Melancholia is divided into two chapters. The first is entitled "Justine" and focuses on a bride named Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and her partner Michael (Alexander Skarsgard), who are attending a party at a manor house. To the annoyance of her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her husband John (Kiefer Sutherland), both of whom have spent time and money organising the party for them, the couple arrive extremely late. The party is occupied by various friends and family. Most bizarre are Justine's parents who have separated and Justine's boss who has her followed. Their behaviour prompts Justine to find excuses to leave the guests and head outside. In the night sky is the planet Melancholia, which we are told is closing in on the Earth, with a chance of both worlds colliding. As the night continues, Justine's behaviour grows increasingly irrational. The second part of the film is named "Claire". It concentrates on how she is trying to help Justine recover, as well as her fear of the oncoming planet too.

The bad boy of cinema hasn't changed. The controversial Danish director Lars von Trier, founder of the abstract film movement Dogme 95, has forgone the nastiness of his previous films and retreated to a more conventional aesthetic styIe. There are thankfully no invisible doorknobs in Melancholia. It's visually spectacular at times, with appreciation towards the scope and grandeur of outdoor landscapes. While the styIe might have changed, the same mind games are intact, making this still very much a von Trier film. We're distracted by the film's lunacy, black sense of humour and sci-fi tropes but at its core it is a film about how two different women respond to death. That is very personal issue for von Trier, an admitted depressive, who claims to use filmmaking as a form of therapy. Melancholia seems like a more accessible story for the director to express himself through but there are familiar tricks at work. A common technique in von Trier's films, one that's sustained here, is his reliance on avatars rather than traditional character arcs. Characters in his films appear normal on the surface but then subvert their image through aberrant behaviour.

Using the image of a bride is smart because it feels less contrived than David Morse's bad cop in Dancer in the Dark (2000). The anxiety that a woman must feel towards marriage is understandable. Physically embodying this tentative role is Kirsten Dunst. She finds the perfect balance between concealing her unrest from the other guests, while selectively revealing her personal conflict to the audience through von Trier's tight close-up shots. The first half of this film genuinely shows her range and her cIass as an actress. She is aided immeasurably by von Trier's intelligent visual design too. The shifts in her personality are reflected in the film's lighting. The wedding party scenes, complete with fake smiles, are brightly lit and juxtaposed against the backrooms and manor grounds, which are dim and shadowy. Rather seamlessly, it shows the transition between each avatar's surface appearance and their true personality. There's a chilling scene where John intimidates Justine in the backrooms, revealing his own personal conflictions.

For much of the film's aesthetic control, there are a lot of strange details that are never explained. Still wearing her wedding dress, Justine climbs into a golf buggy, drives off into the night and then relieves herself on the course. One of the pleasures of Justine's dad (played by John Hurt) is to antagonise the waiters by putting spoons in his pockets and then calling the waiters to replace them with new ones. My favourite is the organiser who declares Justine has ruined the wedding and every time he walks past her he covers the side of his face. The first chapter is brimming with strange, sometimes funny, threads like this. I laughed at many of these oddball characters, assuming it was meant to be funny and intentionally absurdist. The oddity of the piece makes it appealing but it is also dramatically rich enough that it could have expanded into an entire film.

It is all the more disappointing that the second chapter, focussing on Claire, is dreary and morbid. All of the darkly funny characters are missing and Dunst's fine work isn't sustained because the emphasis rests on Gainsbourg's character. She can carry big scenes of emotion like she did in Antichrist (2009) but her character's hysteria over such an unlikely event is difficult to sympathise with. Worst still, we realise the purpose of the flawed side characters from the first half. The separation of a woman from the foundations of life, from her marriage, her job and her unlikeable family is, I think, reflective of von Trier's aversion to the American Dream. Justine, becoming a stark alien-like figure, announces that the Earth is evil and willingly accepts death because she will be free from the self-importance of others. Von Trier contrasts this attitude with Claire's protection of her child but given the film's inevitable resolution there is little question of which woman he sides with more. It is not a view of the world that I could ever find agreeable but that's Lars von Trier isn't it?

