Daniel Craig hasn't lost a step since Casino Royale—this James Bond remains dangerous, a man who could earn that license to kill in brutal hand-to-hand combat… but still look sharp in a tailored suit. And Quantum of Solance itself carries on from the previous film like no other 007 movie, with Bond nursing his anger from the Casino Royale storyline and vowing blood revenge on those responsible. For the new plot, we have villain Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), intent on controlling the water rights in impoverished Third World nations and happy to overthrow a dictator or two to get his way. Olga Kurylenko is very much in the "Bond girl" tradition, but in the Ursula Andress way, not the Denise Richards way. And Judi Dench, Jeffrey Wright, and Giancarlo Giannini are welcome holdovers. If director Marc Forster and the longtime Bond production team seem a little too eager to embrace the continuity-shredding style of the Bourne pictures (especially in a nearly incomprehensible opening car chase), they nevertheless quiet down and get into a dark, concentrated groove soon enough. And the theme song, "Another Way to Die," penned by Jack White and performed by him and Alicia Keys, is actually good (at times Keys seems to be channeling Shirley Bassey—nice). Of course it all comes down to Craig. And he kills. —Robert Horton, Amazon.com

Paul Verhoeven was almost unknown in Hollywood prior to the release of RoboCop in 1987. But after this ultra-violent yet strangely subversive and satirical sci-fi picture became a huge hit his reputation for extravagant and excessive, yet superbly well-crafted filmmaking was assured. Controversial as ever, Verhoeven saw the blue-collar cop (Peter Weller) who is transformed into an invincible cyborg as "an American Jesus with a gun", and so the film dabbles with death and resurrection imagery as well as mercilessly satirising Reagan-era America. No targets escape Verhoeven's unflinching camera eye, from yuppie excess and corporate backstabbing to rampant consumerism and vacuous media personalities. As with his later sci-fi satire Starship Troopers the extremely bloody violence resolutely remains on the same level as a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

The inevitable sequel, competently directed by Irvin Kershner, thankfully continues to mine the dark vein of anti-consumerist satire while being reflexively aware that it is itself a shining example of that which it is lampooning. Sadly the third instalment in the series, now without Peter Weller in the title role, is exactly the kind of dumbed-down production-line flick that the corporate suits of OCP might have dreamed up at a marketing meeting. Its only virtue is a decent music score from regular Verhoeven collaborator Basil Poledouris, whose splendid march theme returned from the original score.

The slightly disappointing commercial returns for Saw 6 may have been grabbing the headlines when the film made its cinematic bow in October 2009, yet this clouded another factor about the movie itself: that it was the best Saw feature for some time.

Granted, the film does have an overriding feel of business as usual, and Saw VI isn’t shy about tying itself close to the hallmarks of the series thus far. So we get no shortage of gore, a collection of new traps for the latest unsuspecting victims to do battle with, and the influence of Tobin Bell’s Jigsaw still firmly felt.

In Saw VI though, it holds together a little better than we’ve been used to seeing. This time, we get Special Agent Stahm going up against Detective Hoffman, the latter of whom is very much trying to build on the legacy of Jigsaw. It’s not the deepest of premises, but it works, and the film ties in just enough plot intrigue to get you to the end. Plus, the set piece sequences work well, and while the editing style is still a little too fractious, the end result is a real improvement, and an effective horror movie. Inevitably, though, episode seven of the series is on the way…! —Jon Foster

This freewheeling parody tosses horror movies, Eminem, The Matrix, and much more into a cinematic blender. Scary Movie 3 centres around Cindy, a bubble-headed young newscaster who believes that a deadly videotape has some mysterious connection to the aliens who've been making crop circles in the cornfield of a local farmer (Charlie Sheen), whose brother hopes to win a local rap contest. Along for the ride are Queen Latifah, George Carlin, Anthony Anderson, Pamela Anderson, Jenny McCarthy, Jeremy Piven, Camryn Manheim, Ja Rule, dozens of rap stars, and Leslie Nielsen as the President of the US. There's no need to have seen the first two Scary Movie flicks—though a few of the characters recur, the movie leapfrogs from gag to goofy gag, plundering The Ring, Signs and The Others as needed. It's silly and slapdash, but with a decent dose of laughs. —Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com

