Leonardo DiCaprio's production company is set to make a biopic based on Dracula star Bela Lugosi's life, and it's bringing back writers from a similar Tim Burton movie.

DiCaprio's company Appian Way Productions has teamed up with producers Alex Cutler and Darryl Marshak to develop a Universal Pictures biopic of Bela Lugosi, as reported by Deadline. Writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski have already written the script.

Lugosi is one of the most celebrated figures in the horror genre, starring in such classics as The Wolf Man, Son of Frankenstein, The Black Cat, White Zombie, The Invisible Ray, and, of course, Dracula. Lugosi's take on the elusive vampire remains one of the most memorable, and directly contrasted the original Nosferatu, forever changing the way the fanged monsters are portrayed in cinema.

The upcoming movie is said to focus on the Hungarian actor's early years as he immigrated to the US and shot to stardom in the late 1920s, before taking on career career-defining role as Count Dracula in the 1931 Universal Monsters horror movie Dracula. The biopic will also explore the actor's career decline after losing the role of Frankenstein's monster to rival Boris Karloff.

Although Universal has yet to confirm the project, which has yet to reveal an official title, Deadline reports that the film was pitched around two years ago. However, producing cousins Culter and Marshak have actually been wanting to make the movie for many years, since they were teens.

This isn't the first time Lugosi's life has been brought to he big screen, as the star was portrayed by Martin Landau in Tim Burton's 1994 film Ed Wood, which was written by the same duo behind the upcoming movie, Alexander and Karaszewski. However, the '90s Oscar-winner looks at Lugosi at the end of his life rather than in the prime of his acting career.

For more, check out our list of the best vampire movies, and keep up with the most exciting upcoming movies heading your way.

The upcoming Marlon Brando biopic titled Waltzing with Brando has released its first official look as star Billy Zane as Brando, and fans cannot get over how much he looks like the legendary star.

The first look released by the Torino Film Festival, which you can see above, shows Zane as Brando’s The Godfather character Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 hit. The Titanic star is posed exactly how we see Brando in the unforgettable The Godfather opening scene where we first see Corleone and just how fearsome he can be. Torino Film Festival has shared more images including one of Zane as Brando as he looked in the 1972 erotic romance movie Last Tango in Paris. Check out the look below. 

But, aside from the accuracy of the pose and picture, fans just cannot get over how much Zane looks like the late Brando. "You could've said this was a photo of Marlon Brando and I would’ve believed it," said one Twitter user, another echoed, "I honestly thought this was Brando." However, other fans say that Zane has always resembled Brando, as one put, "He always had that Brando vibe," and another replied, "This might be the greatest casting of all time."

Waltzing with Brando focuses on Brando during the '70s when he was constructing his new home in Tahiti, around the time he was shooting Last Tango in Paris and The Godfather. The film is based on Bernard Judge's 2011 book of the same name, which tells the story of Brando’s architect who lived on an unpopulated atoll in the South Pacific with the star for quite some time.

The new film is directed and co-written by Bill Fishman who also serves as co-producer alongside Zane. The movie also stars Tia Carrere, Richard Dreyfuss, Jon Heder, Alaina Huffman, Rob Corddry, and more.

Waltzing with Brando is set to premiere at the Torino Film Festival sometime in November 22-30. A wider release date is yet to be announced. For more, see our list of upcoming movies and movie release dates to add to your diary.

Nope director Jordan Peele has responded to a fan calling him the best horror movie director of all time, and it's a masterclass in humility for a director who just pulled off a stunning hat trick with his latest release.

In case you missed it, reviews are pouring in for Peele's upcoming movie Nope, and they're glowing. Total Film's review gave it four out of five stars and praised the "slow, masterful" build-up of action, contemporary themes, and spectacle of an ending. "You’ll spill out into the night jawing with your friends and gazing at the stars," writes Jamie Graham.

Even still, Peele isn't ready to call himself the king of horror, or even allow such proclamations by others to go unchallenged. Over on Twitter, a fan asked hypothetically if it's time to "declare Jordan Peele the best horror director of all time." Sure enough, Peele himself of all people responded, sarcastically asking the fan to "please put the phone down."

Peele followed up by saying he "loves the enthusiasm," and in doing so made it clear who he thinks is the real best horror director ever: John Carpenter, the auteur of horror classics including the original Halloween, The Fog, The Thing, Christine, and They Live.

It's a smart move showing deference to Carpenter in this situation, but Peele has every right to feel proud about his own accomplishments in the genre, with Nope being his third horror (or at least horror-adjacent) flick to attract near-universal critical acclaim. His debut horror film, Get Out, even made it on our list of the best horror movies ever made. Whether he's earned a spot next to Carpenter in the horror hall of fame is a matter of opinion, of course, but Peele's opinion is clear: he still has some work to do to earn that honor.

Nope is just one of the many upcoming movies we can't wait to see. 

Avatar 2 has finished filming – but don't expect to see the sequel to the once highest-grossing movie of all time in cinemas anytime soon. 

James Cameron has confirmed that shooting the live-action elements of the Avatar follow-up has been completed, telling an audience at the 2020 Austrian World Summit (via CinemaBlend): "The day we deliver Avatar 2, we’ll just start working on finishing Avatar 3. So where we are right now, I’m down in New Zealand shooting. We’re shooting the remainder of the live-action. We’ve got about 10% left to go. We’re 100% complete on Avatar 2, and we’re sort of 95% complete on Avatar 3."

While that milestone may be huge, the amount of visual effects is set to be extraordinary. The first movie had over a thousand people working on VFX and the sequel looks set to expand that even further, with a budget rumoured to be around $1 billion for four sequels – so $250 million a pop.

The Avatar sequels started development in 2017 and filming was halted earlier this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. The producers have kept us well informed about how things have been going, with behind-the-scenes shots of Sigourney Weaver underwater, concept art showing off a “Crabsuit”, and more featuring Kate Winslet, Zoe Saldana, and Sam Worthington in action all being shared on social media.

Despite filming being complete, we have some time to wait until we can see the frst sequel. Avatar 2 is set for release on December 16, 2022; Avatar 3 on December 20, 2024; Avatar 4 on December 18, 2026, and finally Avatar 5 on December 22, 2028.

Considering how Avatar remains the second-highest-grossing movie of all time, it's no surprise the sequel, Avatar 2, has an enormous budget. However, quite how much money was being spent on the huge CGI follow-up has been a hot topic of conversation in Hollywood.

In a report detailing how movie productions in New Zealand are allowed to get up and running again following the easing of coronavirus lockdown measures in the country, Deadline claims that the Avatar sequels have a $1 billion budget. It's currently unclear whether that money has been spent on Avatar 3, 4, and 5 or just Avatar 2 and 3, which have been filmed back-to-back. For comparison, Avengers: Endgame and Infinity War – which were shot back-to-back – are rumoured to have cost upwards of $700 million between them, though this has not been confirmed.

Pre-production on Avatar 4 and 5 has reportedly begun, though Disney – who are releasing the movie after buying 20th Century Fox – are seemingly waiting to see whether 2 and 3 are a success before going full throttle into the franchise. Director James Cameron previously told Vanity Fair:  "Let's face it, if Avatar 2 and 3 don't make enough money, there's not going to be a 4 and 5."

All four movies have release dates: Avatar 2 on December 17, 2021; Avatar 3 in December 2023; Avatar 4 in December 2025; and Avatar 5 in December 2027.

The report also details how The Lord of the Rings TV show, which also has a rumoured budget of $500 million for multiple seasons, could resume filming in New Zealand. However, with the bulk of filming finished on the show's first two episodes, they are taking an already-planned break to analyse the best way forward with the series. Find out more about The Lord of the Rings TV show through that link.

Meanwhile, the first images from the set of Avatar 2 were revealed recently, teasing the movie's underwater setting.

• Best sci-fi movies, ranked!
• Movie release dates for 2020

These new Avatar 2 set photos offer a glimpse into the unique ways James Cameron and his crew are bringing the underwater sequel to life.

Don’t expect story spoilers here – unless pool noodles somehow play an integral role in the Avatar sequels – but the two new photos are fascinating nonetheless, and come courtesy of the official Avatar account on Twitter.

In each of the two screens, you can see director James Cameron perched on a platform above a pool and offering instructions to the submerged cast down below. You can even see the camera crew getting in on the action, complete with a rubber dinghy for the equipment.

Cameron, always one to push the boundaries of technology in film, has also implemented a clever trick to stop light reflecting off the water and affecting scenes. See the white material surrounding the pool? The second snap makes things clearer – that's actually a layer of balls designed to make the underwater shoots easier and acts as something for the actors to cling to and use to resurface when needed.

Earlier this year, Cameron revealed the first Avatar 2 concept art at the CES 2020 trade show. It’s a world away from the mo-capped magic present above, with it painting a more complete picture of what we can assume the finished version will look like, including some of the settings and locations for the 2021 sequel.

Avatar 2 is still set for release on December 17, 2021, while Cameron is also shooting the later sequels simultaneously. Avatar 3 is out on December 22, 2022; Avatar 4 on December 19, 2025 and Avatar 5 finally hits theaters when we’re old and grey on December 17, 2027.

• Best sci-fi movies, ranked!
• Movie release dates for 2020

James Cameron has unveiled our first glimpse of Avatar 2 at the CES 2020 trade show. In a series of jaw-dropping pieces of concept art, we’re provided with a new look at the sun-kissed vistas of Pandora as well as some of the animals that will accompany the Na’vi in the 2021 sequel.

The Avatar 2 concept art (H/T Variety) sees a pair of Na’vi – possibly Jake and Neytiri, though it’s hard to say for sure – overlooking an ocean dotted with mini islands. In the distance, the bird-like banshees soar through the air.

We even get a closer look at a mysteriously-shaped rock, which hints at something man-made having been present on Pandora in the past. If you look towards the water, you’ll even eye a handful of Ilu, the creatures that populate the seas of Pandora.

If there’s anything to take away from the Avatar 2 concept art (other than making us want a beach holiday, pronto), it’s that Cameron and his team are looking to create a rich, dense fictional world like no other. The original Avatar opened our eyes to what was possible with 3D technology – this could be another leap entirely.

But it’s not just the flora, fauna, and critters that will stand out in Avatar 2. Cameron told CNET: “I also love the hard stuff. The vehicles, spacecraft, aircraft, ground vehicles, weapons, the hardware. I’m a total geek when it comes to that stuff. We have a lot of cool vehicles for you.”

Two final shots, though, focus on the natural world and see the Na’vi coming in to land on a flock of Banshee. There’s even a breathtaking night scene to coo over.

If Avatar 2 comes anywhere near to how gorgeous this concept art looks, Avengers: Endgame may not be able to hold on to its box-office crown. We won’t want to ever leave the theater. Avatar 2 is set for release on December 17, 2021.

It's not 2021... yet. Focus on the upcoming year in film with our movie release dates guide.

In December 2017, it looked to be game over for Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle before it even hit our screens. A reboot of a family fantasy franchise (Jumanji and sorta-sequel Zathura: A Space Adventure) that had laid dormant for 14 years? A videogame movie? And opening mere days after Star Wars: The Last Jedi? That’s your three lives gone right there. Or not, as the case proved to be: Jake Kasdan’s always frolicsome and sometimes rollicking update took $962m at the box office.

The downside of this success story? This sequel arrives with next-level expectations, meaning it needs to deliver on the promise of that bold title as it again goes up against a Star Wars movie, The Rise Of Skywalker. Well, Kasdan and his two co-writers have a three-point gameplan: 1) switching up which teens - Spencer (Alex Wolff), Martha (Morgan Turner), Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain) and Bethany (Madison Iseman) – inhabit which avatars (Dwayne Johnson’s Smolder Bravestone, Karen Gillan’s Ruby Roundhouse, Kevin Hart’s Mouse Finbar, Jack Black’s Prof Oberon); 2) introducing Spencer’s granddad Eddie (Danny DeVito) and his old pal Milo (Danny Glover); who are also sucked into the game; and 3) opening out the world, so that our heroes face not just jungle terrain but also deserts and snow-capped mountains.

Now on a new quest (outlined, naturally, by Rhys Darby’s NPC Nigel Billingsley) to recover the Falcon Jewel from Jurgen the Brutal (Rory McCann – aka Game Of Thrones’ The Hound), the gang battles a flock of outraged ostriches, hungry hyenas and militant mandrills as they solve various puzzles to graduate through increasingly difficult levels. En route they bicker and banter, with Eddie and Milo naturally finding time to rake over the grievance that’s stalled their friendship for 15 years. Meanwhile, Martha and Spencer, whose romantic relationship is under strain, talk out their issues.

