The Road is based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy starring Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron and Kodi Smit-McKee.

Director John Hillcoat has done a great job of visualising a destroyed and dying world populated by dangerous people. The camera work is excellent, and atmospheric, which helps create and sustain an ominous air of tension up to the last minute.

The man (Mortensen) and his son (Smit-McKee) are battling their way wearily towards the coast and hopefully security. In the meantime they have to evade ferocious cannibals and not knowing who to trust. A very creditable film with an unexpected ending

The White Ribbon directed by Michael Haneke is not your ordinary film.

It is in black and white which adds to its other worldly atmosphere and nothing is clear in a film heavy with ambiguity, strained relations and unclear motivations.

The film is set in a small conformist German county town before the First World War. The sense of morality and need to conform is strong so it is all the odder when unexplained accidents start happening which tear the social fabric apart.

If you like films without easy answers but great photography and acting this could be for you.

The Beatles to Bowie:  the 60s exposed – at the National Portrait Gallery – is well worth seeing if you have more than a passing interest in music.

It is a large exhibition which runs through the whole decade covering both the groups you know and those that have long been forgotten. There is a great mixture of newspapers, publicity photos, fanzines and of course stacks of iconic images. You can see a country change in front of your very eyes.

There is also a small section on the photographers themselves plus some clips of music playing in the background.

A joy.