Super Size Me
12A, 100 mins
This is a documentary about one man’s kamikaze dive into the gargantuan blubber-gut and buttock-mountain serial heart-killer and cholesterol free fall that is obese America’s fast-food blowout. To discover the real price Americans are paying for their “addiction” to fast food, Morgan Spurlock decided to turn himself into a guinea pig and eat only at McDonald’s for 30 days. “Would it do me harm?” asks Morgan, to which any normal person would reply, “Duh? Yeah!” And would you believe it — within weeks, 5,000-calories-a-day Morgan puts on weight. His cholesterol shoots up, his sex drive goes into decline and his liver is on the critical list. His experiment proves the obvious, and he ducks the question of individual responsibility. Yet there is no denying that Morgan is an engaging, funny guide through the nutritional nightmare that is modern America. Four stars

Cosmo Landesman

Wicker Park
12A, 114 mins
A remake of the 1996 French film L’Appartement, this debut Hollywood feature by the Scottish director Paul McGuigan transfers the action from Paris to a snowy Chicago, but can’t reproduce the mysterious allure of the original. Josh Hartnett plays a man who, on the verge of getting married, thinks he has spotted the love of his life (Diane Kruger), who disappeared two years previously, and sets out to find her. Unfolding via a complicated series of flashbacks, the film wants to make telling points about the attitude of its twentysomething characters to romance and relationships, but is let down by the casting. Hartnett and Kruger can’t match the charisma and chemistry that Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci brought to the French version, and it’s left to Rose Byrne and a surprisingly effective Matthew Lillard, as their manipulative best friends, to bolster things. Three stars

David Eimer

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
12A, 94 mins
Set in 1970s San Diego, the director Adam McKay’s comedy stars Will Ferrell as a boneheaded, chauvinistic television host who has to come to terms with the arrival in the newsroom of a female rival (Christina Applegate).

Both Ferrell and McKay are veterans of the cult US series Saturday Night Live, and it shows: the film is nothing like as funny or clever as it thinks it is, with everybody involved (including some big-name cameos) seeming far too pleased with themselves. There are a few amusing moments, but too much of the humour relies on satirising 1970s styles and attitudes — a barrel that must have been scraped bare by now. Two stars

Peter Whittle

Carmen
15, 119 mins
Just what the world was crying out for — yet another adaptation of the classic Spanish tale of murder and mantillas. In Vicente Aranda’s lavish, old-fashioned and occasionally sexy non-musical version, candles are lit, daggers are drawn and cleavages plunge on cue. But although the suggestion of passion and drama lurks in every scene, the film remains stubbornly inert throughout. Paz Vega plays our heroine like a petulant schoolgirl, irritating rather than engaging. And it would have been nice if her broodingly lovelorn José (Leonardo Sbaraglia) had changed his thunderous expression at least once during the two hours. Two stars

Peter Whittle

Envy
12A, 99 mins
Barry Levinson’s misfire of a comedy is a classic illustration of what happens when an interesting premise is not properly thought through. Ben Stiller plays a straight-arrow suburbanite who is eaten up with jealousy when his best friend and neighbour (Jack Black) strikes it big with an invention for making dog mess disappear. The movie seems unsure of its tone, and once the initial gag has worn off, there’s nowhere left for the plot to go except all over the place. Even Christopher Walken, doing his usual offbeat shtick, can’t salvage this one. One star

Peter Whittle

The Isle
18, 88 mins
Set in a misty, floating fishing village, the Korean director Kim Ki-Duk’s nasty and pretentious psychosexual drama depicts the growing attachment between a beautiful but mute groundkeeper (Jung Suh) and a troubled ex-cop (Yoo-Suk Kim). While she services the thuggish collection of fornicating fishermen, he descends into despair and attempts suicide. As we learn little else about this alienated and unlovable pair, it’s hard to become involved. What we do get, however, is a couple of scenes of horrifying self-mutilation involving fish hooks, which, in their graphic detail, are nausea-inducing. One star

Peter Whittle