Hollywood has been quick off the mark to make movies that directly engage with the Iraq War, compared to the 10 years it took Tinseltown to start on Vietnam, but none of them have proved popular with cinema-goers.
The English whodunnit meets The Da Vinci Code in this mathematical murder mystery set in and around the the dreaming spires of Oxford. John Hurt and Elijah Wood play a professor and student who apply their shared passion for logic to the investigation of a series of killings.
As glossy and sleazy as a pornographic magazine, this erotic thriller is a throwback to trashy American movies of the 1980s such as 91/2 Weeks and Fatal Attraction.
The Judd Apatow film factory continues to churn out slacker/ nerd comedies whose quality runs in inverse proportion to their frequency. Forgetting Sarah Marshall, produced by Apatow and written by its star Jason Segel, represents a new low.
Slapstick comedy and soul-searching drama are uneasily wed in this tonally uneven but engaging Britflick. Skinny Englishman Mackenzie Crook and burley Irishman Colm Meaney make a watchable odd couple.
This weird and whimsical film from South Korea’s Chan-wook Park marks a change of tone – if not style – for the feted filmmaker who secured his place in world cinema with his shocking revenge trilogy Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, Old Boy, and Lady Vengeance.
Hollywood’s pillaging of Asian horror cinema continues apace with this remake of Hong Kong filmmaking brothers Danny and Oxide Pang’s exercise in ocular terror.
Happy-go-lucky (15): Just how bubbly is the heroine of Happy-Go-Lucky? Well, if you parachuted her into EastEnders she’d be greeted as the Antichrist. If you could bottle her spirit the makers of anti-depressants would go bust in a day.
Playwright turned filmmaker Martin McDonagh follows his Oscar-winning short Six Shooter with a firecracker first feature so savvy it almost makes Belgium seem cool.
From the writer of Training Day comes another expedition into the LAPD’s murky recesses. This time it’s Keanu Reeves playing against type as the cop finding it hard to toe the line between right and wrong.
Who knows why Donald Sutherland agreed to star in this tedious adventure comedy? Not only is he subjected to a script so awful it hurts, they make him adopt a British accent straight out of Noel Coward.
Showered with prizes in its native Germany, Chris Kraus’s drama offers bleak, intense viewing. Monica Bleibtreu is the aged Miss Kruger, who teaches piano at a women’s prison.
Most modern comedies offer a philosophical experience in that they leave you questioning the very point of life. This weird, sometimes wonderful absurdist comedy by Roy Andersson is the real deal.
Kit Ryan’s comedy-horror is a case of too much ambition, too little budget and talent. Stephen Dorff, whose previous horror experience extended to playing Britney Spears’s boyfriend in a music vid, is Ritchie, a small-time thief sent on a job by a Russian Mr Big.
The titular blockhead in Baillie Walsh’s debut feature is none other than Daniel "007" Craig, previously licensed to thrill, here at liberty to get in and out of a movie pronto.
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