DIRECTED BY Fernando Meirelles

STARRING Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino da Hora, Philippe Haagensen

OPENS January 3, Cert 18, 129 mins

There’s a moment in the Brazilian crime drama City Of God that says it all. It’s near the start and our hero-protagonist Rocket (Rodrigues) is standing in the centre of a dusty city side street. At one end, an excitable troop of policemen crouch behind an armoured van and point their guns in his direction while, at the other, an intimidating phalanx of street criminals cock their weapons and return the gesture. Both groups heckle each other, the former demanding that the latter disarm immediately, the latter demanding that the former go to hell. And in the middle stands Rocket, half-crouching, frozen with fear. And then it happens. We do a swift and dizzying circular dolly around the frozen Rocket, the backgrounds dissolve, he grows younger before our eyes, and we emerge nearly two decades previously with our hero on his haunches, on a dusty football field at the very beginning of the movie’s diegetic narrative.

In that one bravura visual gesture, City Of God, via flamboyant director Fernando Meirelles, telegraphs to the viewer exactly what to expect for the next two hours: an epic era-spanning urban crime saga with a penchant for breathtaking bursts of cinematographic spectacle.

Which is hardly surprising, considering the central protagonist is an aspiring photographer, and as such reflects the movie’s proudly conspicuous visual aesthetic. Rocket is the surrogate eye who documents nearly 20 years of brutal criminality inside the gang-controlled ‘City of God’ favela (housing project) in Jacarepagu

OPENED NOVEMBER 20, CERT 12A, 135 MINS

The 20th Bond film (and Brosnan’s fourth) is a curious affair. On the one hand, Brosnan’s portrayal of Her Majesty’s favourite assassin goes from strength to strength. He’s still the big-screen secret agent to beat and the only Bond to matter since Connery. On the other, Kiwi director Lee Tamahori plays to very few of Brosnan’s strengths, burying the Irish charmer under (quite literally) a tidal wave of digital effects.

As with previous Brosnan outings, Die Another Day opens promisingly with some robust pre-credits stuntwork and an intriguing first half hour: Bond is abandoned by Judi Dench’s hard-faced M and left for dead in a North Korean prison. However, once our tortured hero is released and goes after evil megalomaniac Gustav Graves (a splendid Toby Stephens, looking every bit like the snarling bastard son of Patrick McGoohan), the action descends into a relentless orgy of computer-generated set-pieces that transform Die Another Day into the least believable Bond since Moonraker. An interesting attempt to update the Fleming formula, but a failure nonetheless.

Opens December 6, Cert 15, 124 mins

A noted theatrical director, John Malkovich makes his first foray behind the camera with this ambitious political thriller. Javier Bardem stars as Augustin Rejas, a State investigator assigned to track down the charismatic, Messiah-like leader of a group of violent?and imaginative?underground revolutionaries. The shadow of Costa-Gavras hangs over proceedings (his 1973 film State Of Siege even turns up as a plot device), which is not a bad shadow to be under. Malkovich and screenwriter Nicholas Shakespeare?adapting his own novel?bring complexity and intimacy to what could have been a routine thriller; the film becomes a close study of Rejas, exploring his marriage, his tentative relationship with ballet teacher Laura Morantes (from The Son’s Room) and his feelings for the corrupt state that he serves. Bardem carries all this narrative baggage brilliantly, and his performance keeps the film afloat during a rather clunky first hour. Still, Malkovich stages some powerful set pieces, and brings the film to a close with physical and dramatic force. A debut that bodes well for the future.

Opens December 6, Cert 15, 95 mins Jamie Bell, who pranced about so successfully in Billy Elliot, had yet to turn 16 when playing Private Charlie Shakespeare in this supernatural yarn set on the Western Front. Petrified, Charlie has to be forced over the top at gunpoint into the confusion and carnage of battle. As dawn emerges, he and survivors of his company find themselves fumbling about in no-man’s-land when they come across and occupy a rat-infested, abandoned German trench. However, as night falls, the British soldiers begin to die, one by one, at the hands of an unknown force.

Deathwatch effectively conveys the hellish, fetid mires of WWI, and boasts an able supporting cast, especially Andy Serkis as the violent Quinn. Two problems, however. Firstly, transposing supernatural horrors onto a World War I scenario seems pointlessly superfluous?as if life in the trenches wasn’t horrific enough as it was. Secondly, Bell is, in every sense here, a boy sent in to do a man’s job, and is found wanting. He’s too callow yet for this sort of role. Stick to your ballet, boy.

OPENS DECEMBER 27, CERT 15, 110 MINS

Clint Eastwood’s 23rd film as director and 44th as star features a more relevant statistic than those. He’s 72, and he’s chosen a vehicle that partly?only partly?owns up to it. Based on a thriller by Michael Connolly, the film shares the writer’s narrative drive, cunning plot twists and basic implausibility. Terry McCaleb (Eastwood) is an FBI profiler who suffers a heart attack in pursuit of a serial killer. While recuperating from a transplant, he’s approached by Graciella Rivers (Wanda De Jesus) to track down the hold-up man who killed her sister in a convenience store. Retired and recuperating on his boat in San Pedro harbour, he turns her down until she hits him with the news that he’s wearing her sister’s heart…

Clint is convincing as the fragile ex-cop with moments of renaissance worthy of Will Munny in Unforgiven. He doesn’t win punch-ups, but we do get him advancing down an LA boulevard firing a shotgun and?a laughable moment?in bare embrace, vertical scar from wattled throat to navel, with Graciella. The urge to shout “I gotta get my pills!” was nearly overwhelming.

