Michael Mann's daughter, Ami Canaan, directs this pungent thriller, based on "true events", about three detectives Mike, Brian and Pam (Sam Worthington, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Jessica Chastain) trying to solve a spate of murders in Texas City.

Raul Ruiz, who died this year, has left us with a surreal four-hour story, set in 19th-century Portugal, that reclaims cinema as the language of dream

Retired and Extremely Dangerous: Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren and Brian Cox are former secret service agents who get back into action when Willis and his new girlfriend are targeted by bad guys.

RED (Retired, Extremely Dangerous) follows Frank Moses (Bruce Willis), a retired CIA agent who buries the demons of his past with the help of young pensions officer Sarah Ross (Mary-Louise Parker) and his old CIA team (John Malkovich, Helen Mirren and Morgan Freeman).

John Malkovich is speaking in a tone so low and languorous it seems deliberately pitched at a single, straining pair of ears. As an actor who has used his voice to great menacing effect, it now becomes lighter and more lilting, the more exercised he gets. "Look," he enunciates softly, sitting forward in his chair like an uncoiled snake ready to strike. "I don't need to be liked."

Today: Cabaret, circus, comedy and a conversation with John Malkovich: some of the treats in store at the Sydney Festival, which is getting underway. Tonight's Festival First Night features a performance from Arrested Development and a vaudeville reinterpretation of Hyde Park. The festival runs until the end of January ( sydneyfestival.org.au).

Hex is an attempt to transfer the dark, revenge-fuelled DC comic series to film.

Josh Brolin stars as a bounty hunter bent on revenging the murder of his wife and child by a renegade warmonger (John Malkovich) in the aftermath of the Civil War.