Caramel - charming, go and see it, lovely Lebanese movie that never mentions the war, three (out of four) excellent central performances. I've never seen Beirut, but I once spent a delightful day with the Lebanese novelist and playwright Hanan Al-Shaykh, listening to her describe it, and Caramel made it look just how I'd imagined. The film seems all the more poignant now the war is back.

Indiana Jones - by now you'll know the secrets of the plot and whether Ford stands up well (you'd think, from the ageism on show, that he wasn't able to stand up at all without a Zimmer frame) as an action hero. Actually, he does - weariness and reluctance handily built into the character from the start - and Lucas and Speilberg commendably refuse to shy away from their leading man's age, however well preserved he looks. The backstory revealed in the opening scenes, alluding to Indy's wartime service, and the rise of nuclear paranoia, red-baiting, flying saucer scares and cocky teenagers, is well handled. The big set piece fights, from that early escape by Indy from a nuclear blast, to the sword fight with Shia Labouef straddling a jeep and an amphibious DUKW while being thwacked in the crotch by the vegetation whizzing by - are adroitly done. Shame the script is so inconsistent and that every now and then the creators' wish for an old fashioned look makes you think: hold on, they're just a bunch of embarrassed actors on a cardboard set, holding a plastic skull. Maybe now we are too used to CGI (of which the final scene is an impressive example). Finally, while it was lovely for them to bring back lovely Karen Allen from the first and (still) the best Indy film, it's a shame they couldn't give her more to do. (The script actually seems to forget about her for a good five minutes in one hectic sequence). Oh, and while I didn't mind the cutesy gophers at the beginning, the Tarzan scene with the quiffed monkeys is just embarrassing...

And Woody Allen... where did they get those admiring poster quotes for Cassandra's Dream, which has been hanging around for months and is now finally getting a release? Were the journalists drugged? Even the most die-hard Allen fan will find this one hard going, what with Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor's peculiar accents, Tom Wilkinson apparently forgetting his lines mid-take, the unseemly feeling that Allen is using his camera as a sort of proxy sex organ, in this case on Hayley Carmichael, and a plot that might make a minor storyline in a soap. I go and see these things so you don't have to...

God, I really can't muster much enthusiasm to tell you about Speed Racer, the new one from the Wachowski brothers, except to say that for a simple, primary-coloured kids' film (parents will be bored out of their wits) it is surprisingly long and convoluted. The pulpy exploitation flick Bound and The Matrix (the original, not the dreadful sequels) are beginning to look like distant memories.

Speed Racer manages to waste an awful lot of reliable talent - not just the likes of Susan Sarandon and John Goodman and Christina Ricci, but my friend John Benfield, who plays Cruncher Block. I once had dinner at a hotel I was reviewing in Oxford with John and his wife Lil and we judged decor, food and wine on whether someone called Cruncher Block would approve. It proved a surprisingly useful critical yardstick. And if Speed Racer turns into a franchise, I might finally know someone who has their own action figure.

Watch out, though, for The Honeydripper, a small-scale and virtually all-black John Sayles film about a musician (Danny Glover) trying to keep his eponymous music bar afloat in 1950s Alabama. The script is honourable and serviceable rather than brilliant and  the performances are solid, especially Glover's, but the music is fabulous. I used to have a 1950s song called The Honeydripper on tape. Can't remember who sang it. Anyone help me out?