Amen (PG) <br></br>Tape (15) <br></br>Bad Company (12) <br></br>Scooby-Doo (PG) <br></br>Resident Evil (15) <br></br>Devdas (PG)

Forget the Nazis, I'd rather have a nice chat

Ironically for a film that has garnered so many column inches by dealing with Pope Pius XII's refusal to speak out against the Holocaust, Constantin Costa-Gavras's Amen (PG) would have been better if the Pope hadn't been in it. There are some repetitive scenes in which a fictitious priest travels from Berlin to the Vatican, begs the cardinals to protest against the genocide, and is turned away, but these make up the least enlightening parts of the film, and they're careful not to present the Pope as anything worse than a cautious diplomat.

Far more worthwhile is the film's portrayal of a real SS lieutenant, Kurt Gerstein, who helped manufacture chemicals for the exterminations while labouring to prevent them. Showing us how German officers could be loyal soldiers while being appalled by or ignorant of the Nazis' crimes, it's compassionate and bold, but it's still not great film-making.

Performed in English by European actors, Amen's dialogue can be stilted, and Costa-Gavras's staging would suit a reconstruction on a TV history programme – you feel that Simon Schama might stroll into the foreground at any moment.

The film has just one memorable image: a freight train heading back from the concentration camps, the carriage doors wide open on both sides, so you can see right through it to the landscape beyond. It's a plangent symbol of the void where people used to be.

The script of Tape (15) is adapted by Stephen Belber from his own play, and at first glance you'd think he should have left it in the theatre. It has just three actors, is set in one motel room, progresses in real time, and its action consists of people talking to each other. Still, who needs action when the verbal sparring has more feints and thrusts than a martial arts movie? Tape is even more of a treat because it really shouldn't work.

Shot on digital video by Richard Linklater, Tape is challenging and crafty, yet often explosively funny. Its protagonists are three high school friends who meet up, 10 years on, to settle old scores. Robert Sean Leonard is a sanctimonious film director, Uma Thurman is an attorney who never moved away from their hometown, and Ethan Hawke, as a mangy drug dealer, is like Jack Nicholson, except with more fire than Nicholson's had in decades.

Bad Company (12) is an OK Saturday night comedy thriller directed by Joel Schumacher and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. Chris Rock does his usual stand-up routine as a street hustler who's drafted into the CIA. Anthony Hopkins, as his boss, puts in less effort than he did in his Barclays Bank commercials.

Scooby-Doo (PG), the live-action spin-off of the Hanna-Barbera cartoons has enough zany hijinks to occupy primary school pupils on a wet summer holiday afternoon, but don't let the American box office takings fool you that it's a top quality children's movie. The makers have only a tenuous grasp of the "works on two levels" idea, and instead of layering accessible fun for the kids with witty pastiches for the adults, Scooby-Doo has fart gags for the children and drugs references for the grown-ups, which is not quite the same thing.

Resident Evil (15), starring Milla Jovovich, is a silly computer game tie-in set in a secret underground laboratory infested by undead cannibals. Perhaps if you've played the game you'll be able to tell me why zombie humans hobble around arthritically, while zombie dogs can run like greyhounds.

Devdas (PG) is the latest Bollywood movie that's tipped to cross over to the mainstream. The Romeo and Juliet-like romantic tragedy is a kaleidoscope of jewellery, costume, music and dance, but it's a kaleidoscope that lasts three hours, and for two of those, the snobbish hero is in a madeira-soaked, self-pitying stupor.

n.barber@independent.co.uk