When a simple errand results in a sweet innocent and wordless back and forth between Lisa (Anna Paquin) and bus driver Marretti (Mark Ruffalo) and ends, ultimately, in tragedy, Lisa’s life turns into what she calls a moral gymnasium. A place she feels it necessary to exercise her compass and to become a stronger and better young woman. But to what end?

Christopher Nolan’s hulking finale to his benchmark trilogy of superhero films is a massively operatic, pitch black film which makes no excuses when going to the great lengths of making Batman “human after all”…

Robert Altman was hot property in 1972. M*A*S*H, McCabe and Mrs Miller and Brewster McCloud all garnering critical if not commercial success. When Images screened at Cannes in 72 it went by relatively unnoticed by critics despite the fact that Susannah York won a best actress gong for it at the French Festival and has, like many of Altman’s output received little attention since…

Loosely photocopying scenes from Alien which helped build a blue print for modern horror Prometheus feels like history repeating instead of expanding and sadly, though beautifully designed and amply acted, it never quite reaches the heart pounding, sweaty palmed fear generated by Lt. Ripley and the crew of the Nostromo no matter how hard it tries…

Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard take a sharpened axe of love to the face of their most treasured genre of film making. Playing wonderfully on the docile, expected and lazy set up of every slasher film made since Tobe Hooper changed the game in 1974, The Cabin in The Woods drips with blood and is shot through with the sniper smart wit of Whedon and the tight direction of Cloverfield’s Goddard…

Where as Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard’s admittedly great The Cabin in The Woods lovingly demolished the expectations of the humble slasher film with high concept style and budget, Eli Craig’s Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil seems as intent on doing the same with hillbillies, using only slapstick comedy and blood…

Hal Hartley regular Martin Donovan makes his directorial debut alongside the terse, intense figure of David Morse, playing Robert Longfellow, a play write in self imposed exile at his mothers house in Los Angeles after a barrage of bad reviews in New York for his latest work…

Rupert Sanders’ grizzly adaptation of the Grimm Brothers fairy tale takes a twist on it’s original story and turns the titular Huntsman, who is, in the fairy tale, ordered to take Snow White into the Dark Forrest to die, into her saviour, pairing Mrs White with a burly terribly accented protector…

This wonderful Belgian French production from a few years back is certainly style, style and more style; It’s lengthy near perversive camera work and hypnotic horror editing may be a little too much for those not schooled in the work of the Dario Argentos or the Mario Bavas of the world. But, for those who are, the film is a blast…

Keanu Reeves seems an unlikely face to slap on the 35mm purist’s side in a film, dissecting the influence of digital technology on one of our most encompassing, unchanging and influential artforms. But when watching Side by Side, the new documentary by Reeves and friend Christopher Kenneally, it’s obvious on which side he stands…

Whit Stillman’s return to the screen arriving after a 13 year hiatus is a wordy, quirky, uneven film, more interested in making us smile than belly laugh. It follows the college life of 4 young girls; The florally named, Violet (Greta Gerwig), Heather (Carrie MacLemore), Rose (Megalyn Echikunwoke) and Lilly (Analeigh Tipton). The luminous film glides along on a cushion of hoity toity language which helps the awkward proceedings as long as you fall right in line with it from the get go…

Horror’s first found footage anthology! Ok, that might not ring your bell, whet your whistle or blow your mind based on the various mind-bogglingly horrible efforts we’ve been subjected to in the past 5 years. But, truth be told, there are more scares and ideas in V/H/S than a thousand The Last Exorcisms and a million Apollo 18s…

Carlos Sorin’s instantly loveable return to Patagonia is a slowly unfurling film which relies proudly on it’s lead to carry a walking pace story of a man at the beginning of a new part of his life. Alejandro Awada’s brilliant and subtle performance as Marcos, a divorced and ageing sales man on the way to reconnect with his daughter, proved a real winner with the crowds at San Sebastian this year and rightly so…

If the young Catalan, Juan Antonio Bayona nearly bettered his producer, director Guillermo Del Toro in the scary stakes with his allegorical debut horror film The Orphanage, he has surely challenged himself to no end with a different type of terror in his second, The Impossible…

Lasse Hallstrøm’s U-turn in tone after last year’s Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is a seemingly stereotypical pulp mystery churned out with talent and a fantastic performance by Lena Olin. Though the story could have been culled from a handful of recently in vogue Swedish thrillers it’s sole source is Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril’s best seller in which a police officer attempts to use a hypnotist to solve a series of bloody murders.

Martin McDonagh’s debut In Bruges has become something of a cult film. Quoted in small circles and laughed about quietly so people close by aren’t too offended. It walked a line between the ludicrously un-P.C and beautifully funny all the while being filled with a strangely effecting off kilter life philosophy and perfect performances. Seven Psychopaths stretches McDonagh’s writing talent and uses an ensamble cast to poke fun at the post Tarantino school of self aware film making. There is brutal violence, revenge, crackling wit, shoot outs in the desert, a jangly, too cool for school soundtrack and looping story lines at every turn. There’s nothing too deep here this time around but it’s flawlessly entertaining fun.

Remember Kula Shaker? Well singer/guitarist Crispian Mills has made a well meaning little paranoid comedy of sorts about a children’s writer with a serious problem. While researching a career changing book on serial killers, he begins to become terrified of life, killers and laundrettes and we get to watch a few days of his mostly preposterous antics. Mills told a Sitges crowd of his love for 60s and 70s experimental cinema but sadly little of that spirit truthfully exists within the comedic bounds of A Fantastic Fear of Everything.

Scott Derickson’s somewhat effective shocker The Exorcism of Emily Rose was held together by some clever characterization and an extremely talented cast. Skipping over his wacky remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still (for the better) we arrive at his latest and best effort by miles, the thematically burdened but supremely atmospheric Sinister. Weaving between Hideo Nakata’s The Ring and various found footage genre films this tense piece of film making succeeds on atmosphere and performance rather than (sadly) plot and (admirably) gore.

The New Yorker who found his mojo in the Paris of the 30s with his last effort falls flat on his bespectacled face with his latest, To Rome With Love. Although all the ingredients are there on the table Allen finds no way of combining them all and the whole thing becomes a bit of a disjointed mess with flourishes of vintage crazy Woody.

With his third film, Looper, Johnson put’s himself firmly on the map. His ever present joy in time remapping and retro influence is still there but this time the writer/director has made a startlingly orignal film because of it, not in spite of it…