Known as Get The Gringo across the pond, How I Spent The Summer Vacation reunites co-writer and star Mel Gibson with Adrian Grunberg, who acted as Gibson’s first A.D. on 2006’s excellent Apocalypto. Replete with the Mad Mex’s trademark schlock and run through with some truly ingenious humour, you can’t help but commend Mel for not just buying a box-set, stocking up on Hob Nobs and holidaying on the sofa like the rest of us.

Larry Charles’s outrageously offensive, all-guns-blazing comedy isn’t so much a sharp satire as an exercise in eccentric crassness. Lacking the edge of Borat and Brüno, The Dictator is nonetheless a disconcertingly amusing, predictably gross-out affair, packed full of memorable moments and reliant almost solely upon a central performance from everyone’s favourite master of grotesquerie, Sacha Baron Cohen.

First-time director Simon Aboud constructs an elaborately jewelled (if slightly overdone) bracelet of British cinematic talent with his debut feature Comes a Bright Day, a slightly unexpected comic romance set in the traditionally ardour-stifling confines of a heist in a jewellery store. It’s a little hectic, sure, but taken one gem at a time there’s a lot to admire.

Never quite sure whether it wants to champion the go-getters or those who just let fate sweep them along, Jeff, Who Lives At Home is nevertheless a perfectly amiable mumblecore comedy made watchable by the great chemistry between its leads Jason Segel and Ed Helms. Though it loses its head somewhat in the strangely action-packed final third, some good dialogue and gentle laughs make it just about worth a visit.

This new family-centred comedy from the writer of East is East is sweet, charming and occasionally surprising but suffers from the transition from stage to screen. Slack in the middle and overly repetitious, All in Good Time ultimately feels like a small amount of material stretched over too much screen time.

The film of that TV series you’ve never heard of, Dark Shadows does justice to neither its cult classic source material nor the combined talents of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. Fifty times longer than its trailer and half as enjoyable, Dark Shadows is one of the most tiresome, derivative and uninspiring movies you’re likely to see this year.

Piranha 3D was the surprise hit of 2010, blending knowing references to its glorious B-movie heritage with a truly unfeasible supply of boobs, blood, boobs, fish, boobs, Christopher Lloyd and boobs. Can its long-awaited sequel work the same schlocky magic? …No, no it can’t. Piranha 3DD is exactly as bad as we expected its predecessor to be.

Fresh from winning two major awards at the Berlinale, A Royal Affair is soon to arrive on our shores and give you (probably) your first ever taste of Danish history. Excited? You should be. Brimming with intrigue, action and drama, this is period drama for people who prefer The Wire to Downton Abbey.

Growing up, eh? It’s almost too much trouble to bother with. Lisa Aschan’s impressive directorial debut takes a unflinchingly uncomfortable trip down puberty lane in this sparse yet absorbing drama about two sisters feeling their way through the trials and tribulations of being a girl and that. Though barely-there dialogue and a certain detachment from her characters mean we’re never quite sure what it is Ashchan is trying to achieve, the questions she throws up about sexuality, friendship and balancing niftily on a horse more than make up for the lack of answers.

Maverick writer-director Maïwenn submerges herself in the grim and forbidding world of the BPE – the French police unit tasked with protecting vulnerable children – in this painfully realistic drama, drawn entirely from real-life cases. You’ll never forget it, but you might wish you could.