Four Christmases and Changeling

3:01pm Wednesday 26th November 2008

Rumours of an on-set feud between lead stars Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn hardly echo the tidings of comfort and joy espoused by Seth Gordon’s romantic comedy Four Christmases. "We've just got to get through these four Christmases as quickly and painlessly as possible,” grimaces Witherspoon's plucky heroine as she stares down the barrel of back-to-back celebrations with her divorced parents and the in-laws. By the end of the first act, we realise with mounting horror that director Gordon and his four screenwriters have no intention of granting her (and therefore us) that wish.

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Before the Rains, Año uña and The Silence of Lorna

3:00pm Wednesday 26th November 2008

Having impressed with The Terrorist (1999) and Asoka the Great (2001), cinematographer-turned-director Santosh Sivan makes his English-language debut with Before the Rains. Set in Kerala in southern India in 1937, the action centres on spice baron Linus Roache, as he tries to secure from banker John Standing the funding for a road that will enable him to expand his business. A committed colonialist, Roache plans to share his wealth with factotum Rahul Bose. But the project is endangered when Roache is spotted with his housemaid mistress Nandita Das and Bose has to devise an elaborate cover-up to maintain appearances with the locals and prevent memsahib Jennifer Ehle from learning the truth.

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Photographic exhibition; Charlotte Bird, The Gallery, Steventon, Nov 26 until just before Christmas

9:00am Wednesday 19th November 2008

HERE may not be fairies at the bottom of the garden, but there are certainly lots in the Long Room at The Gallery, Steventon, from November 26 to just before Christmas.

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Waltz With Bashir

3:31pm Wednesday 19th November 2008

The Japanese have been making grown-up cartoons for decades. But the emphasis of so much anime has been on sci-fi and fantasy and it's only recently that animators have begun to tackle weightier topics in the graphic novel style of, say, Art Spiegelman’s Maus.

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Conversations with My Gardener and Belle Toujours

3:30pm Wednesday 19th November 2008

Two superb films about ageing are released this week and it’s wonderful to see that cinema is still being made somewhere in the world whose main constituency isn’t adolescent males.

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'Go Where he Will, the wise man is at home' Frederick Wiseman documentaries at the Ultimate Picture Palace

10:06am Thursday 13th November 2008

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Zack and Miri Make a Porno

10:09am Thursday 13th November 2008

Almost 20 years ago, Rob Reiner's seminal romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally posed the age-old question: can men and women truly be friends without sex getting in the way? For Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal, carnal desires wrecked their characters' friendship, reducing a previously rock solid relationship to a morass of anger, regret and razor-sharp one-liners.

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