Jack (Adam Sandler) is an advertising executive under a strict deadline to try and bring actor Al Pacino in to star his commercial for Dunkin Donuts. Jack is a family man, married to his wife (Katie Holmes), with their two kids. Yet Jack is reluctant to welcome his sister Jill (also played by Sandler), who is visiting for Thanksgiving, into his house. She is loud, rude and awkwardly behaved but also lonely. Jack has the bright idea of trying to find her a man to keep her busy. At a basketball game Jack and Jill bump into Pacino himself and the man is immediately infatuated with Jack's sister. Jack tries to capitalised on this situation by encouraging her to call Pacino but she isn't particularly taken with him.

Early on in this unfunny comedy Sandler's character calls someone out for being borderline anti-Semitic. He tells the man that only he can do it because he is Jewish. Is this self-assurance? Sandler was born of Jewish parents in Brooklyn and that alone asks us whether it's acceptable for the likes Sandler to take aim at his own people, rather than someone else's ethnicity. It's meant to be self-parody rather than prejudice so it must be inoffensive right? The answer to me is no but neither Sandler nor his long-term director Dennis Dugan care. They've made no less than seven films together, which means he thinks Sandler is funny and bankable but not necessarily in that order. These people should not be making films. They have only the most threadbare knowledge of filmmaking and even less regard for storytelling itself. They hurriedly clump threads and skits together simply to cater to an audience that I will never understand: one unconcerned by characterisation, representation, reality or purpose. The only intention this film has is to judge characters solely on appearance rather than action. Jill is from Brooklyn and has a voice so grating that she makes Fran Drescher sound soothing. I had to put my fingers in my ears the first time I heard it. Sandler recycles a lot of the same clichés Drescher embraced in her show The Nanny years ago: the big hair, the excessive luggage, the voice. But this film is straight up mean-spirited. Jill is apparently so dumb that she can't even use a computer. She has no friends or social skills. By choosing to play herself himself Sandler immediately deprives her of being a normal person. She becomes literally a joke, without any semblance of charm or humanity. He intends for us to dislike her but for what reason? I think it says a lot about people's expectations of cinema knowing there was so much laughing and clapping during the screening.

Not only is the film cruel but it offers little more than a checklist of the lowest brand of comedy. Prepare for fart jokes, fat jokes, vision of ear wax, perspiration and armpit hair. People twenty and over find this appealing? It's dumb, obvious and not funny. I barely laughed once and the belated attempts at sentimental family values are condescending and hypocritical. I took most offense to the scene involving a Mexican soccer game. A Mexican character, a gardener of course, frequently makes jokes about stealing and sneaking into places but assures us he's joking. He introduces his kids who all have the same name and during a soccer match we keep cutting to his grandmother with one tooth, who keeps glaring at people. Pathetic. That's before the other Mexicans stuff huge chillies into their mouths. Also pathetic. I find it sad that in the space of a year we've had no less than two films associate Mexican food with diarrhoea. A lot will be made by how obnoxious Sandler is as Jill and quite rightly too. There's not a positive note in his performance. Yet this will overshadow how dull and bored he looks as Jack. A few years ago, P.T. Anderson took Sandler out of his comfort zone, giving him a performance so haunting that few could really believe that it was Happy Gilmore himself. Financially, Punch Drunk Love (2002) tanked badly and Sandler has never returned to anything as daring. He doesn't even look like he's trying here. I don't know why Katie Holmes agreed to this movie beyond a paycheck because she has nothing to do. And are things that dire for Pacino? He's depressing and his final scene involving a commercial is frankly an embarrassment. Though somehow the old dog draws a faint smile when he says: "Burn this". Self-parody? Self-assurance? Great awareness.

Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling) is a campaign manager for Democratic presidential candidate Governor Mike Morris (George Clooney). He is extremely optimistic about Morris' progressive values and says that he will support anything as long as he believes it. Stephen is employed under the watch of Paul (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who values loyalty most and is precariously trying to sway a senator (Jeffrey Wright) for his support so that they can take the crucial state of Ohio. Friction arises when Stephen has talks with rival democrat campaigner Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), who wants to hire him and promote his own candidate. This meeting is somehow traced by a hungry reporter in Ida (Marisa Tomei). Meanwhile, Stephen becomes loosely involved with Molly (Evan Rachel Wood), who is also hiding something.

