As an exercise in controlled madness, Werner Herzog’s remake – or is it? – of Abel Ferrara’s celebrated 1992 film certainly has plenty of screws loose before the credits roll. The charismatic German director has often been drawn to eccentric loners in his documentaries and demented heroes in his works of fiction. His tempestuous working relationship with actor Klaus Kinski on Aguirre: Wrath Of God, Nosferatu and Fitzcarraldo is the stuff of Hollywood legend – the filmmaker famously threatened his leading man with a loaded gun to prevent him from walking off set.

…In his diet, that is. In what is possibly the weirdest celeb confession we’d ever heard, Nicholas Cage has admitted that he chooses his diet based on how “dignified” the animal’s mating habits are. Er… what?

It’s been confirmed that the National Treasure franchise is to get a third installment. Legendary producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Pirates of the Caribbean) has hired Carlo Bernard and Doug Miro, writers of the upcoming Prince of Persia movie, to pen the third film in the franchise.

You know what we enjoy doing? Going to the future. We also enjoy going back to the future, but we gotten into copyright problems with that before. The point is, we’ve risked life and limb to discover what films are hitting our screens in upcoming weeks. Don’t ask us how we’ve done it. All we’ll say is that the Wikipedia Towers of the future are a terrifying and overly bear-guarded place. So, should you save our pennies for an upcoming epic, or splurge like there’s no tomorrow on the flicks out now? We’ve got the answers right here.

Astro Boy is the classic tale of a young boy trying to get along with what life gives him. Making friends, getting by and generally having a good old time, he’s just like you and me. The only difference is that this kid is a robot. And people want to kill the death out of him. It’s a futuristic Pinnocchio-inspired CGI romp, and whilst it has a lot to recommend it, ultimately there’s not a lot of human heart beating behind it.

There’s nothing more heartbreaking than finding out your favourite thrill-flick is based on a load of tosh, so here at Best For Film we have the solution! We count down the Top 5 “based on a true story” films, relishing the truth (and the maybe not so much truth) behind the stories that make us shiver! Dare you join us?

Looking for a box office blast, or avoiding a bomb? We look forward to all the upcoming releases including Edge of Darkness, Invictus, Precious, Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, Adoration, Youth in Revolt and what looks like the utterly terrible Astro Boy. You can’t go wrong with our patented anticipation-o-meter!

2009 certainly brought us a few cinematic corkers, from sci-fi epic Avatar to comic-book crunching goodness from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight and Watchmen. But it wasn’t all wham, bam and explosions – will 2010 be a year of smarter movies? Judging this list… maybe.

“It is better,” said the essayist and moralist Joseph Joubert, “to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.” In the spirit of such a great man that we just found out about on Wikipedia, we present you, gentle reader, with the first in what may well be a series of debates on the state of modern film.

It’s been left up to Disney to challenge our hackneyed beliefs by presenting us with a bunch of spies that take the form of… wait for it, you’ll love it… Guinea pigs! Yeah, those infanticidal, hooting, air-sniffing pigs. As spies. It’s a one-note joke that’s taken to the extreme – Pixar would’ve made an idea like that into a witty ten minute short. Here, it’s 90 minutes long, and generally one ninth as entertaining, too.