Simon ParkinEXAMINED LIFEDir: Astra Taylor (2008)With: K. Anthony Appiah, Judith Butler, Michael HardtPhilosophy may not seem an easy subject from which to eek engaging cinema, but Astra Taylor pulls off this neat trick in her freewheeling documentary.Simon Parkin

EXAMINED LIFE

Dir: Astra Taylor (2008)

With: K. Anthony Appiah, Judith Butler, Michael Hardt

Philosophy may not seem an easy subject from which to eek engaging cinema, but Astra Taylor pulls off this neat trick in her freewheeling documentary.

Taking the subject out of the textbooks and classrooms and into the streets, her engaging film accompanies some of today's most influential thinkers - including Slavoj �i�ek and Judith Butler - into ordinary places and spaces that reflect and resonate their ideas.

As they stroll about various cities and talk about what philosophy means, each of the half-dozen or so thinkers gets around 20 minutes to get their point across - it's a time limit that is at turns just right, not long enough and far too long.

However the film does offer privileged moments with great thinkers from fields ranging from moral philosophy to cultural theory and explores the way we see the world and philosophy's ability to influence it.

t Screens at Cinema City on January 12 (6.30pm), 0871 7042053, www.picturehouses.co.uk

MR RIGHT

Dir: David Morris/Jacqui Morris (2006)

With: James Lance, Luke de Woolfson, Jeremy Edwards, Andrew Dunn

A host of British TV talent pops up in this rarest of things: a very watchable British gay-interest film. Lovers Harry and Alex are starting to have problems, and their friends Tom and Lars have realised there's nothing more to their relationship than money in exchange for sex. At the heart of this film is an off-screen sexual encounter that may or may not have taken place - and which will keep you guessing right to the end.

This latest in the Out At The Movies monthly series of gay films will be introduced by Richard Hinton, talented new stand-up comic from Lowestoft who proved a big hit at last year's Norwich Pride Comedy Night.

t Screens at Cinema City on January 12 (6.30pm), 0871 7042053, details as above

THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH

Dir: Alfred Hitchcock (1934)

With: Leslie Banks, Edna Best, Peter Lorre, Nova Pilbeam

The Noverre Visual Arts Society meet to discuss and show this month's classic film selection. Hitchcock's first and arguably superior production of the same story he retold in 1956 with James Stewart and Doris Day, and critics continue to argue the film's merits versus its successor.

An English couple on holiday in Switzerland find themselves embroiled in an international plot to assassinate a foreign dignitary when the husband overhears the secret and their daughter is kidnapped. This taut, suspenseful thriller is aided by the director's wry wit and tight pacing.

Look out for memorable sequences involving a dentist, an East End mission and the Albert Hall. It's all very stagey by today's standards, but much more fun than the expensive remake.

t Screens at Assembly House, Norwich, on January 11 (7.15pm) and January 12 (2.15pm), more details 01603 626402