Despite the enormity of the cast, The Ides of March is a modestly produced and tautly written political thriller. It throws us into the deep end of American politics and for outsiders this can be daunting. This is because much of the dialogue in the film, though occasionally witty and funny, is also highly loaded. It is essential to read between the lines here and that leaves us on the outskirts from many of these ambiguous characters. The detail placed on single lines of dialogue remains purposeful and requires our full attention. When Stephen asks how old a character is there are more subtle implications as they suss and test each other out. Accurately, it reminds us of how cautiously people in this domain have to tread in both their public and private lives. The battle is here not fought between conflicting parties of opposition but the single regime of the Democrats. It is ironic to see such infighting because we know they will present a united front to the public come the Presidential election. The facade of the characters is reflected through the film's subtle aesthetic design. Many scenes, such as the opening in a hall and a late confrontation in a restaurant, are cast in deep shadows. It gives the film and the characters a cIassic noir feel of mistrust and uncertainty. Contrastingly, day time scenes are photographed down long, cold brick corridors or behind panes of glass, contributing a sense of a highly isolated work environment. Towards its script and its design, this is a very delicately made film.

Although the start of the film is distancing and cold, a clever twist in the plot sees the narrative hit its straps. From this point the film becomes deeply entrenched with human power plays of loyalty, friendship and expendability. Due to the flawless casting and performances many of the intense confrontations, particularly late in the film, are of the highest order. Gosling has proven that this year that he has the range to not only play any type of role but to sustain his work at such a consistently high and entertaining level. He's exceptional again, with his role closer to the one he played in Half Nelson, as a man who is gradually deteriorating from the inside out. As Stephen's status gradually declines, the apparentness of his fear makes the performance human and compelling. Clooney again finds a way to tap into his own celebrity image because beneath the smiles and sincerity of his character is someone dark and entirely ruthless. The force in both of their performances peaks during a riveting showdown that reaches palpable levels of tension. Giamatti and Hoffman are in fine touch but Evan Rachel Wood holds her own too as the most vulnerable kind of damsel in distress. Closing the film is an ending that is part Shakespearean tragedy, hence the title taken from "Julius Caesar", but also Faust as well. It does not reach a high emotional peak but it's still a straight reminder of how quickly people are willing to sell their own moral and ethical values. We already knew that and it will not change the world but as long as cinema returns to a mature state of reminding us of the failure of human nature, like it does here, we're happy.

The title of this documentary is derived from T. S. Eliot's apocalyptic poem The Waste Land, where the world has been polluted by modernity. Director Lucy Walker isn't as bleak about her project because the film has the framework of a simple feel good story. Yet under the surface is anger, hurt and true humanity. It was appreciated through the eyes of artist Vik Muniz who obtained a new perspective on the world. He's extremely wealth and popular but prior to this film he was unsatisfied with his materialist lifestyIe. On the edge of Rio de Janeiro is Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest garbage dump. "Catadores" or pickers are people hired by the ACAMJG (Association of Collectors of the Metropolitan Landfill of Jardim Gramacho) to organise the garbage there into recycles so the materials can be sold. Vik initially intended to paint the catadores with rubbish since he is adept in collecting everyday things for his projects. One of his most famous works is called "Sugar Children", where he used sugar from the plantations in St. Kitts to develop images of the children working there. The purpose of this is to retain a tangible connection to his subjects as he constructs the works. It seems to remind him of what he is really illustrating, physically and metaphorically.

This same method surfaced during the Waste Land project. He discovered that beneath the rubbish were real people who suffered and sometimes didn't even know their own situations. Vik's wife commented that some of them are in denial and that taking them out of their environments would potentially disrupt their minds. It was a valid point because many of the people working on the landfill had been there since childhood. They scavenged through the enormous rubbish piles willingly but were smart enough to organise it into piles so it could be sold and recycled efficiently. They showed their colour and intelligence to Vik through some of their quotes like '99 cans is not 100' and 'it's not rubbish because it can be recycled'. His empathy is clearly articulated in the documentary. He said that he used to grow up in poverty and suggested that he could have been working in the landfill. This is what developed his connection on camera and why he chose to make them the focus of the works. He auctioned off the paintings he made of them so that he could use the money to improve their lives. One of the most humorous paintings Vik design was a recreation of Jacques-Louis David's "The Death of Marat" in an old tub.