Slow to start before powering up nicely, Jumanji: The Next Level is plenty of fun and, just as things start to drag, introduces Awkwafina as new avatar Ming, a cat burglar whose key weakness is pollen. The stars, clearly, are having a ball aping each other’s speech patterns and mannerisms – Johnson nails DeVito’s nervy snark and the usually motormouthed Hart neatly matches Glover’s deliberate delivery – even if the body-swap gimmick inevitably loses a little of its freshness the second time round.

Next level it might not be, but it does have game. Still, any future instalments might want to redevelop and really shake things up. Which, judging from coda, Kasdan and co already know. Expect Jumanji: This Shit Gets Real to stampede into cinemas in 2021...

The Matrix 4 cast has begun to take shape. Joining Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss in the forthcoming sequel will be Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who recently played Manta in Aquaman and starred opposite Lupita Nyong’o in Jordan Peele’s hit Us.

Variety reports that – although rumours have swelled that director Lana Wachowski has been searching for an actor to play Young Morpheus – there's no confirmation as to whether Abdul-Mateen will portray a new version of Laurence Fishburne's iconic character. The publication only states he has a "leading role" in the movie. Michael B Jordan was previously linked to playing a Young Morpheus, though nothing was confirmed.

Details about The Matrix 4 remain light on the ground. Intriguingly, Lily Wachowski, who directed the first three movies with sister Lana, will not be returning to direct. Instead, Lana has written the script with The Lazarus Project author Aleksandar Hemon and novelist David Mitchell. Warner Bros is reportedly eyeing an early 2020 filming date.

Reeves recently teased the sequel, saying: "It's very ambitious. As it should be!" And while that he didn't divulge more information – other than the fact he was "absolutely" excited to reprise the role of The One for a new instalment in the Matrix franchise – the fact he's read the script should have fans excited.

Abdul-Mateen has had a huge past year. As well as starring in Aquaman and Us, the actor will next appear in the Watchmen HBO series and was most recently cast in Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7. He will also play the eponymous role in the upcoming reboot of Candyman. 

Want more on The Matrix 4? Maybe you shouldn't... Here's why the mystery of The Matrix 4 makes the sequel so exciting

Things look dicey for Keanu Reeves’ zen hitman as Parabellum begins. He's now ‘excommunicado’ after breaking secret hitman club rules in the previous film, and on the run with a $14m bounty on his bonce. Clocks tick ominously, assassins lurk, help proves elusive… and it’s pissing it down. Does he have a hope in hell? Can a horse kick like a bastard?

A hit, man

The answer to both is ‘Yes’, just as it is for the implied question: can John Wick go the distance with cinema’s action frontliners? While The Rock, Jason Statham and Tom Cruise keep seeking new ways to flex muscle, Reeves, director Chad Stahelski and creator Derek Kolstad have staked out a genre niche by wedding neon-drunk high-stylisations, stealthy (under)world-building and rain-soaked pop-existentialism to lashings of ever-inventive brutality. And they aren’t letting up. If you thought Wick 2’s turbo-powered takedowns could not be out-powered, think on: intermittent stumbles aside, Parabellum swiftly asserts itself as 2019’s actioner to beat.

Lest anyone worry that valuable seconds between smackdowns might be wasted on Russian literature, reassurance arrives fast when Wick visits a library and weaponises a Russian hardback against a formidably tall goon. After that statement of intent, altercations involving customised guns, knives, motorbikes and horse fu follow at full pelt, giving John’s improvisatory kill-skills the Wick-edest workout.

Wick 3 can’t maintain that momentum throughout, but it’ll be damned if it doesn’t try when it counts. Even if Parabellum doesn’t deviate wildly from 2, it builds on the Wick-iverse’s foundations when the criminal High Table’s steely Adjudicator (Asia Kate Dillon) arrives, armed with ninjas to punish anyone who dares assist Wick. Meanwhile, a little Wick history emerges as he hits Casablanca and asks old pal Sofia (Halle Berry) to help him contact the mysterious figure who overrules the High Table.

Dog days

If you can’t guess where this is headed, you don’t know Wick. Endearingly portentous exchanges about honour and consequence follow, culminating in convulsive confrontations that would be deadening if Stahelski did not direct with such ferocious clarity and kinetic fetishism. The already infamous set-piece involving Sofia’s dogs grabs you by the knackers. Reeves says little and sports the expression of someone who’s been hit too much, smartly keeping our attentions focused on his capacity to dust a goon; meanwhile, Ian McShane and Laurence Fishburne take up the over-acting slack gleefully.

Mark Dacascos adds fiery charisma as a one-on-one challenge waiting to happen, though a few missteps mount before the final showdown. Berry attacks her role so hungrily, it’s a shame she’s swiftly sidelined; likewise, Dillon’s charisma deserved more than a walk-on/walk-off role. Wick’s favourite fight move is also faintly over-used, depending on your appetite for that old throw-down/shoot-in-face routine. And although the script gives Reeves some nicely deadpan one-liners (“I get it…”) and Anjelica Huston some deliciously rum pulp-poetry, that Matrix quote runs surplus to requirements.

Yet most complaints are forgivable for the action peaks. Recalling The Villainess, the bike/swords set-piece has you dangling off your saddle in readiness for the climax, where bones/glass splinter and loaded images flag up key themes with a pleasing brazenness. Mixing galvanised abstraction into pummelling artistry, Stahelski’s exuberantly excessive direction embraces action cinema’s absurdities full-on and sends them hurtling off the scale. When one character coolly dubs their fight “pretty good”, it’s the biggest understatement going in the most deliriously overstated actioner of 2019 thus far. Message to Hobbs & Shaw, courtesy of Mr Wick: “Let’s do this.”

By now, you've probably heard things about the Serenity ending. The Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway led movie is finally out in UK theatres today (with a simultaneous release on Sky Cinema for those at home) after coming out in the US over a month ago, but all anyone can talk about is its mad, bonkers, unexpected twist of a finale. Seriously, what right minded film executive actually signed off on this thing?!

If you’ve seen the Serenity ending, then you’ve already lived through its battier-than-a-cave-full-of-bats finale, which delivers a twist no-one could ever have guessed. But if you haven’t, you’re probably wondering if it’s as unbelievable as everyone’s making out. The answer is yes. Hell yes. So, what happens? Be warned, it’s spoiler territory from here on out as we discuss what happened in that Serenity ending and everything else you need to know about one of the wackiest movies of the year.

Serenity opens on a boy’s eyes, reflected in a computer screen riddled with lines of code. This sullen boy spends most of his screen time in the gloom of his bedroom, staring intently at his computer, before the movie turns its attention to the daily exploits of fishing guide Baker Dill (McConaughey). Dill makes a living taking tourists out on his boat, but his sole reason for living is to catch a tuna called Justice. His dogged pursuit of that fish causes problems that domino across his whole life; he pushes aside paying customers when Justice bites, fires his First Mate Duke (Djimon Hounsou) when he disagrees with him, and, naturally, he starts to hemorrhage money. Luckily, everytime he needs cash, he just has to sleep with Constance (Diane Lane) who will happily pay for a roll in the hay.

When Dill’s ex-wife Karen (Hathaway) suddenly shows up with a proposition - kill her abusive thug husband Frank (Jason Clarke) for $10 million - it’s the perfect solution to his ongoing financial crisis. He can spend his entire life going after Justice and he even leverages in the caveat that Karen must bring his estranged son to him. His son Patrick lives with his mother and stepfather, and from the flashes that we’ve seen of him in his darkened room, it’s not hard to see that living with his real dad would be safer for him as the sounds of his mother being beaten permeate all of his scenes. 

Throughout the first half of the movie, Dill has a strange, ethereal connection to his son, talking to him out loud as if he can hear him, and experiencing a physical reunion with him when he dives into the ocean, only to awake in a puddle back in his shack. This isn’t really explained at the time, but the suggestion is that the Serenity ending will work toward their reunion. And boy, does it.

Everything starts to slide down the slippery slope of incredulity when a skinny bespectacled man named Reid Miller (Jeremy Strong) turns up. He’s spent half the movie trying to track Dill down and finally catches up to him on a stormy night where he tries to sell him a piece of fishing equipment known as a fish finder. After much procrastination and babble, Miller eventually reveals the truth to Dill: He’s “the rules” of a computer game simulation created by Dill’s real-life son, Patrick. Yes, Dill is told he’s a computer game character.

Dill’s obsession with the fish, Justice? Just a part of his code, his character’s primary objective, if you will. His continued romance with Constance? That’s a part of the game too. Miller’s insistence that Dill use the fish finder - along with free lures from his local fishing shop and radio announcers urging him to catch the fish - are all a part of the game’s “rules” designed to keep Dill on track. Still with me? 

However, IRL Patrick is re-coding the game, and essentially changing the rules, so that Dill’s objective is no longer to catch the fish, but to murder someone. Why? Because Patrick’s real-life fantasy is to murder his abusive stepfather. And if you’re wondering why he’s living out his fantasy in a fishing game simulation of all things, it’s because his favourite memory is of fishing with his biological dad who died in the Iraq war.

With Dill now fully aware of his predicament - just to reiterate, he knows he’s a video game character - he barrels ahead with the plan and together with Karen, murders Frank. As Patrick, sat at his computer, witnesses this happening inside the simulation, he realizes that he can also change his circumstances. He hops down from his computer chair, picks up a knife, and murders his stepfather IRL. He then re-codes the simulation to include an avatar of himself, so he can be reunited with his father. Cue the swell of strings.

What’s so utterly bizarre about the Serenity ending is that once you know the truth, everything that’s come before it takes on a completely different tone. When you realise that 99 per cent of the movie takes place inside a computer simulation written by a young boy, the previous scenes, which came across as stilted and awkward, are suddenly explainable. The whole movie is the creative output of a sheltered kid with limited understanding of complex story-telling and even less knowledge about adult life.

Suddenly, Karen’s overly-stylized, faux-chic, Jessica Rabbit-wannabe entrance, the awful dialogue and terrible line deliveries that make you cringe, and the weird, jerky movements of characters that go unacknowledged all make sense. They’re all supposed to be like that. It’s all a by-product of a fishing game-turned-revenge plot penned by a grieving adolescent. I did warn that the Serenity ending is incredibly, deliciously, unbelievable.

There is one final implication that I want to leave you with that’s far more unsettling though: the very unsexy sex scene between Dill and Karen that’s bookended with a brutish “I win” from McConaughey as he does up his fly? That magic movie moment was coded BY THEIR SON. Now let that sink in.

Looking for an actual video game movie? Here's the best video game movies of all time. 

Glass caps off M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Eastrail 177’ trilogy, following Unbreakable (2000) and Split (2016). Unlike its forerunners, though, it lacks the element of surprise: Unbreakable was a covert comic book movie and Split a secret sequel, while Glass is known to be the crossover film linking them. As a result, it comes laden with expectations that it never quite lives up to.

Like a really stripped-back Avengers, Glass throws together characters from standalone films: Split’s Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) and his 23 other personalities cross paths with indestructible security schlub David Dunn (Bruce Willis) and brittle-boned criminal mastermind Elijah Price, AKA Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson). Kevin and hulking alter-ego, the Beast, are still at large, while David has earned various nicknames for his vigilante efforts. It’s no spoiler to say the film opens with David on the hunt for Kevin.

Kevin, David, and Elijah swiftly end up incarcerated (as seen in the trailers), where Dr. Ellie Staple (a slightly hammy Sarah Paulson) studies them as part of her research into people who believe they are superheroes. While Shyamalan’s decision to keep the scale contained is admirable, you do hanker for something a bit more epic from this long-awaited culmination, and the lethargic pace seems unnecessary given we’ve already had two films of slow-burn build-up.

It both tantalises and frustrates that Glass is speckled with moments of greatness. The opening 20 minutes with David on the prowl are terrific, and exactly the sort of thing Unbreakable fans have been waiting for. McAvoy once again gives a virtuoso performance, flitting in and out of personalities with ease. Samuel L. Jackson is also charismatic fun, particularly when Elijah’s masterplan eventually starts clicking into place.

While it’s nice to see Willis taking a break from direct-to-DVD duds, David’s stoic muscularity doesn’t lend itself to being locked in a cell. Much of the emotional heavy-lifting is done by the core trio’s family and acquaintances: David’s son and Elijah’s mum (Spencer Treat Clark and Charlayne Woodard reprising their roles from Unbreakable) and Kevin’s former captive Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy). Elijah is gifted some affecting flashbacks, but recycled Unbreakable clips are an unflattering reminder of just how good that film was.

Shyamalan clearly knows his comics, and delights in having his characters point out the conventions. But it can make for a superhero movie that plays to the head more than the heart, and works better as a conversation-starter (‘What if superheroes are real?’) than as a cinematic experience. The plodding pace also allows a bit too much time to ponder the plot holes and guess at character motivations. Why would a facility designed to hold three individuals with superhuman abilities have such slack security?

