OPENS JANUARY 16, CERT 15, 127 MINS

Runaway Jury focuses less on the courtroom than on the black art of jury profiling. Gene Hackman, in thunderous form as the scruple-free Rankin Fitch, is hired to assist gun manufacturer Vicksburg Arms, which is accused of allowing its weapons to fall into murderous hands. Fitch subjects jurors to an arsenal of covert high-tech surveillance to winkle out their prejudices and identify blackmailable weaknesses. Acquittal would seem assured if John Cusack and girlfriend Rachel Weisz weren’t playing an even subtler game. Despite a squirmingly happy-clappy ending, the flick has enough twists to keep you gripped, and poses serious questions about legal ethics and the jury system. A tendency to deliver sermons about gun control is curtailed by excellent performances. Cusack’s gift for boyish naivet

OPENED JANUARY 2, CERT 12A, 86 MINS

Somewhere between A Matter Of Life And Death, The Sixth Sense and Truly Madly Deeply, without any of the romance, spookiness or wit of any of the above, lies Brit ghost story Kiss Of Life. Death doesn’t become Helen (Ingeborga Dapkunaite), a young mother in Peckham who dies and then mopes about the house, struggling to let go while her kids cope badly with the loss, barely helped by her addled old grandpa (David Warner). Meanwhile, Helen’s charity-worker husband John (Peter Mullan) makes his way home from a war-torn country, unaware his wife is dead.

One could ascribe the film’s faults to the fact that Katrin Cartlidge, who would have played Helen, died weeks before shooting began. But still, Dapkunaite’s Helen is too snivelly to be very sympathetic, and the script doesn’t offer much by way of emotional punch. Instead, we mostly get wintry moments of melancholy and the odd poignant scene, but not enough to make anyone really care about the characters or their troubles.

Directed by Peter Jackson

Starring Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen

Opened December 17, Cert 12A, 201 mins

Now war is declared and battle come down. Armies are mustered, siege weapons unveiled and war elephants saddled. The forces of good line up for a mighty ruck, the outcome of which will dictate the fate of mankind. Hold the line chaps, and watch out for those elephants.

The final part of Peter Jackson’s Tolkien trilogy is already assured a record-breaking box office haul. The trilogy stands as a considerable achievement; a lovingly crafted, exhilarating series which has made that most reviled of genres?fantasy?palatable to millions.

But, but, but…

There are problems here. The first hour seems overly familiar, echoing many of the set-ups from The Two Towers. We get plucky hobbits Frodo and Sam, plus the shifty Gollum, schlepping across wastelands towards Mordor to destroy the One Ring; we get the men of Rohan saddling up and Riding Out (there is much Riding Out done here); we get another city under siege from Orcs. Even Jackson’s reverse tracking shots of the massed hoards of darkness?so impressive in The Two Towers?become tiresome.

Come the second hour and the pace quickens?you steel the gaze as battle is joined. Orlando Bloom’s elf warrior Legolas taking down a war elephant in a two-minute set-piece is jaw-dropping, and, frankly, the sight of Viggo Mortensen’s king-to-be Aragorn charging headfirst into the Orc front line is as stirring as it gets. The siege of Gondor, the last outpost of mankind, is as brutal and bloody as the assault on Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers: pure eye-popping action cinema.

Even outside the battles, Jackson keeps the plot moving briskly along, only slowing for rather irritating soft-focus shots of Liv Tyler looking mimsy and a series of schmaltzy endings. There’s a nifty prequel explaining Gollum’s origins, and a nasty incident with a giant spider halfway through which provides this movie’s water cooler moment.

It may not beat The Two Towers for sheer spectacle and thrill, but this is still some feat. Pass the axe, someone.

OPENS JANUARY 23, CERT 15, 108 MINS

Telling the love story of two of the last century’s most revered poets, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Christine Jeffs’ film avoids the pitfalls of most ‘literary’ cinema. It also refuses to kow-tow to the accepted line that Plath was an underrated genius, Hughes a bloated bully. While portraying her anguish and demonstrating the inherent sexism of the times, it keeps a cool, clear head. It uses picture-book scenery only sparingly. It’s a dark, unsettling, thoroughly convincing work.

