Lacklustre thriller with Keanu Reeves as a serial killer, and James Spader as a traumatised FBI agent who fled from California to Chicago after almost catching him, and losing a victim in the process. But now the killer has followed him there, and is intent on tormenting him even further. Cat and mouse chases, mind games, and some severely naff explosion “special” effects at the end. You get the picture. It whiles away the evening, though.

Take my rating here with a grain of salt, because I’m not the target audience for this film. But that in itself is disappointing, because the original Disney Winnie The Pooh animations are sweet interpretations of A.A. Milne’s books, and hold just as much charm for grown-ups as they do for young kids.

Piglet’s Big Movie consists of a series of little adventures told in flashback, held together by the main storyline, in which Piglet runs away because he feels that his friends don’t really need him. It is clearly designed to drive home a “friends do need each other” message. But much of the beauty of the original Disney treatment lies in its unstructured rambling, and the joy of just “doing nothing” (as Christopher Robin and Pooh discuss at the end). This new film has a purpose. It tries to lead your imagination down a particular path, rather than letting your own mind do the wandering. Having Carly Simon sing a series of bland A-A-B-A songs rather than letting the characters use their own voices for their own little ditties doesn’t help, either. And why on earth did they have to stick a music video of one of the songs between the end of animation and the credits? Alex had a good time because he got to see Pooh and the gang having new adventures, but I didn’t like it very much.

Very black comedy about a group of soldiers in 1980s West Berlin, who are into all the trouble they can make for themselves, from stealing supplies and selling them on the black market, to processing and distributing heroin. Joaquin Phoenix puts in a great performance as Ray Elwood, chief clerk to the base commander. Elwood is a corrupt wheel-greaser who finds his comfortable enterprise spinning out of control when he tries to deal in weapons instead of cleaning liquid. The top brass puts arrow-straight war hero Sergeant Lee (Scott Glenn, doing grizzled and menacing) in place to try and clean up the base. Elwood falls in love with his daughter, which gives the Sergeant even more reason to stomp down hard on him. None of the characters are particularly likeable, but you end up feeling sympathetic towards them nevertheless. It’s a caustic and wry look at the military, and how peacetime can sometimes be no better than war.

Lilo is a precocious young Hawaiian girl who lives with her troubled big sister after the death of their parents. Stitch is an all-destructive but highly intelligent little monster, the result of a mad alien scientist’s dabblings with genetic engineering. When Stitch escapes from the Galactic Council’s captivity, it ends up on Earth, in a Hawaiian dog kennel. Lilo finds it there, and takes it in as a pet. The rest of the film follows Lilo as she tries to socialize Stitch and bring him into the heart of her broken family, and the exploits of two bumbling aliens (the mad scientist and an alien anthropologist) as they try to recapture Stitch.

It’s a wonderfully funny and imaginative film. Lilo and Stitch are both eccentric goofballs, and there are plenty of scenes to show off the strange bond that forms between them. The animation is lovely. Stitch’s behaviour and expressions are hilarious–reminiscent of Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes) at his most monstrous–which leads to some excellent visual gags. And although the “family” theme of the film is obvious, it is warm and affecting rather than repetitive and preachy. Heartily recommended, even if you don’t have kids around the house.