The film comes close to delivering on its potential when Elijah is back in Mr. Glass mode and the final showdown nears, but the frankly silly denouement earns eye rolls. This is clearly one ‘for the fans’, but those fans might have had their hearts set on a more rousing conclusion.

• Release date: January 18, 2019
• Certificate: PG-13 (US)/15 (UK)
• Running time: 129 minutes

J.K. Rowling is back. As in really back. If 2016’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them expanded the universe she first introduced with the Harry Potter stories, then The Crimes of Grindelwald takes things not just wider but deeper. Given this is part two of a mooted five-movie series, Rowling - who again scripts - isn’t even halfway done yet.

It begins in 1927, at the American Ministry of Magic, where the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) had been held for six months since his capture at the end of the original Beasts. He’s had his tongue removed in order to curtail his powers of persuasion, but that doesn’t stop him mounting a dramatic escape. Cut to London, three months later: Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) arrives at the Ministry where his brother Theseus (Callum Turner) works, along with Leta Lestrange (Zoë Kravitz), Theseus’ fiancée.

Sibling rivalry notwithstanding, Newt is there hoping to overturn the international travel ban imposed on him after his role in the events surrounding Grindelwald’s arrest. If talk of such bans brings to mind Donald Trump’s actions at the start of his presidency, it’s not the only time Rowling evokes real-world events. Grindelwald, it transpires, is gathering followers to create a new world order ruling over all non-magical beings.

Key to this is the disturbed Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), now ensconced in a freak show in Paris as he seeks to find his real lineage. “Desperate for family, he’s desperate for love,” coos Grindelwald, all too willing to exploit Credence’s power for his own ends. But Grindelwald is not the only one looking for him. Unbeknownst to the Ministry, Newt is asked to track down Credence by Hogwarts’ very own Professor Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law).

Joining Newt is his no-maj friend Jacob (Dan Fogel), who arrives in London with Queenie (Alison Sudol). Jacob’s memories of their earlier encounters have been restored (or “un-obliviated”) but he’s now under an enchantment. Soon enough, they’re all off to France, with Queenie’s sister Tina (Katherine Waterson) also in pursuit of Credence, for an adventure that comes vividly to life in the hands of director David Yates, who relishes bringing ’20s Paris to the screen.

Notching up his sixth Rowling-inspired film, Yates truly understands what makes the Wizarding World work. Each frame is filled to the brim with detail, whether it’s goblins cleaning windows on floating lifts or a contraption hoovering round the Ministry of Magic (well, someone has to do it). Nor are the ‘beasts’ forgotten, from baby Nifflers cheekily popping champagne corks to the beautiful seaweed-skinned Kelpies, some Japanese water demons, and one lion-like creature that can travel 1,000 miles in a day.

And, of course, Potter fans will get a huge kick out of the scenes that return us to Hogwarts, long before Harry et al got to roam its corridors. Heralded by a blast of John Williams’ original score, shots of the Great Hall and classrooms produce a shiver. And it’s beguiling to see Law’s twinkly eyed Dumbledore giving a lesson. Needless to say, this is no nostalgia trip; Rowling has good reason for going back to school – especially when she cues up flashbacks to the time when the picked-upon Leta and Newt were classmates.

Yet the film really hits its considerable peak in its revelation-heavy final third, with a showdown at Père Lachaise. In a film about brothers and sisters, surrogate or otherwise, the Beasts family tree gets all the more thorny, as hitherto unknown - and complex - relationships are unveiled. Meanwhile, the leather-clad Grindelwald’s rally - cut to images of world war and even a mushroom cloud - weaves threads to our own Muggle world. It’s not hard to link this bleached-blond madman’s rise to that of the far right. While the original cast led by Redmayne pick up easily where they left off, the newcomers fit in seamlessly. Law is spot-on with Dumbledore, making a character so indelibly played by Richard Harris and Michael Gambon his own. As for Depp, he plays Grindelwald with sinister menace, but never overcooks it. Credit Yates, too, for ensuring darkness is seasoned with light. “I think this might be the best moment of my life,” says Newt, as his brother gets zapped. Even in the bleakest of times, there’s reason to smile.

Find out what else is hitting cinemas this year with our most anticipated upcoming movies, plus the films we think are already the best movies of 2018.

• Release date: November 16, 2018
• Certificate: PG-13 (US)/PG (UK)
• Running time: 134 mins

Six years on from the belated release of The Cabin in the Woods, Drew Goddard returns with his second film as writer/director. A bloody 1960s-set crime yarn centred on the eponymous run-down Lake Tahoe hotel, Bad Times at the El Royale comes armed with quick-draw dialogue, violent stand-offs, Motown cuts, and casual allusions to real-life figures. Starring a juicy ensemble, it’s got a Pulp Fiction vibe to it, even if Goddard doesn’t have as distinctive a voice as Tarantino’s.

After a prologue where a crook stashes a bag of cash under the floorboards in one of the rooms, we fast-forward 10 years. The El Royale has seen better days, but that doesn’t stop a gaggle of guests arriving at the same time: priest Father Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges), put-upon singer Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo), garrulous salesman Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm), and the mysterious Emily Summerspring (Dakota Johnson), who signs the register ‘Fuck You’.

Once they’ve checked in with concierge Miles (Lewis Pullman), squabbling over their choice of rooms, Goddard begins to explore exactly why they’re all here. With the first four chapters named after each room number the guests select, we soon learn that just about nobody is who they say they are. Moreover, the hotel itself creaks with secrets, not least because all the rooms are fixed with two-way mirrors and an observation corridor, allowing Miles to film any kinky goings on.

Goddard’s script is such a treasure trove of twists that it might be fairer to resist wading into spoiler territory. That said, the late arrival of Goddard’s Cabin in the Woods star Chris Hemsworth as bare-chested, flaxen-locked cult leader Billy Lee shoves a real stick of dynamite up the third act. Proclaiming “What does God mean to you?” Hemsworth is eminently watchable as a hair-trigger guru in the Charles Manson mould.

Likewise Hamm is enjoyable with his effusive Don Draper-lite character, but it’s the ladies who set the film on fire. Shedding her Fifty Shades of Grey good-girl image, Johnson has a blast as the ruthless Emily, although it’s Erivo (who also stars in Steve McQueen’s upcoming Widows) that really rocks the house. Bad Times at the El Royale may not be a musical, but her rendition of You Can’t Hurry Love and other standards are captivating.

If the film isn’t quite as inventive as the game-changing horror that was Cabin in the Woods (which boasted Joss Whedon as co-scripter), it’s infused with affection and craft. Even if the plot logic doesn’t always hold up, it’s rich on rain-drenched atmosphere as we’re left trying to figure out who’ll be the last woman or man standing.

Find out what else is hitting cinemas soon with our breakdown of the most anticipated upcoming movies of 2018 and beyond. 

• Release date: October 5, 2018 (US)/October 12, 2018 (UK)
• Certificate: R (US)/15 (UK)
• Running time: 140 mins

The world has changed a lot since The Incredibles. Not the world shown in Incredibles 2 – set directly after the first movie, this sees our spandex-suited superfamily still foiling bad guys in the early ’60s and still frowned on by government and public alike – but, y’know, the real world: superhero movies have now conquered the multiplex and a cartoon villain has made the White House his lair.

Both of these developments, each bigger than Giant-Man, impact returning writer-director Brad Bird’s belated sequel to his 2004 original. So while the set-pieces really are incredible, as effervescent as anything seen in Marvel’s 20-film canon, watching a runaway hover train brought spectacularly to heel just isn’t fresh in the way that superheroes saving a city from a giant robot was before Iron Man landed. And, as for the Trump influence, Bird strains a little too hard to make the franchise great again with regular nods to real-world politics: banished ‘Supers’ treated as second-class citizens and termed “illegals”; talk of media being used to feed lies to the duped masses; and an on-the-nose line of dialogue stating, “People have more faith in a monkey throwing darts than Congress.”

Yet despite the first Incredibles feeling newer and, ideas-wise, more focused in its tale of dreary domesticity rubbing up against wacky world-saving, this is terrific. For starters, who wouldn’t want to share in the further adventures of the Parr family – Bob/Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson), Helen/Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), teen daughter Violet (Sarah Vowell), young son Dash (Huck Milner) and baby Jack-Jack (Eli Fucile) – while the soap-opera nature of their mundane day-to-day tasks invites serialisation. Spider-Man certainly didn’t mean changing nappies, separating reds from whites and buying triple-A batteries when he spoke of great responsibilities, but these guys know what it truly takes to keep the world on its axis.

Opening with a thrilling set-piece as the heroic clan take on the Underminer (Pixar stalwart John Ratzenberger) and his gigantic corkscrew drill, we soon see that little has changed: no-one appreciates the intervention, the bank that was being taken down was insured anyway, and the program keeping our Supes suited is closed down. Deliverance arrives in the form of telecommunications company DevTech, with CEO Winston Deaver (Bob Odenkirk) and his tech-savvy sister Evelyn (Catherine Keener) convincing the Parrs they just need a little PR spin to shift perception. But having analysed the numbers, DevTech only wants Elastigirl (Mr Incredible is “too messy”), furnishing her with a sleek grey-and-black suit, a sleeker motorbike that splits apart so she can stretch her torso and pull off corners that London’s bendy buses could only dream of, and in-suit cameras to show the public the whole story. While Elastigirl’s off fighting Screenslaver (Bill Wise), a foe who controls people’s minds via, you guessed it, screens, Bob becomes the stay-at-home dad charged with coaching Violet through boy troubles, relearning maths for Dash’s homework and training Jack-Jack to control his polymorphous superpowers.

A glimpse of said powers were provided at the end of The Incredibles (and in 2005 short, Jack-Jack Attack, available on the DVD), but the full range will not be spoiled here. Suffice to say they lend Incredibles 2 many of its best gags – an unexpected sneeze can bring explosive results – and its standout set-piece: Jack-Jack discovering his abilities while tussling with a trespassing raccoon. It’s a rum, rollicking ruckus, like Tom and Jerry leaving it all out on the floor of Q’s workshop, and the visual wit and invention are signature Bird – see also Elastigirl on her motorbike speeding under a monorail, a pursuit that recalls The French Connection though Popeye Doyle never ploughed his vehicle through buildings, over rooftops and onto the top of the thundering train.

Incredibles 2 is not the Godfather: Part II, The Empire Strikes Back or Terminator 2: Judgment Day of animated sequels; it is not, in fact, the Toy Story 2 or Toy Story 3 of animated sequels, lacking that all-important emotional undertow (odd given that Bird made the heartbreaking The Iron Giant) and laboured in its adult messages. The gender-swap career/parent dynamic feels a little obvious, Screenslaver is no match for the original’s oh-so-prescient toxic fanboy Syndrome, and there’s a twist you can see coming from outer space. But it is a blast, brilliantly animated and furious fun from first frame to last. And we haven’t even mentioned Bird’s movie-stealing cameo as everyone’s favourite fashionista Edna Mode…

• Release date: Out now (US)/July 13, 2018 (UK)
• Certificate: PG 
• Running time: 125 minutes

When the Red Sparrow trailer first dropped, the general consensus was that it looked like the origin story for Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, the one that Marvel hasn’t yet got round to making yet. Let’s make something clear from the outset: Red Sparrow is absolutely not that film. Set in the covert world of Russian sex spies, this tough-to-categorise thriller contains the sort of brutal violence, sexual assault and state-sponsored torture that would never make it into a family-friendly blockbuster. Never boring but occasionally troubling, Red Sparrow is, like its central character, a tricky one to read.

The world that is set up is certainly attention-grabbing. The story begins by cross-cutting between two very different events in Moscow. At the ballet, prima ballerina Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence) is performing on stage, while in Gorky Park, CIA agent Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton) is meeting his Russian informant. Neither evening goes quite as planned; a fellow dancer’s misstep sees Dominika’s leg broken (her dreams shattered along with the bone), while an unexpected intervention causes Nate to scarper for the nearest embassy.

After being replaced by her company, Dominika is struggling to care for her ailing mother until her seedy intelligence agent uncle, Vanya (Matthias Schoenaerts), offers her a way out. Take part in a seduction/espionage mission, and her mother’s medical expenses will be taken care of. Needless to say, the plot doesn’t go off as expected, and Dominika finds herself signed up for ‘Sparrow School’ in an isolated boarding house that trains attractive young people in seduction and manipulation, so that those skills can be used to further Russian interests in the wider world.

