A film called The Quiet Ones that starts with a young patient being kept awake by blasting Slade’s ‘70s anthem ‘Cum On Feel The Noize’ into her room?  It’s a welcome shot of black humour – and glam rock – suggesting Hammer Films’ new entry in its resurrected horror slate might buzz with a little more wit and originality than your average scary movie.

Unfortunately that feeling lasts little longer than a Slade single and all too quickly we’re back in a depressingly familiar groove. If Hammer’s previous spectral story, The Woman in Black, was a worldwide chart-topper, this lackluster follow-up is unlikely to bother the box-office hit parade. Read more

After Drive comes the slow motion, mangled wreck that is Only God Forgives.

In the J.G. Ballard novel (and David Cronenberg movie adaptation) Crash, a group of nihilistic thrill seekers stage automobile accidents for twisted kicks and you can’t help wonder if director Nicholas Winding Refn is operating in a similar way here. Drive’s critical and commercial acclaim put him on Hollywood’s Formula 1 starting grid; here, he’s very deliberately tried to sabotage his race to spin out in a glorious fireball. And while some see great beauty in a spectacular crash n’ burn – and admire the foolish wilfulness that caused it – the end result is still a write-off. Read more

No one succeeds at failure like the Coen Brothers. From exuberant comic dazzlers (Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski) to muted  character studies (The Man Who Wasn’t There, A Serious Man), their lead characters are expert underachievers, whose relentless, blackly humorous misfortunes are lovingly detailed by their unforgiving makers. The Coens, unlike their creations, get the job done. Read more

Imagine Wes Anderson adapting the Adrian Mole diaries; or, if you’d rather get all fancy (and writer-director Richard Ayoade frequently does), J.D Salinger’s seminal ’50s teen angst tome The Catcher in the Rye soaked up by the French New Wave.

Daunting inspirations all, especially for a British debut feature, where first-timers are usually in thrall to either Loach/Leigh kitchen sink-ism or Guy Ritchie-esque gangster leaning. Thankfully Submarine dives far deeper in its ambitions and surfaces with results so fresh and distinctive, it blows most other recent British films out of the water. Read more

Volver (2007)

Director / Screenplay: Pedro Almodóvar  Cinematography: José Luis Alcaine  Music: Alberto Iglesias

Stars: Penelope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas

* * * * 1/2

Three generations of women feel the pull of the ghosts of the past – quite literally with the return of their supposedly long-deceased mother. Fantasy drama from Pedro Almodóvar starring Penelope Cruz.

“Volver” means “to return” or “coming back” in Spanish and, fittingly, director Pedro Almodóvar’s sixteenth feature revisits many of the themes and ideas that fans of his rich melodramas have come to love. As with many of his films, women, whether on the verge of a nervous breakdown or not, dominate. Volver is all about Almodóvar’s mothers, sisters and daughters, his overwhelming respect for their defiance of life’s travails and feckless men. Read more