Entertainment

Director Lee Daniels of Precious brings his shock tactics and turns it up a notch in this based-on-a-true-story depiction of the case of Hillary Van Wetter, a man on death row for avenging the death of his cousin who was brutally killed by a policeman. The Paperboy is, ultimately, a story about love in all forms and the connection of five people investigating this case set in the swamps of Louisiana. From start to finish this film really weirded me out. At first it seemed like a retro, truth-based rework of a murder investigation, but as the film progressed and ultimately changed genres, I was left overwhelmed and, by the end, just shocked.

The Wachowski siblings present this latest addition to their world-renowned collection of mind-bending creations (The Matrix trilogy, V for Vendetta) – an adaptation of the hugely successful book by David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas. Known as the ‘unfilmable novel’, this genre-breaking and unconventional story attempts to transport you back and forth between the ages, telling of interlinked lives and how the effects of certain actions ripple through time... Thinking back to my policy of avoiding book-based films until having read the literature, I find myself now in the exact same position as I was when I first stated that: agreeing.

I Give it a Year sees Borat and Bruno writer Dan Mazer meet the producers of Bridget Jones’s Diary and Love Actually in an unlikely partnership. But don’t let that put you off. I Give It a Year really sticks two fingers up at the British rom-com genre that we do so well, while managing to satisfy our taste for the fuzzy, feelgood factor. The film follows Nat and Josh (Rose Byrne and Rafe Spall), a strikingly mismatched couple seeking guidance from a questionable counsellor after a tough first year of marriage. Here we see the interaction between the common and mundane problems that marriage brings, with an all-too-familiar nod to the matter of in-laws, annoying friends, old flames and the casual slipping-off of a wedding ring.

Director and screenplay guru David Ayer, who wrote The Fast and the Furious and Training Day, now pairs together the yummy Jake Gyllenhaal and talented Michael Peña in a brilliant film about friendship in the force. This raw representation takes all the glamour out of working on the beat and hits home with a real glimpse of blue blood reality...