Mini-Review: Terrifically well-made and tight character-driven mystery that recalls, and almost matches, Bong's earlier masterpiece Memories of Murder. Although the son is a weak character, as the film goes on you realise it is not about him but his mother (the clue was in the title). She is a remarkable and complex character, brilliantly acted by Kim Hye-Ja. The story unfolds slowly like an origami figure and there are some nice artistic touches in the direction of the silent scenes in particular. Great.

Mini-Review: A fun escapist adventure in which Allen tries to catapult us and himself into an alluring bygone world of fantasy and romance, but every time he comes close to making magic he is let down by his urge for silliness and buffoonery. The film is propelled largely by jazz music, costumes and name-dropping, a gimmick which brings regular laughs. But it also feels lightweight with a lot of loose ends. More of a sketched idea, than polished prose. Still it's one of his most entertaining films in years.

Mini-Review: This exciting caper flick mixes elements of Ferris Bueller, Working Girl and Back To The Future. Fox plays himself and the script offers up plenty of fun surprises and precarious escapades. Who doesn't like situations where a character has to change his clothes in an elevator every 5 minutes to play different identities? Another quality 80s family film which can sit on a par with John Hughes's best efforts of that decade. The only downer is the awful tacked-on deus ex machina ending.

Mini-Review: What if Ocean's Eleven was remade by Terry Gilliam in France? You'd have Jean-Pierre Jeunet's "Micmacs a Tire-Larigot", a zany caper film about society's outsiders sticking it to the man. Very strange, but ultimately quite likeable and with a good anti-gun message. A tart with a heart.

Mini-Review: Charlie Kaufman's head has disappeared so far up his own ass that it has re-emerged from his own mouth as a stinking, shit-smeared parody of itself. Evidently that was the inspiration for his latest movie, which is just awful, unintelligible, incoherent, meaningless drivel. One of the few films I have been unable to sit through to the end. Shades of the quirkiness that made BJM and Adaptation so good, but trying too hard, it vanishes into a puff of smoke that should set off anyone's BS detector.