COMIC Rowan Atkinson’s return as JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN (PG) at Newton Stewart Cinema from tomorrow is a welcome escape from our woes.

Surprisingly it is eight years since he first appeared as Johnny English, the worst special agent in MI7, and then he killed off all the special agents even before the film started.

Now he is in disgrace again after a cock-up in Mozambique where he was supposed to protect the new premier.

Banished to a Tibetan monastery, where he is toughened up by dragging rocks, he is recalled to protect the Chinese premier by his new boss Gillian Anderson.

What follows is English at his absolute worst – but funny with it.

The film borrows from a multitude of movies and turns them into his own special brand of chaos.

Top action sequences are a helicopter motorway chase and a car chase across London in a motorised wheelchair.

It’s Mr Bean meets James Bond – and Atkinson wins.

That continues at the Odeon in Dumfries for late shows from tomorrow until Sunday, with matinees and early shows taken with the re-issue of Disney’s THE LION KING IN 3D (U).

This film was always near-perfect but the 3D conversion adds a welcome perspective and depth.

You get Rowan Atkinson here too, as the voice of Zazoo, the busybody toucan who is supposed to protect the young lion cub Simba but falls down on the job.

The Elton John songs are now indelible thanks to the stage version and this is a welcome chance to re-visit an old friend.

From Monday, Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson recreate the Belgian boy detective/reporter of the Herge comic strip books in THE ADVENTURES OF TIN TIN: THE SECRET OF THE UNICORN 3D (PG).

Using the motion capture system, this emerges as a cross between animation and live action and frees Spielberg to let his imagination loose on fantastic seascapes and fast action.

The wonder boy is voiced by Jamie Bell and his hard-drinking companion, Captain Haddock, is the ubiquitous Andy Serkis with a Scottish accent.

On hand too are Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as the inept Thomson twin secret agents and Daniel Craig as the baddie, with famous dog Snowy doing a scene-stealing act.

It’s all to do with a lost family treasure and dastardly deeds on the high seas. If the 3D makes you seasick, the 2D version is also showing.

At the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre, Brendan Gleeson gives a gem of a performance in THE GUARD (15) tomorrow and Saturday.

He plays the eccentric, grizzled but worldly-wise Sergeant Gerry Boyle, a veteran in the Irish police in a small coastal town on the western side of County Galway. When his new assistant goes missing and there are reports of drug smuggling, he is saddled with an FBI agent (Don Cheadle) who plays by the book. Boyle tore up the rule book years ago and makes up his own as he pursues the gangs.

This is a wonderfully witty, foul-tongued but frequently moving story of a man who is the author of his own survival. The plot may be a bit thin and formulaic but Gleeson turns it into pure gold.

On Monday and Wednesday, IN A BETTER WORLD (15) is the Denmark/Swedish film that won the Oscar for best foreign film and is a family drama that flits between war-torn Africa and the bully battleground of a Danish school.

Saintly doctor Anton is a pacifist who patches up the wounds of a brutal warlord in Africa.

His son, Elias, is bullied at school where he struggles to cope with his parents’ divorce, but his new friend Christian sorts out the bully.

When his dad returns and is involved in a neighbourly spat, he turns the other cheek but Elias and Christian believe “might is right” and plot revenge.

Two wrongs don’t make a right in this thoughtful study of family emotions.

On Tuesday, there is a free screening of TAKE MY EYES (15 ) a study of violence in the home screened under sponsorship by the Domestic Abuse and Violence Against Women Partnership. It will be followed by a discussion.

Next Thursday, THE HEDGEHOG (12A ), from France, is based on a bestselling book The Elegance of the Hedgehog.

Eleven-year-old Paloma lives with her well-off intellectual family in a glitzy Paris apartment block. She resolves to kill herself out of boredom on her next birthday and meantime makes a film of life’s absurdities as she sees it.

By getting to know grumpy concierge Renee, and her flirtatious relationship with a new tenant, Paloma’s view of life and death changes a lot.

Bill Cunningham