Plath (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Hughes (Daniel Craig) fall into a wordy but passionate love at Cambridge in the late ’50s. Over seven restless years, as Hughes’ star rises and Plath’s stutters, they enjoy/endure a fiery on-off marriage. Ted succumbs to temptation, but isn’t demonised here. Plath wrestles with jealousy, self-doubt and ultimately madness, before her tragic demise.

Paltrow is credible, mercurial and brittle as Plath, while Craig exudes elemental man as the “black marauder”. Paltrow’s mother, Blythe Danner, is exquisite as Plath’s mother. Very, very moving.

OPENED JANUARY 2, CERT 12A, 118 MINS

All Farrelly brothers films are funny, but there’s a big difference between the ones starring hateful egomaniacs (beat it, Black and Carrey) and the ones starring proper actors. Bill Murray made Kingpin a classic with just a bad wig and attitude, and Greg Kinnear does the same for Stuck On You just by being charismatic and believable. Well, as believable as you can be as a conjoined twin with an eye for the ladies and showbiz aspirations.

Kinnear and Matt Damon are the twins who head for Hollywood to pursue Kinnear’s dreams while Damon simultaneously tries to woo a girl without her twigging Kinnear’s attached to him at the hip. This last plotline requires the same visual gag over and over again, forcing the Farrellys into feats of surreal inventiveness. As the twins rise to fame thanks (unintentionally) to the evil machinations of Cher, there are enough literate wisecracks and Hollywood in-jokes to put this in the same league as Airplane. A clever movie posing as a really, really dumb one.

OPENS JANUARY 30, CERT 15, 74 MINS

The title characters are three sisters who’ve vowed to their grieving mother to avenge the murders of their father and brothers by a local gangster. So each Maria separately sets out into the desert to contract assassins.

Family revenge was the theme of another recent Brazilian movie, Behind The Sun, but whereas that film was slightly po-faced, The Three Marias mixes moments of riotous black comedy with overwrought melodrama. Featuring a trio of kickass, deadpan heroines who could be cousins to Kill Bill’s The Bride, this is a torrid blend of Leone, Peckinpah and Federico Garcia Lorca. The results are uneven and lacking in emotion. But taken as a stylish, live-action cartoon, the movie is perfectly entertaining, with some memorably macho characters (one hitman survives only on snake meat and tequila, convinced this diet banishes all sense of fear) and ripe dialogue. The mother tells her daughters they mustn’t weep until the men who killed her husband are dead?”Never feed pain without giving sustenance to hatred.” Quite.

OPENS JANUARY 1, CERT PG, 92 MINS

Adapted from Edward Anderson’s novel, this contained many of the themes to which Ray would return throughout his career. The isolated hero and his anguished relationship with society is embodied here by Depression-era convict-on-the-run Bowie, played by Farley Granger. There’s a famous, much-imitated aerial shot of Bowie escaping by car along with fellow cons T-Dub and Chicamaw, played by terrific character actors Jay C Flippen and Howard Da Silva. They are bad guys through and through, but Bowie broke out to prove his innocence?fat chance in a Ray movie, particularly as T-Dub and Chicamaw drag him along on a bank job. Injured, Bowie goes into hiding, and is nursed back to health by Keechie. They fall in love, and marry. But Bowie’s new family plunge him into extremes of danger, and finally betray him. Robert Altman filmed the same novel in Thieves Like Us, and doomed fugitive lovers turn up again in Gun Crazy, Bonnie And Clyde, Badlands and True Romance. Landmark noir.

OPENS JANUARY 23, CERT TBC, 85 MINS

In 1997, then world chess champion Garry Kasparov played the IBM-designed computer Deep Blue in a six-game match in New York. As he reveals in Vikram Jayanti’s documentary, he didn’t expect to lose. He’d defeated computers before. What he hadn’t realised was how much stock (quite literally) IBM had put on the match. When Deep Blue won the match, the company share price rocketed. Kasparov cried foul.