“Your body belongs to the state,” explains the school’s cold matron (Charlotte Rampling), before setting out a syllabus of jogging in the snow, target practice, lock picking and porn watching, and the practical assignments don’t really bear thinking about: students are routinely forced to strip and/or perform sex acts in front of their classmates. “It’s just flesh,” is Rampling’s heartless reasoning when teaching the class how to fake physical attraction on demand.

Once Dominika has ‘graduated’ and assumed a fake name, she’s sent to trail Nate, who’s looking to reconnect with his informant. And so kicks of a global story of double crosses and tenuous allegiances, that hops from Moscow to Budapest, the US, Vienna, London and occasionally back on itself. But for all it’s glossy production values, Red Sparrow doesn’t feel like it’s appealing to the Bond market. There’s a surface sheen, but that only exaggerates the lack of glamour present. There’s none of the fun that 007 (even Craig’s 007) finds time for. It’s difficult to know who it’s really aimed at: too grim, gritty, and short on explosions for a multiplex actioner, and a bit too graphic for the Tinker Tailor crowd. And given that it’s directed by Francis Lawrence, J-Law’s Hunger Games 2-4 director, no concessions have been made to the YA crowd. This is adult fare, and pushes its 15 certificate to the complaint-baiting limit. 

Despite a running time of well over two hours, it’s never boring, and the leads ensure it’s always highly watchable. Jennifer Lawrence commits to an impressively not-distracting Russian accent, and doesn’t flinch from the physical demands of the role, and Edgerton effortlessly essays a gruff, natural charisma as pretty much the only character with a clear moral code. Dominika herself is less easy to root for. It’s quite possible that’s intentional. Her mother warns her to hold something of herself back before she heads to the academy, and she arguably does that too well, never really letting anyone (including the audience) entirely in on what she’s thinking. For much of the story she’s somewhat passive, being moved like a pawn from one spot to the next without being given the opportunity to demonstrate her own agency. Besides the ‘sick mum’ card that’s played early on, it’s hard to know what drives her, and her characters motives are clouded by an early act of revenge she commits. The wider implications of Dominika and Nate’s missions also remain somewhat elusive.

Schoenaerts is suitably unpleasant as the primary antagonist of the piece, and there’s classy support from the dependable likes of Rampling and Jeremy Irons. Francis Lawrence marshals moments of genuine tension throughout, including a tense trade-off at a London hotel, but it never truly grips like the best conspiracy thrillers. There’s the sense that the cast are doing the heavy-lifting on a fairly straightforward story, and the frequent interjections of shocking violence mean it’s a tough film to settle into: the shocks have an almost muting effect on other aspects of the story.

Red Sparrow is based on a book by former CIA officer Jason Matthews, which is itself part of a trilogy; no doubt the movie’s producers have their eyes on a franchise. It’s hard to know how much more you’d really want to subject yourself too, though, if the tone is as brutal as this. In terms of crowd-pleasing franchise fare, you’re probably best off sticking with Black Widow. 

Pixar’s once-peerless reputation has of late taken a knock thanks to a string of so-so sequels and the transparently commercial Cars trilogy. But anyone who’s been keeping the faith will feel richly rewarded by this exquisitely rendered musical fantasy set in the Land of the Dead. The studio’s finest feature since 2015’s Inside Out, Coco is a return to the conceptually brilliant adventures that powered the studio’s pre-Toy Story 3 output, even if the rigorous adherence to a well-worn formula means it’s not quite top-tier Pixar.

Living in a small Mexican village, 12-year-old Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez) dreams of becoming a musician, but is forbidden by his family. Sensing a chance to prove his talent during the Day of the Dead show, Miguel borrows the guitar of legendary performer Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt) – a man Miguel believes to be the father of his great-grandmother Coco – but is cursed and sent to the Land of the Dead for his troubles.

Returning home requires his family’s blessing, so with the help of skeletal stranger Hector (Gael García Bernal) Miguel sets off in search of Cruz before he’s trapped for good.

Already Mexico’s highest grossing film of all time, Coco’s depiction of a culture largely neglected by mainstream Hollywood strikes an enchanting chord. Ofrendas – shrines dedicated to the memory of deceased loved ones – take on mythical importance; while alebrijes – eye-popping neon spirit animals – are a continual source of amusement and amazement.

As for the all-important music, Coco’s ditties don’t disappoint. Written by co-director Adrian Molina and Frozen duo Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, the songs are a delight, particularly the dangerously addictive ‘Un Poco Loco’.

More dazzling than delightful is Coco’s gorgeous underworld. Spooky but not scary, the city is one of Pixar’s most visually astonishing creations. Populated by oddly adorable goofball skeletons, the bags of bones are entertaining company, and personable enough that they’re unlikely to frighten young ’uns.

More conceptually terrifying is the idea that in the Land of the Dead, continued existence depends on being remembered. Fade from memory in the real world and you disappear into nothingness on the other side – a fate literally worse than death.

Coco’s world is built on a series of interlinking rules like this that just about cohere, but its script strains against its own internal logic. Miguel’s entire family, for example, have an implausible zero-tolerance policy on even listening to music. And though impeccably constructed, the story feels so comfortably within Pixar’s wheelhouse that it borders on the mechanical, hitting all the expected beats precisely when you expect them.

Whether intentional or not, Coco also remixes several of the studio’s greatest hits. Miguel pursuing his dreams against his family’s wishes echoes Ratatouille’s desire to cook, while his ritual of retiring to the attic to watch Ernesto de la Cruz films is a straight lift of WALL•E’s nights in with Hello, Dolly!

But there’s no question these devices work, Coco hitting emotional highs that rival Up and Toy Story 3 for Kleenex count. If Inside Out’s message to embrace sadness felt powerful and profound, Coco opts for a more conventional lesson – family first – but one that’s no less moving.

Marvel has yet to get around to making a Black Widow solo movie, and based on comments MCU head honcho Kevin Feige made to Deadline in 2016, such a film won't be coming until well after Avengers: Infinity War. But actress Jennifer Lawrence and director Francis Lawrence (no relation) are here to pick up the slack with the upcoming Red Sparrow, which just debuted its first teaser:

Jennifer Lawrence plays Dominika, a beautiful Russian ballerina who is sent to the "Sparrow School." There, she is taught to be a seductress and spy. As for Black Widow, the Marvel Comics heroine is also a Russian ballerina who gets sent to a secret training facility to become a seductress and spy, though her version is called the "Red Room." See the similarities here?

Opposite Lawrence is Joel Edgarton, who plays a CIA operative. Needless to say, the two will cross paths. Double needless to say, there will be high tension and action. It is a spy thriller after all.

Red Sparrow is an adaptation of a book of the same name, written by Jason Matthews. Matthews is an honest-to-goodness former spy who worked for the CIA, which lends that extra bit of authenticity to the proceedings. That isn't to say there aren't some fantastical elements, however. In the book, Dominika has synesthesia, a condition which blends two or more of a person's senses - allowing someone to see music, for example. In Dominika's case, her synesthesia allows her to see a person's emotions through color.

It's an interesting premise, and we won't have to wait long to see how similar (or different) the final product is from Marvel's own superspy tale. Red Sparrow premieres on March 2, 2018.

Telescopic crash-zooms, freeze frames, supporting geezers named Kung Fu Georgie, Mike the Spike and Goosefat Bill… if there were any doubt that this is Guy Ritchie’s fast, loose take on the King Arthur legend, then having the natural-born monarch address a female warrior as “honey tits” clears the matter up.

Ritchie’s flippant folklore flimflam opens with Mordred’s (Rob Knighton) army marching on Camelot, the ground shuddering under the stomps of elephants so enormous they could gobble Peter Jackson’s oliphants as bar snacks. Not that this CG prologue leaves much of an imprint, playing out like Zack Snyder’s offcuts as it moves the pieces into place: the king, Uther Pendragon (Eric Bana), is struck down, and his brother, Vortigern (Jude Law), embarks upon a reign of fear.

One itsy-bitsy problem: Pendragon’s baby son, the rightful king, has been sneaked to safety; a machine-gun montage shows him growing up on the mean streets of Londinium. But not long after he’s filled out, beautifully, into Charlie Hunnam, a scar-faced, golden-toothed David Beckham orders him to take his turn at trying to free the mighty sword Excalibur from a boulder. He succeeds, is thereby identified as Vortigern’s enemy, and is sentenced to death. Then shit proper kicks off…

Painted in the same blue-grey palette as Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movies and similarly eager to jazz everything up, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is not without its moments, many of them involving the director’s old mucker Law giving it supersized sneer with a side of snide.

Arthur plunging alone into the Darklands – a blackly fertile isle inhabited by all manner of beast and fowl – to harness Excalibur’s power is like Luke visiting Dagobah by way of Pandora. Meanwhile, a guerrilla attempt on Vortigern’s life flaunts the geographical range, eye-in-sky choreography and ground-level torque that distinguished The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’s madcap climactic chase.

Mainly, though, this is a tonal misfire, its characters cut down by a blitzkrieg of whip pans, CGI and thunderous percussion. And with Ritchie again rummaging in his increasingly threadbare bag of tricks, the result is a movie more jaundiced than jaunty. There’s a thin line between visionary and hodgepodge, and it’s a line that King Arthur crosses and re-crosses with an abandon that rivals Hunnam’s accent sliding from Cockney to Californian and back again.

The plan is to make a total of six King Arthur movies, with Warner Bros hoping for a fantasy epic to rival Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its own Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts franchise. This is a wobbly start, suggesting there needs to be plenty of meetings round tables to ensure a second instalment is forged stronger and sharper.

Pixar’s sequels to date have ranged from the sublime (Toy Storys 2 and 3) and the serviceable (Monsters University) to the unnecessary (Cars 2). The good news for Finding Dory, the animation powerhouse’s belated but welcome return to the underwater universe of 2003’s Finding Nemo, is that it firmly sits at the upper end of that quality spectrum.

The not-so-good news is that it’s still a few leagues beneath its Oscar-winning predecessor. Dory, you may recall, was the scatty blue tang fish whose defining characteristic – short-term memory loss – didn’t stop her helping clown fish Marlin (Albert Brooks) reunite with his lost son Nemo 13 years ago.

Andrew Stanton’s follow-up, co-directed by Angus MacLane, starts ingeniously by revealing how the infant Dory came to terms with her disability with the help of Jenny and Charlie (Diane Keaton and Eugene Levy), adoring parents she inevitably forgot about the moment they separated.

Cut to the present: Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) decides that things would be a whole lot better if she tracked down mum and dad, the existence of whom she has been briefly reminded by a convenient thump to the head. So across the sea she journeys, with Marlin and Nemo in tow, convinced a tearful family reunion awaits her at the Marine Life Institute in California where she spent her formative days.

What actually awaits her is a cantankerous octopus (Ed O’Neill), a short-sighted whale shark and a disembodied Sigourney Weaver (continuing the Pixar/Stanton association that began in Wall-E) as the voice of the aquarium’s public address system. Cue some often literal fish-out-of-water exploits as Dory follows a trail of clues that whisks her through the facility’s various exhibition zones, from the idyllic environs of ‘Open Ocean’ to the terrifyingly child-friendly ‘Touch Pool’: a deceptively placid lagoon where malleable crustaceans cower in fear of kid hands plunging in their direction.

Restricting the action to a solitary location enables a number of new characters to make their mark, among them a pair of rock-coveting basking seals (Wire duo Dominic West and Idris Elba) and a bashful Beluga (Ty Burrell) whose echolocation abilities help Dory on her quest. Considering the first film had an entire ocean at its disposal, however, you can’t help feeling shortchanged by this one’s comparative non-expansiveness, even if it does provide O’Neill’s tentacled chameleon a host of opportunities to blend in with his backgrounds.

It’s fair to say that Hank is Dory’s seven-limbed secret weapon. His ability to slink, scamper and dangle, and assume virtually any form, brings out the very best in Pixar’s tireless army of animators. (He stretches his skill further in the movie’s climactic set-piece.) Again, though, your appreciation is tempered by the fact that Pixar is arriving late at this particular party, rival DreamWorks having already explored the possibilities of octopoid contortions in Penguins of Madagascar.

Having our heroes encounter a giant squid en route to the MLI also means we get two cephalopods in succession, introducing a repetitive element that’s hardly helped by the number of scenes set inside pipes. You’ll lose count too of the times that Kaitlin Olson’s myopic Destiny collides with walls, a running gag that quickly becomes as familiar as the “Off! Off!” refrain to which West and Elba resort whenever another seal encroaches on their territory.

Thankfully Finding Dory has enough moments of captivating beauty to ameliorate its flaws. One scene in which a nocturnal star-scape is reflected in its protagonist’s inky pupils conveys an abyss of yearning, while another involving a flurry of migrating manta rays will leave you gobsmacked.

