Coltrane reprises his 'GoldenEye' role as the treacherous Valentin Zukovsky with Drum'n'Bass guru Goldie as his henchman.

All the components are present – the girls, the gags, the gadgets. The jokes have been somewhat upgraded – less of the corny puns (Brosnan was never as good at them as Roger Moore anyway) and more proper jokes that make you laugh rather than wince. The final gag is one exception – a pun so obvious you can see it coming an hour beforehand. Cleese, also, is a total failure in this respect – his brand of slapstick is entirely inappropriate.

At the end of the day, the bad guy is often the deciding factor in whether a Bond film works or not, and Carlyle delivers par excellence. Whereas Jonathan Pryce was effeminate and rather dull in the last outing, Carlyle is both menacing and melancholy, knowing he will soon die from a bullet in his head that means he cannot feel pain. Much has been made of Bond's genesis under Brosnan into a caring man of the Nineties, but here he is just as dispassionately cool as he was when Timothy Dalton wore the famous tux. It is just that his women have minds of their own without being overly macho – he can use them and cheat on them, but now they get over it. His only concession to weakness is a dislocated shoulder obtained falling about 100 feet onto the Millenium Dome. 'The World is Not Enough' is not really a development in the Bond franchise, but it is a very slick addition to the series and a great improvement over the lacklustre 'Tomorrow Never Dies'.

In this eagerly awaited film from 'The English Patient' director Anthony Minghella, Matt Damon plays a young man with a remarkable talent for imitating people in every way. Set in 1950s Italy and following the set of privileged young Americans who despise their daddies' money, it is based on a novel, written in the fifties, by Patricia Highsmith.

Tom Ripley (Damon) is sent by a wealthy shipping magnate to bring back his son, the fickle and glamorous Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) from the south of Italy. Ripley quickly becomes flavour of the month with Dickie and his girlfriend Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow), thanks to his adopted love of jazz and aptitude for saying the right thing.

As one might expect, things take a distinctly unpleasant turn for the worse when Dickie gets bored of Ripley's company. To explain any more of the plot would be to ruin a good thriller, but the plot is not nearly as enthralling as the direction, or, indeed, the central performances. Damon is excellent as the mysterious Ripley and Paltrow is not really stretched, as the confused and emotional Marge, but Law is the real star here – his vain and capricious Dickie is a wonderful study of privilege and the arrogance it breeds, and fully deserving of an Oscar nomination.

Minghella showed his immense talent in his last project and continues to do so here. Similarly ambitious cinematic technique is utilised to great effect, immersing us in Ripley's stylish world full of illusion, deception and pain. The problem with this is that the viewer is left with the feeling that the story did not quite merit such lavish treatment. Minghella, of Italian stock himself, is clearly enamoured with the story and its troubled protagonist, but we never really feel the same affinity. The central character, his feelings and relationships, are never entirely convincing. This is a well-plotted thriller, and expertly crafted, but the source material is not in the same league as the Booker-prize winning The English Patient, and it shows in the finished product.

A warm-hearted tale of wartime New England originally written in the mid-Eighties, the rather darker themes of abortion and betrayed loyalties runs through this film. Writer John Irving recently defended his novel, saying that it took fourteen years for his screenplay translation (which won him an Oscar earlier this year) to reach the screen not because of the subject matter but because of the lack of a suitable director.

Fortunately, the talented Swedish director Lasse Halström, who was directing such gems as 'ABBA: The Movie' around the time Irving was writing the story, but later went onto 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape', took the helm. He has done an excellent, unobtrusive job, setting this touching story of a Forties orphanage-cum-abortion clinic among some beautifully photographed Maine countryside.

Michael Caine, with an unusually subtle performance and a decent accent (both of which contributed to his recent Academy Award), plays Dr. Wilbur Larch, the liberal-minded head of St. Cloud orphanage. During the Thirties a young mother leaves a baby boy in his care, whom he names Homer Wells. Homer (promising young actor Tobey Maguire) is never taken away by prospective parents and so Dr. Larch trains him in the science of midwifery and, to his increasing moral objection, abortion. However, when a young couple (Paul Rudd and Charlize Theron) in need of Dr. Larch's services arrive, Homer decides to leave with them and make his way in the wide world.

