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The Cohen Brothers are really churning them out now; sadly 'Burn After Reading' did not strike me as such a good work as their previous film 'No Country for Old Men'.

Set around characters in Washington D.C. the film opens with C.I.A. officer Osbourne Cox (John Malkovitch) being fired from his post. Returning home in a state of irritation he sets about writing his memoirs. Meanwhile on the other side of town gym administrator Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) fantasises about affording plastic surgery and meeting someone decent from an Internet dating web site.

When Linda's co-worker Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt) unwittingly come into possession of a CD with Osbourne's memoirs they hatch a plan to extort money and change their lives for the better.

The essence of the plot is complicated still further by other characters who have various relationships with the key players. George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Richard Jenkins, and David Rasche (remember him from gun-toting 'Sledgehammer' in the 80s?) all contribute considerable acting talent and plot twists to boot.

Essentially this is a comedy-thriller of the sort that Cohen Brothers fans will be familiar with. The film was well made and there were some really good scenes in it. However, at only 96 minutes long it felt like something was missing. I suspect that some serious editing had taken place to bring the story to a close in a neater way. Unfortunately despite the comedy, pace, and brilliant cast, when the credits rolled I thought, "Is that it?"

**1/2 (out of 5)

September is the new time of year for the Cambridge Film Festival. The Poet and I will be endeavouring to visit a selection of films and other film-related events during the next 9 or 10 days.

This year things are especially complicated for us, however a couple of unofficial podcasts will be recorded and placed on the site ready for you to download and (hopefully) enjoy.

See you at the flicks!

Pixar are very well known for their computer-rendered animated features and as is typical for a film for all the family WALL.E was released in the UK in time for the school holidays.

Andrew Stanton is an old-hand at Pixar and writes and directs this particular Pixar project. He previously directed 'Finding Nemo', and was the writer of 'Toy Story'.

To summarise the plot, without giving too much away, WALL.E is the title and main character of the film. WALL.E is a droid working on the tidying up of an over-polluted and deserted planet Earth. He seems to be well past his original service life, as he works alone scuttling around the remnants of civilisation compressing rubbish and salvaging interesting artefacts including an array of extra service items for himself. Mankind has left for space and the droid seems to have developed a personality of his own - the usual anthropomorphism present in most of Pixar's stories.

One day WALL.E witnesses a spectacular visitation from an other-worldly droid who is apparently scanning the planet. Having spent so much time without excitement WALL.E attempts, with the help of a friendly cockroach, to befriend this new arrival.

To put it simply this film was really excellent. At first the scenes are gritty and realistic as WALL.E trundles around doing the sorts of things that Wombles are known for doing. The graphics were so realistic you can recognise rusting cans of WD-40 and bashed-up iPods that WALL.E has found. As the film moves forward it shifts towards a more aesthetic experience altogether, and some of the scenes were just pure art as well as entertainment. There is a blatant ecological message here too, but it's not so heavy handed as to make you feel too guilty about being human.

Considering this film is for all the family, and especially the younger members of them, I found (despite being a jaded adult) that it was quite easy to get engrossed in the visuals and the simple story. A few nods and winks to other Sci-Fi films make for even more fun; Sigourney Weaver even has a cameo voice-over role.

Special note also goes to the end credits which feature the plot of the film backwards in a style from early human wall painting through to primitive computer animation. Sadly I managed to miss the Pixar mini-movie at the beginning of the film, which means I will have to get this one on DVD - or maybe even Blue-Ray - when it is released!

***** (out of 5)

Having seen, and very much enjoyed, The Station Agent, I made a point of catching this latest one by writer-director Thomas McCarthy. It almost lived up to my expectations, but not quite. Like The Station Agent, the film is about the loneliness of modern society, and celebrates the joy of unexpected and improbable friendships. However, there is less zany humour in The Visitor, a film which tries to be serious yet shies away from uncomfortable areas, handling the issue of illegal immigration with extreme caution, almost coyness.

