Set in the Midwest in 1967, this is perhaps the most autobiographical film the Coen Brothers have ever made. It is also the most dense in terms of plot and features some of the most complex characters in the Coen's career. It is also about as far away from No Country For Old Men as you can get.

Larry Gopnik is a physics professor whose life gets thrown into turmoil when his wife abruptly announces she is leaving him for an overbearing smooth talker. His brother Arthur has been sleeping on his couch and shows no signs of leaving any time soon, something that irritates Larry's nose-job seeking daughter no end; Arthur stays in the bathroom far longer than even a teenage girl. His son, Danny, is smoking pot and listening to Jefferson Airplane while he is supposed to be studying the Torah for his bar mitzvah. On top of this he has a gun-toting redneck living next door, a failing student who is bribing and threatening him and anonymous letters threatening his chance at tenure. Overwhelmed, he turns to religion to help him through. But can religion really help one become "a serious man"?

Opening with a flashback to an earlier time in a Polish shetl, the film's multiple themes are set up before the main story even begins. And what themes they are! Man's search for meaning in life, the existence of God, pattern and randomness in the universe, and the solitude of the human condition are all touched on here. It sounds heavy, and in many ways it is. But it is also extremely funny; outrageously so in places.

The detail in this film is outstanding, with props and costumes offering sly insights into characters. The little known actors in the lead roles give outstanding performances of great depth and subtlety. And this has one of the best endings of any film this year, one that will have you thinking for days after the screening, and probably coming back for a second viewing. Which would be very worthwhile because this is a film that both deserves and demands multiple viewings.

web: youtube

Based on the highly successful novel by Steig Larssen, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a taut and twisty thriller. Mikael is a journalist who has been sentenced to three months in prison following his revealing of a financier’s dodgy tax shelters. Still at large while waiting for the date his incarceration is to begin, he is contacted by an industry tycoon, Venger, who has a forty-year-old mystery he would like solved. Impressed by Mikael's journalistic work, and his tenacity when he knows he is onto something, Venger hires him to try and get some answers.

Mikael moves to Venger's island community and begins investigating, helped with his odd quest by a Goth woman hacker, Elsbeth. Elsbeth has a criminal past of her own, and is reluctant to give away anything about her past.

I can't say much more about the plot without giving it away, so I'll stop here. Anyone who has read the book is likely to be a little disappointed by how compressed the novel has become in this screen translation, despite it being close to two and a half hours long. But for those who haven't read it, there are enough plot twists, dramatic turns and unsavoury characters to fill two regular movies. With news of a US version going into production already, make sure you don't miss the Swedish original!

web: loshombresquenoamabanalasmujeres.es

trailer: youtube trailer

Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut is a surprisingly affecting film about the newly re-popularised sport of roller derby. Ellen Page stars as Bliss, a small town Texas girl whose personality is being smothered out of her by an over bearing stage mother who insists she compete in outdated beauty pagents. On her own one day, Bliss picks up a flyer about a roller derby match in Austin, the nearest town of consequence, and sneaks off with best friend in tow. Instantly drawn to the noise, violence and colourful personas, she decides to try out.

Against the odds, pink Barbie skates and all, she makes it and is renamed Babe Ruthless. As she and the team compete, train and bond, Bliss learns about herself and begins a tentative relationship with a wannabe rockstar.

Page proves once a gain what an appealing and talented young actor she is and as her mother, Marcia Gay Harden is perfectly awful. The supporting cast, made up of a mixture of roller derby pros and actors, are uniformly strong and bring with them a real sense of the power and camaraderie that derby is all about.

web: foxsearchlight.com/whipit

Deserving winner of the Montreal Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize, Noodle is a touching film in the same vein as Kolya. Mira is an air hostess, twice widowed by Israel’s on-going war with Palestine. She lives with her sister, Gila, who has marital difficulties of her own. Mira gets off a flight and returns home, only to be begged by the Chinese housekeeper to watch her son while she runs an urgent errand. The housekeeper never returns, leaving Mira, Gila and their friends to contend with a little Chinese boy who they cannot communicate with.

