Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror masterpiece The Shining is a film that has been watched and re-watched, poured over and pondered. Its obtuse finale, its destruction of much of Stephen Kings source and its meticulous details and clues, fuelled by the fans knowledge of the directors infamous shot compositing, has paved the way for this great little film essay by Rodney Ascher…

In a world, much like Lassiter's Toy Story, the heroes and villains in a games arcade full of classics, both old and new, come alive once the premisses are closed for the night. It's a simple and obvious jumping off point for any Pixar or Disney film; A secret world behind a very public and popular one…

Jennifer Chambers Lynch third film since 2008's Surveillance is a mixed bag; Serial killer tension and a somewhat unique take on the battering genre staple of "torture porn" are strong points throughout but the infuriating finale and some messy and obvious plot devices drag stop Chained from ever being truly intriguing…

Lee Hirsch's Bully is certainly a documentary which is ragged around the edges, it isn't perfectly well-formed, it nearly drowns itself in a backwash of unanswered questions and it often falls into the traps of making a factual point to the detriment of the film. But as fact and as an expose it is a seriously affecting and disturbing portrait of a young world pummelled by the cruelest of all individuals; The teenager…

Teenage growing pains evolve into something seriously disturbing in Richard Bates Jr.'s debut horror comedy. The first time feature, expanded from the directors own short is part Cronenberg part John Waters, featuring a fine central performance from a wonderfully “uglied up” AnnaLynne McCord…

David Chase makes his debut with the somewhat autobiographical Not Fade Away, a splash of 60's rock and roll topped off with a good helping of breakfast table family drama. Though the film could have easily played as a more suburban prequel to Cameron Crowe's wonderful Almost Famous, Chase instead hints, and often points directly, at something far darker…

Though Stroszek is perhaps Herzog's least seen film of the 1970's it remains as kind of wonderful backhanded diss on the American Dream. Though on the surface it may often feel like Herzog being Herzog for Herzog's sake, Stroszek is filled with wonderful images and a beautifully real performance from Bruno S. and most of the unknown local cast…

Ben Lewins film is something of a unique sexual discovery. It's a tender look at something which infatuates and consumes many young men and women in film and is the focus of thousands of coming of age stories in modern cinema. Inventive films and terrible films alike, in the shape of high school comedies mainly, take long hard looks at the struggle of the intelligent shy guy or more accurately his struggle to get laid…

The Duplass' Brothers are carving a name out for themselves as the indie comedy kings, dividing audiences and firing out at least one shambolic film a year, but this little gem is their greatest achievement yet. A sort of slacker comedy about a man named Jeff (Jason Segel), who lives at home, of course, under the watchful eye of his working mother (Susan Sarandon)…

Alfred Hitchcock (A nearly more prosthetic than man performance by Anthony Hopkins) is about to begin work on his 1960 shocker Psycho much to the dismay of his studio, friends and his wife and parter Alma (Helen Mirren). The source novels horrible content (based on the life of serial killer Ed Gein) would prompt the studio to pull out of financially backing it seeing a commercial suicide and critical failure…

A frequently funny and often shocking Western transposed to a tonally uneven comment on the Southern American Slave trade has already offended many who claim that Tarantino's giddy love for cinematic violence and his homage heavy scripting is no base to set a top the depiction of a holocaust…

Zero Dark Thirty is not concerned with presenting it as a blind flag waving action suspense movie and instead looks at an almost fruitless decade long search for Osama Bin Laden, warts and all…

Andrew Dominick's own adaptation of  George V Higgins' Cogan's Trade is transposed to an unnamed city 2008 and repetitively uses the US election being fought at the time to punctuate its tense conversations to mesmerising effect…

Producer/Director Judd Apatow’s latest finds Knocked Up sub-plot couple Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann) facing the big four oh, money problems and their quickly growing, rebellious children…

Jacques Audiard's continues his unbroken run of spectacular dramas with this unique, touching and seriously tense love story, walking a miraculous line between the entertaining and the nearly unwatchable. ..

It's safe to say that Jennifer Lawrence is some of the hottest property in Hollywood at the minute. Oscar Nominated and star of the surprisingly great blockbuster Hunger Games she's already shown her versatility and audience pulling power. This just released paint by numbers horror film maybe isn't what she needed at this point in her career, but considering it was shot back in 2010 and brought out last month, it'll probably do little to damage…

A showcase of wasted money, superficiality and excess coated in zero taste by way of the American dream, The Queen of Versailles will enrage and please in equal measure with its thick layer of schadenfreude…

Wu-Tang's RZA and Eli Roth have written and produced this messy little Kung Fu film which although good fun is a bit of a catastrophe. Rza directs himself as a blacksmith in early century China who ends up stuck between a rock and a hard place when he feels compelled to help the man who lost his father to the blades of his own forged weapons…

Michael Haneke's second Palm d'Or in as many years is a powerful, deeply sad chamber piece about the gradual disintegration of a life of love. It's something we all must face at one time or another and for that reason often it's wound around cliché and sentimentality within the realms of film…

Errol Morris' seventh and perhaps least known documentary work is a difficult tale. The opening sequence of Fred Leuchter sitting amongst machinery in a cage, lit by flashes of electricity may seem a tad too Dr Frankenstein and way too over the top, especially when you meet the mousey cowardly man at its centre…