Mark Waters directs Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Cox and Brett Kelly in this soulless cash-in on the cult cynical Christmas classic.

I laughed loudly once near the beginning of this belated sequel to a personal festive favourite and I feel guilty. Not because the humour was in bad taste (it fucking should be) but because I’m sure it was goodwill rather than accidental good writing that tickled out this solitary reaction. Quickly you realise the relentless bleakness of the original has been replaced by frat boy naughtiness… and not even the mindlessly funny kind. Then I had a nap but no further laughter from the quarter full screening woke me and when I opened my eyes of my own volition we were all exactly where we already were when I nodded off. Willie Soke of the original was a failure at his lowest ebb, all transgressive behaviour was the hilarious lashings out of a man who has long ago given up, his partner was a midget who nearly always had the upper hand, and the kid was a fucking enigma who baffled us as much as the thief – a real funny dynamic for the black hearted. Here Soke gets to insult his partner with achingly obvious jibes, who is pointedly always the butt of the joke, while the kid disappointingly just goes full retard. About as funny as a used chemotherapy drip… at least one of those went through its gloopy poisonous motions with some hope of a positive result. Disgraceful given the first film’s rare qualities… I can’t believe I’ve wasted quite so many keystrokes on this humourless cheap slither of shit.

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James Schamus directs Logan Lerman, Sarah Gadon and Tracy Letts in the Philip Roth adaptation involving a determined Jewish student’s discovery of the unfairness of compromise.

Schamus has been part of movie landscape for decades – I know and rate him best from his rather awesome collaborations with Ang Lee – strange then that he chose a lesser Roth work to unleash his long bottled up craftsmanship and deft cinematic touch on as his own debut. Indignation makes a fine companion piece to Ewan McGregor’s underrated take on American Pastoral, whereas many critics felt the actor turned new director was swamped by the epic sweep and meta narrative of the original work, here the slimmer tome gives Schamus more room to explore Roth’s very recognisable set list of lust, repression, Americanism, Jewishness, conformity and beliefs. In fact in a few (later echoed) establishing shots of rest home wallpaper and the Korean War he manages to skip smartly over the whole issue of imagined perspectives and unreliable narrators that seem to trip most Roth adaptations up. As for the plot itself, it initially feels inconsequential – there’s a sexually awkward romance with a damaged but unnervingly confident girl (Gadon stands out), family issues back home ignored, the alien environment of a passive aggressively Christian university… but then midway through comes a WOW moment… a sustained single scene of sparring dialogue, a 10 minute verbal joust between our lead and the Dean… and it wears you down like all the wars in the world are being fought over a sunlit mahogany desk. It is a captivating achievement, beautifully acted, precisely scripted and leaves you breathless. Everything that happens around it is well rendered and engrossing (if less weighty than even I care to admit… at times almost to the point of cliche) and for all Schamus’ fine direction, Gadon’s starmaking turn and that scene this should really be rated far higher by me. I guess I just preferred the overwhelming scope and reaching ambition of McGregor’s riskier punt. With Indignation you get a faultless tale oft told (there seemed one of these mid century blazer, ties, prejudice and romance bildungsromans a week in the early 90s) but we are left with a film you admire rather than love.

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Mary Harron directs Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe and Chloë Sevigny in this blackly satirical adaption of Bret Easton Ellis’ yuppie serial killer novel. 

Not a movie you can watch with mother. This amps up the underlying comedy (it has more laugh out loud moments than most pure genre pieces) and psychological paranoia of Ellis’ 80s masterpiece while only slightly toning down the violence – the pornographic sex, obscene consumption, “trendy” soundtrack and nihilist misogyny all pointedly remain. Disturbingly Bale has never quite inhabited a role ever so snugly again, his Patrick Bateman is a predatory fool struggling in a world of guileless idiots. While Dafoe’s cop sparkles… he might just be asking routine questions, might rightly suspect our vile antihero or might be a symptom of his own suppressed conscience… this supporting turn is an absolute hoot – each line delivery slamoning from a differing perspective to unnerve you and the protagonist expertly. A near perfect adaptation of an “unfilmable” (and often purposefully repulsive) modern classic, a forensic autopsy of the yuppie hedonism and sociopathic practice of the Reagan era.

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