A later scene where Dory’s selective amnesia returns is as heartrending as anything Pixar have given us since Up, while the use of ‘What A Wonderful World’ by Louis Armstrong at a pivotal moment in the narrative is hilarious and audacious. Elevating Dory from comic relief/sidekick to heroine, moreover, it sends out a positive message about not just surviving but thriving with an impairment – an overdue corrective, perhaps, in a genre with a rather patchy track record when it comes to depicting mental and physical disorders.

After the underperforming The Good Dinosaur, Finding Dory could hardly be anything else but a partial return to form. For all its delights though, it remains something of a placeholder from an outfit that, as Inside Out proved, is capable of so much more.

Horror lives in the unknown. It hides in abandoned asylums, in catacombs where long-missing miners stalk with pickaxes, in haunted cabins in the woods and on lonely roads in abandoned forests with no access to social media. These are safe places for nasty things to lurk. Controlled by distance, common sense and stupidity. Don’t want to die? Maybe don’t do a ouija board with your really attractive friends in a shuttered hospital? Stay home and watch Netflix instead. Nothing can find you there. Except maybe James Wan. 

The director of Saw, Dead Silence, Insidious Chapters 1 and 2 (officially termed Insidii by actor Patrick Wilson who should know), The Conjuring and sequel The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Case out this week, Wan is a modern horror maestro who brings the fear home to you. While his films can be included in the so called ‘Blumhouse-ification’ of the genre over the last five years as we’ve enjoyed a glut of slick scares with low budgets and high box office returns, to dismiss them as churn would be sheer horror snobbery. The brilliantly terrifying The Conjuring is the second highest grossing horror movie of all time. The first? The Exorcist. No small feat. Wan knows his craft. And all he has to do to bring you true horror? Take you home. Where you think you’re safe from harm.

“I’ve always said that I’m a real chicken when it comes to scary movies, haunted houses or paranormal and supernatural stuff,” Wan tells me when we meet to talk about the Conjuring 2. “So because I’m able to know what’s scary, I think I can take that - ingest what is scary and then translate that cinematically on the screen. That’s the best way I can try and articulate my process. I try and create scenes and situations that feel very mundane, everyday and in that context, when you feel very related to the sequences, I like to come up with something unique and different and surprise the audience that way.”

And you don’t get much more mundane than a council house in London in the 1970s. The Enfield Case is probably one of the best documented and most contested hauntings in existence. A single mother and her three children were plagued by alleged spirits, with the youngest daughter, Janet, apparently possessed by a demon. The real recording of paranormal investigator Ed Warren interviewing the entity through Janet lives at the end of the Conjuring 2 and it’s difficult not to let chills scurry up your spine even if you’ve especially worn your cynic hat today. It’s unclear how much input Warren and his psychic wife Lorraine actually had on the case but they did visit the house and this makes a perfect follow up to the original Conjuring’s lesser known case. Plus, the movie starts with a certain Amityville House. Yes, that Amityville.

“You want to treat it with reverence. We know it’s a very important case in Britain,” says Patrick Wilson, who takes on the role of Ed Warren. “It’s perhaps the most talked about or studied case in British history and so you don’t want to make light of that. You want to honour that. At the same time, we’re making a movie and it’s not a documentary but even within that you do the research, you have the tapes. We saw the real Lorraine, who’s still with us and Janet and Margaret Hodgson - the real girls - reunited on our set. When you see them meet each other and you see these women who are just so thankful for what Lorraine had done or tried to do, you realise that at the core of this are human emotions and people that needed help and someone that was there to help them.”

While vast swathes of The Conjuring 2 thankfully come from James Wan’s imagination, it’s the heart of the film that cranks up the fear. We’ve all been children hiding under the duvet away from whatever lies in the dark. Even home alone on a rainy day, we’ve sat downstairs and wondered what creaked the floorboards in the seemingly empty room above. Wan’s fear construction is effortless, his best moments lie in the silence between scares. The seconds before a toy moves on its own, a chair rocks slowly or even when you see out of the corner of your eye that a remote control isn’t exactly where you left it. And this all takes place in the very real world, occupied by everyday people trying to get on with life. They just happen to be being set upon by vengeful spirits.  

Wan’s set design too is fascinating. I quickly became obsessed with his version of an English council house in The Conjuring 2. A camera zooms in the window of a traditional semi detached only to find itself inside a veritable TARDIS of flat walls, tall beds, over emphasised creaking stairs and cracked doors. This is England but you’ve never seen it quite like this. A haunted house lives here and it might be different from the expansive, cavernous interiors of the original or the imposing mansion of Dead Silence (his brilliant under appreciated Ventriloquist dummy movie) but Wan’s set design has to be seen to be believed. This is a dollhouse of horrors and it positively shines in The Conjuring 2. 

“I think in a lot of ways the reason why my movies look the way they do look is because of the way I design my shots and so a lot of the time I need my sets to be able to accommodate all the crazy things I want to do with my cameras and the way I want to tell my story with my cameras,” Wan ponders when I share my thoughts. “That’s very important.  You’re right, it is a bit like a dollhouse because of that very voyeuristic approach to my filmmaking. I like to be able to look through a window, look at something from a distance, look down a stairway….”

It’s his environments where Wan finds true horror lives, not in his wide eyed demons, although they’re terrifying too. “All that stuff, for people who live in two storey houses, or big old houses - or even just old houses in general - I really love to capture that mood. That atmosphere,” he continues. “I actually tried to make the Conjuring 2 house much closer to the council housing over here than say the first Conjuring that was in a big farmhouse with a lot of space to move around. Ironically by making it smaller it’s actually a lot harder for me to move my camera around. I saw that limitation as a new approach to kind of my filmmaking and so I think it gives it a slightly different kind of flavour.”

Wan’s horror filmmaking can only be classed as traditional. This is the man who actually makes good on the promise of the traumatic string introduction of Insidious. It plugs itself into your brain like an electric current that buzzes through the rest of the movie. The music of The Conjuring too is joyously old fashioned. While swathes of modern horror tries to live in modern technology, Wan makes the analogue world traumatic with ominous violins and dramatic tension. He’s sneaked old horror back into the mix when we weren’t looking. 

“Even all the way back to Saw my filmmaking has always been very classical,” he confirms. “My second movie kind of reflects that as well. Dead Silence. I’ve always been a fan of classical filmmaking. It’s only now that the general public are catching up to my style. Dead Silence was my love of old school Hammer horror films. All the British stuff that I grew up with loving so yeah I do tend to have a very classical style in my aesthetic.” 

To say more about The Conjuring 2 would be to spoil it and despite an overly long run time, there’s too much joyously scary action in there to ruin. Like all of his movies, Wan has built a ghost train but by tunnelling into the very real fears of the dark, the space in the corner of your eye you just can’t see and the uncertainty of what lurks just out of the reach of your bedside lamp, his horror has never been smarter. Sweet dreams. 

The infamous words 'based on a true story' at the start of a horror movie usually means there's a character in there who shares a name with a human who existed once and might have been scared of the dark. At best the links are spurious, at worst, everything is lies. James Wan's The Conjuring 2 is a little different - or at least different lies. 

It's based on the widely publicised 1977 case of the Enfield Poltergeist which saw numerous investigators visiting the home of two young girls in London who were allegedly undergoing attacks from a vicious entity. Police and investigators alike witnessed unique phenomena that's still not been fully explained and, as you can see in the video below, the victims might be 30 years older but they've stuck to the same story. 

Ed and Lorraine Warren, played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, actually came to investigate, making this the ideal sequel to the original. Combo-ing up the victims stories, real recordings and typical Blumhouse horror footage, the above featurette gives us a glimpse at the scares to come next month. I don't know about you but that recording brings me up in goosebumps. It better have been a hoax, just so I can sleep tonight. 

The Conjuring 2 stars Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga and is directed by James Wan. It's out in cinemas on June 13. 

Image credit: Warner Bros

What with Avatar being the highest-grossing movie of all time, it's got to make you wonder why it's taking James Cameron so long to get the ball rolling on the sequel. The first movie opened back in 2009 and since then the director has teased three further installments without actually making any.

Depending on how you feel about that, this latest spot of news will either make you roll your eyes or punch the air: we're getting four sequels between now and 2023. Avatar 2, originally scheduled for December 2016, opens Christmas 2018, Avatar 3 is due Christmas 2020, Avatar 4 on Christmas 2021, and Avatar 5 on - you guessed it! - Christmas 2022.

So, why the need to spread things out across so many titles? According to Cameron, who made the announcement at CinemaCon, "We’ve decided to embark on a truly massive cinematic process. We’ve begun to bump up against the limitation of our art form. There's just too much story." He added that each successive film won't necessarily follow on from one another, but instead, work together like.... a cinematic universe. “Each one [of the sequels] stands alone but together form a complete saga, a true epic saga told in this rich complex world.”

Cameron's enthusiasm for such an ambitious proposal is exciting, especially when he's churning out golden sound bites like this - “In pure imagination, it’s far beyond the first film.” We've heard so much from him over the years on the topic, that it's easy to brush this latest news off as more lip service. One solution? He should just unleash a teaser trailer when no-one expects it.

However Cameron chooses to proceed, Fox clearly has a lot of faith in him being able to deliver the goods. And deliver, he'd better! Those Christmas release dates are also shared by a small Disney franchise called Star Wars.

Images: Fox

Man! I feel like a woman… 

The timing couldn’t be better, really. In the year of Caitlyn Jenner and TV’s Transparent, this handsome and sensitively played biopic about Lili Elbe, the first person to undergo gender-reassignment surgery, pushes all the right topical buttons.

Recounting how 1920s Copenhagen artist Einar Wegener found his inner girl when he posed as ‘Lili’ for his wife Gerda’s daring portraits, it also provides a fine showcase for Eddie Redmayne’s transformative powers. Like The Theory Of Everything, this is an outsider triumph-and-tragedy tale, with Redmayne’s confused-but-determined Einar creating Lili’s transition as carefully as one of his landscape paintings.

To make the story relatable, the Wegeners’ stormy and unconventional marriage is put resolutely front and centre, all the way from newlywed gender-bending frolics in bedrooms and ballrooms to ‘three people in this marriage’ anguish. Too bad that, unlike director Tom Hooper’s Oscar-laden The King’s Speech, where an odd-couple friendship powers the story, Gerda and Einar’s bond proves more glamorous, but less moving.

Performance power isn’t lacking here – Alicia Vikander’s feisty Gerda, torn between helping Lili and losing Einar, gives it her all. She’s overshadowed, however, by Redmayne’s delicate, androgynous performance, moving from shy experimenter to fully-fledged femme without a false move.

Even those daring scenes in which Einar strips-and-tucks to conjure up Lili, or mimics a naked hooker’s seductive poses, are tender rather than titter-raising. By contrast, the Wegeners’ rows and reconciliations feel overwritten, the show-and-tell dialogue (“I felt I was kissing myself!”) just underlining what’s already perfectly visible. And throwing Matthias Schoenaerts’ world-weary art-dealer Hans in between them ups the melodrama more than the excitement.

The film’s considerable visual beauty at times overwhelms rather than offsets the drama. It creates a gorgeous setting for Redmayne’s performance, but along with Alexandre Desplat’s lush, string-sobbing score, makes for a self-consciously rich mix.

Thematically it’s all in the best possible taste, careful not to upset either multiplex viewers or the transgender community with anything crass or edgy. While admirably spotlighting Lili’s bravery, the film does develop a faint whiff of well-dressed earnestness. A little less decorum wouldn’t have hurt – and would have made it a whole lot more fun.

Christmas Eve of destruction…

Christmas is just the worst thing going, let's face it. The drained bank accounts, the forced encounters with half-remembered relatives, the awkward office parties... it's all too much. Even worse than the holiday itself are the syrupy, cloying films about Christmas. Yuletide movies are generally as life-affirming as last-minute shopping frenzies on 24 December.

Which is why The Night Before is so refreshing. Yes, it ends on a celebratory note – they all do – but along the way, it properly knocks our intrepid heroes around, dragging them through a druggy night of craziness. The true spirit of Christmas is challenged at every turn – meanwhile, homage is paid to all the festive perennials you can think of, including Die Hard, Home Alone and The Grinch.

The story centres on sadsack Ethan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a 30-something basket case unable to move forward after his recent break-up with girlfriend Diana (Lizzy Kaplan). His two best buds Isaac (Seth Rogan) and Chris (Anthony Mackie) have a long-standing tradition of taking Ethan out for a night of boozy hijinks every Christmas Eve, but their busy lives have made it more of a chore every year.

Ethan manages to steal tickets to the most exclusive party in New York, a white whale the trio have been chasing for over a decade. As they stumble through the city's urban wonderland in search of the Nutcracker Ball, attempts are made to mend their strained friendships.