The film's warm humanity comes largely from its caste of likeable characters. Walter, an ageing professor teaching third world and development studies, is kind and gentle and cannot resist helping a young couple when he finds them unexpectedly living in the New York flat he rarely uses. Incidentally, I wasn't sure exactly how they managed to infiltrate it and felt that that area of the plot could have been better clarified. Anyway, Walter turns up one day to find Zainab, a young African woman, in the bath, upon which her boyfriend Tarek runs up to find out why she is screaming. After initially asking them to leave, Walter decides to invite them back as they clearly have nowhere else to go. It probably helps that they are an attractive and charismatic couple: he a talented musician and she a stylish jewellery designer. One wonders whether Walter's reaction would have been the same if they had been a little more unsavoury or just stupid. Anyway, Walter is won over when Tarek offers to teach him drumming (Walter's a would-be musician whose attempts to learn the piano after the death of his piano-teacher wife have ended miserably). With his new friend, Walter visits cool night-clubs and open-air jamming sessions and feels generally rejuvenated.

The sunny mood clouds when Tarek is arrested in the subway and kept in detention. In his efforts to help Tarek, widower Walter strikes up a relationship (of a very decorous kind) with Tarek's elegant Palestinian mother, who wants to visit Tarek in prison. Meanwhile Zainab remains in the vicinity, watching and waiting, and apparently safe from suspicion although she too is not a legal resident. The question of why Tarek was picked on for arrest rather than other, equally marginal figures, was not explained, although the lawyer whom Walter hires explains that the government is tightening up a lot in the wake of 9/11. I felt that McCarthy could have gone further - without becoming too heavy or boring - to show the range of treatment meted out to people in these circumstances. I was left wondering what was special about Tarek's case. The treatment given to the issue just seemed a little thin, and whilst I appreciate that McCarthy was trying to make a character-driven film rather than an issue-driven one, the result was a little frustrating.

The best scenes in the film were the ones of group drumming, in which the performances of the musicians were exhilarating. These high points were equivalent to the visual poetry (shots of disused and little-used railway lines winding into the distance) that made The Station Agent so beautiful and moving. The Visitor was an enjoyably bitter-sweet study of human vulnerability. Almost like E. M. Forster's novel Howards End - with its motto 'only connect' - the film showed the very human need for friendship and understanding, but it could have afforded to be a little more hard-edged without losing its appeal. Or simply be more zany: one or the other. This film ended up being neither one thing nor the other.

Listen very carefully, I will say this only wuurnce ... Women have been making important contributions to national life (at least in European countries like France and England) for a long time, not merely since the advent of 'feminism' thirty years ago. It doesn't need a film like this to present that fact - the involvement of women - as if it were a surprising discovery! One of the aims of Female Agents is to pay tribute to a group of women who helped the D-Day Landings to go ahead, but whose contribution was not, perhaps, recognised as much as it should have been. That is a good aim, but I felt that the film over-played the feminism angle in a way that seemed, at times, patronising. Apart from that flaw, however, it was a gripping, fast-paced piece of cinema that told a fascinating story very well.

Jean-Paul Salome, the director, combines convincing character-development with good cinematic technique (such as interesting cutting between different scenes) to hold the viewer's attention from the start. The women in the team (whose mission is initially to save a man wounded whilst reconnoitring the Normandy beaches, then to eliminate the Nazi colonel who suspects the plans) are portrayed as very different in their personalities. Gaelle, the explosives expert, is religious, Suzy is a sensualist, Jeanne is earthy and tough, and Louise, who holds them together, is coolly rational. The male characters in the film (even the ones on the Allied side) come off rather badly in comparison. Louise's brother Pierre, for example, seems cold, and fails to win our sympathy even when he is the victim of torture by the Nazi colonel, Heindrich. Perhaps if there had been some more sympathetic male characters the film wouldn't have felt quite so dogmatic in its feminism. Colonel Heindrich's romantic involvement with Suzy adds complexity and psychological interest to his character, and his one act of mercy redeems him somewhat, but ultimately (and inevitably) he is a villain. The fact that he alone of the higher-ranking Nazis seemed close to suspecting the Allied plans before D-Day is intriguing, and a testimony to his intelligence.