Homer takes a job picking apples with a group of migrant workers led by the enigmatic Mr. Rose (Delroy Lindo). From here the plot thickens in surprising ways, ultimately heart-warming, but often edgy enough to ask important questions about their superficially staid society. With a glut of believable and moving performances from the leads, the film really benefits from an excellent supporting cast, especially the migrant workers and the orphans. Emotional, powerful and beautifully shot, The Cider House Rules is just the thing for a quiet Sunday evening.

Director Spike Jonze's first full-length feature is a work of demented genius. Jonze, whose previous work includes the video for Fat Boy Slim's Praise You and a small role in David Russell's 'Three Kings', has created something virtually unique: a film far too bizarre to ever get studio interest, but with main-stream stars and a world-wide release.

Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) is a brilliant but pretentious and egotistical puppeteer. His frumpy animal-obsessed wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz, looking plain – I told you this was weird) urges him to get a proper job, which he eventually does, sorting files on floor 7 ½ of an office building, where the ceiling is so low he is forced to crouch all the time. There he meets a very attractive woman (Catherine Keener) who isn't at all interested in him until he finds a magical portal into the mind of John Malkovich. She suggests charging $200 for fifteen minutes in the great man's head, after which the passenger is dumped onto the verge by the New Jersey turnpike.

To explain any more of the (increasingly odd) plot would only convince you not to watch this film. This would be a bad decision, as Jonze handles the idea (by Charlie Kaufman – arrest this man, he must be a danger to society) with a deftness that astounds. The ridiculous concept is only half of the film – the reactions to the supernatural are the real charm. The concept is not clouded by philosophical considerations of self, as Schwartz naively believes, but by love, jealousy and greed.

Of course, this turns on the central performances. Malkovich is wonderful as himself and adapts his performance brilliantly as the plot requires. Cusack bravely loses all attractive character traits to create Craig, a jealous impotent idiot with ideas above (and indeed, outside of) his head and Diaz is equally remarkable as the wacky Lotte. It is Catherine Keener however, who steals the film with a display of such massive selfishness and egotism that she fully deserved her recent Oscar nomination. These performances, and a host of cameos, some less than a second (spot Winona Ryder and Jennifer Aniston), really make a film that is in danger of being a little too weird. I have no idea how this got made, but thank goodness it did – it waves two fingers at Hollywood and runs off giggling.

Yes, it is intended for children. And yes, it is a sequel. But suspend your preconceptions for just over an hour and a half and you will witness one of the movies of the year, I kid you not. Woody, Buzz Lightyear and friends have returned and their exploits are even more imaginative and breathtakingly realised than in the first film.

Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks again) and Buzz (Tim Allen) are now good mates and so when the diminutive cowboy is toynapped by greedy collector Al McWhiggin (3rd Rock's Wayne Knight) Buzz and the rest of the toys – Mr Potato Head (now married), Rex, Hamm and Slinky Dog – are duty bound to rescue him.

Woody, meanwhile, has discovered that he was once the hero of an old children's TV show. He joins his old show-mates Jessie (Joan Cusack), an over-enthusiastic cowgirl, and Stinky Pete (Kelsey Grammer, better known as Frasier), a grouchy old prospector. If he leaves them their collection won't be complete and they'll be put back in storage instead of being put on display in Japan.

Far from being simplistic or patronising, Toy Story 2 is intelligently plotted, fast-moving and full of movie in-jokes to keep the older members of the audience entertained. The animation has been improved and the humans now look far more realistic. A whole host of beautiful effects for things like leaves, bubbles and dust add to the impression of painstaking care taken over the entire project. Far more impressive, though, is the level of characterisation in each and every toy. From the melancholy penguin with the broken squeaker to Woody's faithful steed, Bullseye, they are consistently funny and often quite moving.

Toy Story 2 is a triumph over standard ideas of sequels and children's films being less successful or engaging than more conventional blockbuster material. It is witty, emotional and brilliantly made with the highest attention to detail possible – witness the 'out-takes' during the credits. How many films will you be able to say that about this year?

In the 1950s, the Chinese invaded Tibet, killing one fifth of the six million inhabitants and destroying over 10,000 Buddhist monasteries. Today, Buddhism is strictly forbidden in Tibet and even owning a picture of the Dalai Lama is a crime. Consequently, many families send their children to monasteries-in-exile in India and Bhutan in order to receive a traditional Buddhist education. The Cup is set in such a monastery, at the time of last World Cup.

