ELITE SQUAD: THE ENEMY WITHIN
Dir: Jose Padilha. Starring: Wagner Moura, Irandhir Santos, Andre Ramiro.

After his ground-breaking documentary Bus 174, director Padilha made Elite Squad, a rough violent Rio-set actioner that exposed corruption within the police fighting gangs and drugs in the favellas. This time he takes on the entire system and the results are riveting.

It doesn't matter that this is a sequel – you don't need to have seen the first film first, but I'd recommend it, because Elite Squad was fast, flashy and furious, the best slice of Brazilian action since City of God. This is even better: the characters are deeper and more resonant, the plot more complex and layered, and the filmmaking even more confident.

The central character is Lieutenant-Colonel Nascimento, initially head of BOPA, the ‘elite squad' of the title. But a prison riot goes dangerously out of control on his watch and he finds himself shunted sideways up the chain of command, behind a desk and in charge of surveillance. From this position he begins to see how the entire system, from politicians down to the militias and gangs, is entwined and corrupted. His attempts to combat this are – predictably – unpopular.

This is great stuff – exciting, tense, colourful, and smart, made with cool style and intelligence. There aren't many sequels that surpass the original but Elite Squad: The Enemy Within is a rare exception.

Like so many other average 1980s horror flicks, Fright Night has been retooled for modern times by losing any edgy subtext, making the cast younger and inserting a pre-title scare sequence. B-moviedom remains, with 3-D objects (usually blood) flying at the camera and a bunch of knowing overacting. Colin Farrell is the vampire who moves in next door to young Charlie and starts offing the neighbourhood kids; David Tennant is the Midori-swilling occult magician Charlie seeks for help; and Christopher Muntz-Plasse has a lot of fun as the best friend. It's not a great film by any stretch, but that doesn't make it unenjoyable.

Salvation Boulevard is a quirky comedy centred around American televangelistic shenanigans. Pierce Brosnan – with possibly the strangest accent to grace a movie all year – plays the dodgy preacher, Ed Harris the atheist writer who debates him, and Greg Kinnear the newly-converted deadhead who witnesses an accidental crime and finds himself on the run from church henchmen. The film is intermittently smart and funny, but too loose and inconsistent to really hit home, too often playing things safe. And while Jennifer Connolly gets a nice turn, it wastes Marisa Tomei, which is just criminal.