Stephen Chbosky directs Jacob Tremblay, Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson in this saccharine tale of a facially disfigured rich kid starting school and exposing the loneliness in everyone’s life.

What does Owen Wilson do? How can he fund the millionaire’s lifestyle of his miserable family? In real life the kid with Treacher Collins syndrome would be the only kid at that school not being bullied. This isn’t real life. This is more puke worthy than that. Manipulative bunkum.

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James Franco directs himself, Dave Franco and Alison Brie in this recreation of the making of “the worst movie ever made,” The Room, and the strange relationship between its principals, Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero.

A hipster Ed Wood but with little of the heart. My fear going in wasn’t that I never wanted to watch The Room. The idea of being in a roomful of unproductive yuppies screeching with laughter at the end product of a group of people who had least tried to create some art repulses me. My fear was it would be merely a cynical spoof of their failed endeavour. The first hour almost won me over, the Francos clearly have a loyal affection for their true story counterparts. Some chuckles are elicited from their enthusiastic awfulness. But after that hour you realise the story has little humour away from the calculated schadenfreude and little drama away from a bit of salacious on-set gossip about elevated nobodies. When they devote an extra 10 minutes of runtime before the end credits to recreating scenes from the film they couldn’t fit into the narrative, you realise what this all is… expensive celebrity karaoke to a song you wouldn’t bother listening to by the original artist. Ed Wood didn’t just make you want to watch Glen Or Glenda?, it crystallised its overlooked decency and ambition, while The Disaster Artist is merely a dull film about a bad joke.

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Takashi Miike directs Takuya Kimura, Hana Sugisaki and Sōta Fukushi in this hyperviolent samurai revenge actioner.

Blood worms. They keep you alive forever and seal up any wound or dismemberment. Perfect if you need to kill a thousand fucking samurai over three hours. Sometimes in relentless droves, other times in fantastically costumed one-on-one marathon duels, duels with villians so stunningly designed you want to start collecting the Blade of the Immortal action figure range from Kenner. Viciously slapstick and touchingly involving, this mixes the bad taste body horror carnage Miike is infamous for, with the more sumptuous period setting he has toyed with recently in the equally well made 13 Assassins and Hara-Kiri.

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George Clooney directs Matt Damon, Julianne Moore and Noah Jupe in this fifties set neo-noir about an all American boy witnessing his family fall apart after an iffy home invasion. 

Clooney directs a dusty, dated Coen’s cast off script. All the good ideas have been reused elsewhere and only Oscar Issac’s brings any of the screwball verve that the Brothers themselves can ellicit from a cast. Part of the problem is, although there is murder and mayhem in this starchy suburban “utopia”, none of it comes at you from left of field, it all feels rather obvious. Pedestrian even. There is a subplot involving the arrival of the new first black family next door and the rabid mob who protest their presence. The joke might be that they are being objected to while far worst things are going on across the driveway. But these glimpses of stoic heroism never gel into the run of the mill stranglings, poisoning and bludgeoning going on with All American honkys we stick distractingly with.

5

Wally Pfister directs Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany in this sci-fi movie about a dying computer genius who uploads his personality into an evolving super computer. 

A beautiful and occasionally haunting movie scuppered by an uncertain tone (you get the feeling someone really wanted the cold Kubrickian drama to be an action movie) and lifeless performances. Not as bad as its toxic reputation suggests, but still wasteful of some expertly conceived imagery and some potentially cinematic ideas.

4

Michael Haneke directs Isabelle Huppert, Jean- Louis Trintignant and Fantine Harduin in this cold farce about a disconnected upper class Calais family. 

Often feeling like a Haneke Greatest Hits Tour (murderous children filming their crimes, old relatives wanting to be euthanised, untrustworthy relationships between poshos and their immigrant servants) finally proves inconsequential. It is frothy and glossy rather than intellectual or rattling. Just as it has the Haneke seal of quality on it, does not mean he has anything new to say, or fertile ideas to re-explore. It feels very much like a placeholder made by a director because he could fund a film this year, rather than he should. It is sunnily shot, Fantine Harduin puts in a good child performance as the bad seed among the bad eggs, and the few moments when the family interact with the local dispossessed African immigrants have a laugh-worthy, open mouth shock.

4

Richard Fleischer directs Lee Marvin, Gary Grimes and Ron Howard in this revisionist western following three farmboys who try to emulate the life and crimes of a violent but charismatic bank robber they cross paths with. 

Standard product that tries to be as palatable for the kids as The Cowboys was, while still somehow wanting to match the grit and tragedy of The Wild Bunch. It manages neither, struggling to walk the same path as the superior Bad Company. The loss of innocence is effecting, the robberies have an inept shock to them, and Marvin’s untrustworthy fairy godmother figure is surface level alluring. Just as you’d expect from one of the dying genre’s last true stars, he makes the best impression in a role that might as well have been tailored for his magnificent presence. But even if you are a fan of his and the form, this is often merely workable at best.

6

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger direct Eric Portman, Laurence Olivier and Anton Walbrook in this World War II propaganda thriller imagining Nazis on the run in Canada. 

The inverse of One of Our Aircraft is Missing , this depicts a group of (mostly) despicable hun running roughshod over Western freedoms. It works really well though, both as a thriller in a mode not dissimilar to Predator or Centurion,  and as a didactic piece to encourage the States not to deal with Hitler and his values. While it may lack the magic of their technicolour fantasy work, The Archers make striking use of rural Canadian life in stiff juxtaposition to the fugitives’ politics. The Nazis interact with, and are bested by, continually decent sorts, whether it be Larry Olivier’s bullish hunter, a community of sweet Hutterites or Lesley Howard’s gentleman explorer. It may force its points across bluntly, but beyond these forgivable manipulations, it proves a tight little adventure.

9

Christian Duguay directs Peter Weller, Roy Dupuis and Jennifer Rubin in this Philip K Dick inspired future war thriller about killer weapons hidden among us. 

An underwhelming first act and an equally lacklustre finale hobble a neat little premise. Weller is gruffly enjoyable as the battle hardened lead grunt and the FX are pretty good (and cleverly deployed) considering the low budget. But whenever these two undeniably pleasurable positives get abandoned for any other business the movie reveals its pedestrian lack of ambition. Watchable.

6

Nikolaj Arcel directs Alicia Vikander, Mads Mikkelsen and Mikkel Følsgaard in this true story period drama about a love triangle in the Danish Court between a mad, young king, his tormented trophy wife and a radical physician. 

Beautiful people in historical fineries swing between beastly behaviour and passionate affection to distracting enough effect. It starts like Marie Antoinette, shifts into the tone of Ridicule and ends up reaching towards being The Crucible. It never quite meets the quality of those mature, harsher re-enactments but it frames Vikander and Mikkelsen to look their most scrumptious and allows Følsgaard to explode vividly as the brutish fool of a young king.

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