In Scary Movie we visit BA Corpse High School, where all the pupils are visibly in their late 20s and a masked madman (or two) is on the loose, slaughtering self-involved, pop-culture-obsessed kids while trying to get to virginal heroine Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris). The gang are still guilt-ridden over their semi-accidental killing of a fisherman last Halloween, while at least one has been driven homicidally mad by the cancellation of the Wayans Brothers television show. An old vaudeville motto has it that you can't kid a kidder, and the makers of this would have done well to remember MAD Magazine didn't run a satire of Airplane!. The obvious flaw in the canny plan to satirise Wes Craven's Scream films is that they were already comedies, playing as many self-referential tricks as anything from the Naked Gun team but with the added bonus of actual scary scenes. The joke about ageing starlets pretending to be high school kids was done in Scream 3, for instance, and Scary Movie keeps sending up scenes that were funnier "straight" and only really gets a good satirical victim when it turns to the somewhat sillier I Know What You Did Last Summer franchise. Director Keenen Ivory Wayans and his writing-acting brothers Marlon and Shawn show no real interest in the genre they're taking pot-shots at, suggesting that the point here was to lampoon something hot rather than (as in the best spoofs) growing from a mixture of affection and contempt. The only way Scary Movie can get a reaction is going for gross: heads skewered by dildos, slashed-out breast implants, tiny dick gags, a torrential gush of sperm washing the heroine against the ceiling, relentless fag jokes (a DVD-ROM "Gaydar" feature even enumerates these) and a lot of old Cheech and Chong marijuana routines. About one in 10 of the jokes crack a grudging smile, with riffs on recognisable bits from The Matrix and The Usual Suspects, and a nicely nasty irrelevant aside that makes fun of both Titanic and Amistad. The best moment is a "scenes we've always wanted to see" scene in which an obnoxious cinemagoer is murdered by an entire audience for talking on her mobile phone during Shakespeare in Love. On the DVD: the DVD is letterboxed to 2.35:1 and has Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks in English and Italian, with subtitles in English and Italian. Extras are seven brief scenes cut out of the film (none very funny), a matey behind-the-scenes featurette, DVD-ROM features (a useful function plays the film with all the jokes and in-references explained in subtitles) and the theatrical trailer. —Kim Newman

If you’ve got too many pre-conceptions of just how a Sherlock Holmes movie should pan out, then it’s probably best that you check them in before popping this latest version in your player. Starring Robert Downey Jr. in the title role and accompanied by Jude Law as Watson, this film dispenses with some of the conventions of Holmes, and instead starts turning him into something of a period action hero.

Downey Jr. is more than up to the challenge too. Early scenes in Sherlock Holmes are more Fight Club than sleuth-influenced, with the hand of director Guy Ritchie behind the camera being very clear. But the film soon settles down and starts to have some fun, with the able assistance of Mark Strong and Rachel McAdams, among the supporting cast.

Yet this is Downey Jr.’s show, and he doesn’t waste the opportunity. He’s an engaging leading man at the worst of times, and he’s clearly having a ball here. What’s more, it’s immensely satisfying when his Sherlock Holmes gets down to the business of solving crimes, even though there are some really quite impressive action sequences to work through first.

There are problems, of course. There’s not enough flesh on the bones of some of the characters, and the early part of the film feels very different from the latter stages. But there’s solid groundwork here for the inevitable franchise, and watching Downey Jr. reprise the role of Sherlock Holmes over the next few years should be really quite good fun too. —Jon Foster

A movie that would not have been out of place in the run of paranoid-political thrillers of the 1970s, Shooter works an entertaining variation on the assassination picture. Mark Wahlberg, carrying over good mojo from The Departed, slides neatly into the character of Bob Lee Swagger, master marksman. Swagger has retreated from his duty as an off-the-books hired gun for the military, having become disillusioned with his government (switching on his TV at his remote mountain cabin, he mutters, "Let's see what kind of lies they're trying to sell us today."). Ah, but the government needs Swagger to scope out the location of a rumored attempt on the life of the president, so a shadowy government operative (Danny Glover) begs Swagger to use his sniper's skills to out-fox the assassin. From there—well, spoilers are not fair, since the movie has a few legitimate shocks and a very nice wrong-man scenario about to unfold.

