Already a comic and a computer game, this extra-terrestrial smack down from Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil director Paul WS Anderson is a murky, unsatisfying mess. Lance Henriksen?playing the human antecedent to the Bishop android from Aliens and Alien 3, and easily the best thing here?is a billionaire industrialist who leads a team of archaeologists into a pyramid buried beneath Antarctica. There they discover Predators have been breeding Aliens to fight their young warriors as part of a rites-of-passage initiation. Naturally, the humans become cannon fodder, caught up in the bloody combat between these two warring species, and Anderson’s movie stumbles incoherently from one poorly executed battle sequence to another. The sets are too gloomy and the aliens too gloopy; slime, acid blood and all manner of mucus splatters the screen. Anderson clearly riffs on James Cameron’s Aliens, but possesses none of the imagination or intelligence to elevate this beyond a bargain basement thrill, devoid of shocks or style.

On paper, Finding Neverland sounds like a typical Miramax period movie. Johnny Depp tries out yet another of his accents, this time as Peter Pan author JM Barrie, and Kate Winslet looks on lovingly in an Edwardian frock. But take a look and you’ll see it’s not anywhere near as sugary as it sounds. It’s suffused with melancholy and haunted by death, as is Barrie’s original play. The story tracks how Barrie came to write it, inspired by the widow Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Winslet) and her brood of four sons whom he befriends in a London park one day, out for a stroll to escape his social-climbing wife (Radha Mitchell). Although his bond with the family is platonic, rumours start swirling, suggesting his feelings for the widow?or even the boys! ?may not be strictly innocent. Depp underplays for once, letting the younger cast shine the more, especially Freddie Highmore as Peter Llewelyn Davies. Grainily shot with handheld cameras, it hardly looks like a costume drama and has the same pained honesty as Marc Forster’s previous film, Monster’s Ball.

In 1979 Chris Petit made one of the most atypical British films of all time. Heavily influenced by US noir and the European wanderings of Wim Wenders (the associate producer) and Godard, yet it distils a very English despair and sense of dislocation. Despite a soundtrack laced with Low-era Bowie, Kraftwerk and Stiff Records stars, its perverse, introverted slowness failed to chime with its intended audience and it’s since lain fallow, forgotten. This reissue suggests we may now be angst-ridden enough to embrace it. Its morose anti-hero (David Beames) is a graveyard shift DJ at a biscuit factory. Informed that his brother has died, he leaves London for Bristol to find out more. On the motorway he meets a series of oddballs: an army deserter, a garage attendant who’s into Eddie Cochran (a young Sting). Arriving, he interacts with glum women, gets drunk and existential. Less happens than this synopsis suggests, but the monochrome melancholy and rain will strike a chord with anyone who’s into Hopper, Ballard or always crashing in the same car. Turn on, tune in, mope out.

Computer whiz Kerry Conran’s retro fantasia is, quite literally, an art deco cartoon brought to life, following the adventures of the eponymous P-40 fighter pilot (Jude Law) and his battle against the evil Dr Totenkopf’s super-robots. On the plus side, Conran’s CGI-created opus is a thing of technical beauty laced with clever homages to pop culture classics, referencing everything form Max Fleischer’s Superman cartoons to The Shape Of Things To Come, The Island Of Dr Moreau and The Wizard Of Oz. On the negative side, the dialogue lacks the wry humour of Indiana Jones, while Law and Gwyneth Paltrow (as love interest come sidekick) appear to have forgotten how to act. Fortunately, the pace never lets up, and it kicks into overdrive when Angelina Jolie, as the commander of an amphibious squadron, replete with eye patch, ushers in a rollicking climax. All in all, it seems churlish to take issue with such a beautifully realised slice of classic pulp adventure.

Particularly when the fearless hero is?at last? an Englishman.