The cIass elements of Waste Land are its most surprising socio-political concerns. Many of the pickers stated they were frowned upon by people, who were not only wealthy, but well-educated Brazilians too. One of the common responses was that they don't care about being dirty because it was a more honest line of work than the prostitution in the area. The pickers in the film are distinguishing because of their courageous attitude but also because their stories are moving too. One of the women commented that she hated working in the landfill. She described how when her son died his body was wrapped in a plastic bag. Another woman recalled how she saw a baby left in the rubbish, which seemed deeply affecting for her because she had children of her own. The hurt beneath these people, who were so diligent towards a thankless task, gives the film emotional pull.

It is a nice movie because it's about someone who simply wanted to use his own wealth, status and creativity to do better by others. It's very cleanly photographed and one of the most interesting shots is a wide angle of Vik sitting in his quarters, surrounded by all the junk on his wall, showing his isolation. This is just after he said that he was unfulfilled by how materialistic his life became. The only thing wrong with the film is that the occasional Portuguese subtitles are in a white font, which means that in bright areas they are sometimes impossible to read. If it were a Hollywood picture people would call Waste Land sentimental and predictable. Yet the importance of the documentary is that its subjects and their attitudes are real and that there are still genuinely kind and hardworking people in the world. I find that alone extremely refreshing.

A woman named Eva (Tilda Swinton) wakes up dislocated from her life. The outside of her house is covered in red paint. She is alone but tries to reassemble her life by applying for a job in an office. Everyone is interested in watching her but we are unsure why. Flashing back to an earlier time period and we see Eva living with her husband Franklin (John C. Reilly). They raise a child named Kevin but she struggles to cope with the baby. Over the years she forms a rivalry with her son Kevin because they have no understanding of each other's space. He grows up to become a problem child with little compassion and only a slightly stronger bond with his father. Their lives are further complicated by the arrival of their second child Lucy (Ursula Parker), who at one point loses one of her eyes. Cutting in between the two timelines is a tragic event that Eva keeps remembering and returning to.

This chilling adaptation of Lionel Shriver's novel succeeds in projecting two separate but common periods of isolation. The first is the most familiar to us. It is the conflict between an adult and a child's perspective of the world. A normal mother like Eva holds an expectation for her child to be obedient, while Kevin deliberately questions why at every opportunity, through his rebellious behaviour. It is rare that either character finds a cooperative middle ground. The rivalry between Eva and Kevin is fascinating to watch because their relationship shifts regularly between attention seeking and the need for separation and independence. Meanwhile, the present day scenes reveal that in the absence of children, parental instincts still remain and can develop into a deep case of paranoia. It forces a parent to always question the people and places in their vicinity. This is reflected through Lynne Ramsay's formal sophistication, a quality seen all too rarely in films this year and one that gives the story texture and immediacy.

Images in the film, such as the paint thrown over the house, or Kevin's chomping jaw, are tightly framed. The diegetic sounds of objects in the film, such as the rumbling of a sander, are amplified to deafening levels. The sound and visuals combine to characterise a deeply claustrophobic world, where a parent's caution of people and spaces separates them from normality. While the theme of isolation is carried between both timelines, the non-linear narrative frames the story like a mystery. The film is cleverly told because it understands how to build tension through its structure. Events in the present are selective but then revealed slowly through flashbacks. At one point Lucy is shown with an eye patch and then the film moves back in time, building up to what happened to her. Similarly, a woman slaps Eva in the face and it is over the course of the entire film that we learn why, with mesmerising results. These time shifts are deliberately disorientating, revealing Eva's disconnection from the present day. We're constantly trying to determine how we reached this emotional crisis point. The shifts also threaten to derail our understanding of the story but the film smartly settles into a more cohesive rhythm. Whether you know the eventual outcomes of the narrative from the novel or not, the events are told with a foreboding sense of dread.

