WARRIOR

Starring: Tom Hardy Joel Edgerton, Nick Nolte

It's taken me a few weeks to get around to Warrior, partly because of its 2 ¼ hour duration but mainly because I'm a bit off fighting films at the moment. The thought of macho bruisers lengthily pummelling each other in a ring was temporarily too much. But I should have listened to all the good reviews I saw – this is terrific stuff.

The specific fighting in question is Mixed Martial Arts, which basically seems to mean that the fighters can do pretty much anything they want, kicking, punching, wrestling, whatever it takes. The protagonists are Hardy and Edgerton – estranged brothers – and the obligatory crusty old trainer, Nolte, is their alcoholic father (also estranged: this is a family not unfamiliar with dysfunction).

As that suggests, the real story, much like last year's The Fighter, is familial, the two brothers fated to meet in the tournament final, and their history is well drawn. Hardy (soon to be the new Batman villain) and Edgerton are both convincingly working class American (given they're a Brit and an Aussie) and muscle-bound, while Oscar-nominated Nolte is effortlessly gruff and layered.

The fighting throughout is brutal and authentic and by the time of the climactic showdown the combination of emotional heft – both brothers have compelling sympathetic reasons for needing to win - and physical conflict is genuinely exhilarating.

One can only assume that after The Fighter the Academy felt the same way as I did about fighting films, otherwise this would have won a swag of statuettes this year.

Errol Morris makes fascinating documentaries about fascinating people, be they folk who run pet cemeteries, Robert McNamara in Fog of War, or the crazy Mormon-kidnapping romantic at the centre of Tabloid. The lady in question is Joyce McKinney, a former Miss Wyoming who travelled to the UK to 'rescue” the imagined love of her life from what she regarded as a Mormon cult (it would seem he was actually on regular missionary work). The film, as the title suggests, takes a wider view, delving into the bizarrely sensationalised newspaper coverage the events inspired while trying to dig out the (equally bizarre) truth.

Daniel Craig quits his high-flying publisher job to move to rural New England with his wife (Rachel Weisz) and two daughters in Dream House. Unfortunately, the realtor neglected to mention the family previously murdered in said property (the father – and presumed murderer – still at large). This turns out to be an important oversight, as mysterious stalkers and night-time bumps rapidly escalate. But all is not as it seems and the halfway mark brings a revelatory twist which the film struggles to recover from. Either this was hacked down by the studio or the thing was fundamentally flawed from the get-go.

Damned By Dawn is a very low budget Aussie horror which finds a young couple visiting family in the isolated countryside. What with granny spouting incoherent warnings about 'The Lady of Sorrows” and the strange screaming noises at night it would seem something is amiss. The title is a clear Evil Dead reference and, sure enough, the group are soon under siege from demonic nasties. Sadly this lacks any of Sam Raimi's wit and imagination while none of the cast show a hint of Bruce Campbell's goofy charisma. From script to execution it is an unconvincing mess.

And the superb documentary Senna is now out on blu-ray. As someone with no interest in motor racing and no real memory of the Brazilian world champion driver I was still totally captivated by it. The on-track battles between Ayrton Senna and Frenchman Alain Prost, the off-track politics and backstabbing, and the sheer charisma of the young driver are brilliantly captured. Dramatic and moving stuff.