50/50 2011 USA Cert (UK): 15 : 100 mins Directors: Jonathan Levine Cast: Anjelica Huston, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Philip Baker Hall Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the somewhat portentously named Adam Lerner, a young writer working for a National Public Radio station in Seattle, who is told out of the blue he has spinal cancer with a 50-50 chance of recovery. He gets along with a little help and hindrance from his friends, family and fellow patients, and the movie and Adam himself treat his situation with considerable humour. The absence of self-pity and sentimentality is something of a change. The women involved, however, are given a rather hard time. American: The Bill Hicks Story 2009 UK Cert (UK): 15 : 110 mins Directors: Matt Harlock, Paul Thomas Cast: Bill Hicks Bill Hicks, who died of cancer in 1994 at the age of 32, was a stand-up comedian from a suburban, middle-class southern Baptist background. Hooked on performance from the age of 13, he evolved into a serious critic of American society. Hicks belonged to the mumbling, dragged-from-the-guts style of expressive, stream-of-consciousness comedy that developed from Lenny Bruce in the late 1950s, rather than the wisecracking, sardonic form of commentary associated with Bruce's contemporary, Mort Sahl. Anonymous 2011 Country: UK Cert (UK): 12A : 130 mins Directors: Roland Emmerich Cast: David Thewlis, Derek Jacobi, Edward Hogg, Jamie Campbell Bower, Joely Richardson, Mark Rylance, Rafe Spall, Rhys Ifans, Sir Derek Jacobi, Vanessa Redgrave, Xavier Samuel Welcome back to the world's oldest fully functioning conspiracy theory: that William Shakespeare did not write the plays and poems attributed to him. Screenwriter John Orloff and director Roland Emmerich have created an amusing and mischievous Blackadder-style romp, enlivened by cheerfully OTT performances from Vanessa Redgrave as the Queen, Rafe Spall as Will and Rhys Ifans as the Earl of Oxford. By the end, it looks as if Dan Brown has been allowed to smoke crack in a secret room in Anne Hathaway's cottage. Arrietty 2010 Japan Cert (UK): U : 94 mins Directors: Hiromasa Yonebayashi Cast: Keiko Takeshita, Mark Strong, Mirai Shida, Olivia Colman, Ryunosuke Kamiki The Borrowers turn Japanese as the children's classic is lovingly reworked by the studio that gave us Spirited Away The film is based on Mary Norton's 1950s Borrowers novels, in which miniature people live like mice under the floorboards. Here, the simple acquisition of a sugar cube takes on the suspense of a bank heist. Arrietty herself is a mini-teen curious to fly the family nest and learn more about the world, armed with a pin for a sword. But her illicit friendship with a sickly human boy threatens her family's secret existence and teaches her a thing or two about compatibility. Bridesmaids 2011 USA Cert (UK): 15 : 125 mins Directors: Paul Feig Cast: Chris O'Dowd, Ellie Kemper, Jill Clayburgh, Jon Hamm, Kristen Wiig, Matt Lucas Wiig plays Annie, a single woman with a failed cake shop business who is asked to be maid of honour for her best friend Lillian (played by another SNL alumna Maya Rudolph, daughter of 70s soul singer Minnie Ripperton). The appointment seems to trigger some kind of meltdown in Annie, who can only see her childhood friend's happiness as a reflection of her own misery. Her jealousy deepens when, at the lavish engagement party, Annie meets Lillian's "new best friend" Helen, played magnificently by Rose Byrne. Subtlety and character lift this hilarious comedy above the rest The Deep Blue Sea 2011 UK Cert (UK): 12A 98 mins Directors: Terence Davies Cast: Karl Johnson, Rachel Weisz, Simon Russell Beale Rattigan's characteristically well-made play is set on a single day in a dingy bedsit in north London. It begins with an act of despair as Hester, 40ish estranged wife of reserved, 50ish high court judge Sir William Collyer, attempts to commit suicide (a crime in those days) by gassing herself. This action is dictated by the callously offhand behaviour of her lover, the 30ish Freddie Page, a handsome, feckless, sexually vigorous ex-Battle of Britain pilot. Davies elicits outstanding performances from his central triangle, all sympathetic in their various ways, lacking in self-awareness and victims of sorts. The Descendants 2011 USA Cert (UK): 15 : 115 mins Directors: Alexander Payne Cast: Amara Miller, Beau Bridges, George Clooney, Judy Greer, Matthew Lillard, Michael Ontkean Matt is a workaholic lawyer, so dedicated to his legal practice that he's neglected his wife, Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie), a flirtatious beauty obsessed with speed sports on land and water, and their daughters, the 17-year-old Alexandra (Shailene Woodley), a heavy- drinking, drug-abusing semi-delinquent, and the rebellious, intellectually precocious, foul-mouthed Scottie (Amara