Ace showing by Illusionist

After all the furore of the Oscars (and thank God Martin Scorsese finally got his just desserts), the cinema scene has a rather "after the lord mayor's show" feel about it this month.

Last week we had Robert De Niro's obsessively detailed marathon about the birth of the CIA, The Good Shepherd, which was a bum-numbing two hours 47 minutes. Interesting, but rather dull during its middle third.

Now comes The Illusionist, the story of an enigmatic loner called Eisenheim (Edward Norton) who astounds audiences with his incredible tricks and sleights of hand.

The only man not won over is Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell), who wants to expose him as a fraud - particularly when he discovers the magician has a thing about his beautiful fiancee (Jessica Biel).

This is an entertaining thriller which begs inevitable comparisons with The Prestige. Like its predecessor, it harks back to a vintage era and conceals a couple of aces up its sleeve.

Production design is fabulous, but Paul Giamatti is squandered in a support role as a wily police chief, and it seems somehow wrong to ask us to believe Eisenheim really is a master illusionist, when all his tricks are so blatantly achieved with the help of computer-generated effects.

Elsewhere this week, comic book super hero Ghost Rider is brought to the screen in what has been a labour of love for fan Nicolas Cage.

He plays a former circus bike rider who is in debt to the devil - the devil saved the life of his father when he was young. Now, the man from hell's fire has come back to collect his debt, turning poor Nicolas into flaming-headed Ghost Rider to hunt down a host of demons.

This is a film which revs up to maximum volume right from the outset. There's not even an attempt to flesh out the central love story between Cage and leading lady Eva Mendes.

In fact, most of the plot is dispensed with in the first hour to allow maximum space for fiery special effect action sequences.

Cage deals admirably with the physical demands of the role - he hasn't looked this tones since Con Air - but Wes Bentley is rather too bland to cut it as the chief villain of the piece.

Fans of the comic book and action junkies will find more than enough here to slake their thirst. But if you're expecting a film with soul, forget it.

Fans of rather more pedestrian cinema may want to check out Freedom Writers, which sees Hilary Swank take on a class of unruly youngsters at a suburban school.

When colleague say she's wasting her time trying to get them to learn, she takes it as a challenge, and finally manages to get them addicted to the Diary of Anne Frank.

It's nothing we haven't seen before in everythig from Dead Poet's Society and To Sir With Love, or Dangerous Minds, but Swank is always worth watching, and manages to make the film tug gently at the heartstrings.