The Water Horse: Legend Of The Deep is out

Missing his soldier father, a Scottish boy seeks comfort in a new friend in this WWII-set adventure. But Angus (Alex Etel) doesn't find just any new friend: this one hatches from an egg and turns into The Loch Ness Monster. As he strives to hide his find from his housekeeper mother (Emily Watson) and the resident regiment (lead by David Morrissey), Angus befriends handyman Lewis (Ben Chaplin) and has various enjoyable adventures.

Part family melodrama, part knockabout kiddie romp, The Water Horse injects its loss-of-innocence story with frequent chase scenes. The little CG Nessie is quite a handful - especially as he grows at an alarming rate - and is given to escaping from his hiding place (first the shed, then the spare bathroom) and lolloping around the mansion. Kids should enjoy watching Angus and his sister scramble around after their new pal, especially when he's chased by the cook's slavering bulldog.

Adults, meanwhile, may find this family flick more bearable than most, thanks in part to Emily Watson's sensitive portrayal of Angus's mother. A repressed, secretly grieving woman, she fails to notice Angus's problems, and has her eyes gently opened by Lewis, implicit love rival to Morrissey's bullish army captain. The narration - a modern-day Brian Cox reminiscing in a local pub - is too sentimental, and the film is too long. But this is still a decent old-fashioned fantasy that should entertain anyone who's ever dreamed of stumbling across a mythical beast.

National Treasure: Book Of Secrets

In this goofy, good-natured sequel to his 2004 hit, Nicolas Cage returns as mystery-solving treasure hunter Ben Gates. When crooked antiquities dealer Wilkinson (Ed Harris) turns up with a page from the diary of Lincoln's assassin, it seems to prove that Ben's ancestor was a co-conspirator, whilst incidentally hinting at the existence of an Eldorado-like city of gold. Ben, along with dad Patrick (Jon Voight), girlfriend Abigail (Diane Kruger) and partner Riley (Justin Bartha), set about solving the clues which will lead them - and baddie Wilkinson - to the mythical metropolis, hopefully clearing the name of Ben's ancestor en route. Like its predecessor, this is The Da Vinci Code, but with intentional, if corny, laughs.

The globe is duly trotted: Ben and co stop off in Paris (to retrieve a clue from the original Statue of Liberty), London (to nab some hieroglyphs from the Queen's desk), and back to America, where Ben is forced to kidnap the President in order to get hold of the riddle-solving book of state secrets, which urban myth declares all presidents must pass on to one another. Ben's mum Emily (Helen Mirren) proves useful as a hieroglyph translator, and the whole cavalcade ends up at Mount Rushmore for a waterlogged subterranean climax.

This isn't pretending to be anything other than popcorn fun with a (very) light educational touch, and teenage viewers might, just possibly, be piqued into thinking about history as well as hip-hop. Nicolas Cage's dazed delivery, often laughable in drama, doesn't jar in this frothy fare, and the set-pieces look refreshingly physical rather than CG. Parents needn't worry about the presence of Harvey Keitel as a (rather half-hearted) lawman: this being a Disney production, he's on his best behaviour throughout.

There Will Be Blood

Oscar glory beckons for Daniel Day-Lewis, at his imperious, explosive best as turn-of-the-century oilman Daniel Plainview in Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood. Pitting his capitalist ambitions against young preacher Paul Dano's fanatical evangelism, the Boogie Nights man presents a gripping saga of obsession, corruption and greed topped off with an audacious finale that more than delivers on his movie's doom-laden title. Hypnotic, poetic and often downright strange, the remarkable result is every bit as combustible as the black stuff itself.