The centrepiece of the film and why the rivalry is so accomplished is due to the dominance of Swinton's troubled performance. She inspires one of the most hauntingly effectively roles this year. Her physical attributes are an asset to her work. She already has a thin, hollow face and through the grim close-up shots she is able to express her inner-most torment. The intensity in her body language too, along with the icy delivery of her lines, reveals a frustrated woman, deeply bitter at having her life disrupted by her child. Featuring in nearly every scene, a Best Actress nomination early next year is highly likely. Ezra Miller as the older Kevin is almost effortless in creating an equally cold character and one that we find compassionless and easy to hate. Kevin is a highly ambiguous character though and he represents a void that the screenplay can never fulfil. The questions surrounding his psychology are deliberately unanswered but it also begs for more clues to be left behind. At its most simplistic, the film suggests that he holds a desire for attention. Following one of the film's major climaxes, Kevin postures in front of people as though he is a celebrity being cheered upon. Yet this is at odds with an earlier scene where he wrecks Eva's computer. She asks him why he does it and he replies: "There is no point. That's the point". With more hints his psychology might have been more conclusive and satisfying. Warmer support is provided by John C. Reilly. Predictably, he has a few clever comic moments but also a much tighter relationship with Kevin. Their bond makes the very moving climax all the more challenging to understand. It suggests that sometimes even the closest parents will have trouble understanding why.

A man introduces a modern play, detailing how everyone has been fooled about who Shakespeare was and suggesting that someone else wrote all of his most famous texts. This story is then projected back in Elizabethan England, as we are introduced to a playwright named Ben Jonson (Sebastian Armesto), who is being hunted down. The story then cuts back again to an earlier period where Jonson is called upon by Edward de Vere (Rhys Ifans). De Vere realises that he can inspire political movements by using the plays to sway the public. Given politically inclined art is outlawed, he forces Jonson to attach his own name to the works. Yet Jonson is overshadowed by William Shakespeare (Rafe Spall), a buffoon who jumps on the stage at the end of a production, claiming authorship over it. He successfully blackmails the Earl, threatening to announce the truth if he isn't paid. Meanwhile, the Earl is caught up in a conspiracy involving Queen Elizabeth I (Vanessa Redgrave) and a number of figures who are looking to become her successor.

Roland Emmerich is a director who revels in disasters. Some are intentional, like the sci-fi epic Independence Day (1996) and others, like Godzilla (1998), are just plain bad. Anonymous is Emmerich's most mature film so far. It's handsomely crafted, offering the scale of a medieval epic and yet it's efficiently acted to resemble more of a closed door conspiracy thriller. For all of Anonymous' qualities, of which there are many, it's a near impenetrable film. A fascinating premise is undone by a narrative so clumsily told and convoluted that on first viewing it is impossible to realise how any of these characters relate to one another and what is going on. The film is inept with its time frames. The opening quarter alone shifts between three or four different periods, using flashbacks and moving the narrative backwards and forwards in time. The narrative is disjointed without any clear reasoning. There are two major threads running throughout the film but they're not given equal weight. The film has advertised the focus on Jonson and Shakespeare but much of the story is actually devoted to the conspiracy involving the Queen. This is problematic for a number of reasons. It leaves the parallels between the two strands thinly stretched, scarcely determining that two different men forgo an opportunity for greatness in the public eye. It also means the film is scattershot in perspective too. Characters fade in and out of the story, with less interesting figures taking up ample screen time. It's a common ploy in Emmerich's film to use a broad spectrum of figures because it enlarges the landscapes of his narratives. It was sufficient in Independence Day as the archetypes were visible.

A lot of the side characters here are only vaguely established, making the story opaque when it chooses to focus on them. Rhys Ifans brings power and conviction to his role but he fades in and out of the story and has less dialogue than we would like when he's on screen. He still has the best line in the film when he says: "All artists have something to say. Or they'd make shoes". Neither of the two writers are particularly well developed though, with Spall's comic relief at odds with the darkness of the rest of the film. There are still some spectacular moments that demonstrate Emmerich's visual flair. His use of use of establishment shots is distractingly frequent but he draws some striking images. The fog over the river and the snow falling on the cityscapes gives the film an occasionally chilling atmosphere. And there are fine touches, like when the film montages through many of Shakespeare's most famous works on stage, glimpsing several masterworks. It is extraordinary to consider how some of the greatest texts of all time were written not only without computers or word processors but even ordinary pens too, leaving merely the brush of a quill on loose sheets of parchment to preserve these texts over time. Perhaps in calling this film 'Anonymous', Emmerich is alluding to appropriation: the name of a text or an author is irrelevant if the essence of a cIassic Shakespearean tragedy is retained at the core of the narrative. That's captured somewhere in this film too but Emmerich can't unscramble the labyrinth with any cohesion. It's a rare case of a film that might improve on multiple viewings but on an initial screening it is difficult to recommend this beautiful but long-winded thriller.

