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Films I've seen recently:

Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit - really good. The plot and one or two of the action sequences are a little reminiscent of A Close Shave in places, but that doesn't really matter, as the film's packed full of new ideas as well. Much of it is laugh-out-loud funny, some of it is touching, and the claymation has enough texture and depth to it for there to be some creepily atmospheric moments, too. Just as you'd expect from Nick Park, actually.

Nochnoy dozor aka Night Watch - not a film of the Pratchett book, but a Russian horror movie. The premise sound like the usual hokum: 'forces of Light locked in an eternal battle with the forces of Darkness ... prophecies of a chosen one', but this is very watchable stuff. Not least because it focuses for much of the movie on the story of someone who's not a great warrior, but who's somewhat reluctantly got caught up in it all because he happens to have the power of prophecy. It has a welcome feel of authenticity; if the forces of light and darkness really were battling each other in present-day Moscow (which also contains vampires and shapeshifters), this is how it would be. Some of the camerawork and direction is highly inventive, and look like sequences lifted from a graphic novel, even though I believe they're not. I'm also pretty sure the creators of this have seen Ultraviolet. First of a trilogy, apparently: let's hope it doesn't go the way of The Matrix.

Kinky Boots - I almost failed to see this, as it looked like a standard Full Monty rip off. It's 'inspired by' a true story, and many of the production team worked on Calendar Girls, so I also thought it might be trying to cash in on the success of that. But this stands up very well in its own right. It's more character-focused and less political than The Full Monty, and smaller-scale than Calendar Girls, but that works really well. The characters feel real; fallible people, struggling with decisions that they often don't feel qualified to make. It's a feel-good movie at heart, but within that framework people get to be human, insecure, petty and vulnerable. And it's got Chiwetel Ejiofor as a drag queen; if that's not a reason for seeing it, I don't know what is. One of the writers also wrote All Quiet on the Preston Front, and this has much the same sort of quiet, wryly-observed humour. And Kirsty MacColl on the soundtrack singing, inevitably, In These Shoes?

p.s. We saw a trailer for Mrs Henderson Presents when waiting to see Kinky Boots. It's got Judy Dench and Bob Hoskins, is directed by Stephen Frears, and looks copmletely fabulous.