There’s some wicked satire in this debut from writer/director Brian Dannelly, co-produced by Michael Stipe. At American Eagle Christian High School, Hilary (Mandy Moore) domineers for Jesus. Among her serfs are Mary (Jena Malone), but when Mary gets pregnant trying to ‘save’ a gay boy, Hilary’s flock turns against her. She bonds with other misfits?Macaulay Culkin’s wheelchair-bound cynic, Patrick Fugit’s skater, Jewish rebel Eva Amurri?and wages war on the pious. Feuding at the Prom ensues, while a Christian rock band plays. It’s not as subversive as it believes, and in the last half-hour loses focus, copping out of offending the God squad. But the performances are feisty, and Martin Donovan’s wannabe-hip preacher is a gas?”Let’s kick it Jesus-style!” he exhorts.

Saved begins darker and sassier than Drop Dead Gorgeous or Bring It On, but in daring to broach sensitive ground?some churches slated as locations pulled out at the last minute?conceives its own anticlimax. It can’t follow through, for fear of crucifixion

Although it starts out in superior spooky fashion with an inventive murder sequence featuring, of all things, a pizza wheel, this psychological horror yarn from first-time director Seong-ho Kim quickly shifts its attentions elsewhere. A shopping centre is about to re-open following a fire five years earlier. But a series of murders?initially thought to be suicides?puts pressure on the mall’s head of security Yeong-min (Yoo Ji-tae), who’s already struggling with his own demons. Police procedure and Yeong-min’s personal problems take up a big chunk of the film’s overlong running time, with crucial revelations being so drawn out that the viewer constantly feels one step ahead of the game. Narrative frustrations aside, though, the film presents its ingredients with a real confidence, mixing the supernatural and the everyday in relatively believable fashion. It’s good to see a contemporary horror film taking such care with its plot and characters, but a few extra crowd-pleasing jolts wouldn’t have gone amiss.

Old Nouvelle Vague warhorse Jacques Rivette resurrects a 28-year-old ghost story and transforms it into an epic paean of Parisian angst that plays like an arthouse Sixth Sense. Originally conceived in 1976 as part of a quartet that began with Duelle, but shelved soon after, …Marie Et Julien tells the story of clockmaker Julien (Jerzy Radziwilowicz) and his dreamy otherworldly lover Marie (Emmanuelle B

Don’t be put off by singing cameos from the likes of Robbie, Alanis, Sheryl et al: this inventive, vibrant ride through Cole Porter’s life story (written by Scorsese collaborator Jay Cocks) succeeds in fusing the music’s glory with both the grandeur and gutter-trawling of the man. A clever deconstruction technique has the dying Cole watching his nights and days flash before him, the mysterious Gabe (Jonathan Pryce) choreographing, from rise to fall to comeback to big reveal. It’s visually sparkling. Kevin Kline, as Porter, wins you over with his commitment and sincerity. In the glittering Jazz Age he marries socialite Linda (Ashley Judd), who tolerates his gay flings as long as he keeps coming up with the goods. And these goods are greats: “Love For Sale” and “In The Still Of The Night” are wonderfully deployed. Moving to Hollywood, things hit the rocks, and Cole loses the use of his legs. Sure, De-Lovely manipulates your emotions, but, like the songs, it never insults your intelligence, giving you the grind as well as the glamour.

Eric Rohmer has always made quite cerebral films where people, usually ethereally pretty girls and their beaus, yak at each other for hours. Now in his 90th decade, he’s still at it, although the actors chosen are inching towards middle age and Rohmer has taken to setting the stories in historical periods?the French Revolution for The Lady And The Duke, and now the 1930s for Triple Agent. Lord love him for trying something different, but sadly Triple Agent is almost excruciatingly dull.

