David R. Ellis is familiar enough with the slasher-less slasher genre, having previously directed not just one but two instalments in the Final Destination franchise. His latest offering sees a batch of very CGI sharks take over death’s killing duties, as another array of faceless teens line up for slaughter. At the end of the Night, however, maybe Ellis should have stuck with invisible killers, as the director doesn’t fare quite so well when handed a box of pixels and left to jump the shark instead.

There are three scenes in Sleeping Beauty: Someone Being Horrible To Emily Browning With Her Clothes On, Someone Being Clinical To Emily Browning As She Takes Her Clothes Off, and Someone Being Horrible To Emily Browning Wearing No Clothes. Mix and match as you desire. It’s a poised and classy-looking directorial debut from writer Julia Leigh, but it’s nonsense all the same.

Don’t let the name fool you; Dirty Pictures isn’t a charming piece of erotica. Sure, it MENTIONS sex, but… never mind. Instead, the film actually offers an amusing look at the life of “the godfather of ecstasy”, Alexander Shulgin.

In an industry stuffed with honking, plastic portrayals of first love, it’s deeply refreshing when you find a film that quietly hits the mark. Like Crazy, though perhaps sketched rather too broadly to leave a lasting impression, is a delicate, affecting take on the joys and sadnesses that come with finding your way through your first relationship, showcasing gently wonderful performances from stars Felicity Jones and Anton Yelchin. It’s not necessarily easy-going for anyone concerned, but then, what relationship is?

A warm, funny, unassuming and genuinely original take on the traditional road movie, Natural Selection is a confident little comedy-drama about faith, trust, shame and forgiveness. A startling debut from writer/director Robbie Pickering – you might as well watch it, seeing as this is a fellow we’ll be hearing a lot more from in the future.

Have you ever got up one day and thought “Today, I’d really like to watch a drama about competing Talmudic scholars at an Israeli university”? No, neither had we. More fool us, frankly, because Footnote is absolutely superb – funny, poignant and cynical, it will draw you into a rarefied world you never knew existed.

Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg both give admirably miserable performances in Melancholia; a shoe-in for Film Most Likely To Make You Top Yourself 2011. Bleak, beautiful, and oh so very Von Trier, Melancholia offers an alternative to your run of the mill blast-tastic apocalypse – it turns out there’s going to be a lot of horses lying down.

Festival audiences all over the world have lavished praise on Sean Durkin’s debut feature Martha Marcy May Marlene, the tense and disturbing story of a girl who escapes from a charismatic cult leader but is plagued by horrific memories of her subjugation. Who knew there was an Olsen sister who was actually talented?

If, like me, you’ve never really got into Westerns, perhaps what you need to win you round is an Eastern. Jiang Wen’s frenetic, action-packed romp through cinematic and cultural cliché takes no prisoners, dispensing bullets and dark humour in every direction. It’s just… stupid, quite a lot of the time. Really quite stupid.

Two American girls become separated on a biking trip through the remote backroads of rural Argentina. Cue cautionary tale slathered with a healthy ol’ dose of girl-on-girl gore? Not quite. Beyond an opening scene vaguely suggestive of electrocution, and a (more tortuous) rendition of the Divinyls’ ‘I Touch Myself’ this is, by no means, the material from which to get one’s bloodlusty jollies.