Feast of Film

Dan Brown's much read (though not by me) book comes to the big screen . Big stars (Hanks, McKellen, Prochnow, Reno, Tautou); big name director (Howard) and screenwriter (Goldsman); controversey (the descedants of Jesus and the Catholic Church); big budget - how could anything go wrong? In a way, this could be seen as Hollywood's response to Mel Gibson's hugely successful Passion of the Christ . The secular Hollywood producers take on the devoutly religious Gibson with a 'bible' of their own. I'll leave that in the air for consideration, as the film itself is rather pedestrian and does make efforts to distance the Church itself from the actions of its constituent shadowy parts. The plot: Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is a professor of religious symbolism currently in Paris to promote his book on the feminine representations in religion. Summoned to the Louvre to see the gruesome self-defaced corpse of a curator, Langdon joins forces with French cryptologist, Sophie

One's tempted to say Tom cruises through another movie, but clearly he has made every effort in this third instalment of the Mission Impossible film franchise to make sure we understand that he suffered, really suffered for us. The plot: Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has retired from active field duty with the Impossible Mission Force (IMF) - he now trains agents. He has found a beautiful woman (who looks oddly like Katie Holmes) and is settling down to a life of domesticity. The movie opens with his engagement party where we find out that his cover story is that he works at the Motor Vehicle Department studying traffic patterns and can lip read. But just when Ethan thinks he's out, they drag him back in. One of his bosses tells him that his star pupil has been kidnapped and the information she has is so important that they want to rescue her - normally killed or captured IMF agents are "disavowed". His paternal instincts kick in and he assembles a team to rescue her. I&#