Anderson starts as he means to go on with a daring opening sequence that charts Day-Lewis's early stabs at silver mining entirely without words - an admirably economical device that shows prospecting to be a dirty, dangerous and frequently deadly business. Prologue done, Plainview is revealed to be a silver-tongued opportunist keen to make his fortune in California's petroleum-rich heartland. When his quest leads him to the small town of Little Boston, however, he finds his way barred by Eli Sunday (Dano), a charismatic preacher determined to ensure his church benefits from the black gold that lies beneath their feet

It's easy to draw parallels between the antagonists' ideological battle to contemporary conflicts involving oil and religion. Yet Anderson's film is also timeless – a sweeping epic in the classic Hollywood tradition that invites comparison with Citizen Kane and Giant. As lofty as its themes are, though, There Will Be Blood finally works best as a thrilling vehicle for its star's fiery majesty and remarkable ability to disappear inside every role he takes on.

Be Kind Rewind

For Mr Fletcher (Danny Glover), business couldn't be worse. His dilapidated video store, Be Kind Rewind, with its paltry stock of VHS tapes, is weeks from demolition. Putting adopted son Mike (Mos Def) in charge couldn't make much difference, he thinks, as long as Mike keeps that idiot Jerry (Jack Black) out of the store. He doesn't, of course, and within hours every tape is ruined. So Mike and Jerry decide to remake the films themselves and, amazingly, they're brilliant.

Jerry and Mike's harebrained, homemade movies take you back to those heady early days of the camcorder when kids were remaking Spielberg's Raiders Of The Lost Ark in their sheds. It's not hard to imagine a young Michel Gondry doing the same as he developed into one of modern film's most inventive directors. There's a Spielbergian optimism to Be Kind Rewind. Jerry and Mike's movies unite a crumbling New Jersey neighbourhood that, with its community of destitute pensioners and ghetto kids, is strangely reminiscent of 1988's Batteries Not Included.

"THE ORIGINALITY IS A CONSTANT WONDER"

Like The Science Of Sleep, his previous project as writer-director, Be Kind Rewind shows the best and worst of Gondry. The originality of his ideas is a constant wonder and, as the film progresses, it's an exciting wait to see what he'll do next, whether it's Robocop armed with a hairdryer or a Boyz N The Hood drive-by death incorporating a pepperoni pizza. But his whimsical dialogue, and the performances he gets from his actors, is patchy at best. Jack Black, in particular, seems stuck in the wrong groove. Nevertheless, those moments of Gondry inspiration make Be Kind Rewind worth your time, even if you decide to wait for the video.

RAMBO

While the nostalgic Rocky Balboa suggested Sylvester Stallone was the comeback king, Rambo proves he's a punch-drunk lunk. Thirty-three years after Vietnam, his ex Green Beret soldier battles the Burmese military and (we're guessing) rheumatoid arthritis to save a bunch of God-bothering Christian missionaries from rape, torture and being fed alive to hungry pigs. "Live for nothing, die for something," mumbles the po-faced OAP as he unleashes the dogs of war in a silly yet sadistic slice of cartoon action.

Still troubled by his 'Nam experience (hello black & white flashbacks) Rambo's working as a snake collector in Thailand when a bunch of US missionaries (including Julie Benz from Dexter) lure him out of retirement to escort them into war torn Burma. When government soldiers kidnap the God-fearing Americans, Rambo returns with a group of mercenaries led by Gavin McTavish's snarling ex-SAS man (who gets the movie's best line - unprintable here but something to do with Thai ladyboys) to rescue them.

The years haven't been kind to Stallone since helping Osama Bin Laden defeat the Russkies in Rambo III. The never-handsome star's turned into a dead ringer for his Spitting Image Puppet and has begun to look all of his sixty-plus years. Perhaps that's why there's none of the usual scenes of bare-chested Rambo being tortured, just endless close-ups of his biceps shaking as he fires .50 cal machine guns and plays with his bow and arrow. Rambo leaves no enemy alive and very few in one piece as mortars and heavy weapons turn human bodies into geysers of gore. It's less a war movie than a turkey shoot in a ketchup factory. It's also reactionary, tasteless and laced with nastiness: a jungle holocaust of civilian casualties and scenes of gang rape harking back to '80s style exploitation. Still, it could have been worse; they could have sent him to Baghdad...