IT'S an annual certainty that Harvey Weinstein and Miramax will produce some form of period film in autumn which has been aimed directly at Mr Oscar.

And it's a tactic which has won a Best Picture statuette for Shakespeare in Love and garnered a long list of nominations for The English Patient.

This year's big bet is the very lovely Finding Neverland, a biographical piece which attempts to explain the genesis of the writer JM Barrie's most celebrated work, Peter Pan.

An almighty tear-jerker and Tim Burton-type project, it makes sense that it should thus star the latter's favourite leading man, Johnny Depp, as Barrie.

When the curtain rises, we meet a disappointed Barrie in London in 1903, fresh from his latest theatrical flop and labouring in his marriage to the very frosty Mary.

One day, while out looking for inspiration in Hyde Park, he finds it in the shape of widow Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Kate Winslet) and her four boys, Michael, George, Jack and Peter.

To help them through the death of their father, Barrie tries to awaken the boys' imaginations, but, in the process, offends society because he is present with the family so much and his own marriage begins to crumble around him.

Recent newspaper coverage has tended to look at the more salacious aspects of this particular story, insinuating that there was something improper in the extent of Barrie's relationship with the boys - a claim they rubbished as adults - but this is not what director Marc Forster (Monster's Ball) is concerned with.

He presents us with a simple tale, illustrating how human behaviour evolved into the traits of characters for Barrie's novel, with vividly unreal scenarios meshing with the actual landscapes.

Depp's Scottish accent is convincing, Winslet gives us her best English rose turn and we're also spoiled with Dustin Hoffman, Julie Christie and Depp's favourite, Paul Whitehouse.

Worth a watch for all these reasons, and for the stunning turn of Freddie Highmore as Peter, who will next assume the role of Charlie in Burton's remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.