GREAT news, family movie lovers - 'The Rock' is back with his best movie yet.

Find out why there should be more to come from the all-action star by clicking on the link below.

FROM its curiously light opening to its emotive climax, the best thing about this animation is that it gets better and better as you grow into its own little world.

Find out more about this cute French animation by clicking on the link below.

I'VE warmed to Clive Owen in recent years as an actor - even though before long his remodelled gnashers are going to look 30 years younger than the face they're in.

But, and this is a big but, the Coventry-born star is struggling to choose the right film to make a big splash at the box office.

Click on the link below to see what can be done to help him.

WHAT is particularly interesting about this year's list of Oscar nominations is not so much who is in, but who has been left out.

Click on the link below to read about the two who are missing and need to be filed under the 'Glaringly Obvious' category.

ONE man who has excelled himself in the past year is my old friend, Neil White, a former fellow trainee at the Birmingham Post & Mail turned deputy editor of the Derby Telegraph.

How did his achievements with '606' knock Robbie Savage into a cocked hat?

Find out by clicking on the link below.

As yet another New Year begins, it's time to take another brief look back at the year now behind us.

Click below for my 2011 Films of the Year to see which films I rated, which I hated, and, in traditional fashion, which ones I've put into different categories in a bid to prove that the year had something for everyone.

The best films aren't necessarily the award-winners.

They can be the ones which entertain you the most, the ones which you'd like to see again or the ones where the audience simply didn't made a squeak throughout.

I even enjoyed New Year's Eve. Sure, it's not a fantastic film - many critics have really derided it and with reasons I fully understand - but it stirred a lot memories deep within, including the death of my grandfather at a similar time of year.

In that respect it did more for me than Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life even though that is, clearly, the superior film.

That's the great thing about the movies. We all like different things and for different reasons - and long may that continue to be the case.

PS. Delve deep into this blog and you'll also find my Films of the Year for every year this century, too.

VOTING has opened in the sixth annual Richard Attenborough UK Regional Film Awards.

And you can help to choose the film which deserves to win the Birmingham Mail Family Film Award.

Click below to see how you can vote.

I WASN'T able to go to London on the one Saturday afternoon when the distributors of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011) were willing to screen this movie.

And there were no advance regional screenings either.

Should I have been smelling a rat?

Having seen it at Cineworld Broad Street on Boxing Day, check out my review by clicking on the link.

IS IT just me, or when I see the promising new trailer for Clint's Eastwood's latest film, why do I think more of two boys with stuck-up blond hair more than Leonardo DiCaprio as the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation?

The film, set to be released on January 20 in the UK, is called J. Edgar.

Now that, to me, looks like JEdgar. Or even Jedgar.

Which isn't far removed from JEdward... and then Jedward, stars of the The X Factor.

Which is not an image you want if you are pushing for recognition at this year's Academy Awards.

Perhaps Tim Burton (Ed Wood) will one day make Jedward's movie.

And call it JEdwood.

And so here we arrive at the third and final movie in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

And, after director Peter Jackson had earlier promised me that it would be 'all climax', how right he was after a slow start!

Released on December 17, 2003, The Return of the King went on to complete a clean sweep at the Oscars in 2004, winning all 11 of its nominations.

These were for art direction, costumes, director, film editing, make-up, score, song ('Into the West'), sound mixing, visual effects adapted screenplay and, of course, best picture.

Its rivals that year were Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (and, yes, that was lost on me, too); Peter Weir's Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World; Gary Ross's Seabiscuit and Clint Eastwood's Mystic River which, in any 'normal' year, would have had my vote out of the remaining four contenders.

And the most bizarre thing of all about this series?

It became available to buy on VHS for home viewing.

Remember that format?

Click below to read my original review of The Return of the King as well as the chance to learn some more facts about the series and to see again the original details of its release on DVD and VHS.