The film develops the relationship between Mira and "Noodle" slowly and naturally, showing how the little boy grows from being a small alien, to a real and important center to her family.

Bonded by Noodle and the task of re-uniting him with his probably deported mother, Mira and those around her, all find their life changed for the better by being involved with the little boy. The audacious plan Mira comes up with is both thrilling and engaging, involving the entire cast of characters.

Beautifully acted, and sensitively directed, this is an heartwarming, beautiful little film that celebrates the goodness in human nature, rather than examining the darkness, which is generally the case.

trailer: moviestrailer.org

James Napier Robinson’s first feature is a welcome addition to the pantheon of low-mid budget digital features being produced in New Zealand and features an impressive cast of well known local actors. This is a taut thriller that keeps you guessing throughout its tense 100 minute running time.

Stanley is a young author whose crime novel, under a pseudonym, has sold by the thousand. In the midst of his second novel, about real life killer Harry Jenson, he is tortured by nightmares, completely blocked and unable to deliver the draft on time. He asks his agent to get the deadline extended, something the agent refuses to do, suggesting that Stanley gets away for a few days to clear his head.

So Stanley leaves the hustle and bustle of Sydney for the remote New Zealand bush, joining seven others, including guide, Cody, for a tramping expedition. He wakes up after the first night in the bush with blood on his shirt, the man asleep next to him having had his throat cut. He hides the bloody shirt before anyone sees it, unsure if he has killed the man in a fugue state.

As suspicion falls on everyone in the party, tension rises, reaching a feverish pitch when, after a second night, another in the group is also found dead.

To give away more of the plot would be to spoil the film for you, but suffice to say, there are many twists and turns as the remaining trampers try to uncover the identity of the killer in their midst. Napier focuses the camera on his actor's faces to great effect, dragging us into their emotional state as he whips us through the myriad possibilities the plot throws up. The cinematography is wonderful, capturing the wild beauty of the bush, a perfect backdrop to this creepy psychological thriller.

trailer: youtube.com

web: www.imnotharryjenson.com

This very charming and witty Norwegian film is reminiscent of Amelie, only the Audrey Tataou character is a man who remains nameless throughout the film. He is an insecure young man whose life is turned upside down by the sudden arrival in his life of Marianne. He never really invites Marianne in, but she turns up, more and more often, and finally starts bringing her furniture to his apartment.

He is unsure if he really wants a girlfriend, but is helpless in the face of her determination and force of personality. He starts spending time at the local swimming pool where he befriends Glenn, a world-weary character who advises him to sleep with her if he wasn't to get rid of her.

This only makes Marianne cling more.

She decides that the pair will take a train trip around Europe, but not long into the trip they are separated, she wanting to stay in the countryside with a bizarre couple they met, and he moving on to Paris. In Paris he meets a young French girl with whom he has far more in common with than Marianne.

Visually inventive, laugh-out-loud funny and often scream-at-the-screen frustrating, Gone With The Woman has much to recommend it. Less a battle of the sexes than an intimate portrait of what happens when two completely different people fail to communicate, this is one of the funniest films I've seen in ages and one I urge you not to miss.

web: website - www.nfi.no

trailer: youtube trailer

This charming French film charts the lives of a family of five through first loves, first jobs, family gatherings and departures. At the center is Marie-Jeanne, a mother struggling with her firstborn leaving home. Taxi-driver husband , Robert has his own problems, as do all three of their children, Albert, Raphael and Fleur. Sketching out a family portrait over twelve years, the film focuses on five days in the life of each family member, all of which resonate within the family in different ways.

web: www.lepremierjour-lefilm.com

Roald Dahl's beloved book about a wily fox outwitting three mean-spirited farmers has delighted children for years, and this big-screen adaptation will too. Wes Anderson's quirky visual style is tailor-made for this kind of film, and he does not disappoint with this vibrant stop-motion adaptation.

