Our weekly roundup of film reviews returns, courtesy of James Bryan... This week, the diminishing returns of Brideshead, Simon Pegg in How to Lose Friends and the truly bleak Import / Export. As the Guardian says in the review for Brideshead Revisited, “why revisit it?” We already have the iconic TV series and Evelyn Waugh’s original 1945 novel so what’s the point in attempting to distil it into a new film? Very little apparently......

In his short story The Final Problem Arthur Conan Doyle, suffering from an "overdose" of his most famous character, decided to smite Sherlock Holmes; the deerstalker-clad 'tec was apparently killed in a tussle with nemesis Moriarty, the pair plunging over Reichenbach Falls to their doom. Public outcry saw Doyle resurrect Holmes for The Adventure of the Empty House, yet had he lived to see this day, he perhaps would have considered leaving him interred:......

A pair of Antonioni pictures, a classic London whodunnit, a "mythbusting" doc on Iran and a sneak preview of the new film starring Ellen Page of Juno fame: it's a week of contrasts at London's rep cinemas. Thursday: Michaelangelo Antonioni's death last year, on the same day as Ingmar Bergman, served perhaps the final chapter on a particular kind of European arthouse cinema: the brooding, slow, existential and (to its detractors) pretentious style. Antonioni's......

Our weekly roundup of film reviews returns, courtesy of James Bryan... This week’s biggest release is also the biggest letdown; the De Niro / Pacino team up Righteous Kill. We also have the preposterous looking Death Race as well as Kristin Scott Thomas drowning in praise for her performance in I've Loved You So Long. The cloud of wasted opportunity hangs heavily over Righteous Kill. What should have been an epic clash of the......

The Serpentine Pavilion has but a few weeks before being dismantled, so why not spend the evening watching a double-bill of films under the asymmetrical awning of London's first, and perhaps only, Gehry? Night And Fog, Alan Resnais' short, sober documentary about the Nazi concentration camps, and The German Sisters, which follows the diverging lives of two siblings whose radically-minded lives follow opposite if similar paths, are showing at the pavilion from 8pm onwards. Tickets......

The British Film Institute turns 75 this month, and they're throwing a big Birthday Weekender bash at their swank Southbank and IMAX locations to celebrate. Things kick off tonight with an audiovisual performance that aims to "glance into the future of cinema" and mix it with "club culture", an ominous pairing if ever we imagined one one. On Saturday and Sunday things settle into a more predictable groove, with free screenings of Mitchell and......

A certified celluloid classic, a crowd-pleasing trilogy, and an original if less than definitive "history" of the cinema: there's something for everybody this week. Thursday: Citizen Kane is the Ulysses of film: hugely influential, yet more talked about than seen. But its ubiquitous position atop the American Film Institute's list of all-time great movies remains deserved - nobody developed the language of cinema, and invented so many of the techniques we now take for......

This time of year is a cinematic no-mans land; we’re post summer blockbuster and pre-Oscar baiters. We’re left with the extremes of the ludicrously high concept Tropic Thunder and the very low key Unrelated. Tropic Thunder has got some mixed reviews, and you’ll probably know from the trailers if this is going to work for you. Written and directed by Ben Stiller it’s about a bunch of pampered narcissistic movie stars who end up......

Our weekly roundup of film reviews returns, courtesy of James Bryan... This week a nice young couple get brutally terrorised by hoodies in Eden Lake, a couple of stoners try and track down some Pineapple Express and holocaust film The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. Horror films are more effective when they’re close to home and full of British voices. 28 Days Later, The Descent and even The Cottage are much more chilling and......

Lots to cover this week, so let's crack on with things. Friday: A solid double-bill here as part of the BFI Southbank's Time Machine season, which explores cinema as a "time-based and time-obsessed medium". Alain Resnais' Last Year in Marienbad unfolds like a perfect modernist dream. The repetition of conversations and half-remembered chance meetings at a society ball course the imprecise tracks of the moment before waking, like the mind clutching at a dream......