Fiodor Voronin (Serge Renko) is a White Russian living in Paris with his Greek wife Arsino

When folks talk about the “curse of The Exorcist”, this prequel should join the two sequels to William Friedkin’s landmark original as a key exhibit. Directed in its first incarnation by Paul Schrader, Exorcist: The Beginning was repossessed by Cutthroat Island’s Renny Harlin, who reshot it with a new draft of the script, a new cast (save Stellan Skarsg

“What’s it all about?” It’s about transposing Bill Naughton’s morality tale of an upwardly mobile shagaround in swinging ’60s London to skinny latte 21st century Manhattan. It’s about casting Jude Law in the role that provided Caine with his career breakthrough in 1966. It’s about Hollywood trying to revamp one of the greats and fucking it up, yet again. In its day, Alfie worked as a satirical comedy exposing the pursuit of the post-war ‘permissive society’ as a hollow, misogynous sham. Forty years later, its central message?that commitment-fearing blokes who think women are just “face, boobs and bum” are inadequate pond scum who’ll end their days weeping over their Viagra?lacks any revelatory clout, even as a post-’90s lad critique. Law is too posh and pretty to earn our sympathy, while the necessary brutality of Naughton’s play (notably its infamous abortion scene) is also neutered amid the Sex And The City makeover. And sickly new MOR tunes from Mick Jagger are no substitute for Sonny Rollins. Pointless.

DIRECTED BY Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott

STARRING Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Jane Akre, Naomi Klein Opens October 29, Cert PG, 144 mins

With the political left helpless, with US news media quiescent, the burden of protest against George Bush and his cronies has fallen to docu-cinema, an unlikely genre spawned by the success of Michael Moore. The Corporation is co-made by Mark Achbar, who has form in this field?he made Manufacturing Consent, a fast-cut, arresting depiction of the political thinking of Noam Chomsky. He employs the same techniques here?splicing recent footage, such as a montage of TV spokespeople using the spurious phrase “bad apples” to explain away corruption in the corporate cart, or archive footage of old movies to illustrate points. It’s very postmodern, very hip hop, this ingenious visual sampling, but there’s no play here?this is deadly vital. The film explains how in an inspired act of callous legal opportunism 150 years ago, US businesses appended themselves to a new law designed to protect the personal rights of emancipated blacks by arguing that they, too, should be treated like “persons”. Thereafter, corporations grew into the most dominant and rapacious institutions of the modern age.

The film-makers methodically demonstrate, by individual examples of corporate misbehaviour what kind of “person” the corporation is?a psychopath. Individuals from within corporations express misgivings and, as Noam Chomsky observes, these people might be the nicest guys in the world?but no matter, because the corporation is a monster.

Length-wise, this movie might have benefited from some judicious editing. Still, whether it’s one Michael Walker, unblinkingly arguing for the privatisation of every last inch of the globe, or the saga of Fox News gagging their own investigative team from running a story on a dangerously infectious synthetic hormone manufactured by megacorp Monsato, this film will make your blood boil. Essential.

DIRECTED BY Chanwook Park

STARRING Min-sik Choi, Ji-tae Yoo, Hye-jung Gang

Opens October 15, Cert 18, 119 mins

the second instalment in director Chanwook Park’s so-called “Revenge Trilogy” (begun with 2002’s Sympathy For Mr Vengeance) would put even Tarantino to shame. Here Park loosely adapts a Japanese Manga about a family man imprisoned, transformed into a killing machine and eventually returned to civilian life to wreak havoc on his former captors.

In this case, the family man is Dae-su, introduced as an irascible drunk (and bravely played by the craggy, Bronson-esque Min-sik Choi) but soon kidnapped, placed in a cell that’s mocked up as a garish motel room and fed on a 15-year diet of bad TV, Valium gas, remorse and recrimination. He then finds himself back on the streets, dressed in sharp black Armani, with a mobile phone, a wad of banknotes and a near psychotic desire for revenge. Which is when the real fun begins.

Along the way, Park?like Tarantino, a natural cinematic stylist? ticks all the boxes. There’s Hitchcockian paranoia and voyeurism as Dae-su and his beautiful young sidekick Mido (Hye-jung Gang) piece together the movie’s central conspiracy; there’s Fincher-esque psychosis implicit in Dae-su’s slightly unhinged nature, as well as explicit reference to Fight Club in the high-rise d