In the future people suddenly stop ageing at twenty-five years old. They can live longer by working for more hours, adding to their dwindling lifespan engraved on their arms. Time is also a currency where one can spend individual minutes or hours on commodities and share time with others to survive. Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) and his mother Rachel (Olivia Wilde) are a part of this dystopia. One night at a bar, Will attempts to save a man who is being pursued by gangsters because he has a century's worth of time on his arm. They escape and the man reveals that society is deliberately increasing the cost of living in the ghettos so that people will die out. After the man shares his time and then kills himself, Will is investigated by a 'timekeeper' (Cillian Murphy), who is essentially a detective. Angry at another significant death, Will enters the wealthy district for revenge. At a casino he meets Sylvia (Amanda Seyfried), the daughter of a wealthy businessman and they connect. When the timekeeper turns up, Will kidnaps Sylvia. She comes to admire his recklessness and together they begin to literally steal time from the rich.

In Time has about as much subtly as a grandfather clock striking midnight. There will be heavy speculation about how such a fascinating concept, drawing richly from the themes of Aldous Huxley's dystopian fiction, became such a misfire. The film is written and directed by Andrew Niccol, who previously made the science fiction film Gattaca (1997) and penned the screenplay for The Truman Show. Those were terrific films, examining surveillance in such intelligent and visually inventive ways. By writing and directing this himself, his first feature since Lord of War (2005), Niccol has not been able to take a step back from his own material. His script is at fault here because it reads like a bad first draft. In a sea of mindless action films and reboots, he deserves credit for attempting to touch on ideas of cIass and economics. Yet it never overcomes the starting block of being more than just a potentially good idea. All of the characters are sketchily drawn and reveal too thinly the transparency and mechanics of the screenplay. As the characters stand around to debate how unjust society has become, we realise that they are ciphers for Niccol's thematic concerns. This would matter less if the lines were well written but the dialogue is grating and repetitive, thanks to clunkers like: "No one should live like this. You've never lived a day in your life father!" As shown in the superior dystopian film Children of Men (2006), a distinguishable setting and selective camerawork is invaluable to expressing a way of life. But Niccol's has forgotten the golden rule of screenwriting: 'show, don't tell'. He lacks aid and imagination from the film's cheap visual design. The city, mimicking the likes of an impoverished Detroit, is never affecting and given this is meant to be a world where time can be transferred in a handshake you'd expect its architecture to be more elaborately enhanced.

Potential for social commentary and satire is also weakened by Niccol's bid to show his hand too soon. There are no shades of grey here. The rich are wealthy but bored and the poor are cheated by the state so that it increases the cost of living. Sound familiar? The director compounds the simplicity of this issue by having characters verbally reference the likes of Charles Darwin and the 'survival of the fittest'. There is rarely a moment where the themes are allowed to boil under the surface, letting the audience think for themselves. Viewed as a straight thriller, In Time is an untidy piece. The narrative is episodic, made up of obligatory car chases and superfluous characters. The script needed tightening because there are scenes, such as the one in a casino, that are overextended and logically amiss. The strangest inclusion is probably its best and that's when the film alludes to Bonnie and Clyde (loosely) and John Dillinger, as Will and Sylvia start robbing places, giving out time quotients to the poor. If it had focused on a series of heists and had less of the gangsters and Sylvia's father, it would have been more cohesive. The performances are mostly uninspired. Timberlake, brilliant in The Social Network (2010), has proven that he can act. The kid is a born performer but he's been reined in and told to scowl more, which means the film makes less use of his charisma or cheek. Murphy looks like he's just walked off the set of The Matrix (1999) and Seyfried brings little edge to her character. When she says that her father thinks she's reckless it's laughable. Olivia Wilde has the most thankless part because with just two or three scenes she's reduced to little but a cameo. Given that there was an embargo preventing any reviews of In Time to be published before its starting date, it's presumable that the studios saw what was coming. Once this silly film is released officially in America there will be a new reason to hate socialism.

A biotech research company hires a mercenary named Martin (Willem Dafoe) to hunt down the Tasmanian tiger in the Australian bushland. He finds the territory extremely hostile because the loggers in the area are afraid that environmentalists will endanger their work. Martin takes refuge with a family, including Lucy (Frances O'Connor), who takes sleeping pills and her two small children, one of whom does not speak. Their house is a shambles because they are reeling from the disappearance of Lucy's husband, who went missing while looking for the tiger himself. With the help of some drawings from one of the kids, Martin travels back and forth to the bush, trying to bait the tiger. Yet the ambiguity surrounding Jack (Sam Neill), a fellow bushman, lends a sense of unease to Martin's expedition.

