With the eventual belated release in the UK  of this year's Oscar-winner for Foreign Film, The Secret in Their Eyes, all the contenders for that award have now been distributed in all the major territories.

 It's a known known that the end of summer is the dumping period for surefire shockers at the cinema. Even my enthralled passion for the grin-inducing euphoria of dance flicks couldn't stop Step Up 3D from a script that an earthworm would be shamed by.

 Evidently the answer is No. But that might not be the message gained if you were a intermittent viewer of recent British films.

One can certainly admire some of the works and certainly see a broad range of quality - from the well-paced and tightly constructed Shifty to the stream of dross starring everyone's favourite cockney punching bag Danny Dyer.

 Weighing in on Inception now is like pondering the cost-benefit equation of the Vietnam war - it is too late and too murky a field to get any leverage in. But it's also a hot topic that anyone seeing it wants to wade into and wave their hands about, since they and they alone have cracked it.

 A recent refresher on the glorious Gattaca brough the current state of sci-fi cinema into stark relief.

 New York is a mecca for those seeking to draw a clear line between so-called high and low culture. More accurately, there is so much on offer here that those lines are so blurred, it ceases to matter.

The critical community may be withering and dying in traditional media across the US and the UK, but those alive and kicking still need a rallying cry every now and again. A shining light to keep our collective faith going.

 With the recent release of Polanski's latest thriller The Ghost Writer, one of the oldest debates in art has been dragged into the 21st century with a sharp edge - can and should you separate a work of art from its creator?

As the snow flurried, we had the far too rare pleasure of a trip to London's BFI to see a preview of microbudget British indie Exam, written and directed by Brit Stuart Hazeldine, whose made his name by rewriting such highly dubious efforts as Knowing and The Day The Earth Stood Still remake.

A Christmas flurry of "culture" brought the universally seen Avatar 3D followed by the latest production at London's Donmar Warehouse, Red, starring film actor Alfred Molina as the American painter Mark Rothko.