When the first five minutes of a film accost the vision with a panning shot of flying penises, quick work is made of ascertaining the depths to which the remaining two hours will inevitably descend.

A strangely beguiling mixture of character piece and road movie and that never leaves the city, Passenger Side is a warm and surprisingly poignant low-fi gem. A slew of cameos prop up two outstanding lead performances as director Matt Bissonnette announces himself as one to watch.

There are two things that epitomise a Hammer film: a distinctively poignant visual style and a plot whose direction is deciphered within the first twenty minutes. In these two respects, The Resident is bona fide Hammer at its idiosyncratic best.

The wives of two sex-obsessed men get so fed up with their husbands leering at other women that they give them a hall pass – a week off marriage to..

Potiche is the French word for a vase or ornament of superficial beauty and little real value. Idiomatically, it refers to a trophy wife – a pretty, inoffensive girl who’ll sit on her shelf and not cause any trouble. Mischievous satirical prankster François Ozon directs the magnificent Catherine Deneuve in a hilarious and savvy tale of one trophy wife who simply won’t stay in the cabinet.

City Island, home to the Rizzo family, is part of the Bronx; a small spit of land jutting out into Long Island Sound. Garcia’s character Vince Rizzo lets us in..

The debut movie from director of Lance Hammer won both the Directing and Cinematogrpahy Awards at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008 – and there’s a reason. Beautiful direction and brilliant performances from its three lead actors (all amateur) ensure a film of smouldering beauty, centring on an estranged Mississippi family racked with grief.

Recessions are rubbish, that’s pretty much a given. However, there is one distinct upside to the spectacular financial crash which has bankrupted and disenfranchised millions in the last four years; some really bloody good films have come out of it. We’ve had Up in the Air, Inside Job – and now The Company Men, which will make you empathise with a hugely well-paid executive more than you would have thought possible.

Described by debut filmmakers Brek Taylor and Elizabeth Mitchell as a ‘fairytale thriller’, Island sees a young woman journey to a distant Scottish island to seek vengeance for a lifetime of neglect. What results is a brilliant and ambiguous drama played out against the stunning backdrop of remote and rural Scotland.

Director Anh Hung Tran adapts Haruki Murakami’s bestseller into an entrancing vision of teenage angst. Drawn together by a shared tragedy two young people forge a painful and potentially destructive bond in 1960s Tokyo.