Our trio runs into various ghost of Christmases past, present and future, including Michael Shannon's deadpan drug dealer Mr. Green and Ilana Grazer (TV's Broad City) as a sex-crazed grinch. Meanwhile, Rogen's character inhales more drugs and embarrasses pretty much the whole city.

Directed by 50/50's Jonathan Levine, The Night Before is essentially Superbad for the holidays. Funny, cynical, and warm in all the right ways, this could finally be the Christmas movie for people who hate Christmas movies.

MURRAY, MURRAY, MURRAY, ALWAYS FUNNY...

There’s something wonderfully crumpled about Bill Murray. Even if you took an iron to him, the creases would probably pop back up in an instant. And he exploits this lived-in quality to the max in St. Vincent, a comic odyssey from writer/director/ producer Theodore Melfi about a Brooklyn grouch with barely a good word for anyone.

Admittedly, Murray has toyed with failure before – not least as a washed-up actor in Lost In Translation. But Murray’s Vincent, a Vietnam vet who lives alone with his Persian furball of a cat, Felix, seems to wallow in it. He drinks. He gambles. And he occasionally has sex, with a pregnant prostitute named Daka (Naomi Watts, with a borscht-thick Russian accent).

The only thing slightly out-of-character is his weekly visit to Alzheimer’s sufferer Sandy (Donna Mitchell) at a nearby retirement home. Otherwise, he’s a cash-strapped recluse who is happily guzzling his last days away. Until, that is, single nurse Maggie (Melissa McCarthy), still recovering from a tough divorce, and her 12 year-old son Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher) move in next door.

She quickly starts imposing on him, asking if he’d watch Oliver after school. Naturally, given his selfish bent, he charges her by the hour; and given that he soon takes Oliver to a bar and the racetrack, you suspect he’d give Billy Bob Thornton’s Bad Santa a run for his childcare money.

No prizes for guessing that Vincent and Oliver forge a mentor-protégé bond, though it’s nowhere near the competitive, combative relationship that Murray and Jason Schwartzman drummed up in Rushmore. With Oliver in dire need of a father-figure, Vincent shambles in, unwittingly, even showing him how to down bullies with a swift blow to the nose.

Murray’s physical comedic skills clearly haven’t deserted him – as one brilliant early scene where he endures a domestic accident in his kitchen demonstrates. His laid-back vibe ensures the sickly endgame never feels too overcooked. Watts, meanwhile, almost steals his thunder, if only because of her how-far-you-can-push-it accent and outfits.

There’s an ambling, first-draft quality to the script that doesn’t always serve the story well (note the ill-conceived role for McCarthy’s Bridesmaids co-star Chris O’Dowd as a Catholic priest). But as a vehicle for the might of Murray, Melfi can give himself a back-pat. While it’s not quite up there with his work for Sofia Coppola or Wes Anderson, St. Vincent is further proof that there are few better American comic actors working today.

The approach has felled others since, but James Cameron’s scaled-up 1986 sequel to Ridley Scott’s shocker makes brilliant work of a brusque formula: preserve what works and multiply. A subtle, spooky movie with teeth becomes a subtlety-bashing war movie.

With Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley and maternal themes thrust forwards, Cameron also aces the horror, using a flashed-up ‘proximity alert’ as his inspired cue for various shockingly sudden close encounters. Factor in some ageless model work and no-flab scripting, and it’s like the man says: state of the bad-ass art.

In his umpteenth sports-movie role, Kevin Costner is Sonny Weaver Jr., beleaguered general manager of the perpetually losing Cleveland Browns football team. It’s 12 hours before ‘Draft day’ – the NFL’s yearly selection of eligible college players – and he’s got his eye on someone who may or may not save everyone’s bacon.

Along with this heavyweight decision, there’s drama with his pregnant ex (Jennifer Garner) and various nuisances provided by a star-studded cast that includes Frank Langella, Sean Combs, and Denis Leary. Director Ivan Reitman jazzes the talky proceedings up with split screens and transitions galore, but it’s still just a minor-league Moneyball .

An education is the last thing on the minds of the entitled toffs in Lone Scherfig’s latest, Oxford students whose membership of the titular fraternity demands they treat “debauchery as an art form”. That’s bad news for the country hostelry that rents them its dining room, though not for fans of dishy Brits in tails (Max Irons, Douglas Booth) and punters keen to have their prejudices about aristos confirmed.

Adapting her own savagely funny play Posh , Laura Wade betters it by adding an additional female presence (Holliday Grainger) who sees these Bullingdon bullies at their worst.

Jim Jarmusch’s 1986 follow-up to his breakthrough film, Stranger Than Paradise , is a stylish black-and-white prison romp with a sense of humour as offbeat as its perfectly cast stars (John Lurie, Roberto Benigni and singer Tom Waits).

Set, beautifully, in Louisiana, it sees a small-time pimp (Lurie) and a wastrel DJ (Waits) framed and locked in the clink with an irrepressible Italian tourist (guess who?). Mutual irritation merges into grudging friendship, and the wit manages to be both broad and smart, soulful and silly, subtle and raucous, all at the same time.

Pretence is a key theme in Don McKellar’s provincial comedy, a remake of Québécois hit Seducing Doctor Lewis . The film, alas, is merely phony. Brendan Gleeson plays a former fisherman who leads a fraudulent bid to seduce a city GP (Taylor Kitsch) into moving to his depressed harbour village so that a factory can bring jobs there. Locals pretend to like the GP’s favourite sport (cricket) and drug (cocaine), drolly.

But McKellar’s take on class is a fib too far: low-grade laughs can’t sweeten the sour message that any crap job will placate working folks. Think: Local Zero.

James Cameron has confirmed that Sigourney Weaver will return for the forthcoming Avatar sequels, but will be appearing as a different character from the scientist she played in the first film.

That shouldn't come as a huge surprise (FIRST FILM SPOILERS AHEAD), seeing as her character didn't make it out of the first film alive, but just who she will be playing in the new one remains something of a mystery…

"Sigourney and I have a long creative history, dating back to 1985 when we made Aliens ," says Cameron. "We’re good friends who’ve always worked well together, so it just feels right that she’s coming back for the Avatar sequels."

"Her character of Grace Augustine, as fans know, died in the first movie, so she’s playing a different and in many ways more challenging character in the upcoming films. We’re both looking forward to this new creative challenge, the latest chapter in our long and continuing collaboration."

Intriguing stuff. Hopefully we'll find out more when filming begins later this year, with Avatar 2 set to open in December 2016.

James Cameron has been discussing how work has progressed on the forthcoming Avatar sequels, with the director explaining how hiring four different writers to pen the respective scripts has resulted in a more collaborative process.

Josh Friedman, Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver and Shane Salerno have been hired to work on the second, third and fourth films respectively, with Cameron basing this collaborative approach on his experiences with TV writing.

"We tried an experiment," explains Cameron. "We set ourselves a challenge of writing three films at the same time. I knew I could certainly write any one of them but to write three in some reasonable amount of time… I knew I would have to work with other writers."

"The best experience I had working with other writers was in television when I did Dark Angel . So we put together a team, three teams actually - one for each script."

"We sat in a writing room for five months, eight-hours-a-day, and we worked out every beat of the story across all three films so it all connects as one three film saga."

"I didn’t tell them which sequel was going to be theirs to write until the very last day, so everybody was equally invested story-wise in all three films. We all consider that to be a really exciting, creative and groundbreaking experiment in screenwriting."

We'll find out just how well it turned out when Avatar 2 opens in the UK in December 2016.

Fans of Kristen Stewart and/or Chloe Grace Moretz might get a surprise when they hunker down to watch Clouds Of Sils Maria .

Any ass-kicking or vampirism here on display is of the mental and metaphorical kind, the Hollywood It girls teaming up with one of Europe’s premier auteurs, Olivier Assayas ( Carlos, Something In The Air ), to take part in a multi-layered meta-fiction that potently explores themes of aging, role playing and stardom. Think All About Eve meets Persona.

The title refers to the strange weather phenomenon in the heart of the Swiss Alps whereby ramblers might witness the Maloja Snake, a trail of clouds that roll in from the lakes to glide its way between hilltops.

Maloja Snake is also the title of the play that, two decades before, made Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche) a star. She’s now visiting Sils Maria to accept an award on the playwright’s behalf, flanked by her BlackBerry-juggling assistant, Valentine (Kristen Stewart), and hunted down by a renowned stage director who wishes to revive the play in London.

In the original stage version, Maria played Sigrid, a slyly ambitious 18 year old who seduces her middle-aged boss, Helena, then leaves her high and dry. Now she’s being courted to essay Helena, with her signature role going to Hollywood hellcat Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloe Grace Moretz), a star of 3D superhero hits and TMZ.

This switch of roles naturally plays into Maria’s own fear of aging in an industry that now churns out product she views as trash (though in one standout scene, Stewart’s PA vibrantly defends the artistic integrity of blockbusters while telling Maria to be mindful of the power of the “pre-teen” audience). It’s also clear, upon running lines, that Mari’s bringing her own age, experiences and views to the text – as we all do.

Assayas’ screenplay deftly celebrates the act of creation and neatly demonstrates that works of art, like people, can be viewed from different angles, their true meaning unknowable.

The French filmmaker also neatly dovetails the relationship of Sigrid and Helena with that of Maria and Valentine: the pair are close, at times bordering on getting too close, and their power dynamic squirms and coils as the film develops - a Maloja Snake of its own.

In face of a strong competition line up, it seems unlikely that Clouds Of Sils Maria will be among the prizes. But it’s an elegant, intelligent drama, enlivened by strong performances by Binoche, Moretz and especially Stewart, for whom this will surely usher in a new dawn.

Unless you're a diehard Match of the Day viewer, you'd probably think a football documentary isn't for you.

Which is why we're rather chuffed to introduce you to Next Goal Wins , the surprisingly touching, heartwarming and downright rather-quite-bloody-good documentary all about the American Samoan soccer team.

Not only has it drawn critical acclaim aplenty (check out our four star review on the link above), but it's got a more unique tale than most - the team may have lost 31-0 to Australia back in 2001, but this is their attempt to regain their dignity and quality for the 2014 World Cup.

Check out our video clip below, in which you're introduced to the team, and then let us know what you think in the comments below!

Next Goal Wins opens in UK cinemas from 9 May 2014.

American Movie , Murderball , Searching For Sugar Man … every now and then a small-scale but big-hearted documentary comes along to win our affections and score mainstream success. Next Goal Wins should be the next to get promotion, its good-natured, jocular chronicling of the worst soccer team on the planet sure to appeal to ardent football fans and haters of the beautiful game alike.

Kicking off with a flashback to 2001 as American Samoa lose 31-0 to Australia, it follows the team’s fortunes through the South Pacific Games, where they get trounced in all five games, and then the qualifying campaign for the 2014 World Cup.

Along the way we meet, and come to care about, the players and shouty Dutch coach Thomas Rongen – he’s worked with Johan Cruyff but really looks and sounds like he belongs in Dodgeball (“I would cut off my penis to play in a World Cup qualifying game!” is a typical comment). Star player, though, is transgender defender Jaiyah Saelua, who strides gracefully forwards with the ball like a pony-tailed Alan Hansen. “I’m not a male or female,” says Saelua. “I’m just a soccer player.”

The laughs come hard and fast as we watch players who get tackled by cones in training steadily improve until they win their pride. Hell, they might even win a match if they can just stop puffing cigarettes at half-time. Even better, Next Goal Wins has two halves to its game, buffering the humour by introducing us to the tiny island territory of American Samoa and its religious population.

With most scrabbling to survive after a tsunami hit in 2009, the only escape from the island is to join the military. The footie team at least offers joy and release where little is to be found. OK, so sometimes the backstories all get a little X Factor and there’s one too many shots of glowing sunsets, but it’s churlish to gripe. Next Goal Wins is a winner.

Verdict: A triumph-of-the-underdog documentary so amusing and inspirational you’ll have to Google events to ensure it’s not a mockumentary. Back of the net.

After assassinating her brother, inscrutable mafioso Salvo (Saleh Bakri) keeps blind girl Rita (Sara Serraiocco) hostage, unable to kill her for reasons kept, like his white t-shirt, extremely close to his chest.

Although it begins with a striking shootout, writer/directors Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza’s debut explores over-familiar territory and suffers from fiercely ponderous pacing.

With no context to help us care about either character, and Bakri barely raising an eyebrow as he grumps around like a gloomy Terminator, the result is an exercise in muddy, moody subjectivity.

Plot For Peace begins as it ends, with a round of Patience. It’s a game very much like life, observes our mysterious card player – who once spent years trying to deal the world a better hand.