Orgyen (Jamyang Lodro) is a young monk who is obsessed with football. When he isn't pretending to be Ronaldo or discussing the World Cup in the middle of prayer, he is planning to see the next game in the local village without getting caught by Geko (Orgyen Tobgyal, Jamyang Lodro's father in real life), the father-figure disciplinarian of the monastery. With his friend Lodo (Neten Chokling), he quickly persuades new arrival Palden (Kunsang Nyima) to join them, while Geko and the Abbot (Lama Chonjor, real-life Abbot of Chokling Monastery, where The Cup was filmed) try to maintain discipline and fathom the rules of the game.

Directed by Khyentse Norbu, a first time feature director and important Buddhist figure himself, The Cup features an all-monk cast, none of whom had any acting experience prior to filming. Essentially a documentary about monastic life, The Cup nevertheless shows the realities of the Tibetans' political situation and combines serious issues with a more light-hearted style. It is genuinely witty in places and with great performances from Jamyang Lodro and Orgyen Tobgyal, always a pleasure to watch. The foothills of the Himalayas are beautifully photographed and the score is appropriately inobtrusive. On what is usually described as a 'shoestring budget' ('sandal-strap' might be more appropriate) Khyentse Norbu has created a lovely little film that deserves all the success it can get.

This is a supreme example of the lazy, unimaginative film-making that has given Hollywood a bad name over the last twenty years. Matthew Perry (he of Friends fame) is Oz, a dentist with a horrible wife (Rosanna Arquette, with a 'comedy' French accent). His world is turned upside down when Jimmy 'The Tulip' Tudeski (Bruce Willis), a famous hitman, moves in next door. You see what I mean? It's creaky already. Throw in some tedious plot about gangsters killing each other and the truly unlikely idea of Natasha Henstridge falling for Perry and what emerges is an over-long sub-Sopranos crime comedy-thriller with no thrills and no discernible jokes.

The problem is with Perry, really. He is rightly praised for his role in Friends, where he is both charming and genuinely funny. Unfortunately, this film uses all the least funny and least charming aspects of Chandler, namely, his slapstick shtick and gormless loser routines. As a stinging wit, he is very good - here, he is forced to play the straight man to Willis's grinning hitman and it just doesn't work. This is isn't just a bad film, but an unforgivable waste of talent and promise as well.

The city of London has featured in innumerable films - a vast, intensely varied metropolis, it has served as a vivid backdrop countless times. From the sun-drenched banks of the Thames in 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' to the gloomy squalor of Camden Town in 'Withnail & I' it is always an interesting setting for a story. But in 'Wonderland', directed by Michael Winterbottom ('Jude', 'Welcome to Sarajevo'), it almost gains a life of its own.

Superficially a story of the day-to-day lives of three sisters, Wonderland is more about the city and the millions of people who live in it than the troubled family the plot centres on. They are Nadia (Gina McKee), a single woman desperately in search of friendship and romance, Debbie (Shirley Henderson), a single mother with a young son (Peter Marfleet) and Molly (Molly Parker), a pregnant woman whose husband (John Simm) is having doubts.

The camera follows them (mostly Nadia) as they travel through the busy streets of the capital. It does not concentrate on just the characters, often lingering on faces and groups, giving the film a real-life edge. This is added to by the hand-held camera work and the slightly grainy quality of the image, which is as though a much larger picture has been magnified to concentrate on these people.

The stories themselves are uniformly (and depressingly) realistic, although they all end on a high note, leaving the viewer surprisingly upbeat. Winterbottom has a knack of coaxing great performances from good actors and does not fail here, with the quietly miserable couple of Kika Markham and Jack Shepherd as the sisters' parents standing out.

Wonderland will never break any box office records and is certainly not flawless, but it is an admirable film and it warms the cockles of this reviewer to see such worthy films still being made in Britain.

Taiwanese director Ang Lee, whose previous films include 'Sense and Sensibility' and 'The Ice Storm', turned to the American Civil War for his latest feature. Based on a novel by Daniel Woodrell, it follows the exploits of a group of Southern guerrillas, known as bushwhackers, as they fight their Northern equivalents, the jayhawkers in the backwater of Missouri.