The Hunter is like a safari trip with no wildlife in sight. It is based on a novel by Julia Leigh. She wrote and directed Sleeping Beauty earlier this year. If she had adapted her own novel this might have been a more accomplished film, not just because of her formal sophistication, but her understanding of her own story too. What's missing here is clarity and a strong narrative premise. The film is sketchy with plot details because we know so little about the research company or Martin himself. Without this foundation of exposition the twists in the narrative and Martin's eventual attachment to the family make little sense. There are superfluous characters too. The motives of Sam Neil's character are achingly unclear. What we initially assume about Jack doesn't eventuate and then his surprise alignment is never explained. His part is so superfluous that it could have really been played by anyone or cut altogether. I was disappointed that he was wasted in this film. Compounding these narrative issues is the lack of real conflict and drama. Apart from an improbable climax, the film is dull. We rarely feel the weight of the terrain overcoming Martin. There are also far too many scenes of him driving aimlessly, coupled with moments of trap making and the domestic scenes, which don't satisfy.

Director Daniel Nettheim tries to rectify the lack of tension through the inclusion of the territorial loggers. But their representation and characterisation is laughable. They act more like a group of evil bikies, terrorising people by flashing their headlights and firing rifles in the air. This needed to be handled with a lot more subtlety and to have the tension build under the surface. At the very least, the film has some conceptually interesting ideas, including the way that groups of men mark their territory. Both the loggers and Martin resort to primitive methods, like intimidation and hunting and gathering, to determine their grounds. The film also holds a natural beauty that is immensely impressive. None of the Australian landscapes have been stylised because they don't need to be. The focus on the lush greenery of the bushland is solely magnificent. These are some of the more impressive elements of The Hunter, which individually, point to a more complete thriller. Yet like so many Australian films, the script needed more refinement and a lot less driving.

Travis (Michael Angarano) is a high school student who is warned in one of his cIasses about a Christian fundamentalist group called the Five Points Church. They're a group of radicals led by a pastor named Abin Cooper (Michael Parks). They are said to be so extreme that the Neo-Nazi's have separated themselves from them. The Church is seen on television because they are protesting outside the funeral of a homosexual teenager who was found murdered. Travis and his two friends are planning to have sex with an older woman that they've found on the Internet. They meet the woman at her trailer park and her name is Sara (Melissa Leo). She drugs them and takes them to the Five Points Church. Travis is left in a cage and the others are either locked in a hole or bound and gagged. The boys attempt to escape leads to a standoff between the Church and the SWAT rescue team outside. One of the cops is Joseph Keenan (John Goodman), who has been investigating the Church's vast gun ownership.

Red State is meant to be one of Kevin Smith's last films as a director. The man responsible for such indie films as Clerks (1994) and Chasing Amy (1997) is calling it quits. This is following apparent onset disputes and verbally attacking film critics for the reception of his buddy movie Cop Out (2010). After seeing Red State you'll wish that the big guy had turned the lights out earlier. The film is a mess. It's reflective of Smith's scattershot anger towards just about everyone. It is also schizophrenic in both genre and perspective. The setup is initially intriguing and intense because we're curious to see what trap the boys are being led into. Yet the alarm bells are sounded as soon as they're caught because the film looks to descend into another awful torture porn film. The drab, grey corridors and handheld camera are reminiscent of the very worst of this subgenre, Hostel (2005). This is most likely what earned the approval of Quentin Tarantino, incidentally a producer on Hostel, who declared that he loves this film. But he's a movie buff though and there are few, if any movies, he dislikes. Michael Parks also happens to have appeared in numerous Tarantino-related films too. During an overlong sermon where Cooper condemns homosexuals, two people in the audience walked out. They left at the right time because this is where the violence begins and where the film loses its footing.