Every bit as compelling as any Hollywood political thriller, this fascinating documentary tells the largely untold story of French-Algerian businessman and diplomat Jean-Yves Ollivier (a dumpy, bespectacled, razor-sharp man with a decided touch of the George Smileys about him), who played a key role in dismantling South African Apartheid during the Cold War years via some incredible, covert backroom manoeuvres.

Quietly heroic in every way.

Ignore the fist fights, the one-liners and the shock twists.

One of the best things that Joss Whedon arguably does is create memorable characters we feel we know. Ever since he debuted Buffy The Vampire Slayer on the idiotbox in 1997, he's been responsible for some of the coolest, scariest and wittiest characters on the big and small screens.

Here, then, are our favourite characters from Whedon properties. These are, in our eyes, the best of the best - which means no Dawn (sorry Dawn fans, all one of you)…

20. Ripley 8

"I'm the monster's mother."

Alien: Resurrection wasn't all that, we know this, but as icky and needlessly sticky as Jean-Pierre Jeunet's fourquel turned out to be, we at least got an awesome new version of Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) as part of the deal.

Made in a lab as part of an attempt to resurrect the Alien Queen that Ripley died harbouring in her chest (in Alien 3 ), Ripley 8 is an unwanted "by-product" of the company's eighth and final (successful) attempt at creating the Alien Queen - 200 years after Ripley's death.

This new Ripley is part alien, part human, able to slam dunk a basketball without looking and a dab hand at underwater combat. The scene in which she encounters the seven, mutated, failed attempts at cloning her is a brilliantly dark Frankenstein's monster-style sequence that almost justifies the film. Almost.

19. Oz

"Maybe it's 'cause of all the horrific things we've seen, but, hippos wearing tutus just don't unnerve me the way they used to."

You go to a Halloween party, make all the effort of hiring an extravagant costume and slathering yourself in make-up. Then Oz (Seth Green) turns up in his regular clothes and an unobtrusive name sticker that simply reads: 'God.'

That's how Oz rolls. Drip-fed into the Scooby Gang at the start of Buffy season two, he's the perfect love match for Willow - where she's nervy, he's grounded. Where she's ramble-y, he's restrained, sitting quietly on the fringes of a scene before unloading an earth-shattering observation of brief eloquence.

Oh, and he's also a werewolf, in a band called Dingoes Ate My Baby and eventually responsible for breaking poor Willow's heart. The most unexpected bad boy ever.

18. Lilah Morgan

"Just shut up! One more excuse from you and I am going to bury you alive, next to my house so I can hear you screaming."

Everybody hates lawyers, but we just can't get enough of Lilah Morgan (Stephanie Romanov). At least she admits she's evil. Well, she'd have to, considering she works for Wolfram & Hart, the formidable LA law firm that helps demons out of a tight spot. Because who else is gonna?

At first a somewhat forgettable B-character in a suit who crops up in Angel 's first season, Lilah soon transforms into one of the show's greatest she-bitches - always ready with a tart put-down, she's a Machiavellian schemer who does her own thing (when she's not answering to the suits upstairs, of course).

As with everything in the Jossverse, nothing's black and white, and Lilah's eventual relationship with Wesley is startling but totally makes sense, and by the time she bites it (at the hands of a possessed Cordelia, no less), you feel the loss like a blade in the jugular.

17. Darla

"Oh, I love children. I could just eat 'em up."

The first character we ever meet in Buffy The Vampire Slayer is also one of the coolest. Pretending to be a helpless teenage girl, Darla (Julie Benz) lures a high schooler into her trap and reveals she's actually a vampire. Then nom nom nom .

She's the perfect mirror to Buffy, herself a convention-flouting blonde bombshell, though with a very different agenda. (Darla also helps to establish that Angel very much has a type.)

Not only is Darla integral to Angel's back story, she's also been at the centre of spin-off show Angel 's best twists - from being resurrected at the end of season one, to causing havoc in season two and then turning up preggers in season three. " It's the one good thing we've ever done together ," she gasps to spine-tingling effect as she goes into labour...

16. Drusilla

"I met an old man. I didn't like him. He got stuck in my teeth."

Like a bat out of hell, Drusilla (Juliet Landau) descended on Buffy season two with her own very special brand of cuckoo. She's just the kind of nuts that Whedon does so well. A total conundrum, she's alternately innocent, childlike, deadly and demonic.

When we first meet her, she's weak and reliant on Spike (James Marsters) - until she regains her strength, the tables are spectacularly turned and she reveals she can be disarmingly vicious - she kills slayer Kendra using just her fingernails. Meanwhile, Drusilla's psychic senses mean she can often tell when bad things are about to happen. Handy, that..

Basically, Drusilla was called on whenever Buffy or Angel needed an injection of all-out insanity.

15. Topher Brink

"I don't want to use the word genius, but I'd be OK if you wanted to."

Of all the characters created for short-lived series Dollhouse , Topher (Fran Kranz) is easily the best - and most memorable, which is sort of poetic given what the character does in the show.

Nerdy to the extreme and responsible for programming the 'dolls' in the Dollhouse, Topher is an over-caffeinated geekazoid - he's the kind of guy you imagine would hang out with the Geek Trio in Buffy (hello, crossover potential).

14. Wesley Wyndam-Pryce

"The father will kill the son."

If we'd told you when Wesley Wyndam-Pryce (Alexis Denisof) first wafted onto the scene in Buffy 's third season that he'd become one of the darkest, most captivating anti-heroes in the Whedonverse, you'd probably have laughed in our face. (Heck, we'd probably have signed ourselves over to the loony bin without much complaint.)

But that's exactly what happened. Pitching up halfway through Angel 's first season to a chorus of groans (not least because he replaced the much-loved Doyle), Wesley gradually developed from gormless buffoon to capable fighter to perceived traitor and despised outcast.

His relationships with Fred Burkle and Lilah Morgan only deepened our understanding of this complex man - and if there weren't tears in your eyes when he was finally bested in battle and requested Illyria "lie" to him, you're a cold, cold monster.

13. Buffy Summers

"If the apocalypse comes, beep me."

Starting out in Whedon's head as little more than a clever post-modern concept (what if the helpless blonde girl attacked in an alleyway turns out not to be helpless at all?), Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) remains one of the coolest TV characters ever created.

Though she's outshone by other characters on the show (well, she IS the lead, and therefore gets lumbered with less kooky characteristics), Buffy's a great heroine because she's also resolutely human.

Charged with fighting monsters as a teenager, she goes through all the trials that most young people face (college, first jobs, first loves, deaths in the family), always with a quick one-liner and a stake at the ready. It's her journey that we go on for seven years, and what a journey it is.

12. River Tam

"I swallowed a bug."

Though she spends most of Firefly hiding behind her brother's lab coat and babbling nonsensically, River (Summer Glau) really comes into her own in Serenity , the movie continuation of the show.

Raised in a government facility called The Academy, River was trained to become a deadly fighter - and in Serenity , she kicks considerable booty when, in the third act, she demonstrates just what she's capable of by wiping the floor with a rabid pack of Reavers.

11. Andrew Wells

"It eats you starting with your bottom."

Originally a member of the Geek Trio (alongside Jonathan and Warren), the (not so) Big Bads of Buffy 's sixth season, Andrew (Tom Lenk) is separated from them in the show's seventh year and becomes a hilarious (if unwanted) member of the Scooby Gang.

His defining moment (aside from getting beaten up by Anya) comes in 'Storyteller', in which we see the movements of Buffy and her friends through Andrew's fanciful eyes.

That includes slow-mo shots of Buffy seductively pouring herself some cereal, and a colourful segment in which Andrew pictures himself and the other Geeks as gods. Oh, and when the apocalypse is at hand, he has a wheelchair fight with Anya…

10. Wash & Zoe

Wash: "Psychic, though? That sounds like something out of science fiction."
Zoe: "We live in a spaceship, dear."

We're counting these two as one, not because we think they can't function independently (or that your partner defines you), but because Zoe (Gina Torres) is so integral to understanding Wash (Alan Tudyk) and vice versa. (Also, we only have room for 20.)

Part of Mal's (Nathan Fillion) crew aboard Serenity , they're one of the only couples in the Whedonverse that isn't overwrought with domestic drama. Zoe's a fearless fighter and Wash is a wise-cracking pilot, and the two go together like (to pinch a Friends quote) day and later that day.

True, they bicker, but that's normal right? And it's a tragedy that we'll never get to see on-screen how Zoe copes with Wash's death in Serenity …

9. Willow Rosenberg

"And I think I'm kinda gay…"

It's a toss up, here, between Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and Evil Willow (er, also Hannigan), the alt-reality vampire version of everybody's favourite red-head (she crops up in 'The Wish' and 'Dopplegangland'). Considering Willow sticks around for considerably longer, though, we'll go with her (though Evil Willow remains a pinnacle of wicked TV brilliance).

Of all the characters on Buffy , it's perhaps Willow who develops the most over the show's seven seasons. Initially an awkward nerd, she graduates literally and metaphorically when she becomes interested in magic - which turns out to be an extended metaphor for homosexuality (and, later, less cleverly, drug addition, but we'll ignore that).

Her flay-happy Dark Willow is unforgettable, and we'll never get over her appearance in Angel 's season four episode 'Orpheus', when she mistakenly believes Fred (Amy Acker) is coming on to her.

8. Xander Harris

"If we close our eyes and say it's not real… it'll stab us to death."

Considering he's just a regular teenager with no discernable talents (beyond the ability to wheel out the odd sarcastic remark), it's pretty remarkable that Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon) opts to help Buffy when she's, er, ousted as a slayer.

Though he's rarely at the centre of the story, season three episode 'The Zeppo' was a master class in alt-POV storytelling - while Buffy and co fight the apocalypse, Xander's got his own non-end-of-the-world problems to contend with.

As he'll note in season seven, he's the heart of the gang, and particularly good at fixing the things that get broken during the numerous demon battles. Also, he gets a bitchin' eye-patch in the show's final year…

7. Lorne

"Man, you just get darker and darker. And the weird thing is... your aura? Beige."

Until now, demons have generally been considered bad. Sometimes misguided, yes, but mostly just monsters in need of a good putting down. All that changed with the opening episode of Angel 's second season, which introduced the never-more-demonic-looking Lorne (Andy Hallett), actually the owner of a demon karaoke bar.

When he's not interfering with Angel's broody schtick by referring to him as "angel cakes" and "angel face", Lorne (otherwise known as 'The Host'), quickly turns into a valuable ally - not least because he has a direct line to the Powers. Also, he's fabulous.

Notable moments? When Lorne's trapped in Las Vegas as a performing monkey (not literally) in season four, and season five ep 'Life Of The Party', in which Lorne has his sleep removed and the rest of the team are compelled to quite literally act out his instructions for a company shindig…

6. Faith

"Don't you need anyone dead? Or maimed? I can settle for maimed."

Initially conceived of as a dark slayer yin to Buffy's bubbly slayer yang, Faith (Eliza Dushku) is like the awesome older sister you're probably glad you never had - dark, dangerous, rule-trashing, tough as nails, always ready for a fight - and yes, she's smoking hot, to boot. Though she's originally a morals-muddying foil for Buffy, Faith quickly develops beyond that into something genuinely interesting.

Leaving Buffy with a body-swapping bang in season four, her dark side's unleashed in full force on Angel , where she comes into her post-watershed own torturing Wesley in ways you can only imagine (or probably shouldn't).

Her gradual rehabilitation leads to her triumphant return in the final five episodes of Buffy 's final season, where things finally come full circle and she fights side-by-side with the Buffster. They finally learn to get alone. Sort of…

5. Cordelia Chase

"I'm not a snivelling, whiny, little cry-Buffy. I'm the nastiest girl in Sunnydale history. I take crap from no-one!"

Entertainingly snippy but dismissable in early seasons of Buffy as a prom queen with pointier fangs than most vampires, Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter) was granted unexpected depth by Whedon and his writers over the course of her time on Buffy .

It was on spin-off show Angel that she really came into her own, though. Plonked in Los Angeles with no money and a misguided notion of becoming an actress, she becomes an integral part of Angel Investigations, adding bright wit to an undeniably dark show.

Her season five swan song, 'You're Welcome', is a fittingly emotional, delightfully snarky send-off.

4. Spike

"Out. For. A Walk… Bitch."

Though his accent's all over the place (where is this guy actually from?), Spike's an infinitely more interesting vampire than wet-blanket Angel (even Angelus can't hold a flame to him). He's killed two Slayers in his time, he's named after a railroad spike and his style icon is Billy Idol.

Better still, Spike (James Marsters) was responsible for sneaking a colourful array of British swear words onto prime time TV, introducing the whole of America to nouns like 'wanker', 'tosser' and 'ponce'.

