I was hoping to tell you about Spider-Man 3 here, but they wouldn't let me into the last screening this week. Bastards. But I can tell you a bit about 28 Weeks Later, which is almost as good a sequel to Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later as Aliens was to Alien. In the first film, you recall, Britain was quarantined from the rest of the world while the zombie-creating Rage Virus swept the country: the last moments (at least in the more upbeat of the two endings shot) showed American jets zooming over the green and pleasant land, apparently scanning for survivors after the virus had burned - or rather starved - itself out. The new film, directed by Spanish newcomer Juan Carlos Fresnadillo under the supervision of Boyle and the original's writer Alex Garland, starts - you guessed it - 28 weeks after the first film, when returning refugees are reunited with survivors in the first 'security zone'. In a brilliant but logical stroke, the film-makers imagine this would be the Isle of Dogs, a part of London surrounded by water and so isolatable, full of spanking new accomodation at Canary Wharf etc for refugees, and with its own telecommunications systems and power supplies (true, apparently). Ariel shots echoing the first film's startling imagery of a deserted capital therefore segue into footage of a DLR chain full of returning Brits trundling past tanks and American snipers fortifying/occupying the isle. Later, there are more wonderful sequences of plague- and zombie- ravaged London locations (Shaftesbury Avenue, the Millenium Bridge, Whitehall and, er, Blundell Road, Holloway) and a deftly brilliant use of Wembley Stadium, that are worth the price of admission alone. (Admittedly, Fresnadillo's idea of London geography seems a little cockeyed, but the film's ending, conversely, strikes me as a witty riposte on an old and very British rivalry: I'm interviewing Mr Fresnadillo tomorrow, so I'll ask him if I'm right on both counts.)

I won't say much more about the plot, except to say that focusing it on a family is another adroit way of moving the story on from the original and opening it out. And I won't say much about the acting, except that the defiantly unsentimental playing of stalwarts Robert Carlyle and Catherine McCormack is nicely balanced by unassuming American and Australian support, and by two very impressive new young acting talents with the highly improbable names of Mackintosh Muggleton and Imogen Poots. Ms Poots, by the way, has the most attractive nose I've seen on screen for a long time, although, as she's only 17, I feel like a dirty old man for saying it. Maybe I can balance it out by observing that I sat next to Catherine McCormack at dinner once, and she is one of the most charming and intelligent people I have ever met.

Anyway, all this set me thinking. Any other nominations for sequels which are as good as, if not better than, the films that inspired them? Let me know. Oh, and the Star Wars films are banned on the basis that it's impossible to know what order to put them in...

Finally, a plea: go and see This Is England, especially if you are a fortysomething like me who remembers how deeply scary skinheads were in the 70s. Even if you aren't, go and see it. I'm interviewing director Shane Meadows next week immediately prior to the film's release, and he used to be a skinhead. Hope he doesn't chin me...