There were some very skilfully-shot sequences in this film. For example, the bombing of the hospital near the beginning. Before the bomb has exploded, Louise (disguised as a nurse) stalks Heindrich with a gun whilst the rest of the men are distracted by a Folies Bergeres-style striptease routine that some of her fellow agents put on. Louise tracks Heindrich to the men's lavatory and he, still in his cubicle, sees her approaching by means of the reflection in the chrome plumbing in front of him, The camera angles here added magnificently to the suspense, in a way reminiscent of the chase scenes in that movie classic, The Third Man. The fast pace continues throughout Female Agents, with twists and turns enough (no spoilers here) to intrigue the viewer right up to the end. It is a very moving film as well, and makes you wonder how many other heroic lives from that era remain untold.

Le Grand Voyage is a road movie with a difference. Not only does it show the gradual growth of trust and liking between father and son in the course of a long journey, it also shows the meeting of different cultures, namely western secularism and traditional Islam. The kind of Islam that the father practises is strict but not fundamentalist, and the positive aspects of his faith are represented with impressive impartiality. This is no mean feat in today's climate of paranoia and intolerance. One small example will help here: the father scrupulously shows charity to strangers, and gives alms. Although the son protests when he sees their dwindling supply of money being given away, he has clearly learnt something because at the end of the film we see him giving money to a beggar on the street. This small detail, showing his change of heart, is typical of the way the director, Ismael Ferroukhi, works: through subtle touches. It is a very thoughtful film, but certainly not a humourless one. There were many points where I found myself laughing out loud, and reflecting that it was the best film I had seen in a long time (and I've seen quite a few recently).

A little plot summary here will be useful. Reda has been saddled with the unenviable task of driving his somewhat taciturn old father on an overland pilgrimage to Mecca, starting from the south of France where they live. This is a very short-notice arrangement, as it was to have been his elder brother who would do the driving, but the brother is arrested for drunk driving. Reda is not best pleased as he has important exams coming up, and also he is seeing a girl from his class and does not want to leave her for a long stretch of time. However, he puts family duty first and accepts the challenge. For the first part of the journey, our sympathies are definitely with Reda rather than with the father, who seems grumpy, unreasonable and generally awkward. For example, he puts his son's mobile phone in a litter bin while his son is sleeping because he thinks it is distracting him from the pilgrimage. He also prefers to trust to his own sense of direction rather than maps, causing them to get lost in a particularly bleak part of eastern Europe. However, it becomes apparent in the course of the film that he does actually care a lot for his son, and that there are always strong principles behind his actions. It is the way he usually refuses to justify or explain his actions with words that causes problems initially. Language is an interesting area in the film. The son speaks almost entirely in French, whereas the father prefers Arabic, so that their conversations are strangely polyglot. It only becomes apparent later on that the father can actually speak French but stubbornly chooses not to: his surprising fluency in French is demonstrated at the French embassy in a Turkish town when the two of them are trying to claim reimbursement after they've been robbed by a confidence trickster. Reda is to blame for this disaster, as he had been too willing to trust the wily man who offers himself as their guide; Reda allowed himself to get drunk one night, providing the thief with his opportunity. The father's suspicions turned out to have been right all along.