Jayanti’s fascinating film suffers from a lack of clear identity. The voice-overs belong in a conspiracy thriller, the interviews with computer programmers, grandmasters and journalists hint that this is investigative journalism, while all material about Kasparov’s rise through Soviet chess suggest we’re being offered a profile. Jayanti was a producer of When We Were Kings, and clearly sees Kasparov as the Ali of chess. His subject is charismatic and articulate, but Jayanti fails to answer the key questions his film asks: was the match a fix and, if not, has man now been outstripped by the machine?

DIRECTED BY Edward Zwick

STARRING Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe, Hiroyuki Sanada, Timothy Spall

Opens January 9, Cert 15, 154 mins

Very loosely based on the development of trade links between the US and Japan in the 1870s, signalling the end of Shogunate rule and the beginning of Japan’s Meiji Restoration era, The Last Samurai details the exploits of fictional cavalry hero Captain Nathan Algren (Cruise). Dispirited by the violence he’s inflicted on the Indian nation, Algren accepts a lucrative assignment to train Japanese riflemen. Goaded into leading an attack against rebel lord Katsumoto before his inexperienced troops are ready, Algren’s command is wiped out. Captured and studied by the fearless samurai leader, Algren finds his Western beliefs challenged and his life changed beyond recognition as he’s drawn into the bloody conflict between Katsumoto and the Japanese Emperor’s US-influenced advisors.

Ken Watanabe and Hiroyuki Sanada, as the noble Katsumoto and his unyielding super-warrior Ujio, are both fiercely charismatic, recalling Toshir

DIRECTED BY Tim Burton

STARRING Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup, Jessica Lange

Opens January 23, Cert PG, 125 mins

Two years after his pointless remake of Planet Of The Apes, Tim Burton is back on form with Big Fish, the most narratively accomplished, emotionally resonant movie of his career to date.

Based on Daniel Wallace’s novel, Big Fish is the tall tale of Edward Bloom (Finney), a big man in a small Midwestern town. Bloom is a consummate storyteller, renowned for the oft-told yarns of his apparently incredible exploits. These elaborate adventures have endeared the ailing raconteur to everyone he knows apart from his son, William (Crudup), who feels his father’s outlandish tales have prevented him from getting to know the real man behind them. As the elder Bloom nears the end of his life, father and son attempt to rebuild their relationship and come to terms with each other against a background of mythic flashbacks (played out by McGregor as the younger Bloom).

The two leads are inspired choices?Finney is at his twinkly-eyed, curmudgeonly best as the elder Bloom, while McGregor rediscovers the movie star in himself after seven post-Trainspotting years of lazy, self-satisfied performances. His spirited, endlessly optimistic young Edward is a triumph of grinning charisma, equally at home battling giants, parachuting behind enemy lines or discovering ghostly villages. The movie represents a major step forward for Burton. Bloom’s freewheeling adventures through the looking glass are as quirkily entertaining as you’d expect from a man who thrives on celebrating the freakish kinks in the heart of US suburbia. But this movie’s real triumph lies in its unexpected emotional maturity. Father/son relationships are a recurring motif in Burton’s work, but here Finney and Crudup transcend their wondrous quasi-mythological surroundings and deliver a climax that forgoes light-hearted whimsy for profound emotional truth. This understated, affecting portrait of a son’s love for his father (and vice versa) will stay with you long after the end credits roll. Big Fish is a unique, atmospheric fantasia with real heart. See it and shed an unembarrassed tear.

OPENS JANUARY 16, CERT 12A, 103 MINS

Watching this film is like spending the evening with a teenage supermodel. It’s so gorgeous to look at that it takes a while to realise there’s not a hell of a lot going on. Adapted from the novel by Tracy Chevalier, the film creates a fictitious history for the famous painting by Vermeer, set in the Dutch town of Delft in 1665, where Vermeer (Colin Firth, no less) lives and works. Scarlett Johansson plays the servant girl who attracts and inspires the artist?an intimacy that threatens to cause havoc in his already chaotic household. The town and Vermeer’s house are somewhat cleaner than they would have been in the 17th century, but they’re evocatively realised?it’s not so much a historically accurate rendering of the time as one that’s been filtered through Vermeer’s paintings. It’s a technique that has been used before, most notably in Vincente Minnelli’s Lust For Life, but the nature of Vermeer’s studied, claustrophobic portraits compared to the tortured exuberance of Van Gogh lends the film an inert, repressed feel.

