BY NIALL ANDERSON

This week has been thronged with things coming to light that somebody, somewhere in a position of power, knew about already. Things they didn’t want us to see. No, not just Ben Miller’s Huge. Not even Jean-Luc Godard’s Film Socialisme. I’m talking about important things. Things like how Marlon Brando patented his own tuneable congo drums. Or that Spike Lee is in talks to remake Oldboy. Surprising things that make you wonder what kind of world you’re living in.

The week’s cinema is not going to help you reorient yourself. It’s as though the schedule has been drawn up purposefully to distract us from what’s really going on. Take your pick, then, between James Gunn’s brittle and brilliant Super and David “I’m Still On A Break” Schwimmer’s web-sceptical paedoploitation saga Trust. Or go and see Yuya Ishii’s clam-packing family drama Sawako Decides. Or Paul Campion’s occult Nazi suspense thriller, The Devil’s Rock. It’s hard to think of four more different-sounding films, or one person who would enjoy them all.

But maybe that’s just what they want you to think.

Of course, what they really don’t want you to know is that this week serves as a mere prelude to the return of Harry Potter in the second part of The Deathly Hallows. I mean, what is Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life, anyway, except a meditation on life before, during and after Potter? Isn’t Alan Rickman’s Snape a bit like a sad dinosaur? Mostly Film will be reviewing the last of the Potters midweek and will answer ALL of these questions. ALL of them.

Quieter on the rerelease front than it has been for a while – unless Alain Resnais’ seminally spooky Last Year in Marienbad is your personal kettle of ambiguity – so here’s a novel trip through a particular chapter of cinema history: every Ray Harryhausen monster inside four minutes. And here’s Buster Keaton’s last headline performance in its entirety: in Samuel Beckett’s (!) Film.

Next week, while we’re all Waiting For Potter, Mostly Film will keep you going with reports from the Manchester International Festival, a wrap-up of the London Russian Film Festival, and a very personal list of our favourite minor characters in film – the more minor the better. It will pass the time. (It would have passed anyway.)