Across the Universe (12A)

This is like watching a car-crash in slow motion. Julie Taymor's fantasia on the social and political convulsions of the 1960s is refracted through the songs of The Beatles, an idea so mad you could almost admire it just for its hubristic ambition. Almost. It's about Liverpudlian docker Jude (Jim Sturgess) who goes to America and finds love in the shape of peace activist Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) and a boho ménage in Greenwich Village. Taymor doesn't seem acquainted with the word "naff", or she'd hear a collective groan every time a Fab Four tune is galumphingly inserted into the plot: a lesbian named Prudence is lured out of the closet in "Dear Prudence"; a mustachioed Bono sings "I am the Walrus" – a low point, until you see the montage of the bombing of Vietnam over "Strawberry Fields Forever".