Hollywood's chattering classes love intrigue around the agency water cooler, especially when it comes to agents with powerful clients.

Let's avoid saying that 2011 was the best of times, the worst of times for the crime and thriller field - but it has been a turbulent year, with regular visits by authors to both the heights and the depths.

Strange as it seems, the answer is yes – and it could help us solve our problems, says Dan Roberts

As The Professionals and The Sweeney get big-screen reboots, Geoffrey Macnab asks if British action movies can take on Hollywood

The high-concept viral campaign for 'The Dark Knight Rises' might be the smartest film marketing yet

Obsessed with dark thoughts as a child, communing with the spirit of Edith Piaf as an adult: the Oscar-winning Marion Cotillard has spent a lifetime studying the human soul – which should come in handy as she takes on the role of an anthropologist in her latest film

Besuited heroes are back on the big screen as leading men ditch their bandanas, vests and leather jackets for classic sharp suits, says Alice-Azania Jarvis

Anne Hathaway has been cast as Catwoman in the forthcoming Batman movie 'The Dark Knight Rises'.

Christopher Nolan's Inception is that rare thing, a science-fiction blockbuster that isn't based on a comic or a videogame, but on the writer-director's own bracingly brainy, swaggeringly ambitious, uncompromising ideas.

An impressively imagined, complicated turn through a Borgesian skein of nightmares, Christopher Nolan's latest mind-meld involves a team of adventurers venturing into people's dreams in order to plant ideas in people's heads. Sound complicated? It is, but Nolan manages to drip-feed exposition to make such conceits digestible.

Seeking self-awareness by sharing your dreams with total strangers is becoming more popular

Christopher Nolan had the concept, the budget and the CGI – what a shame he fell asleep at the wheel

Christopher Nolan's Inception, like Pixar, works at the cutting edge of technological sophistication.