A novel by the Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Stephen Hunter gives the movie a logical spine, even if the premise itself is the stuff of conspiracy theorists. Wahlberg gets support from Michael Pena, as a skeptical FBI agent; Kate Mara, as a trustworthy widow; and Ned Beatty, trailing along memories of Network, as a supremely cynical Senator. Along with the well-executed action sequences (the previously unreliable director Antoine Fuqua gets it in gear here), the movie includes a few potshots at the Bush administration. No, that doesn't put Shooter at the level of The Parallax View or All the President's Men, but it provides some tang along with the flying bullets. —Robert Horton

All three of the hit animated movies in one package.

Full of verve and wit, Shrek is a computer-animated adaptation of William Steig's delightfully fractured fairy tale. Our title character (voiced by Mike Myers) is an agreeable enough ogre who wants to live his days in peace. When the diminutive Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow) evicts local fairy tale creatures (including the now-famous Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio and the Gingerbread Man), they settle in the ogre's swamp and Shrek wants answers from Farquaad. A quest of sorts starts for Shrek and his new pal, a talking donkey (Eddie Murphy), where battles have to be won and a princess (Cameron Diaz) must be rescued from a dragon lair in a thrilling action sequence. The story is stronger than most animated fare but it's the jokes that make Shrek a winner. The PG rating is stretched when Murphy and Myers hit their strides. The mild potty humour is fun enough for the 10-year-old but will never embarrass their parents. Shrek is never as warm and inspired as the Toy Story films, but the realistic computer animation and a rollicking soundtrack keeps the entertainment in fine form. Produced by DreamWorks, the film also takes several delicious stabs at its cross-town rival, Disney. —Doug Thomas

In Shrek 2, the newlywed Shrek and Princess Fiona are invited to Fiona's former kingdom, Far Far Away, to have their marriage blessed by Fiona's parents—which Shrek thinks is a bad, bad idea, and he's proved right: the parents are horrified by their daughter's transformation into an ogress, a fairy godmother wants her son Prince Charming to win Fiona, and a feline assassin is hired to get Shrek out of the way. The computer animation is more detailed than ever, but it's the acting that make the comedy work—in addition to the return of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, and Cameron Diaz, Shrek 2 features the flexible voices of Julie Andrews, John Cleese and Antonio Banderas, plus Jennifer Saunders as the gleefully wicked fairy godmother. —Bret Fetzer

And in Shrek The Third, it's not easy being an ogre. Shrek finds it doubly difficult for an ogre like himself to fill in for a king when his father-in-law King Harold of Far, Far Away falls ill in this third Shrek movie. Shrek's attempts to fulfill his kingly duties play like a blooper reel, with boat christenings and knighting ceremonies gone terribly wrong, and to say that Shrek (Mike Myers) is insecure about his new role is a gross understatement. When King Harold (John Cleese) passes away, Shrek sets out with Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and Puss-in-Boots (Antonio Banderas) to find Arthur (Justin Timberlake), the only heir in line for the throne besides himself. Just as Shrek sets sail to find Artie (as Arthur is more commonly known), Fiona (Cameron Diaz) shocks Shrek with the news that she's pregnant. Soon after, Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) sends Captain Hook (Ian McShane) in pursuit of Shrek and imprisons Fiona and her fellow Princesses as part of his plan to install himself as King of Far, Far Away. Shrek finds an awkward Artie jousting with his high school classmate Lancelot (John Krasinski) and, while Artie is certainly no picture of kingliness, Shrek is determined to drag him back to Far, Far Away to assume the throne. Mishaps and comedy abound, including a spell gone wrong that locks Donkey and Puss-in-Boots inside one another's bodies. While Fiona and the other Princesses prove they're anything but helpless women, Artie and Shrek battle their own fears of inadequacy in a struggle to discover their own self-worth. In the end, Shrek, Artie, and Fiona each learn a lot about their individual strengths and what truly makes each of them happy. Of course, it's the pervasive humour and wit that make Shrek 3 so side-splittingly appealing. —Tami Horiuchi