Gregory Hoblit, Fracture

Hoblit is one of those names that sticks in the mind - along with an inexplicable image of hairy feet - from trawling through credits. He was an exec producer on NYPD Blue - one of those US drama series that Channel 4 seem to have lost down the back of the Big Brother sofa because they're busy catering for minority tastes so much. Bochco was the presiding genius, of course, and David Milch and Mark Tinker went onto Deadwood, and Hoblit went to direct.

I remember the did he do it thriller Primal Fear with a needlessly showy performance from Richard Gere, who clearly feared being upstaged by Edward Norton, then an unknown, and Frances McDormand pulling the movie from under their noses. There was a tidy thriller with Denzil Washington, Fallen, which pitted the two JGs - Goodman and Gandolfini - together and had a neat twisteroony. It felt rather like a Steve Gallagher novel. Frequency was a delightful fantasy of two people communicating across thirty years, with a touch of the Timescapes.

So we have a director associated with crime drama, who can go the gritty street realism route and can handle a little bit of fantasy should the narrative if he chooses, and who can be relied upon for a last minute twist.

Anthony Hopkins is Ted Crawford, who has shot his wife and has elected to defend himself in the case brought by hotshot attorney Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling). It should be a slamdunk, even for a hotshot attorney who only has twenty four hours to get his man before he gets his dream job. Of course, these things have to be stretched out to two hours, so it isn't that easy; a vital fact has been overlooked, Crawford is acquitted and Willy Beachum is left high and dry like a whale beached. Willy knows Ted done it, because he would, wouldn't he?, but double jeopardy means he can't be tried twice for the same crime.

Oh, where's that twist when you need one? Hold up, there it is.

Can you spell h-u-b-r-i-s? Beachum and Crawford both.

Gosling is, apparently, the next big thing, this week's Giovanni Ribisi, and he does the hot shot thing, and the emoting thing, and the keeping his anger under control thing, and the being led astray by his desires thing, and you can't help but reflect that, yes, Matt Damon is now too old for this kind of thing.

Hopkins, meanwhile, shows his command of accents - American, Irish, even Welsh - but you can't help but feel that only one of them would have done for the part. There's also the sense that maybe he should have cracked open a bottle of Chianti at some point.

It's not a bad movie - it diverts for the best part of two hours, although ninety to a hundred would have been tauter. And it's always good to see David Strathairn get work, and see Fiona Shaw do something to pay the bills whilst her heart may be in theatre.

Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 28 Weeks Later

Once upon a time there was 28 Days Later, from the director of Shallow Grave, Trainspotting and A Life Less Ordinary, Danny Boyle. I think Boyle lost his way with The Beach, especially by casting Di Caprio over MacGregor, but kudos for the cameos of Carlyle and the divine Tilda. Days was a second collaboration with Alex Garland, the source for The Beach, and was a brilliant cosy catastrophe, albeit with a heavy nod to Wyndham. Half the population of Britain become violent zombies, intent on killing the other half but generally infecting them. I blinked the week it was on general release, and it found a home on video.

Now we have a sequel by other hands, 28 Weeks Later, with Garland and Boyle no doubt as courtesy execs. To be fair, the film is in good hands. Don (Carlyle, closer to Gaz than Begbie), is holed up with his wife Alice (Catherine McCormack) in a farmhouse in the countryside, when zombies attack. Carlyle makes a run for his life, and leaves wifey down the rabbit hole to die.

Over the next five months all the zombies starve to death, and the Americans secure the Isle of Dogs for the uninfected survivors, and selected people returning from overseas. These returners include Don and Alice's children who spend a night in Canary Wharf before being able to slip out of the highly guarded compound without being spotted - this is clearly no Guantanamo Bay. The kidlings make it to their old home safely where they find someone apparently immune to the virus - and who presumably can work a microwave.

Well, it has to go pear shaped, because we want our body count, and the officials are stupid enough not to think of the consequences of bringing a plague carrier within the safety cordon. Kerpow. Splat. Heads roll. The air force is sent for.

There are bits of this film which are pretty disturbing, and gruesome, and make you jump. The film goes into grainy shakey cam, if only to hide the joins, like Superman Returns did. No one is safe, especially from the trigger happy US soldiers let alone the zombies.

At the risk of spoilers, it is an awfully small world, and I'm impressed with the kids' ability to find their way to Hyde Park and Wembley via the Underground system. It's hard enough with trains, let alone in the dark. I'm also impressed by the sense of direction that the zombies have, even after banging their heads against plate glass. Repeatedly.

Blood is thicker than water, but not as thick as some of the plotting.

They bravely opt for the seventies ending, which is darker than first apparent but is generically right, and in the process leave the door open for 28 Months Later and firther sequels. 28 Aeons Later?