As one might expect, there is plenty of visceral action, but the focus is on the tension that the war put on the young men who fought it - many of whom were fighting against their former neighbours and even family. Jake Roedel (Tobey Maguire) is such a man, or rather, boy, as he is only seventeen when the war reaches Missouri. He is the son of a German immigrant, but instead of following his countrymen and becoming a Unionist, he joins his lifelong friend Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet Ulrich) and rides with the bushwhackers. Despite a lack of acceptance because of his ancestry and an unwillingness to participate in the murder of unarmed Union men, he remains loyal to the cause. So does his friend Daniel Holt (Jeffrey Wright), a black slave freed by another bushwhacker and so fighting for the South.

Lee handles the subject with aplomb, never rushing the deep introspection that the plot demands in favour of action and this lends the film a sense of the reality of war - long periods of boredom and waiting interposed with occasional flashes of intensely terrifying fighting. The action is unglamorised and admirably candid, recognising that both sides committed a great number of atrocities.

The performances are superb, with Maguire and Wright both courageous and dignified. Up-and-coming Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers is particularly chilling as a cold-blooded killer, while Skeet Ulrich is enjoyably suave and arrogant. Lee never flinches from the reality of war, but his actors do an admirable job of showing the good that comes from it - the growth of friendship, the demonstration of courage and, on a wider scale, the emancipation of oppressed peoples. Ride With the Devil is a beautiful and deeply compassionate film that regularly shocks but always moves the audience.

Every inch a home-grown product, The Tichborne Claimant is a Victorian-set comedy-drama, based on a true story and featuring a whole host of British character actors. During the 1870s Sir Roger Tichborne, heir to the ninth largest estate in Britain, went missing, shipwrecked off Australia. Sure of his survival, his brother and manservant went to find him. When his brother died of alchohol abuse, the servant was stranded in Australia, the Tichborne family unwilling to pay for his return. This is where the story really begins. The servant, Andrew Bogle (John Kani), formerly an African slave, begins to look for Tichborne - or a passable imposter - in order to return to England and resume his old life. After years of searching, a fat drunkard (Robert Pugh) appears who is evidently Tichborne - or someone who knows an uncanny amount about him. They sail back to London, Bogle training Tichborne up to act like an aristocrat on the way. Unsurprisingly, his family claim he is an impostor and he is forced to take legal action to claim his estate. Both Pugh, a veteran stage actor, and Kani, a South African who survived three assassination attempts while campaigning against Apartheid, are excellent. Kani is both dignified and enigmatic, while Pugh is outrageous as the cigar-smoking, drunken Tichborne. A supporting cast of dozens of Britain's finest adds an enormous amount, with Stephen Fry and John Gielgud (who recently died, aged 96) particularly enjoyable as wonderfully odious members of the establishment. First-time director David Yates sustains a comfortable pace and establishes a stylised but believable vision of Victorian England. As in real life, we are never truly sure whether Tichborne is who he says he is and this helps to sustain the interest in the story throughout. Overall, an enjoyable film - witty, moving and interesting, a quiet alternative to the likes of Fight Club.

If ever one needed evidence of the rampant nepotism in the movie business (and the Coppola family provide plenty anyway), then this film would be sufficient. Starring Ralph Fiennes, directed by his sister Martha and with a score by brother Magnus, Onegin appears to be something of a family concern.

In a recent interview, however, Ralph was entirely unapologetic - and so he should be. The close relationship between the lead and the director is of great benefit to the film, bringing it a tightness and a focus that a very complex character demands. Martha Fiennes has a background in directing commercials, and it shows. Every shot is perfectly composed, not a frame wasted without something symbolic or beautiful. It is a shame, then, that the subject for such technical skill is so uninspired. Adapted from a novel, written in verse, by Alexander Pushkin, the story concerns Eugene Onegin, an impecunious nineteenth-century Russian aristocrat who is bored with Petersburg. Fortunately, his uncle dies and leaves him a large country estate. He moves in and becomes friends with a local gentleman, Vladimir Lensky (Toby Stephens). Lensky is engaged to Olga (Lena Headley), a local woman whose sister, Tatyana (Liv Tyler), is both beautiful and intelligent. Not surprisingly, Onegin stays. The love story that follows is extremely slow, but very well acted by Fiennes, a picture of smug misery throughout, and, more surprisingly, by Tyler, who knows exactly when to look radiant and virginal and when to cry pitifully. The supporting cast is the usual collection of British character actors, playing the usual collection of vapid snobs and rude old ladies. Although they are effective in their roles, the film is carried by the leads who really are not given enough to fill the running time. Technically brilliant, Onegin is flawed by a stolid script.