The story is, like most of Dahl's work, simple on the surface, but hinting at more serious things underneath. Mr. Fox is a good husband and father, providing for his family the only way he knows how: by thieving from the neighbourhood farmers. When the farmers decide to fight back, the fox family and several others, are trapped underground with no way to escape except to dig. And dig they do, outwitting the hapless farmers in the process.

Featuring a veritable constellation of star power in the voice talent. Fantastic Mr. Fox will delight adults as well as children with its expressive animation and visual flair.

web: www.fantasticmrfoxmovie.com

This endearing, funny and extremely clever film owes as much to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich as to Russian author Gogol. Paul Giamatti plays Paul Giamatti, an actor struggling with the role of Uncle Vanya. He is getting weighed down by the character and is finding it increasingly difficult to function in real life. He stumbles upon an article in The New Yorker about a doctor who extracts souls in order to lighten the burden some people are carrying.

Desperate for anything that will make things easier for him, Paul goes to the clinic. Naturally he is full of questions, all of which the doctor manages to answer quickly and without fuss. So Paul allows himself to be placed in the soul-extracting machine, something which resembles an oversized MRI. Afterwards he is surprised to find his soul looks like a chickpea.

Without his soul Paul is a different man. He is light hearted, breezy, comic. And terrible as Vanya. He returns to Soul Storage to discover his soul missing from its vault. Desperate for something to help him, he rents a Russian poet's soul while he tries to find his own. His investigations lead him to discover that there is a huge black market for Russian souls and that his own soul may well have made its way to Russia in soul mule, Nina.

There's more, but to reveal what happens next would be to reveal too much. Suffice to say this is a very clever film, full of interesting ideas about identity and what makes a person themselves. The film would not work without Giamatti who manages to play himself with and without a soul, to great dramatic effect. While there are some ideas that don't get the attention they perhaps deserve, and a plot line that gets suddenly dropped part way through, there is plenty of food for thought here. And did I mention that it is also extremely funny?

web: www.coldsoulsthemovie.com

Widely heralded as the saviour of British independent film making, Eran Creevy's debut feature is a hard-hitting, emotionally devastating look into the life of a petty crack dealer in the London suburbs. Four years earlier, following the accidental drug death of a girl, Chris fled London. He has settled in Manchester and is quite comfortable there, living a white-collar existence. He returns to London and looks up his best mate, Shifty, who had been dealing weed and took the fall for Chris four years ago.

What follows is a day in the life of the crack dealer as Chris trails around after him, trying to find out why his friend, so brilliant at school, has sunk to such lows. Meanwhile, Shifty's supplier, Glen, is out to get him, trying to set him up to look bad. And one of Shifty’s clients, Trevor, is desperate to get his hands on some gear, despite having no cash and being kicked out by both his wife and his employer.

There is no glamour to this life and Creevy does an admirable job in capturing the grim squalour. Shifty's devout brother's house is an oasis of cleanliness and order into which Shifty brings his business, with devastating consequences. This is a film about the reality of drug taking and drug dealing: sneaky people doing nasty things behind closed doors.

Made for less than $100 000 pounds, this film looks incredible. The actors are uniformly good, especially Riz Ahmed as Shifty. After so many Guy Ritchie imitators trying to capture the dark underbelly of the British drug trade, this film is refreshingly without gunplay. Gritty, realistic and often heart-rendingly horrible, this is a tragic tale of friendship gone awry and a life that may be wasted.

web: www.shiftyfilm.com

With Sea Shepherd's actions in our own waters making headlines recently, there seems no better time to screen this outstanding documentary about the organisation's founder, Paul Watson. The film takes us through Paul's activist background; his first claim to fame is having been the youngest founding member of Greenpeace. Once he realized that Greenpeace were primarily about raising funds and awareness and less about actually protecting the ocean, he left them to form his own organization to do more.

Now he is best known as the vigilante environmentalist who arrests illegal fishermen and shark-finners (see Sharkwater which we screened in 2008 for his scene stealing turn). This documentary covers several of Paul's most recent and noteworthy accomplishments including the time Paul saw Japanese fishermen fishing illegally. He rammed their boat after documenting their criminal act. The Japanese vessel filed a complaint against him. Paul admitted guilt and provided his videotape of the infarction as evidence to the courts. The fishermen never turned up to court and ended up dropping all charges, claming the event never happened.

