The standout new release with heaps of appeal for young folk is GForce, the improbable story of a team of guinea pigs trained as secret agents.

Just as the team looks like being disbanded, they take on a maniacal billionaire trying to take over the world through computer chips in household appliances.

Also taking part in this fantasy are a rubbery-nosed mole and a hampster.

Available in some cinemas in 3D, you will find some top stars, including Sam Rockwell, Penelope Cruz and Nicolas Cage, providing voices for those cute rodents. UK actor Bill Nighy is terrific as the evil billionaire. The film is rated PG.

Imagine this: An Eddie Murphy movie called Imagine That without any of the rubber fat suits that have been over-used in recent Murphy releases,

Imagine That, rated G, is a family comedy in which Murphy tones down the ratatat delivery that has characterised his recent films.

He plays the divorced father of a seven-year-old daughter whose imaginary friends help to turn around his job as an investment adviser.

Murphy even allows newcomer Yara Shahidi, as the daughter, to occasionally come close to stealing one or two scenes.

More young appeal comes with Shorts, PG, a movie or set of mini-movies which is set in a town where all the houses look the same and all the grown-ups work for a company called Black Box Unlimited, including the parents of an 11-year-old with an unusual name, Toe, played by Jimmy Bennett.

The friendless Toe has a life-changing experience when a mysterious rainbow-coloured rock falls out of the sky and hits him on the head. The rock will grant wishes to whoever happens to be holding it and it quickly passes from hand to hand, from children to adults, in a movie with a message: think very carefully before making wishes you know will come true.

Finally, a film for the grown-ups. Mao's Last Dancer, PG, directed by Bruce Beresford and mostly made in Australia, is an outstanding drama based on the autobiography of a Chinese ballet dancer, Li Cunxin, who now lives in Melbourne and who, at age 11, was taken from his remote village to Beijing to study dance. On a cultural exchange dancing in Texas he defected from China, going on to dance for the Houston Ballet, and later the Australian Ballet.