Our weekly roundup of film reviews returns, courtesy of James Bryan... This week, Sir Ben gets groovy in The Wackness, Will Ferrell continues to coast on his comic abilities in Step Brothers and the comeback no-one was waiting for with Vin Diesel in Babylon AD. Scarily for those of us that remember it very clearly, 1994 is now deemed long ago enough to warrant a period drama. The Wackness is set in that distant......

The Olympics have been put to bed and there's nothing but bilge on the box. Time to extract yourself from the sofa and skulk down the local uniplex to see what's shaking, where this week the delights include a pair of triple-bills - including probably the finest sequel in movie history - and some choice cuts at a free festival. Wednesday: Tonight, the Roxy continues its Beefeater London Movie Season. It's pretty simple: £3......

This week the London-set Somers Town (that’s Kings Cross to you and me), the spy ‘comedy’ Get Smart and some dirge from Disney called College Road Trip. With Somers Town, director Shane Meadows has left his traditional East Midlands stomping ground behind and headed to London where the streets are paved with Eurostar-funded gold. Like his last film, the phenomenal This is England, it stars Thomas Turgoose and is a black and white story......

It's Frightfest! And we have two separate giveaways for the brave souls who have pants strong enough for these special premieres... From the director of The Hills Have Eyes comes Mirrors is the terrifying story of troubled ex-cop Ben Carson (Sutherland) who must save his family from an unspeakable evil that is using mirrors as a gateway into their home. Carson (Sutherland) takes a job as a security guard at a department store which......

Our weekly roundup of film reviews returns, courtesy of James Bryan... This week, Hellboy takes on the Olympics (a shame he didn’t qualify as he’d have been phenomenal in the track and field) and a few other films bravely dare to test whether anyone is going to be prised away from their sofas and into the cinemas. The over-sized cigar-munching demon that is Hellboy returns in the well-reviewed sequel Hellboy 2: The Golden Army,......

Matt Damon may not be the most charismatic Hollywood hunk around but he does suppressed emotion and brooding profile jolly well and his amnesiac assassin turn in the Bourne Trilogy is total brainless, Saturday night all action fare. So brace yourselves, because our friends at the BFI IMAX are showing not only all 3 Bourne films back to back in their all-nighter on 23 August but they're throwing in Team America: World Police as......

While hand-wringing from the chattering classes about what to do with "da kids" dominates the media, charities such as Get Connected, who offer confidential advice to young people, are busy doing something about it. Ever keen to engage London's youth in constructive projects that actually matter to them, they've launched a short film competition. Nobody's Perfect calls for 16-25 year olds interested in directing, producing, starring in or scoring films to submit examples of......

There are many cinematic free treats this week but these come with news that Picturehouse cinemas is planning to ban sales of popcorn . Citing the smell, sound and contentiousness of popcorn as reason to stop, Head of Media for Picturehouse Cinemas Gabriel Swartland will be running a trial popcorn-free period before rolling out the ban across all 19 Picturehouse venues. A full popcorn cull at Everyman Cinemas is already in place, saving the......

After a week off spent organising our copious Laserdisc collection, the Repertory Film Round-up is back to sift through the silver screen classics that London offers the discerning cineaste. Thursday: Hot-foot it to Highgate tonight for the You're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat film quiz, which this time is themed around "Blockbusters" - a subject the Rep Film Round-up confesses to being less than au fait with. Entry is two quid, and it begins......

The Bat-Hype has peaked and the Dark Knight is finally with us (if the London Met don’t get him first). The only question left to ask is, does it live up to the insane levels of expectation? The lovers have already voted it the greatest film ever on IMDB and the haters are a gathering cloud. Like their US counterparts the UK critics are fawning over Christopher Nolan’s dark interpretation. The Times (5-star) declares:......

