Art reflects real life: sometimes with affection, sometimes with brutal honesty that sends a chill down the spine. Gone Baby Gone, a hard-hitting adaptation of the crime thriller by Dennis Lehane about the abduction of a four-year-old girl, was scheduled for release in December last year, only to be postponed because of its similarities to the Madeleine McCann case.

The child in the film was almost the same age, the character's name slightly similar (Amanda McCready) and, in a spooky twist, the young actress playing the pivotal role was called Madeline. With another six months passed, including the one-year anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance, Ben Affleck's directorial debut finally opens at UK cinemas laden with numerous awards, including an Oscar nomination for Amy Ryan as Best Supporting Actress.

The plaudits are well deserved. The film is a riveting tale of corruption and twisted love, sharply scripted by Affleck and long-time friend Aaron Stockard, with tour de force performances from a stellar cast led by the director's brother, Casey. Affleck and cinematographer John Toll capture the rough and tumble of Boston by shooting on location, employing local people in minor roles to give the peripheral characters a gritty authenticity which begins with the distinctive, thick drawl.

It is in one of the city's poorest neighbourhoods that little Amanda McCready (Madeline O'Brien) vanishes without trace from her bedroom. The girl's mother, Helene (Amy Ryan), makes a television appeal for her safe return while police swarm the scene, led by Captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman). Frustrated by the lack of police progress, the girl's feisty grandmother Bea (Amy Madigan) enlists the services of private investigators Patrick Kenzie (Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) to make their own enquiries. They have contacts in the city's underbelly, who would never share information with the police.

As they gather evidence about the missing child's final hours, Patrick and Angie forge an uneasy alliance with renegade cop Detective Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and his partner Detective Nick Poole (John Ashton). Together, the quartet exposes a web of deceit and lies which appears to implicate everyone involved in the case.

From its opening scenes of city life accompanied by Patrick's voiceover ("I find people who started in the cracks . . . and fell through"), Gone Baby Gone holds us in a vice-like grip as the investigation twists and turns with horrific repercussions. It's a deliberate slow burn but director Affleck confidently injects pace with a couple of expert choreographed action set pieces, including a botched night-time ransom drop and a nerve-racking shoot-out in the house of a suspected child abuser.

Performances are excellent, from Casey Affleck's somewhat naive and doomed hero to Ryan's ballsy portrayal of a foul-mouthed drug addict who may not be fit to raise her child. The narrative wrong-foots us to the closing frames, when one character faces an agonising moral dilemma that will provoke heated debate for weeks to come.

Somebody ought to explain to filmmaker Craig Mazin that in Hollywood you have to respond quickly to audiences' changing tastes. It's vital to strike while the iron is hot, especially with vast sums of money riding on the opening weekend box office. So writing and directing a spoof of Spider-Man, complete with a smutty recreation of the upside down kiss in the rain, some six years after the web-slinging superhero first swung on to the big screen is a completely pointless exercise.

Yet in Superhero Movie we have this tongue-in-cheek romp of good versus evil that also takes half-hearted jabs at X-Men, Superman and Fantastic Four among others. Even if Mazin's film could boast a miasma of polished one-liners and inspired visual jokes - which it can't - there's no escaping the fact that it far exceeds its sell by date and should be flung into the nearest dustbin.

During a class trip, student Rick Riker (Drake Bell) is bitten by a genetically engineered dragonfly, investing him with the nifty superpowers of the creature. Struggling to conceal his secret identity as the masked Dragonfly from Uncle Albert (Leslie Nielsen) and Aunt Lucille (Marion Ross), Rick puts his new found skills to good use and sweeps next door neighbour Jill (Sara Paxton) off her feet. Unfortunately, Dragonfly meets his match in The Hourglass, the dastardly alter ego of megalomaniac Dr Lou Lander (Christopher McDonald).