Inkheart

Cornelia Funke's successful children's novel receives the big-screen treatment here with truly wonderful results. This is the tale of Silvertongue (Brendan Fraser), who is blessed with the ability to make storybook characters come to life when reading aloud.

Alas, this proves somewhat disadvantageous one evening when, while reading his daughter Meggie (Eliza Bennett) a bedtime story, he summons up the detestable Capricorn (Andy Serkis) and leaves his wife (Sienna Guillory) trapped in the novel (from which the movie takes its name).

And so Silvertongue and Meggie must scurry across Europe in search of a rare copy of Inkheart, encountering all manner of characters from the book world en route - including collectors, authors and fictional characters (variously played by Helen Mirren, Paul Bettany and Jim Broadbent). There's nothing particularly new about this story, but it is told with such fairytale perfection that it is downright impossible to resist. ·