Critical Week: Brain-bender

Two brainy movies screened for London critics last week, and while neither is quite Inception, at least they demonstrate that blockbusters don't have to be stupid. To follow up his astonishing debut Moon, director Duncan Jones goes big-time with Source Code, a crackling terrorism thriller with a Groundhog Day premise. The likeable Jake Gyllenhaal and especially good Vera Farmiga and Michelle Monahan help. The other is Limitless, about a brain-expanding drug, and it's also exhilarating good fun, with a terrific central performance from the even more likeable Bradley Cooper.

There were a few other high-profile films last week for us as well: we had a very late screening of Matthew McConaughey's enjoyably twisty legal thriller The Lincoln Lawyer; Tom McCarthy's latest engaging slice of real life in Win Win, starring Paul Giamatti; the goofy stoner fairy tale Your Highness, reuniting DannyMcBride and James Franco; and the genuinely scary horror film Insidious, with Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson. Last week's kiddie movie was the enjoyably deranged Easter Bunny adventure Hop; the foreign film was the serene, doc-like Le Quattro Volte from Italy; and the documentary was the inspirational charity film A Small Act.

The big movie this coming week is Zack Snyder's girl-power fantasy Sucker Punch, and for the kids we have the 3D animated parrot adventure-comedy  Rio. Smaller indie films include the British thriller Blooded and the London romance Break My Fall. Foreign films include the South African drama Life Above All and the Berlinale-winning Turkish drama Honey (Bal).