OPENED JANUARY 2, CERT 15, 82 MINS

Jonathan Parker’s film transplants Herman Melville’s short story to a version of modern-day LA that emphasises the city’s alienation and sheer weirdness. David Paymer plays the dull but decent boss of a company hired to look after stacks of public records, his offices buried inside a mysterious modern block on a hilltop. Among his staff are macho Joe Piscopo, blundering Maury Chaykin and flirtatious Glenne Headly. None of them can cope with the arrival of Crispin Glover’s Bartleby, who’s answered a press ad that Headly’s placed offering “low pay, dull job”. Glover plays the role in glazed, pasty-faced slow motion, trapped inside a black suit that doesn’t quite fit. At first the model filing clerk, he starts replying, “I would prefer not to,” to all subsequent requests to lend a hand. His descent into inertia, apathy and death walks the line from queasy humour to pathos, as Paymer’s efforts to help founder on Bartleby’s blank inscrutability. Production values are comically cheap and the moral is left up to you, but some fine performances make it linger in the memory.

OPENS JANUARY 16, CERT U, 135 MINS

Theatrical reissues are so common now that we’re starting to get ‘masterpiece fatigue’ as critics, like starving dogs, dub a ‘gem’ every trinket from the archive. But?honestly?this one (showing at the NFT this month) is the real deal. Yasujiro Ozu’s composed, moving and timeless exposition on generational conflict and loss has to be seen in a cinema to get the full impact of its soft-spoken, painterly aesthetic.

The story is simple: an old couple (Chishu Ryu and Chieko Higashiyama) come to Tokyo to visit their family, but the kids are too busy to bother with them. They go home, the grandmother dies, and then the progeny travel to the funeral. Naturally, it’s all in the telling, particularly in Ozu’s trademark low-angle, bestilled camerawork and subtle use of sound. See it and you’ll not only understand why this film features so often in Top 10 lists of greatest films of all time, but you’ll recognise an original that’s been copied (but never bested) by a thousand film-makers, from Kurosawa to Tarantino.

OPENS JANUARY 23, CERT 18, 108 MINS

Writer/director Penny Woolcock made her name with TV dramas, but her first film goes further out there, impressively winding up as a Sheffield answer to Fight Club with a dash of Easton Ellis amorality. It’s unsettling, violent and distinctly un-British. She’s to be encouraged.

Into the going-nowhere life of slacker Paul (Alec Newman) come two influential characters. Juliette (Sienna Guillory) could be the love of his life. Billy (Marc Warren) could be the ruin of it. Billy?charismatic, fearless, into death or glory?and his stripper wife Hole persuade Paul that random sex, drugs and bareknuckle fighting are the way forward. He’s seduced, but knows Billy’s not quite the anti-compromise hero he thinks. He doesn’t want to blow the good thing he’s got with Juliette and her kid, but it may be too late…

Though it gets foggy with its own head of steam at the climax, this is a blisteringly brave film that questions your priorities and preconceptions. The three leads are stunning, and Warren confirms he’s this era’s Malcolm McDowell. Merciless.

OPENS JANUARY 23, CERT 15, 106 MINS

For using the word “spooks” in class, though he means “ghosts”, distinguished academic Coleman Silk (Anthony Hopkins) becomes the target of a politically correct witch-hunt. His wife dies; his reputation is ruined. Meeting reclusive writer Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise), he reflects on his life, but any notions of calm are scuppered when he falls into a tempestuous affair with the emotionally damaged Faunia (Nicole Kidman), 30 years his junior. She has a bitter Vietnam Vet ex-husband (Ed Harris) and more problems than even Silk’s wisdom can comprehend. But Silk’s past houses a secret?one he’s never told anyone.

Director Robert Benton has adapted Roth’s incendiary book with unflappable subtlety. Hopkins’ performance has to be both towering and vulnerable, and is. Sinise and Harris are reliable, and the younger cast excel. Benton fluidly flies this American tragedy across time, morals and ethics, and across scenes of privilege, poverty, prejudice, boxing, eroticism, loneliness and deep inexplicable connection. Magnificent.