Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is quite a remarkable achievement, a film that is moving, funny, honest, true, sad and sweet. It's a film about characters whom so very many people, young and older, have come to know and love, and which understands that it's these characters, and not simply the magic they perform, that is the real hook of the series. This latest outing glows with beautiful vistas and marvellous CGI effects together with undoubtedly some of the best performances yet seen in the series.

And - it has Jim Broadbent. Could a Harry Potter film finally show up at the Oscars in a non-technical category? If all the elements are finally in place, there really should be a nomination for the sublime Broadbent, who plays new Potions teacher Horace Slughorn. While Slughorn, a retired teacher who Dumbledore needs back at Hogwarts as he holds a vital clue to defeating the resurrected Voldemort, was never a favourite of many in the books, Broadbent takes the role and does unbelievable things with it. He plays a level of buffoonery that's hilarious - we're introduced to Slughorn when he's morphed himself into an armchair - but this astonishing actor also manages to bring a level of sadness that is palpable and affecting. Slughorn 'collects' students; his self-image comes from being the mentor to witches and wizards who advance towards achieving great things. In a momentary lapse of judgment he helped young Tom Riddle, the boy who would grow up to be Voldemort, find the key to a kind of immortality. Broadbent keeps the sadness and shame and regret just under the surface, and when he fully brings it out he doesn't overdo things. The performance is a thing of beauty.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix marked director David Yates' introduction to the series. When the finale is all wrapped up Yates will have directed more Potter films than any one else, as he is also doing the two-part adaptation of Deathly Hallows. Phoenix seemed to some to be the most rushed Potter film, one where everything felt squashed and nothing had a chance to breathe. Any complaints though, will have disappeared completely with Half-Blood Prince. If the standard of this film is in any way indicative of what he'll do with Deathly Hallows, then it will be an immensely satisfying and gratifying conclusion to the complete works.

For anyone who may be a relative novice to the Potter cinematic experience – don’t even think of jumping aboard with this one. While Half-Blood Prince is so good that I think it would charm even the most jaded Potter non-believer, the film doesn’t hang back on being the sixth in a series. Characters, locations and creatures show up without any sort of introduction or memory-jogging namedrop. Many characters don’t have their names or functions mentioned in the film, so for a newcomer, things could seem daunting. However, it's a testament to Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves that the continuity never gets in the way of the storytelling, which moves forward vigorously, whilst ensuring time is taken to concentrate on the characters. Yates' visual style shows Hogwarts as now less about magical moving paintings and stairways that move and more about long corridors and dark passages; these passages reflect the journeys the characters make on their way through puberty. He uses the geography of the school in ways that advance the characters while also making stunning shots - the camera pulls out of a parapet window where Hermione cries and flies up, peeking in a window where Ron kisses a girl and then continues all the way to the top, where Draco Malfoy stands alone, fuming. It looks beautiful and it succinctly encapsulates everything you need to know about these characters at this moment. Yates also really understands how to integrate magic visually into his film; there's a matter-of-fact quality to it here that never diminishes the joy of the magic but also never makes it the centrepiece.

Half-Blood Prince shows how the larger forces affect us as individuals and how we as individuals affect the larger forces. The entire story is essentially a struggle for the soul of Draco Malfoy, the bullying bastard whose father, played by Jason Isaacs in previous films, was recently sent away to Azkaban prison for being a Death Eater. Draco is given a mission by Lord Voldemort himself, and it's one that could completely destroy him as a human being. The ongoing battle between Voldemort and Dumbledore over the soul of Malfoy is a version of the battle the two have been playing out over the whole series. Half-Blood Prince feels like the most grown-up Potter film yet when it comes to the menace of the bad guys. They're everywhere, and they're casually evil – and the film carries a constant presence of malice, and it feels like anyone could be killed at any moment. 

More than that, there’s growing-up sexuality at play - the students are deep in puberty, all they want to do is kiss and touch each other. It's to the massive credit of Yates and Kloves that the teen sexuality comes across as neither puritanical nor crass. There's a sweetness here, the sweetness of the first kiss and the inarticulate aching for something more. But Yates and Kloves (and Rowling, of course) don't see this through the fog of nostalgia. They fully understand the pain that goes along with this exciting and confusing part of life. In a scene where Hermione, heartbroken that Ron has chosen to run off and snog some other girl, sits weeping in a stairwell our hearts are broken too. It's not just because the character's journey is one we have enjoyed or that Emma Watson has blossomed into a fine young actress; it's because we were there when she was a little girl - Hermione and Watson - and we've watched her grow up before our very eyes. Now, having spent eight years and 12 or so hours with these youngsters, we feel protective of them, and we share in their pain and in their victories in ways that wouldn't have been possible without this sense of massive continuity. We've been through the wringer with Harry and we’ve seen Ron grow into a young man, and it lends Ron's Quidditch success much more depth.

