Would the author of Where Angels Fear to Tread have ventured upon butt-waxing? This stray, even idle thought surfaces while reading William Ian Miller's account of the shrinking brain and concomitant weakenings. He ranges widely but accords no space to EM Forster, who lived beyond 90 but, decades earlier, lamented the hair between his buttocks.

Need a severed head in a box? He's your man. Not sure if rape and murder are appropriate for a blockbuster? Let David Fincher convince you. James Mottram meets the owner of Hollywood's darkest mind, as he takes on the US remake of 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'

Box office takings at London's theatres have bounced back from a winter slump thanks to a string of big productions and star performers.

The quintessential actor, Samuel Johnson once said, is "a fellow who claps a hump on his back... and cries, 'I am Richard the Third'." Interesting then that Kevin Spacey, playing Richard III at the Old Vic, sports a hump which our critic describes as "brutally disfiguring".

My parents were ... good-looking LA arrivistes. They were ill-suited for parenthood, so I'm not surprised that I turned out to be both as troubled and gifted as I am.

The cover photo – of mother's and daughter's bangled hands clasped together – tells its own story, of folk and family traditions passed along the line.

Two minutes' walk from Waterloo Station and a little, graffiti-covered door in a side wall grants you access to a starkly different world. Cold, smelling of mould, and resounding to the thunder of the trains hurtling overhead, this massive underground labyrinth of high, vaulted brick tunnels forms a magical space that has been commandeered by the Old Vic's artistic director, Kevin Spacey, as a subterranean arena for non-profit theatre pieces and art works.

Jon Ronson's book about the Pentagon's secret experiments in psychic combat has been turned into a film in the most unsatisfying possible manner.

Jon Ronson's droll and troubling exposé of the US military's bizarre practices – which included forming an experimental unit that employed paranormal techniques (such as killing goats by just staring at them) to train a legion of "Jedi warriors" – has been adapted into this weak satire.

Duncan "David Bowie's son" Jones's low-fi sci-fi, which features no sex, very little violence or budget and ostensibly one actor (Sam Rockwell), is a cerebral delight. Sam Bell (Rockwell), like ET, just wants to go home; three years working on the dark side of the Moon with only Kevin Spacey's creepy voice, as spaceship computer, Gerty, will do that. Sam's suffering hallucinations and headaches and a near-fatal accident lands him in the infirmary. He awakes to find a younger version of himself stalking his bed. Jones's intelligently constructed, distinctly retro film borrows from the best – Silent Running, Alien, Blade Runner, Solaris, Dark Star and Outland – and is the best kind of paranoia movie, with unfussy dialogue, a heightened sense of isolation and corporate wickedness to the fore.