We realise that Smith is only interested in painting in broad strokes and working to the nth degree, rather than establishing the humanity of these fundamentalists. Is there a point to this then? His message is that some groups will fight at all costs to get what they want, forgetting that they're not dissimilar. That is a very broad concept to try and satirise, a well-known one too and he never pulls it off. He tries to flip the script on us by introducing the SWAT teams as the baddies. They shoot first and think later and suddenly Sara's daughter briefly becomes the main protagonist because she just wants to protect the children in the house. While this thankfully takes us out of the realm of torture porn, it is only to introduce a series of overly violent and tiring gunfights. As figures from all sides are gruesomely plugged off, we're left in a state of emotional limbo because Smith has done little to earn our sympathy with any of these sketchily drawn characters. The experience of Leo and Goodman isn't even enough because uncharacteristically, they're both way over the top here and not particularly interesting. Though some might take pleasure in the shootouts and moments of tension, the satire is thinly stretched in a film that merely postures as being politically intrigued. It is essentially an excuse for Smith to give all aspects of American society the middle finger. Don't give him the satisfaction.

On an open property, a construction worker named Curtis (Michael Shannon) is worried about the storm clouds looming over his land. He lives with his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and their young daughter, who is deaf. Curtis starts suffering from reoccurring nightmares, where he and his daughter are being attacked. This is coupled with his increasingly irrational behaviour. He insists on locking his dog outside and is intent on building an outdoor shelter for his family to protect them from when he believes the storm will arise. This is despite how tight their money has become, particularly when they are expecting to pay for their daughter's operation. As Curtis investigates his own health and the medical history of his family, increasing pressure is placed on his relationships with his colleagues and also his wife. She continues to suffer because she cannot keep up with her increasingly distant and distracted husband.

A haunting atmosphere dominates this slow burning and methodically produced psycho-thriller. The motif of a storm, as a metaphor for the internal pressure of the mind, is not a new concept. It's a cIassic Shakespearean symbol, used to evoke physical and emotional tension for the characters. This is precisely the brand of horror that Take Shelter strives for, investing heavily in emotional paranoia, as well as post-9/11 angst and uncertainty. What is most refreshing for a thriller of this kind is the restraint that director Jeff Nichols brings to the narrative. The start of the picture is the shakiest because it insists on taking us directly into the mind of the character. We're involved with two or three different dream sequences, where birds drop out of the sky, furniture is turned upside down and a dog bites Curtis. The latter is the most rattling because the lines between what is real and imagery are blurred. The other dreams are problematic because they feel like they belong to a separate picture, like a cheesy M. Night Shyamalan horror film. It weakens the realism and the belief in the psychology of the central character Curtis. Thankfully, Nichols lets the tension build slowly but visibly in his characters. His control reminds us that less is more and that the unknown is most frightening. There are scenes in Take Shelter that are achingly slow to unfold but the tension is efficiently realised because of the quality of the direction and the performances. In one late scene, Nichols relies solely on diegetic sound and the reverse camera shots of Curtis and Samantha during a conversation. The quietness here is more unnerving and riveting than anything happening outside of the house. This is a leisurely paced film that tests our patience but its rewards are invaluable.

One of other major testing factors in this film is our inaccessibility to the central character. Michael Shannon has face that rarely moves in expression and that alone ask us how much we are going to sympathise with him. The film improves immeasurably, almost to a breaking point of tension, as we become more involved with his irrationality and his fearful uncertainty. The script that Nichols wrote himself is smart because it knows how to raise the stakes for Curtis in an unstable climate but equally unreliable economy too. It's increasingly apparent in Shannon's performance that there's a distant void of a man, who is cold but seemingly ready to explode. Chastain is a perfect contrast because she's far more emotive and sympathetic. She understands the power of a close-up shot like few other actresses. As with The Tree of Life (2011), she shows us how brittle her character is, not through verbal explosiveness, but the most subtle and gentle of facial expressions. She brings so much feeling to this role. I hope she is rewarded early next year for her recent performances. Collectively, both of these tortured characters make us question whether it is better to survive and live in fear or to die peacefully. If this sounds daunting, there's a quietly funny scene where this is humorously visualised. After Curtis purchases several gas masks and an oxygen tank for his daughter, he makes his family sit with him in the shelter. The wide shot of the family mounted up together shows us their isolation but also the occasional absurdity of overt paranoia. Sometimes in the worst situations, all you can do is laugh. And this very rich thriller strikes some painful, nervous laughter. It's one of the most mesmerising thrillers released this year.