As the London Film Festival gets under way, Newsnight Review gives its take on a selection from this year's programme, plus the week's big general release, Burn After Reading.
More about all that below - do leave us your thoughts and reviews on the blog.
FROST/NIXON
Opening this year's London Film Festival is the world premiere of Frost/Nixon.
This Hollywood movie adaptation of Peter Morgan's award winning stage hit depicts the historic TV interviews between chat show host David Frost and disgraced ex-president Richard Nixon in 1977.
Morgan described the play as "a thinking person's Rocky."
Forty-five million Americans watched Frost force the Commander-in-chief to account for his mistakes in office, a record for a news programme.
After successes with films such as The Queen and The Last King of Scotland, Morgan has himself written the screenplay.
Academy award winner Ron Howard directs, while Michael Sheen and Frank Langella reprise their original theatre roles from the Donmar Warehouse and Broadway.
Morgan says he is reluctant for the film to be read as a commentary on the current US president:
'If anything, I went back to the text to take things out,' says Morgan. 'I didn't want it to be viewed as a metaphor for Iraq and the Bush presidency.'
The film has already been tipped for Oscars, but what will our panel think of the translation from stage to screen?
Frost/Nixon, rated 15, goes on general release on 9 January 2009.
BURN AFTER READING
After the Oscar bonanza of Texan revenge story No Country for Old Men, the Coen brothers return to the style of their earlier films with an eccentric black comedy, Burn After Reading.
Set in Washington, Burn After Reading is a spy story which opens with low level CIA analyst Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) being offered a demotion. He refuses it and storms home to his wife, Kate (Tilda Swinton), to work on his memoir and his drinking.
Kate, already deeply involved in an illicit affair with married Federal Marshall Harry Pfarrar (George Clooney), is planning to leave her husband and is accruing details of her husband's assets.
Elsewhere in the capital, Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), an employee at Hardbodies Gym, is consumed with her life plan for extensive cosmetic surgery, confiding all to her enthusiastic colleague Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt).
Directed, produced and written by Joel and Ethan Coen, and bursting with stars, does Burn After Reading live up to the expectations set by their previous work?
Burn After Reading is on general release, certificate 15.
TELSTAR
Actor Nick Moran, best known for his role in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, has written and directed his first feature film, Telstar.
Set in London in the early 1960s, it tells the story of independent record producer Joe Meek (played by stage actor Con O'Neill), a musical maverick who recorded his hits from a flat on the Holloway Road.
He produced a number one song "Telstar" which was the biggest selling record of its time.
Meek struggled with his illegal homosexuality, was addicted to amphetamines, dabbled with the occult and was increasingly haunted by paranoia.
The film also stars Kevin Spacey and other well known British faces including Gavin & Stacey's James Corden.
What will our panel think of this new British offering?
Telstar, rated 15 will be released in cinemas in 2009.
THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX
The Baader Meinhof Complex continues Germany's cinematic confrontations with the darker periods of its history, following the success of Downfall and The Lives of Others.
Based on Stefan Aust's book, The Baader Meinhof Complex is about the Red Army Faction (RAF), the left wing militant group formed by radicalised children of the Nazi generation who fought an international terrorist campaign against the establishment of West Germany and the influences of American imperialism.
Viewing themselves as urban guerrillas, the leaders of the RAF fight a violent war against what they perceive as the new face of fascism.
Ruthlessly brutal in the pursuit of their ideals, they are responsible for bombings, robberies, kidnappings and assassinations, stopping at nothing to achieve their goals.
Directed by veteran Uli Edel, whose previous work includes Last Exit to Brooklyn, and adapted by Downfall screenwriter Bernd Eichinger, The Baader Meinhof Complex dodges accusations of sensationalism, dealing with the contradictions of a group prepared to murder innocent people in the name of democracy and justice.
The Baader Meinhof Complex is released on 14 November 2008.
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