Though season six misused him as a weird torture porn love interest for Buffy, Spike returned with a vengeance in Angel 's fifth season, adding pith and pluck to an already strong final year for the show. Spike, we love you.

3. Anya

"Bunnies, bunnies, IT MUST BE BUNNIES! Or maybe midgets…"

She's an ex-vengeance demon who's scared to death of "floppy, hoppy bunnies" (that's leporiphobia, you know), which is surely all you need to know to fall in love with Anya (Emma Caulfield).

Introduced as a guest starrer in season three Buffy episode 'The Wish', she was so brilliant that she became a regular as Xander's on-off girlfriend in season four (going on to share a peppy, screwball musical number with him in 'Once More With Feeling').

Frank to the max, Anya's everything you'd expect an ex-demon to be - cynical, obsessed with money and sex, and hopelessly confounded at every turn by the weirdness that is humanity.

2. Fred Burkle

"Nutty-ol'-goonie-bird-up-in-her-room-doin'-nothin'-but-moochin'-off-Angel Fred. I swear, I don't know how y'all put up with me."

Introduced in rags as a wormhole-jumping UCLA graduate at the tail end of Angel season two, Winifred 'Fred' Burkle (Amy Acker) starts out as a shy, retiring (Texan) wallflower, mooning over Angel and confining herself to her room, where she scribbles mathematical equations all over the walls.

By the end of her first season ( Angel 's third), though, Fred's proved she's vital to Angel Investigations. Not only does she boast an intellect to rival even Wesley's, she's also the sweetest thing you ever did see.

High points? Exquisite season three ballet ep 'Waiting In The Wings', plus that devastating, reduce-you-to-howlin'-tears season five farewell, 'A Hole In The World'.

1. Mal

"I start fightin' a war, I guarantee, you'll see somethin' new."

He could easily have been a pale imitation of Han Solo, with his roguish charm and refusal to be tied down by anybody. Instead, Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) emerged as one of the best sci-fi anti-heroes in recent memory.

Yes, he swaggers, yes, he's quick with the wit (and even quicker with a gun), but he's exactly what a rag-tag band of space fugitives need in a leader - somebody who isn't afraid to stare unblinking into the harshest, bleakest reaches of space.

We wish we'd have been given the chance to get to know him better…

Who can we blame? The Hangovers ? Police Academies ? Either way, comedy sequels have a reputation for stumbling over the hit-repeat-and-scarper approach to gag-making. Adam McKay and Will Ferrell’s sequel to their 2004 sleeper satire isn’t entirely immune: it often revives old glories with the eagerness of Ron Burgundy guzzling the tipples.

Yet it also sneezes up enough nonsense non-sequiturs, crack-smoking irreverence and hair-based hilarity to tickle anew. Meet The Fockers it most definitely is not.

At the kick-off, McKay juggles the old and the new. Reunited, polyester news prat Ron (Ferrell), blustering redneck Champ (David Koechner), human sex panther Brian (Paul Rudd) and man-child Brick (Steve Carell) are pleasingly un-evolved. The reason for their return is a good one: the redemption of Ron.

And he’s in dire need, after losing his job (sacked by the first of many big-name guest stars), leaves his wife (Christina Applegate) and son, and loses another job at Dolphin World after accusations of touching starfish in a wrong way.

In a fresh twist, his comeback bid is a fish-out-of-water gig at 24-hour news channel GNN in the early ’80s, where James Marsden’s Jack Lime provides oil-slick competition, Meagan Good’s Linda Jackson tests Ron’s racial awareness (spoiler: he isn’t very aware) and serious reportage gives Ron’s rabble a mission: to make news less boring.

‘Boring’ isn’t an option here, but like Burgundy’s voice volume, McKay sometimes let his control slip. The first film’s strike-rate was hit/miss, but it moved so fast you hardly noticed. Here, the legend continues, and continues some more, then over-heats old gags: Ron’s jazz flute, Brian’s cabinet, Champ’s secret love and a mob-handed ruckus all feature, with varying degrees of success.

Without the sense of discovery that made Anchorman a newsflash, the mix of wall-to-wall wackiness and repetition sees diminishing returns creep in. And they diminish some more for an Airplane! -aping jive-talking satire with Linda’s parents, which embarrasses in unintended ways.

Yet there’s more than enough fun elsewhere to offset the losses. Especially when an icy accident (a Blades Of Glory callback) enables Ferrell to flex his improv muscles in an episode involving wanking and sharks (not together). It’s essentially an extended sketch - but taken purely as a giggles-generator, fresh enough to tip the hit/miss ratio in the former’s favour.

Elsewhere, the laughs are well-spread: good ones involve Champ’s recipes and Brick’s agonised flirtation with kindred odd-bod Chani (Kristen Wiig). Before we meet Brick here, he’s presumed dead. But it turns out there’s life in the newsdesk dinosaurs yet.

Verdict:

Bigger and broader than before, Ron’s return occasionally feels like autocue’d sequel-making. But it spikes old news with enough fresh comic zip to keep you hooked through the self-indulgent stretches.

Like Jane Austen in Tel Aviv, Rama Burshtein’s debut is a warm, watchful slant on marital mores in an ultraorthodox Jewish community.

Our torn heroine is Shira (Hadas Yaron), an 18-year-old urged to wed new dad Yochay (Yiftach Klein) when his wife, Shira’s sister, dies.

The resulting pickle may seem alien to many, but Yaron’s navigation of Shira’s struggles make it tangible.

So does Burshtein’s vivid community portrait: a New Yorker who converted to Judaism, she illuminates the culture’s complexities with the clarity that Austen brought to her world’s relationship rituals.

If you’re a fan of ‘70s Hollywood then chances are you dig John Milius.

His writing gigs saw him contribute to Dirty Harry , Jaws and Apocalypse Now . Then there’s the directing credits: Dillinger , Big Wednesday , Conan The Barbarian …

A self-titled “Zen anarchist”, Milius is also a right-wing gun-nut, but directors Joey Figueroa and Zak Knutson never let that overshadow his talent in this memorable, conventional account of a true maverick.

Old pals Spielberg, Scorsese, Schrader, Lucas and Coppola pay tribute, before the final reel adds genuine poignancy to the life of this unique storyteller.

Sam Worthington is all signed up to return to Pandora for the various sequels to Avatar , with the star confirming that filming is set to begin in October 2014.

James Cameron is thought to be hard at work on pre-production on the sequels, with the second, third and fourth instalments set to film back to back.

"We are going to start [ shooting ] this time next year and we will do two, three and four," said Worthington in an interview with an Australian radio station. "I'll be grateful if it finishes!"

We'll take that last aside as a wry comment on what promises to be a gruelling shoot, rather than Worthington's diminishing interest in the franchise as a whole! Although three sequels does seem like a lot…

Worthington went on to suggest that the three films will be filmed within a year-long shoot, which would set the studio up to release a sequel each December for 2016, 2017 and 2018. Get comfortable on Pandora everyone… we won't be leaving for a while yet!

Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac has released a raft of risqué character posters online, featuring all of the primary cast in what we’ll describe as a range of “climactic” poses.

They’re all pretty graphic (as graphic as facial expressions can get, anyway), and it’s fair to say that some members emerge in a more favourable light than others.

So while Sophie Kennedy Clark, Shia LaBeouf and Uma Thurman boast a kind of post-coital glow, Connie Nielsen, Jamie Bell and Christian Slater aren't shown in the most flattering light. And then there’s Stellan Skarsgård...

The film tells the story of Joe, a self-proclaimed nymphomaniac who tells her colourful life story to a kindly old bachelor after he finds her in a bad way in a dark alley.

Directed by von Trier and co-starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe and Stacy Martin, Nymphomaniac will open in the UK in 2014, with a release date to be confirmed.

Take a look at the new posters, below...

After The Mother and Venus , director Roger Michell and writer Hanif Kureishi return for a third look at characters approaching their later years.

Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan's ageing English couple travel to Paris to reinvigorate their marriage, only to bicker their way down the Champs-Élysées as travel troubles give way to long-held resentments. Jeff Goldblum adds oily charm as an old friend randomly encountered, but it's Broadbent who dominates.

The result? An accomplished, bittersweet drama that's more bitter than sweet.

You would think that following the years of blood, sweat and tears that went into the making of Avatar , James Cameron wouldn’t be likely to hear a word said against the use of 3D technology in modern filmmaking.

However, Cameron has been talking about the proliferation of 3D blockbusters at the multiplex, and argues that in most cases, the technology is not being used correctly.

“I do not think Hollywood is using the 3D properly,” said Cameron at technology forum TagDF . "The reason I say that Hollywood is not doing well is because it is automatic.”

“For example, Man Of Steel , Iron Man 3 and all those movies should not necessarily be in 3D. If you spend $150 million on visual effects, the film is already going to be spectacular, perfect.”

Presumably that would also have been true of Avatar , although Cameron argues that the difference lies in the fact he actually filmed with 3D cameras.

“One thing is shooting in 3D and another to convert to 3D,” continues the director. "After Avatar changed everything, good and bad movies, everything has to be in 3D since Avatar .”

“The problem I see now is that instead of it being a filmmaker issue, it's a matter of the studios to make money and are pushing 3D to directors who are not comfortable or do not like 3D.”

So, Cameron remains the outspoken auteur, but he does seem to have a point when it comes to the ubiquity of the format. Not that we’ll be expecting the Avatar sequels in 2D, mind…

Cameron also added that he expects to start work on his long-awaited Battle Angel adaptation in 2017 (presumably when he's winding down work on his Avatar trilogy). Sounds like he'll be a busy man for some time yet.

According to the logic of Shawn Levy’s movie, 40 is the new 80. that’s really the only way to explain the predicament its two middle- aged protagonists, Billy (Vince Vaughn) and Nick (Owen Wilson), face.

After all, they’re completely side-swiped when their boss informs them that their careers – selling high-end analogue watches – have come to an abrupt end, leaving them to flail around in a digital world they don’t understand.

When an attempt to work for nick’s brother-in-law (Will Ferrell, in a funny cameo) doesn’t pan out, the pair sign up for a Google internship.

Naturally, most of the interns are half our heroes’ age, and in order to beat the odds, Billy and Nick have to endure traumas both physical and emotional in a programme that seems more like a sadistic reality show.

Despite the exaggerated cluelessness of its leads, there’s a sobering truthfulness to The Internship which undercuts the obvious comedy.

As the middle-aged duo risk it all for an entry-level position, it’s hard to forget the similar scenarios being played out for real after the recession.

Get beyond the grim reality and you get to the real heart of the film: Vaughn and Wilson. eight years on from Wedding Crashers , the pair successfully rekindle their irascible shtick.

Sure, the years might have mellowed them but the bromance is definitely still there.

First released on a double bill with My Neighbour Totoro in Japan (and showing as such in selected UK venues in an HD restoration), this 1988 wartime drama is Totoro’s dark, adult flipside.

Death haunts every frame as a brother and sister escape from the American firebombing of Kobe that kills their mother.

Charting their journey through the ruined landscape, Isao Takahata’s powerful anti-war movie is all the more harrowing for the care we invest in its beautifully drawn children.

Like post-nuclear worrier When The Wind Blows (1986), it’s a cartoon with the power to chill you.

Dispatched to the French colony of new Caledonia to solve a hostage crisis, crack negotiator – and writer/ director – Mathieu Kassovitz finds himself in the middle of a sweaty stalemate.

The local freedom fighters want independence, the army wants them dead, and French politicians want it over.

Book-ended by thrilling combat sequences, this tragic true story is absorbing, but let down by two crucial flaws.

At a compassion-sapping 136 minutes, it’s far too long, and Kassovitz’s characterless central turn makes a worthy personal statement veer close to vanity project.

With James Cameron hard at work on the forthcoming Avatar sequels, it has fallen to producer Jon Landau to give an update on how the back-to-back productions are coming along.

As is appropriate for a film series that has changed the face of modern filmmaking, Cameron is doing some more innovating with the sequels, including scenes of underwater performance capture.

“We have kept a team of digital artists on from Avatar in order to test how we can create performance capture underwater,” says Landau. “We could simulate water [ in computer graphics ], but we can't simulate the actor's experience, so we are going to capture performance in a tank.

“They are looking at what we did before with reflective markers," continues Landau, before stressing the importance of, "how we record reference photography so that as we are going through the editorial process and the postproduction workflow, we can see what the actors did and make sure that the final performance up on screen represents that.”

The producer went on to confirm that the sequels will “wrap up the story arc of our two main characters”, just in case you’d forgotten there’s a story to be told alongside all the technological bells and whistles.

Avatar 2 is tentatively scheduled to open in the UK on 19 December 2014, with Avatar 3 set to arrive on 18 December 2015. Don't be suprised if they don't meet that deadline...