DIRECTED BY Clint Eastwood

STARRING Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon

Opens October 17, Cert 15, 137 mins

Following some unconvincing recent outings as a director, Clint returns to form in a major way with this intelligent, probing adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s formidable crime novel. Over three decades behind the camera have honed Eastwood’s skills to what must be as close to perfection as one can get; here, that experience combines with strong source material to give us his finest work since the powerful one-two punch of 1992’s Unforgiven and 1993’s A Perfect World. In fact, the brooding tone and moral ambiguity of those films mark them as close companions to Mystic River, which runs deep with past sins, violence, revenge, regret and destiny.

The story grabs you straight away. Three young friends?Jimmy, Dave and Sean?are playing hockey in the street when two men posing as plain-clothes cops pull up, give the boys a talking-to and take Dave away. What happens to him after he gets into their car has a bearing on events some 30 years later, long after the boys have grown up and?despite still living in the same Boston neighbourhood?grown apart. Dave (Robbins) is one of the walking wounded after his abduction; Jimmy (Penn) is a liquor-store owner with criminal connections; and Sean (Bacon) is now a detective. The three men are reunited by another tragedy, the murder of Jimmy’s daughter (Emmy Rossum)?for which Dave becomes the prime suspect.

Mystic River feels like a gathering storm. You sense something devastating brewing from the off, the atmosphere growing increasingly charged as Dave, Jimmy and Sean are forced to confront each other and their individual and shared pasts. Eastwood’s style is as lean and elegant as ever; he doesn’t need to trick the viewer into staying hooked but he knows how to make each scene and performance count (which really means something when your cast also includes Laurence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden and Laura Linney). It’s rare with a mainstream studio film to feel that you’re watching complex, credible people?but that’s what Eastwood and his actors have achieved, and it’s what makes this film uniquely thrilling.

OPENS OCTOBER 3, CERT 18, 88 MINS

From Sabbath to Slayer, metallers have always loved horror, but Rob Zombie takes the obsession further than most. Having named his band White Zombie after a 1932 Bela Lugosi flick, he’s moved into directing with a film that’s part Texas Chainsaw Massacre, part From Dusk Till Dawn and part B-movie medley. The surprise is, it’s very nearly a classic. Nearly, but not quite.

Four teens stop at a roadside funfair where the creepy owner tells them about a mythical serial killer. They go looking (at night, in a storm) for the site of the killer’s grave, but break down and fall hostage to a family of sadistic rednecks. What starts off cool changes tone every 20 minutes, becoming first camp, then scary, then insanely OTT as Zombie throws killer clowns, burlesque, circus freaks, vivisection and (perhaps inevitably) zombies into the increasingly mind-boggling mix. Blending different horror genres like this is surprisingly effective, and there are flashes of real genius, but it finally falls apart in a tangle of unresolved arcs and last-minute subplots. Not bad for a metaller, though. Roll on AC/DC’s opera.

OPENS OCTOBER 24, CERT PG, 117 MINS

The Fugitive director Andrew Davis does a superb job bringing to life Louis Sachar’s wry, sprightly (whisper it) children’s book about the palindromic Stanley Yelnats. Unjustly sent to Camp Greenlake?a remote detention centre for juvenile delinquents in Texas?Stanley literally unearths a mystery with a connection to his family’s past.

Davis neither patronises nor preaches, rising to the fierce moral subtext in Sachar’s novel and tackling an inter-racial love affair with respect for his audiences’ intelligence. He’s helped by a major league cast?Sigourney Weaver as the rattlesnake-tough warden, Jon Voight hilarious as her bequiffed number two, Tim Blake Nelson riffing on his O Brother, Where Art Thou? character, and, in pivotal 19th-century flashbacks, Patricia Arquette and The West Wing’s Dul

OPENS OCTOBER 24, CERT U, 67 MINS

Scooby Doo, you’ve gone all blue. And trippy, Daft Punk, the French techno-pop duo who’ve consistently worked with cutting-edge directors (Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, Roman Coppola), have collaborated with their lifelong Manga animation heroes Leiji Matsumoto and Kazuhisa Takenouchi to produce this ‘musical’, loosely accompanying their 2001 album Discovery. It’s fun, and sweet rather than radical. If you’re a Manga buff you’ll enjoy the quaint sci-fi plotline and imagery, and stare at the female bassist’s lovingly-drawn arse. A band of cobalt-coloured aliens from a happy-clappy galaxy where they play “One More Time” seven zillion times is kidnapped by stormtroopers from nasty Earth. Here, they’re made over into pop puppets who are globally marketed with military precision, only to end up wreaking revenge on the Pete Waterman evil-doers. The Smurfs on ecstasy.

OPENS OCTOBER 3, CERT 12A, 102 MINS

Potentially a vibrant bit of fun, this knowing retro-romp is hindered by one millstone: Ewan McGregor (here starring, in a chemistry-free zone, opposite Ren

OPENS OCTOBER 24, CERT PG, 141 MINS

Seabiscuit was the little horse that could?a pop culture phenomenon in Depression-era America who won the 1937 Santa Anita Handicap against all odds and beguiled an ailing nation.

Written off in his early years as a grumpy, awkward loser, Seabiscuit was trained for victory by three broken men: too-tall jockey Red Pollard (Tobey Maguire), tragic millionaire Charles Howard (Jeff Bridges) and washed-up cowboy Tom Smith (Chris Cooper). Pleasantville director Gary Ross’ self-penned script focuses on this maverick trio and how they came to find redemption through their unlikely partnership.

OK, it’s not just a horse flick?some of Seabiscuit’s most resonant moments occur in the first half-hour as Ross details the rise of mass entertainment culture in ’30s America. This may sound like a recipe for the worst kind of mawkish US myth-building but Ross avoids the pitfalls and, with the aid of a killer trio of lead performances, delivers the finest racetrack movie since Frank Capra’s Broadway Bill.