Local cinema listings

Whilst not entirely free of flaws, this debut feature from polymath Tom Ford (fashion designer, reinventor of Gucci etc.) is an assured and stylish affair. The resurgent Colin Firth plays George Falconer, a frustrated academic mourning the loss of his great love, Jim (Matthew Goode). Drowning in the stupidity of his students and dissatisfying drunken reunions with divorcee, ex-lover Charlie (the peerless Julianne Moore), the jaded lecturer is ready to commit suicide. Only the youthful advances of student Kenny (Nicholas Holt) threaten to rekindle his dormant passions. Everything from Firth’s measured performance to the weary lighting in Falconer’s apartment speaks of a bitter, wounded elegance. The audience constructs a picture of George and Jim’s romance through flashbacks – neatly dramatising the claustrophobic internal monologue of

After being lured into an underground lair by neighbour George (Stanley Tucci), who brutally ends her life, 14-year-old Susie Salmon narrates the story of her own murder in Peter Jackson's troublesome adaptation of Alice Sebold's novel. Susie's father (Mark Wahlberg) continues to search after the police close the case and starts seeing messages from his daughter – delivered from beyond the grave and pointing him towards the killer. The hallucinogenic visuals of the other side are ambitious and occasionally moving, but unconvincingly executed. As in Jackson’s King Kong, the computer animation is frequently distracting. The great flaw though is Sebold’s. All the while trying to convince us this is a profound imagination of the afterlife and a celebration of family strength, it feels more like a cynical and emotionally manipulative tale of vengeance – and a curiously unsatisfying one at that. Dan Steadman