It may come as a shock, but giant, mutated man-lizards don't happen to be real. So, in order to make Spider-Man's nemesis The Lizard believable, the effects team had to hit the books – and the pet shop.

The publicity material for The Amazing Spider-Man promises "an untold story that tells a different side of the Peter Parker story". Let's overlook that unlovely repetition of "story" and just ask one question: does Columbia Pictures believe we don't have a memory?

The Independence Day director's totally unnecessary "conspiracy theory" drama wheels out the tiresome thesis that William Shakespeare was not the author of his plays.

Poor old William Shakespeare hasn't had much luck in movies. He didn't get his girl in the truly appalling Shakespeare in Love, and now he's about to be accused of not writing his own plays in a new Hollywood film.

Rhys Ifans is set to star in the next James Bond film.

When choosing where to file Bernard Rose's diverting take on the life of Howard Marks in your DVD collection, put it perhaps in the non-fiction section, but at the end closest to comedy.

In spite of winning the 2004 Perrier Award, Will Adamsdale's show never got much of an airing in the capital, something that this Jacksathon, playing 26 London venues in 26 days, is designed to rectify.

Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Ralph Fiennes

You would have to indulge in Howard Marks's premium brand not to find this flat biopic, starring an irritating Ifan Rhys, smug and self-congratulatory

Based on the memoirs of Welsh drug-trafficker Howard Marks, this tale of a louche life is rather like its subject – tall, self-indulgent and rather windy. Rhys Ifans brings a scapegrace charm to the role, at least in the early days of small-town Wales and Oxford, where Marks, a capable student ("My success went completely to my head") first embraced the joys of psychotropic drugs.

Greenberg, Noah Baumbach's latest comedy stars Ben Stiller as a washed-up indie musician who drifts around LA, hanging out with an old bandmate (Rhys Ifans) and getting to know his brother's twentysomething PA (Greta Gerwig).

David Thewlis only took up acting to further his music career but, thanks to Mike Leigh, it took off. He tells Chris Sullivan about his new role in the Howard Marks biopic

Roger Greenberg is prickly, paranoid and petty. It's Ben Stiller's best role since his winning "loser" in There's Something about Mary.

From vampires to Voldemort, Facebook to family crisis and Wall Street to Welsh drug smugglers, Ben Walsh previews a great season of cinema