FILM REVIEWS

• 'The Twilight Saga: New Moon' sure to please fans

  The runaway hit that is the Twilight Saga continues to provide screaming teenagers - of the female variety - exactly what they want: sexy leading man (Pattinson), vampires, thrills, spills, danger, romance, sheer, pulsing excitement.

• 'A Serious Man' clever, but an acquired taste

  The Coens bring us the seriously troubled Professor Larry Gopnik (Stuhlbarg) whose life in the late 1960s is coming apart at the seams fast and leaving him with the questions we all often ponder.

• 'The Informant!' an unlikely but successful comedy

  This is based on a true - and quite serious - story about corruption at a big corporation.

• '2012' action-packed but predictable

  Another date for the diary, another day for the world to end.

• 'Taking Woodstock' entertaining and terrifically photographed

  Once again Lee captures a defining moment in American, and subsequently world, history with this wonderful film about the iconic Woodstock music fest of 1969 … though not so much about the event itself as what surrounded it and how it came about.

• Caine lifts 'Harry Brown' above the ordinary

  Caine carries quite brilliantly what is otherwise a quite ordinary, and poorly scripted vigilante film that takes its cue from such previous predictable revenge dramas as Death Wish … only Caine could bring something worthwhile to such unoriginal a film.

• 'Cold Souls' a quirky tragicomedy

  Where’s his motivation? Giamatti, playing himself playing – not too successfully – Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya on Broadway thinks his soul is giving him problems and decides, after visiting Dr Flintstein (Strathairn), to put it into cold storage for the duration of the play.

• 'A Christmas Carol' an excellent adaptation

  Dickens’ classic morality story has been brought to the screen so many times that the redemption of old miser Scrooge is well known to us, and difficult to present in a new and engaging way.

• Nothing new in 'Jennifer’s Body'

  A rock band ritual goes wrong and sexy, popular cheerleader Jennifer (played by sexy Fox) turns into a blood-thirsty vampire getting her fangs into fellow male students in this so-so comedy horror.

• 'The Men Who Stare at Goats' wonderfully inventive

  It’s all – sort of – true, as those of you who have given your moggie the vapours by staring at it will testify. Cats, as well as goats, just don’t like being stared at.