Film - showing at a cinema near you

Hallam Foe

This is a truly powerful punch of pure talent - the tale of a teenage boy named Hallam Foe (Jamie Bell) struggling with the death of his mother and the arrival of his new stepmother, who skedaddles to Edinburgh and grows ever-more infatuated with the golden Kate (Sophia Myles). At times muddy thriller, at others sweet-natured romance, Hallam Foe is essentially a story of teenage obsession and confusion, magnificently written, shot and acted. Exceptionally fine soundtrack, too.

18, 95 mins

Waitress

If an aura of sadness surrounds this film, it may be because its writer and director, Adrienne Shelly, was murdered just months before its Sundance premiere. But there is also melancholy in the film itself, since its story of small-town waitress Jenna (Keri Russell) - who is both pregnant and caught somewhere between a soured marriage to her domineering husband and a heady affair with the town's new doctor - is laced with disappointment. The film can still stray into the overly hokey, but the pleasing thing is that Waitress knows when to rein itself in, sidestepping any too-sweet endings. A welcome addition to the compelling genre that dwells on female disenchantment.

12A, 107 mins

Lady Chatterley

It is somewhat discombobulating to watch a version of Lady Chatterley that's faithfully set in England but performed entirely in French. The keen-eyed (and eared) will also notice that director Pascale Ferran has chosen to adapt an earlier version of DH Lawrence's tale, in which Mellors becomes Parkin. Once one has straddled these hurdles, however, this becomes an extremely enjoyable adaptation, rich and warm and sensual; even the landscape takes on an erotic tinge. As the repressed Lady Chatterley, Marina Hands displays precisely the right level of pleasant cleanliness to be tousled by Parkin's (Jean-Louis Coulloch) manly hands and gruff earthiness.
18, 168 mins

Breach

Genuinely thrilling thriller based on the real-life case of FBI counter-intelligence agent Robert Philip Hanssen, who for 20 years fed classified information to the Soviet Union. This is the cinematic account of his downfall, orchestrated by honcho Kate Burroughs (an excellent Laura Linney), and enabled by new agent Eric O'Neill (Ryan Philippe). Here, Hanssen (Chris Cooper) is a blank-faced, meticulous man, frustrated by the bureaucracy of the FBI and sustained by his Catholic faith and a penchant for sexual deviancy, pitched against the youthful ambition and fresh-faced honesty of O'Neill. Breach's biggest triumph is that it persists in always standing slightly too close for comfort, making for a movie that is uneasy, tense and unwaveringly claustrophobic.
12A, 110 mins

Flood

Following the horrendous floods that swept across the UK this summer, one cannot ignore the timeliness of this film, a fictional account of how spring tides and a North Sea storm conspire to create a surge of water that carries from the east coast, crashes over the Thames barrier and pushes on into the city, killing thousands and leaving thousands more without homes. Meteorological experts Rob (Robert Carlyle) and his father Leonard (Tom Courtenay), along with Rob's ex-wife Sam (Jessalyn Gilsig), join forces to try to save the city, as the water levels rapidly rise. A taut and impressive movie in which the sense of tension is, of course, heightened by its prescience.
12A, 110 mins

Sugarhouse

On a predictably run-down estate in east London, twitchy crackhead D (Ashley Walters) is rattling out a deal with the suited-and-booted Tom (Steven Mackintosh) while, near at hand, maniac drug dealer Hoodwink (Andy Serkis) is not best pleased to find some of his property missing. And so descends a sense of impending doom. While this proves an interesting snapshot of the British underworld, and is an impressive turn from Walters, on occasion it feels a touch hammy. It would be refreshing, too, to see a few more serious British films that aren't preoccupied with gangsters, grit and gloom.
12A, 90 mins