The excellent mini-season of films at Rivington Place, which has accompanied the gallery's Oscar Muñoz retrospective (pictured), concludes tonight with the dreamlike Japanese fable Woman In The Dunes. The kind of flick you might have expected had Beckett or Sartre ever picked up a Bolex, the bonkers plot is about a man who becomes ensnared in a strange woman's house at the bottom of a sandpit and embarks on a Sisyphean struggle to escape. The......

Wall-E has arrived, and the genius of Pixar is declared once again. A simple yet multi-layered tale of a U certificate robot love on post-apocalyptic earth, it’s the silent first half hour that really has the critics rhapsodising. The Times (4-stars) calls the film a “magical animation” while the Guardian (4-stars) says it’s “an exquisitely rendered piece of work.” Over at Empire it’s 5-stars, describing the film as the “most ambitious undertaking since Toy......

Difficult to avoid the Bat-hype machine this week, as the release of The Dark Knight has prompted calls for a posthumous Oscar for Heath Ledger. Luckily, as always, London provides for those who don't necessarily want the latest marketing churn poured down their throat. For your consideration this week: Thursday: Wong Kar Wai's In The Mood For Love is the next film at Rivington Place, in conjunction with their Oscar Munoz retrospective. After his......

Our weekly roundup of film reviews returns, courtesy of James Bryan... So along comes Mamma Mia, the ghastly looking film version of the apparently much loved West End Musical. If you didn’t run screaming when you saw the trailer featuring Meryl Streep and her ridiculous dungarees prancing around some Greek island then maybe, just maybe, you can handle this. For the rest of us, please listen to Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian who gives......

We hate to keep droning on about it, but There Will Be Blood is one of the most amazing films we've seen in years, and with the DVD about to be released it seems important to remind people that this is exactly the kind of movie to be watched on the expansive screen of a cinema setting rather than a tiny box in a living room. The Roxy in Borough High Street is showing it......

Can't decide on whether to take an umbrella or a sombrero out in this ever-changeable climate? The answer's both, unfortunately, so we recommend that instead of facing the elements you bed down in a hushed auditorium, where this week's selection includes a season of films from an island where the sunshine is just that little bit more reliable. Thursday As part of their retrospective of Oscar Munoz, which we reviewed last month, Rivington Place......

Our weekly roundup of film reviews returns, courtesy of James Bryan... No prize for guessing what Kung Fu Panda is about. DreamWorks’ latest animation has Jack Black as lazy fat panda, Po, embarking on a quest to be kung fu champ and escape his humdrum life of noodle-making. It’s making the critics smile. The Times (4-stars) calls it “a slight story, but it’s charmingly executed. This is the most handsome animation that DreamWorks has......

While our Saturday Cinema Summary does an admirable job of rounding up the week's new releases, London's celluloid attractions run deeper than the local multiplex's offerings. From retrospectives of filmmaking greats, to cult classics introduced by obsessive cinephiles, each week we'll offer a preview of the forgotten films and rare screenings worthy of your attention. Wednesday: 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, the stark Romanian film that snatched the Palme d'Or at Cannes last......

Another week and another set of under-whelming blockbusters. First up is James McAvoy going A-List in Wanted, as Angelina Jolie plucks him from a life of mediocrity to run around as a super-assassin firing bullets around corners and doing cool only-in-movies stuff . Overall the reviews have been OK but the UK broadsheets are having none of it. Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian loathes it with his customary eloquence (1-star), ‘you could gargle bitumen......

Getting the most press this week is The Edge of Love, an account of the women who surrounded legendary boozer (and occasional poet) Dylan Thomas during the Second World War. London lovers will cherish it for the “wonderful rendering of Blitz London” (Independent, 3-stars) but overall it’s got very average reviews. The Guardian (2-stars) calls it an “exasperatingly unfocused and underpowered movie.” The performances of Keira Knightly, Sienna Miller and particularly Mathew Rhys (as......