Set in London, 1962, Ginger & Rosa is a largely insufferable coming-of-age story, charting the friendship between two teenage girls set against a backdrop of the threat of nuclear destruction and the beginning of the change in attitudes towards sex and femininity that the 60s instigated. Wonderfully shot, but populated with insufferable characters and terrible British accents, Ginger & Rosa is a psuedo-intellectual endeavor, overflowing with proto-philosphical nonsense.

The worst part of watching Sparkle was coming to the realisation that as a nation, we appear to have learned nothing from Glitter. It’s time to face the fact that singer-turned-actors appearing in films headed by one-word titles of adjectives usually used to describe jewellery are not a good idea. Not since Mariah Carey’s unfortunate first foray into feature-film have we seen the age-old rags-to-riches trope done such a disservice. To refer to this film as a poor man’s Dreamgirls is to pay it a compliment it doesn’t deserve.

Holy Motors is an intensely weird, but visually stunning deconstruction of the art of acting, and of cinema in general. At least, we think that’s what it’s about. There are likely to be dozens of interpretations. Holy Motors is a unique and vivid experience; sure to be too weird, and too pretentious for some, nevertheless, Denis Levant’s astonishing lead performance is worth the experiment alone.

Dear Friend. In her first leading role outside the castle walls of Hogwarts (though strangely, still in the 90s), Emma Watson turns American adolescent as she welcomes you to the island of misfit toys. If you’re still reading and not too busy cringing your face inside out, you might find a lot to like in Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Killing Them Softly is a strange cocktail of unusually thoughtful gangsters, stylized violence and unsubtle political satire. If you can get past the wanky title, viewers may be pleasantly surprised by its thoughtful approach to grizzly topics but it is by no means the film it has been marketed to be. Think The New World with more guns.

Much, much better than the tiresomely earnest endeavor you might expect given the nature of the independent production, art-house values and risque subject material, Lawrence Anyways is an engaging and powerful look at identity and acceptance, sexuality and love, all told with incredible performances and some interesting – but not alienating – direction.

“When one story ends, another begins” is the strapline for After the Wizard. Catchy, and often true, but that doesn’t make the story it accompanies any good. Here’s another quote for you: “Property of Breaking Glass Pictures”.You can keep it, mate.

Inspired by true events and set during the 1920’s, My Way sees Korean country boy Kim Jun-shik struggle to reconcile his aspirations of becoming an Olympic runner with the various forces that conspire to stop him realizing his dreams. If you’re expecting a sleepy art house flick with lots of panning shots and loaded silences you’re in for a disappointment. My Way is a relentlessly high octane affair and serves as a compelling comment on Japan’s fraught and complicated history.

Really? OK – Battle of the Pacific is a dreary WWII yarn sold to me by Best For Film as a ‘Martin Sheen war drama’, which is true if you take ‘Martin Sheen’ to mean ‘Daniel Baldwin’ and ‘war drama’ to mean ‘fiasco’. Running at a good two hours that feel like a bad three, I only made it to the end by turning the sound down and practicing my ukulele as I waited eagerly for the bad news from Hiroshima – and before you mount your moral high horse, just try sitting through Battle of the Pacific yourself and then tell me you don’t want to see people die.

Joe Wright injects new life into the period drama format with this lavish adaptation of Tolstoy’s cherished novel. Anna Karenina is a lush, tantalising spectacle which features compelling performances from its leads, Keira Knightley and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, but doesn’t quite hit the mark when it comes to plumbing the emotional depths of its tragic story.