Prepare to meet your makers -

Scott's loose prequel to Alien is the most eagerly anticipated film of the year. It would be impossible to live up to the hype, and I have to say that Prometheus doesn't. But it is bold, breathless, with moments of great ghastliness and extraordinary beauty. More than another marauding monster yarn, it is a farther-reaching story about an attempt by a team of scientists to discover the source of mankind's origins, "to meet our makers" in deep space.

The original Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Noomi Rapace, plays Elizabeth Shaw, an archaeologist who discovers millennia-old drawings which she believes to be an "invitation" to the stars. In 2093 she is on board the spaceship Prometheus with her RSVP. The crew includes a ball-breaking executive (Charlize Theron) from the Weyland Corporation that has funded the trip and a company android, David (Michael Fassbender). Their boss, Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), appears as a hologram; considering his corporation's malign role throughout these films, we suspect that Shaw hasn't been backed for spiritual reasons.

And so we return to the planet where Ripley and her doomed crewmates of the first film discovered the pods with their "facehuggers", along with a dead and unexplained alien astronaut. Scott is soon offering some familiar scenarios, as the team find not a god-like race waiting with open arms, but darkened ruins, a sticky substance on the walls and a hall full of cylinders. But whereas the previous films are all cat-and-mouse affairs, this is more of a mystery. What happened to this advanced race? Why were they dabbling with dangerous biotech weapons? Could it be that our creators grew to hate us?

Driving many scenes is another question: how much does David know? Fassbender gives a great turn as an android whose favourite film is Lawrence Of Arabia. He's at once amusing and creepy; though he supposedly doesn't have any feelings, at least one deed is driven by a desire for payback.

What grabs the viewer immediately about the film is the spectacle – from the gorgeously shot 3D images of the planet to the Prometheus itself, as both a dot speeding across the universe and in minutely-detailed high-tech close-up. The sight of Idris Elba as the ship's captain at the helm has an old-fashioned romance about it; in contrast, the most distinctive gizmo is a robotic operating table, scene of one of the grizzliest onscreen procedures you'll ever see – one in keeping with the breeding theme that informs the series.

Prometheus thrills, but doesn't frighten, which is disappointing. And it creates more questions than it answers, perhaps more than it intends. That said, it makes a change to have so much on which to ponder. And in space no-one can hear you scratch your head.

Theron turns up again as the queenly nemesis of Snow White, in a film that is infinitely superior to the tongue-in-cheek Mirror Mirror earlier this year. Snow White And The Huntsman is a new take on the template, turning the fairytale into a highly credible fantasy and action adventure.

It opens darkly, as the mysterious Ravenna uses seduction and magic to murder the king, heap desolation on his kingdom and imprison Snow White (Kristen Stewart) in the tower. Sucking the life force out of young women in order to stay young, the Queen decides she needs Snow's heart to make the process permanent. The youngster escapes into the Dark Forest, where she meets the huntsman (Chris Hemsworth), who in this version becomes her ally and, ultimately, will be her prince.

Although the story palls when the delectably evil Theron is off-screen, it moves well between fantasy, action sequences (with Stewart ably adopting the strut of a Joan of Arc) and comedy. The latter is provided by a brilliantly British band of dwarves, including Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Ian McShane and Nick Frost. "We're promised gold," Frost laments, crawling through a sewer, "and what do we get? Poo."

The Angels' Share is an unusually fulsome foray into feelgood by Ken Loach and writer Paul Laverty, albeit within a characteristic milieu. A quartet of very different characters meet in Glasgow while serving community service. The most serious offender is Robbie (Paul Brannigan), a young man locked into a violent family feud. With a baby on the way, Robbie is desperate to break out of a cycle of criminality, to settle down with "a wean, a bird, a motor and a job". A visit to a distillery gives him a sniff of a plan that might help. With his new friends, he heads to the Highlands for a very special auction.

This is a caper movie and a cheery, shamelessly cheesy celebration of Scotland itself, from the use of The Proclaimers on the soundtrack, to a stream of fruity idiom and the roundabout way of introducing the national dress, when Robbie and co seek to blend in with the whisky aficionados. If they wear their usual clothes, they agree, they'll look like neds; put a suit on and it will seem as though they're on the way to court. So out come the kilts.