To return to the question of language: the fact that different varieties of Arabic are spoken in different parts of the world was reflected. As the two men are nearing their destination, they share a picnic with some other pilgrims in a wayside stopping place in the desert. The father explains that his son only speaks Morroccan Arabic, not classical Arabic, so he would be unable to join in the conversation. The other pilgrims are amazed at the distance the men have covered (nearly three thousand miles) and are full of praise. Reda, humbled by his experience with the trickster, has started to see his father's point of view by this point, and has stopped complaining about the laboriousness of the journey. When he asked his father why he didn't just take the plane to Mecca, the father explained that it is not simply arriving at the destination that counts, but the means taken to achieve that end, and a more difficult journey will yield greater spiritual benefit. When the men actually arrive in Mecca, the overwhelming number of pilgrims converging on the spot is very graphically conveyed: the crowds pushing forward towards the mosque create a feeling of claustrophobia, yet there is also an atmosphere of elation. The cinematography at this point becomes a bit dream-like, as if Reda is having a kind of waking vision. It is not clear, by the end of the film, whether he has actually been 'converted' from secularism to religious faith, but he has certainly had a life-changing experience. Without wishing to spoil the surprise for anyone intending to see the film, I'd say that the journey back will be very different from the journey out.

The one thing that slightly spoilt the film for me was the cheesy music! At moments of good will and relaxation, some very artificial 'feel good' music blasted out, annoying me a lot. Why not use proper arabic music, either classical, or one of the many popped-up variants that are popular among immigrants in France? That would surely be more authentic and interesting? Apart from that, though, the film was very impressive. The use of humour was very well-judged. One particularly funny moment was the sheep scene. Reda is complaining about the fact that their diet lacks meat, so the father buys a live sheep at the next village they stop at, and puts it on the back seat of the car. Reda only realises this after they've set off again and he hears a funny noise coming from behind him. When they try to kill the poor creature though, the father brandishing his knife, Reda fails to hold it down and it runs off into the desert, bleating. There were many quirky scenes like this, and some lovely landscape shots too. As I've already indicated, this was the best film I've seen this year.

'Honeydripper' is the name of the bar where the action of this film takes place, and if that word suggests 'slow' and 'sweet' then that pretty much sums up the film itself too. The proprietor of the establishment, Tyrone Purvis, is determined to have one last crack at making the place financially viable before giving in to pressure from the legal owner, who wants to put it to a different use. Tyrone's big idea is to invite 'Guitar Sam' to come and give a live performance, since Sam is a big name and plays the kind of music that is more to the taste of the younger generation than the old-style Blues that has been on offer at Honeydripper up to that point. As the fateful Saturday night of the performance approaches, all kinds of situations and relationships in the community start to crystallise around the event, as if everything hangs off it.

The great thing about this film is the script; the dialogue and the characterisation are brilliant, and would win praise if the production were shown on a West End stage. A good example is the conversation between Delilah (Tyrone's wife) and Amanda Winship, the white lady she works for as cleaner. The unfinished sentences and uneasy pauses in the conversation reveal much about social boundaries in the society of Alabama in 1950, the time when the film is set. I'm not sure what else John Sayles (the director/writer) has done in the past, but this really does him credit. In this film, he revisits and reworks many of the standard myths about Blues music, but nostalgia is resisted. Sayles is interested in what happens when times change and society moves on. Of course, Blues music never died, but got incorporated into the mainstream of rock and roll, and that is the process that we begin to see happen when a young guitarist (Sonny, played by Gary Clark Jr) turns up in the town Melody (where Honeydripper is located) and produces his strange but magical electric guitar.

I've recently watched all of the films in the excellent documentary series Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues (different directors for each one, but all overseen by Scorsese) and so I'm particularly 'tuned-in' to Blues history. This film makes a good contribution to the ongoing debate about this important part of American culture. However, it also seemed to be a story simply about youth and age, the passing of time and fading of hopes, that worked on a universal level. Maybe this is why Sayles didn't overplay the old Deep South melodrama too much: maybe he wanted the story to stand alone, rather like a fable. At times I felt that the picture we are given of life in Melody seemed almost too implausibly clean, and not gritty enough. The cotton pickers didn't even seem to be sweating for heavens' sake! Perhaps this was part of the attempt to present an upbeat vision that we can all relate to and share without feeling too oppressed by darker issues. As the story slowly unfolds, we are drawn into the web of human relationships - Tyrone and his wife, Maceo and Nadine, the sheriff, China Doll and Sonny - so that we feel almost like one of the neighbours. At times, watching this felt like seeing a production of Chekhov's Cherry Orchard.