While we haven't quite seen the older actors growing as much (although a number of them look quite older than when we it all began), their presence has also established a continuity of this world that makes it all the more coherent. Some of these actors return for roles that are cameos – for example the wonderful Timothy Spall's entire role is to open a door! - but they seem to be having a great time with them. Even the shortest turns are burning with energy, and some of them carry plenty of meaning. Then there are the main elder roles. It seems impossible to think that Richard Harris could have brought to these latest chapters the spry humanity that Michael Gambon offers with such natural ease. There was always something more otherworldly about Harris' Dumbledore, but Gambon's is identifiably down to earth and even action-oriented in this film. As always, the magnificent Alan Rickman luxuriates in the role of Severus Snape, and you can almost feel him breathing a sigh of relief at once again having something to do in this series beyond staring down Harry Potter in a couple of scenes. Finally, as I mentioned at the start: the utterly outstanding Jim Broadbent, Oscar nominee in an ideal world.

Director: Duncan Jones
Story: Duncan Jones
Screenplay: Nathan Parker
Cast: Kevin Spacey, Sam Rockwell, Matt Berry, Kaya Scodelario, Benedict Wong, Malcolm Stewart, Dominique McElligott, Robin Chalk

Running time: 97 mins

Thought-provoking, intelligent science fiction tends to be conspicuous by its absence on film. With the exception of Steven Soderbergh’s 2002 remake of "Solaris" and Richard Linklater’s 2006 adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel, "A Scanner Darkly", science fiction films have relied on blockbuster-sized budgets as a cover for thematic and narrative deficiencies. Cinemagoers so far in 2009 have had four big-budget, science-fiction-oriented films, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," a reboot of the "Star Trek" franchise, "Terminator: Salvation," and "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," the sequel to Michael Bay’s no-brain-required 2007 blockbuster. Luckily for science fiction fans, there’s an alternative: "Moon," Duncan Jones’ remarkably self-assured directorial debut.

In the near future, most of the world’s energy problems have been solved through Helium-3, a naturally occurring gas used as fuel for nuclear fusion that’s abundant on the moon. Lunar Industries (LI) has a monopoly on mining Helium-3, establishing the Sarang lunar base on the far side of the moon. To keep the base’s automated harvesters running efficiently, a lone miner-engineer-astronaut lives and work from the lunar base. The latest miner-engineer-astronaut, Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), is two weeks short of completing his three-year contract. For the duration of this period, Sam has been alone, with only GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey), a company-provided AI that runs the base, and, with a live feed from home back on Earth currently inoperative, videotaped messages from his wife, Tess (Dominique McElligott), help to keep his loneliness at bay.

However, at this juncture, Sam’s health begins to deteriorate: bad headaches, loss of focus, and even hallucinations. On a seemingly routine repair mission to fix a malfunctioning harvester, Sam sees a woman on the Moon’s surface and crashes the lunar rover into the harvester. When he awakes in the lunar base’s med-lab, GERTY informs him he’s suffered a concussion but that he will make a speedy recovery. Sam, however, can’t remember how he returned to the lunar base or even the details of the accident. When he attempts to venture outside to investigate the crash site, GERTY refuses to give him access. Eventually he does manage to get outside, of course, but to say more would be to definitely ruin "Moon"'s most important plot twist, one that simultaneously overturns everything we knew or thought we knew about Sam and Lunar Industries and one that leads, inevitably to "Moon"’s primary thematic concerns.

A first-time director with a background in advertising, Jones developed the story treatment for the film, but handed over screenwriting duties to Nathan Parker (who receives the sole screenwriting credit). With "Moon", Jones wanted to pay homage to the cerebral science-fiction films of what he’s called in interviews and in the production notes the 'Golden Age' (roughly 1970s through the early 1980s), including Stanley Kubrick’s "2001: A Space Odyssey", Andrei Tarkovsky’s "Solaris", Douglas Trumbull’s "Silent Running", Ridley Scott’s "Alien", and Peter Hyams’ "Outland". Thematically, Jones and Parker also drew on science fiction/cult writer Philip K. Dick’s ground-breaking novels and short stories.

In a nod to the 1970s influences and concerns on "Moon", Jones decided against computer-generated visual effects and instead went with the old-school approach to the visual design and visual effects provided by the UK-based Cinesite. Rather than rely on expensive CGI, Jones relied primarily on miniatures for the exterior lunar scenes. Jones even went as far as hiring effects veterans who worked on Silent Running and a set designer who worked on "Alien" to design the lunar rover. Jones also decided on a self-enclosed, 360-degree set for the lunar base to add to the realism. Grit and grunge were added to the base’s interior to give it the function-first, aesthetics-last look prevalent in 70s films.

That aside, "Moon" only goes as far as Sam Rockwell will take it, and in fact Jones wrote "Moon" with Rockwell specifically in mind. No stranger to challenging work, Rockwell captures Bell’s multiple moods, different states of mind, and physical changes (especially after the big plot revelation) with an almost effortless ease. He’s never less than sympathetic, but never pitiful or pitiable. Rockwell sells Parker’s dialogue and Sam’s emotional (and physical) journey without relying on histrionics or overacting. This is an excellent piece of work all-round with some sublime, dazzlingly subtle editing, and a highly promising helmer’s debut for Duncan “Zowie Bowie” Jones.