The Dark Knight

The late Heath Ledger is mesmerising as the villainous Joker in the latest, deeply dark Batman instalment

In 1995, lightweight George Clooney and director Joel Schumacher dealt this comicbook superhero franchise a near-fatal blow with their dire Batman and Robin.

Ten years later, co-writer and director Christopher Nolan and star Christian Bale rescued the legend of the Caped Crusader by returning to his origins in Batman Begins.

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Baby Mama

"I want a baby now - I'm 37," states Tina Fey's Kate Holbrook, eliciting the understandable response from her dinner partner: "Too much information for a first date."

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Angus, Thongs And Perfect Snogging

Cat-haters apart, it is hard to see why anyone should dislike director Gurinda Chadha's amusing coming-of-age tale.

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The man unlocking the real Abu Ghraib story

Oscar-winning film director Errol Morris explains why he is trying to uncover the real perpetrators of one of the most shameful episodes of the Iraqi war.

Some time ago, the Oscar-winning documentary-maker Errol Morris came across a series of photographs taken by the SS of the selections of Hungarian Jews for the gas chambers at Birkenau in 1944. “They are among some of the most extraordinary pictures in the history of photography, and they deeply fascinate me,” Morris says.

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The Deep South dance film that pops anti-American snobbery

Alex Reuben’s dance movie is designed to blow apart European stereotypes about US culture.

For a man who does not trust words much, Alex Reuben is pretty easy to talk to. An art-school lecturer in London, with a background in design and DJing, he is best known today for his work with dancers — teaching them, choreographing for camera, and producing beautiful short films on dance.

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Review: Wall-E

 (U)

Pixar-Disney’s latest animated feature would have to be very good indeed to live up to the hype accompanying it. Fortunately, it is. 

In effect, this magnificent science fiction-romantic-comedy-adventure, directed by Andrew (Finding Nemo) Stanton, is two films.

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Standard Operating Procedure

 (15)

The whole world knows about the ill-treatment of inmates of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail, not least because of their American army tormentors documented proceedings in a set of photographs.

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Meet Dave

 (PG)

Director Brian Robbins’s seriously silly but entertainingly science-fiction comedy has Eddie Murphy playing the commander of an Eddie Murphy-lookalike spaceship on a mission involving the destruction of Earth.  Forget the plot and enjoy watching spaceship Murphy, under the command of his minuscule alter ego, learn to walk and talk and bond with humans in a series of mostly crude but often very funny verbal and visual gags.  

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Chantal Akerman: My family and other dark materials

Top avant-garde director Chantal Akerman explores her pressured past in a film being shown in London

Chantal Akerman once described her concerns as follows: “Language, documentary, fiction, Jews and the Second Commandment.” Many critics would add feminism to the list. However, Akerman, whose first solo exhibition in this country opens today at the Camden Arts Centre in North-West London, resists the idea of being categorised. 

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Mamma Mia!

 (PG)

Over 30 million theatregoers have seen the Mamma Mia! stage show. If only half that number see the new film version of the celebrated Abba musical, then it will truly be a hit, and the song Money, Money, Money will apply. 

Fans of the band will not be disappointed. Others, for whom Abba is a four-letter word, need not apply.

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