A dark, ambitious re-imagining of Swan Lake, with the classic ballet itself handily packed inside like an instructional Russian doll, Black Swan is visually and psychologically mesmerising. A master of suspense, Aronofsky’s sumptuous direction ensures that we never lose concentration for a moment – which, actually, may be just as well. For all its beauty, upon closer inspection it may be that there’s less originality present in Black Swan than the reviews would have us believe. But does it matter? Probably not.

Director Peter Mullan serves up a gritty account of life in Glasgow in the 1970s, aided by a brilliant cast and savvy music choices. The tale follows a young innocent slowly drawn into the violent world of the Neds (non-educated delinquents), its just a shame the director didn’t pick up any of the ever-present knives and slash away at the overly flabby screenplay.

The heat is on to be the best gosh darn villain the world has ever seen. And when your competition is out nicking the Egyptian pyramids and other great wonders of the world, you know you’ve got to up your game. So Gru sorts himself out with the ultimate secret weapon in his grand master scheme; three orphan girls. And before you get the wrong idea, he doesn’t put them through an intensive training course and turn them into child soldiers, rather, he uses the power of cookie selling to get the ball a-rolling.

When it was first announced that David Fincher, best known for such meditations on violence as Seven and Fight Club, had taken up directorial reins on a film about the founding of Facebook, it’s fair to say that some film fans found themselves confused. Why had Fincher attached himself to such a potential snoozefest? Well, now we have the answer. With a story driven by sharp dialogue and an unrelenting pace, The Social Network is anything but boring. A beautifully acted character study, it asks real questions about the nature of business, friendship and loyalty – and we don’t just mean online.

In 1999, the award-winning East is East provided an extraordinary snapshot into the trials and tribulations of growing up as a mixed race teenager in the 1970s. Eleven years on, and time has only moved on by five years for George Khan and his brood; now cheeky ten-year-old Sajid is a truculent teenager. George takes Sajid to Pakistan in an attempt to recover his roots, but finds far more there than he expected.

Inspired by the best-selling video games series (a sentence that always puts fear into our hearts), Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time is a rollicking escapade which marries gorgeous Moroccan locations with state-of-the-art visual effects. The time-bending storyline of Mike Newell’s big budget adventure incorporates a romantic subplot, presumably to appeal to female audiences who might otherwise give this testosterone-heavy romp a wide berth.

Vampires Suck is a Twilight parody that’s vibrant on the outside and dessicated (sucked dry, indeed) on the inside. However, even a spoof movie as weak as this one does have some surprisingly redeeming features that are almost worth the price of a cinema ticket…

A young woman faces a terrifying ordeal in J Blakeson’s accomplished feature directorial debut. The Disappearance Of Alice Creed is an edge of seat thriller that by its simple design – three characters trapped predominantly in one location – could easily have started life on the stage. The intimacy of the set-up works in the film’s favour, forcing Blakeson to develop his protagonists to sustain our interest and the dramatic momentum.

The directorial debut from Ivorian film-maker Katell Quillévéré, Un Poison Violent (Love Like Poison) is a classic coming-of-age tale which shows the conflict between human nature at its freest and most rigidly controlled extents. As its teenage protagonist struggles to make choices which will define the course of her life, the audience is forced to make its own decision between the extremes of passion and piety.

Another Year, the latest devised-piece-cum-film from Vera Drake director Mike Leigh, has been widely acclaimed at Cannes and the London Film Festival. At the risk of turning Best For Film into some sort of underground band of critical mavericks, I really don’t see why. It may be a far cry from Leigh’s best work, but its extraordinarily realised characters do a reasonable job of balancing out a plot which ends up being more hollow than touching.