Miller). Troubles descend on Payne's characters the way sorrows come to Claudius in Hamlet – "not single spies, but in battalions". Dreams of a Life 2011 UK Cert (UK): 12A : 90 mins Directors: Carol Morley Cast: Alix Luka-Cain, Cornell S John, Neelam Bakshi, Zawe Ashton One grim day in 2006, acting on account of rent arrears, Haringey council officials broke down the door of a bedsit in a housing complex above Wood Green Shopping City in north London. This was occupied by a single thirtysomething woman, Joyce Vincent, whose corpse these officials then discovered, slumped on the sofa in the light of the TV set, which had remained on. She had lain there dead for almost three years: so long that it was impossible to determine a cause of death. Drive 2011 USA Cert (UK): 18 : 95 mins Directors: Nicolas Winding Refn Cast: Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston, Carey Mulligan, Christina Hendricks, Kaden Leos, Oscar Isaac, Ryan Gosling He's a Hollywood stunt driver with a toothpick in the corner of his mouth, wearing a sleek bomber jacket with a scorpion on the back. Secretly, he also works for scary criminals as a wheelman, a getaway specialist; he gets top dollar, because he's the very best. With no fear, he can drive at terrifying speeds with extraordinary manoeuvrability; he has a sixth sense for cop cars and police helicopters. But then Irene's man gets out of the joint, still mixed up in rough stuff, and just for Irene's sake, Gosling does one last driving job on his behalf, which of course goes horribly wrong. But then Irene's man gets out of the joint, still mixed up in rough stuff, and just for Irene's sake, Gosling does one last driving job on his behalf, which of course goes horribly wrong. The Green Wave 2010 Country: Iran : 80 mins Directors: Ali Samadi Ahadi Cast: Payam Akhavan, Pegah Ferydoni, Shirin Ebadi Ali Samadi Ahadi's documentary blends phone footage, animation and to-camera interviews to follow the course of the Iranian green movement during the disputed re- election of Mahmud Ahmadinejad in June 2009. It's a film powered by the internet, in which the voices of Iran's reformists are relayed via blogpost readings and on-screen tweets to create a day-by-day account of events. Animator Ali Reza Darvish's drawings offer a flashcard guide to the protestors' emotional state; they're played skillfully across interviews with some of the thousands of imprisoned activists, as Ahadu pulls the curtain back on a government that was willing to imprison and torture its electorate. A blogger's quote lingers longest: "Endurance is the only option Iranians have." It's an immensely courageous, terribly sad statement. The Help 2011 USA Cert (UK): 12A : 146 mins Directors: Tate Taylor Cast: Allison Janney, Bryce Dallas Howard, Emma Stone, Jessica Chastain, Mike Vogel, Octavia Spencer, Sissy Spacek Young Skeeter (Emma Stone) coaxes tales of rage from the below-stairs help and ruffles the feathers of the town's fragrant, Stepford-style racists. Tate Taylor's polished, handsome yarn (culled from the Kathryn Stockett bestseller) boasts some bold play- acting from Bryce Dallas Howard (spiteful society belle) and Jessica Chastain (brittle trophy wife) though happily they're very much the support chorus here. Instead, centre stage goes to Stone (who it could be argued is more catalyst than character anyway), Viola Davis's stoic, seething Aibileen and Octavia Spencer's indomitable Minny, who delivers the film's bumper payload of revenge. Hit First, Hit Hardest 2010 Country: Denmark Cert (UK): 18 : 99 mins Directors: Michael Noer, Tobias Lindholm Cast: Dulfikar Al-Jabouri, Jacob Gredsted, Johan Philip Asbaek This prize-winning prison movie is the grim tale of a first offender convicted of violent assault and sent to the grimmest wing of a Danish jail, where he's exposed to endless brutality and humiliation by warders and experienced fellow inmates. Everything is seen from his point of view, and what we are shown is far removed from those old Warner Brothers "Big House" pictures where you made friends for life and had lifers for friends, and quite unlike the popular conception of Scandinavian penal institutions as liberal, clean, well-lighted places. Hugo 2011 France, USA Cert (UK): U : 126 mins Directors: Martin Scorsese Cast: Asa Butterfield, Ben Kingsley, Chloe Moretz, Christopher Lee, Emily Mortimer, Frances de la Tour, Helen McCrory, Jude Law, Ray Winstone, Richard Griffiths, Sacha Baron Cohen. Hugo (Asa Butterfield) has inherited a love of tinkering with machinery from his late father, and has quite recently taken over the job of superintending the station's clocks from his drunken uncle. Fate draws him into the orbit of a querulous old man, Georges (Ben Kingsley), who runs an old-fashioned shop on the station selling toys and doing mechanical repairs, assisted by his 12-year-old god-daughter, Isabelle.