Being wealthy and famous, living life to the full, having lots of sex, going to the doctors and discovering you have a malignant tumour on your breast. It happens. Love Life is an award-winning Dutch movie about an adventurous couple that decide who the hell they are when cancer enters their lives.

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.

For a film about the re-writing a political memoir, it’s rather ironic that the screenplay for Roman Polanski’s thriller should be one of its weaknesses. Characters are not fully formed in a script co-written by Polanski and Robert Harris, adapting his novel of the same name. Indeed, they are ciphers in a clunky and contrived plot that builds to a big reveal, which would be risible in less accomplished hands.

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.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a magical car with more sass than KITT and more aplomb than Herbie – it’s the best magical car by far. This heartwarmingly anarchic musical is now available to buy as a Blu-Ray DVD combo set – ideal to bring colour and vitality to a wet Sunday afternoon.

Halloween is a time for scary movies with a high sugar and fat content. Cast aside nutritious award-winning scares and shun that well-received Scandinavian or Japanese horror… It’s time to pig out on the scary movie equivalent of tarty/spooky Halloween costumes, apple bobbing and dodgy home-made punch with jelly spiders in it. What does the world want out of a truly great Halloween movie? PURE NONSENSE!

And so we continue with our odyssey to find the 10 best Halloween movies of all time. Let bad taste and good taste rub shoulders this Halloween, just as the dead rise up to greet the living…

We know, we know. You loved Let The Right One In, and you’re sick of Hollywood rehashing every good Swedish film ever made, so you’re not going to bother seeing Let Me In even though you liked Chloe Moretz in Kick-Ass. STOP RIGHT THERE. A faithful remake enlivened by sensitive direction and some truly extraordinary performances, this is a film which stands squarely on its own two blood-spattered feet.