This fun-filled film came out in time to make best use of the school Easter holidays, and it was clearly aimed at a younger audience. Garth Jennings (who also directed the film remake of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) this time breaks that hallowed rule of not working with children, and appears to survive.

There have been many films about making films; watching this one I presumed that the story was semi-autobiographical, having been penned by Jennings as well, and was therefore possibly a more personal film than THGTOG.

The story revolves around the two central characters, Will, and Lee. They are opposite sides of the same coin. They appear to be children who are suffering a little from not having their full complement of parents present in their lives. Will is looked after by his Mum in a strict Plymouth Brethren household. Lee meanwhile is bullied by his older brother Laurence who manages the house in their parents' absence. While Lee is the more outrageous and street-wise character when compared to his soon-to-be-friend Will, they both have another thing in common - a powerful imagination.

After a chance meeting in the coridoor at school, they eventually become friends and Will is cajoled into helping Lee with making a film for a competition. As it turns out Will subverts Lee's original intentions creating his own character the 'Son of Rambow'.

While this is a simple film in some respects, and not ground-breaking in terms of style or artistry, there is a fair amount going on here for family entertainment. The film is set in the 80s and is quite nostalgic in some respects. There are also various in-jokes for older viewers. Additionally the arrival of a French-exchange class adds to the fun and dynamic of the tale. Inevitably there is a hint of a moral message, but it did not appear to be too heavy handed.

One of the fun aspects of the film is the occasional glimpse into Will's imagination. As an avid doodler we occasionally perceive his hand-drawn view of the world superimposed onto the footage. I could have taken a lot more of this, and I thought it worked really well as a visual treat during the film. I also thought that the children's acting was pretty good as well, certainly good enough to allow me to immerse myself in the action.

Ironically the film serves as a really good advert for the Sylvester Stallone 'Rambo: First Blood' movie which fires the imagination of the main protagonists. Proof of this was overheard recently in a conversation as I passed a group of schoolboys. I imagine a lot of children will be getting into the action movies of the 1980s as a result!

****1/2 (out of 5)

This latest offering from veteran British director Mike Leigh stands in marked contrast to his previous piece, Vera Drake, a sombre tale of back-street abortion. Happy-Go-Lucky is light-hearted and unchallenging, but that does not mean it does not have a message. The message seems to be that personal life is meaningless and worthless - that we should all live publicly, for the public good, helping our fellow men and women the way Poppy, the main character does - that we should be bright and cheery members of the community without bothering to establish a private life. Significantly, Poppy's relationship (when she finally gets round to forming one, in between her other commitments and activities) is with someone she met through her work as a primary school teacher: again, the public persona replaces, or merges with, the private one. I'm not sure that I subscribe to this message, that private life is worthless, but thankfully that didn't stop me enjoying the film.

As a Mike Leigh fan, I couldn't help making comparisons and parallels with his previous work, and Life Is Sweet is the film that Happy-Go-Lucky most resembled to my mind. That is probably because it shared with that earlier film a preoccupation with women's lives and choices. In this film, as in Life Is Sweet, women are shown choosing between independence and family life, between conformity and quirky individuality. Career Girls also focussed on the position of women in modern society, but that film did not contain any scenes of domesticity whereas in Happy-Go-Lucky we have the visit to the married and pregnant sister's house. In comparison with her pregnant sister, Poppy seems relaxed, self-aware and vibrant: an advertisement for the modern singleton's lifestyle of clubbing, pubbing and travelling. Domesticity and motherhood are seen as implicitly dowdy and unfashionable, which contrasts with the picture presented in Life Is Sweet, in which Alison Steadman is very sympathetic and likable as the warm-hearted and humorous housewife mum of female adolescent twins (two girls, one bulimic, who are struggling with what it means to be a modern woman). Have Mike Leigh's views of family life changed over the years? One wonders if that has anything to do with his personal circumstances. Perhaps I am reading too much into these character portrayals. There did seem to be a slight bias in favour of the single, unattached lifestyle.