DIRECTED BY Woody Allen

STARRING Woody Allen, Helen Hunt, Charlize Theron, Dan Aykroyd

OPENS December 6, Cert 12, 100 mins

One suspects that Woody Allen only makes films nowadays so that he gets to make out on screen with women twice his size and half his age. Mind you, given his body of work, he’s earned the right to make entertaining if slight cinematic confections like this.

Set in a deftly recreated 1940, The Curse…stars Allen as CW Briggs, a New York insurance investigator whose working methods are threatened by the arrival of Helen Hunt’s executive Betty Ann Fitzgerald. Matters are complicated when he’s hypnotised by a charismatic, turbanned jewel thief (David Ogden Stiers) in a nightclub and subsequently forced to carry out heists under his thrall.

Allen pays homage here to Howard Hawks, Billy Wilder and fast-talking and/or sultry dames like Veronica Lake, of whom Charlize Theron does a straight impersonation, coming on to Allen like a femme fatale-o-gram. Hunt at times seems uncomfortable at the ’40s-style corset her character is forced into, but gives Allen a decent run for his money, while Aykroyd adds solid support as an adulterous coward

DIRECTED BY Stephen Frears

STARRING Chiwetel Ejiofor, Audrey Tautou, Sergi L

Opens December 6, Cert PG, 125 mins

The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes (1970) was a box office dud for Wilder. Certainly, it’s flawed?there’s an embarrassingly ill-judged scene involving Queen Victoria, and the film takes a while to get going. But get going it does.

The opening sees Holmes (Robert Stephens) amusingly castigate Watson for embroidering him in his memoirs, to the extent that he has to wear a ridiculous deerstalker to pander to public expectations. Subsequently, Holmes pretends he’s in a homosexual relationship with Watson (Colin Blakely) to repel the propositions of a Russian ballerina. Aghast, Watson wonders whether Holmes is indeed gay. However, when a mysterious amnesiac Belgian female arrives on his doorstep, initiating an adventure which takes him from London to Loch Ness involving a submarine, a troupe of midgets and German espionage, Holmes’ indifference to women is tested. Moving symphonically from farcical to melancholic, peppered with tart, bittersweet dialogue and bolstered by fine performances, The Private Life… merits a more sympathetic viewing than it was initially granted.

DIRECTED BY Various

STARRING Ernest Borgnine, Maryam Karimi, Dzana Pinjo

Opens December 27, Cert 12, 135 mins

This fascinating project is the brainchild of French producer Alain Brigand, who asked 11 directors to contribute a film lasting 11 minutes, 9 seconds and one frame which “evoke the planetary echo” of September 11, 2001. Needless to say, the diverse nationalities and cultures of the directors involved makes for a broad spread of opinion. Ken Loach focuses on September 11, 1970, the date when a CIA-sponsored coup deposed Allende’s government in Chile, an event that led to the Pinochet regime’s appalling abuse of human rights. Loach (like Japanese director Shohei Imamura, who reminds viewers of Hiroshima) suggests 9/11 was an inevitable act of karma.

Other directors include Danis Tanovic, Amos Gitai, Idrissa Ouedraogo and Mira Nair. Amores Perros director Alejandro I

Opened November 15, Cert PG, 160 mins

It’s Harry’s second year at Hogwarts, and someone’s foolishly opened up the long-hidden Chamber of Secrets?which is bad news for any of the student wizards who come from ordinary human backgrounds, as it’s only a matter of time before one of them gets killed. While Harry’s allies Dumbledore (Richard Harris) and Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) are forced to leave the school, some of the new faces on hand are a lot less comforting: Draco Malfoy’s evil father Lucius (Jason Isaacs in full-on panto villain mode) and the narcissistic new Dark Arts teacher Gilderoy Lockhart (a wonderfully vain Kenneth Branagh).

There’s a lot less time wasted on exposition, the child actors are mercifully less precious than previously, and the likes of Julie Walters and Alan Rickman get more to do. Plus there’s a flying Ford Anglia, a whole forest full of giant spiders, a self-combusting phoenix, a huge serpentine dragon for Harry to slay and, of course, a hankie-waving farewell to Richard Harris. All in all, it’s darker, deeper, funnier and scarier than last time?just like magic ought to be.

Opens December 6, Cert PG, 122 mins

Vincent (Jacques Bidou) is not a happy man. A French factory worker, his monotonous, backbreaking toil holds scant rewards. There’s little compensation at home, too, as routine set meals, domestic drudgery and joyless sex only compound his grey existence. After deciding enough is enough, Vincent spontaneously decides to leave home and travel around the world. Beginning with a trip to Venice, Vincent encounters numerous cranks and misfits on his canal-side strolls.

Occasionally, his bewildered family are seen pondering his motives and next moves, but there’s little about Monday Morning to invite a similar reaction. Esteemed, veteran director Otar loseliani captures dowdy rural France and Venice’s waterways with broad, elegant strokes. But Bidou’s painfully mannered acting and a lifeless script ensures the film is as directionless as Vincent’s travel plans. Rather than offering any wisdom on personal collapse, this appears like one long Stella Artois advert with grizzled old men hitching lifts down cobbled country lanes. Tepid and frankly tedious, loseliani is capable of so much more.