A more disturbing section of the film deals with the Canadian culling of baby fur seals. Not only is the slaughter of these beautiful creatures horrific to watch, but the spewing invective coming from the cullers at the Sea Shepherd crew is full of blind, misguided hatred.

In the face of such a glowing portrayal, it would be easy to imagine that director Ron Colby kept something off camera, some darker side of Watson that he doesn’t wish to show. But Paul is an open book, admitting openly to damaging vessels whose occupants are performing illegal acts. But he also proudly claims never to have killed or injured anyone in the process. He has complete knowledge of maritime law, and is enforcing it in places where no national government is doing so.

Charismatic and committed, Paul Watson is a vigilante, but not in the classic sense of the word. The cause he champions is an important one, and he and his organization are clearly taking on a role that nobody else is willing to. This film will, I'm sure, bring more people together to support him.

web: www.pirateforthesea.com

The wedding farce is almost a sub-genre in its own right, and this Algerian/French entry into it, is a genuinely amusing and always charming affair. Mounir (director Lyes Salem) is driven to build his status within his small village. He calls himself a horticultural engineer, but is really just a gardener for The Colonel, the village’s big cheese, often mentioned but rarely seen. His sister, Rym, is narcoleptic, given to falling asleep at key moments, not exactly prime wife material. This has made Mounir something of a laughingstock.

Rym though, has been seeing Mounir's best friend, Khliffen, on the sly. He is too shy to ask her hand. When Mounir gets drunk one night, and announces to the village that a rich foreigner is wooing Rym, she decides this is a great opportunity to force Khliffen's hand. Of course the foreigner is fictitious and the lie spins out of control.

While there is nothing new about this story, it is light-hearted and good fun to watch. Salem had brought together a genial team of actors all of whom perform well. Visually the film is assured and I know I for one, will be eagerly waiting to see what this talented Algerian comes up with next.

Last year's Young @ Heart showed us how singing in a choir could be an uplifting and life affirming activity for people of any age and ethnicity. The Choir confirms this, and adds to it the redemptive qualities that singing in a group can have for a group of hardened criminals.

Shot over four years, The Choir takes us inside Leeukwop Prison, South Africa's largest penitentiary. Jabulani, a teenaged robber, and his fellow inmates struggle for survival, rebellious and angry. When Coleman, a wily old bank robber asks him to join the prison choir, his life is changed forever. The film follows the choir as it prepares to perform at the National Prisoner Choir Competition.

The prisoners are amazingly open, Davie having spent considerable time in the prison, gaining their trust. The stories they tell are often horrific, but we need to see where these people have come from if we are to fully appreciate the distance they have come. Music has changed their lives in such an immense and significant way that it is impossible not to be overcome by emotion when the beautiful voices soar.

This is an inspiring film about finding hope and freedom in one of the unlikeliest places on earth.

trailer: youtube trailer

A tense revenge thriller, Law Abiding Citizen opens with a horrific home invasion in which Clyde (Gerard Butler) is forced to watch as his wife is killed and unspeakable atrocities (thankfully offscreen) are done to his daughter. The perps are caught, but through some legal loophole, get off easily, something that Clyde finds unforgivable. He is bent on revenge.

The form his revenge takes is best not gone into here for it will spoil your viewing pleasure. But let it be known that his resourcefulness is almost super-human. As the unexplainable crimes mount up, District Attorney (Foxx) is as determined to take the killer down as he is on getting his revenge.

Often quite daft and logic-defying, this film remains compelling even in its more preposterous moments. Both leads have a gritty determination that informs their every move, while director Gray manages to build layers of suspense and dread into each consecutive scene until the tension level is near unbearable.

Infinitely enjoyable while in the cinema, this one will not stand up to much post-film discussion or dissemination, but really, if you've spent an entertaining hour and a half, who cares?

web: www.lawabidingcitizenfilm.com