Critical Week: No shirts required

OK, no one's hugely surprised at the massive success of the Twilight sequel New Moon - especially since they have so blatantly pandered to their pre-teen girl audience by having all of the boys continually remove their shirts and flex their abs. They finally showed it to the press a few days before its release, and while it's much soapier and mopier than the first film, it at least builds a great sense of moody atmosphere. And the third film is bound to be better simply because David Slade is directing it. But we'll have to wait until the summer to find out.

Also screened this past week were the colourful and cluttered Ian Dury biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, Michael Moore's entertaining and blood-boiling Capitalism: A Love Story, the surprisingly involving biographical doc Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story, and the surprisingly enjoyable Depeche Mode fan doc The Posters Came from the Walls.

This week I've got Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are, Sandra Bullock in the true drama The Blind Side, Thomas Turgoose in the British drama The Scouting Book for Boys, and the 3D sci-fi animation Battle for Terra.