The best scenes in the film were undoubtedly the driving lesson scenes. Mike Leigh is spot-on and razor-sharp in his insight that it is behind the wheel that modern man (or woman) reveals him (or her) self in his (or her) true colours. The uptight driving instructor is played brilliantly and hilariously by Eddie Marsan, an actor who impressed in another recent British film, Grow Your Own (about allotments, and definitely worth seeing). Poppy and Scott are heading for a collision course from the word go, and their final showdown is the climax of the whole film. The schoolroom scenes are also interesting and insightful, but in these, Mike Leigh's political correctness came through a little too strongly. Most of the ingredients of a great Mike Leigh film are here, in particular the telling and surprising camera angles that seem to catch the characters off-guard. There is always something magic about the way Leigh lingers on a disillusioned or wistful face, isolates an impatient gesture, or simply captures on camera the daydreaming and the wishful thinking in which we all indulge. Leigh is a voyeur, a master of the intimate and the small-scale, and that is why I find it odd that he should start subscribing to the view that it is not who we are in private and at home that counts, but how we behave at work. What I felt was missing from this film was a good balance of characters: Poppy monopolises the director's sympathy and attention, leaving the other characters (apart from the monstrous driving instructor) in the shade. As a result, the film lacked depth and richness and felt a little superficial.

Veteran director Martin Scorsese has been there and done that, and as far as making movies is concerned has a wardrobe full of T-shirts. So it seems that he now occupies himself by making movies about things that personally interest him.

After his excellent collaborative work of 'The Blues' and the 'No Direction Home' Bob Dylan film he turns his attention to 'The Rolling Stones'.

This work, shot at a concert given in aid of Bill Clinton's charitable foundation (and part of the ex-President's birthday celebrations), gives a close up insight into the onstage antics of the 'Stones''. The footage starts with a very brief glimpse of arrangements being made for the concert. This includes some interesting dialogues and discussions about how the shoot of the concert would actually happen. The cut into the opening act occurs swiftly, with as little notice as Scorsese apparently was given as to the running order of the numbers in the set. Once into the flow of the concert there are interludes of archive material.

The main thing that struck me about this film was the cinematography. It was excellent. Just getting a good set of cameras and settings that would capture the visuals with all the stage lighting and movement must have been a major feat in itself. I pondered what a difficult task it must have been to soak up all the on-stage action. One gets the impression that there must have been a lot more going on.

Unlike a normal film where the environment is carefully controlled the Stones throw themselves about the place with abandon. Despite their age they put on a good performance, and Scorsese and his camera team record the vitality so well. The colours stand out immediately, and the shots are so intimate on occasion that you practically flinch as Mick Jagger's phlegm flies over the microphone.

However, this is the big screen, so there is plenty of background action to enjoy as well once you get used to the overall impact. I was especially entertained by the attempts of the groupies to attract the attentions of the band, and I began to wonder which ones would be successful in their attempts to woo the stars, or whether Bill Clinton would swoop in and grab the action for himself!

As for the archive material, I would have loved to have seen a little more. It really made the film for me (not being a major Rolling Stones fan) to see some classic clips. Of special note was the bowl-haircut of drummer Charlie Watts in one of the scenes which made him look almost exactly like Javier Bardem's character Chigur in 'No Country for Old Men'.

During the course of the concert there were numerous guest appearances, including Jack White and Christina Aguilera. The appearance of the latter seemed to really upset the groupies for some reason. Of special note however was Buddy Guy, who almost stole the show!

There were some good songs by the headliners though and while the encores were slightly predictable I came away feeling that I'd had a reasonably exhilarating experience - without having to stand for two hours or deafen myself.

**** (out of 5)