Director: Dominga Sotomayor
Cast: Francisco Perez-Bannen, Paola Giannini, Santi Ahumada, Emiliano Freifeld
Certificate: 12A
Trailer

Planes, Trains and Automobiles. National Lampoon’s Vacation. Little Miss Sunshine. Identity Thief. Cinema is full of road trips – too many, in fact. But while the USA’s frequently recycled format has begun to bore, South America is starting to remind us what makes the genre so special. Las Acacias last year was a lovely Argentine romance. Dominga Sotomayor’s Chilean drama is the opposite. But they have something in common: they both feel like real road trips. And they're both excellent.

Director: Harmony Korine
Cast: Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, James Franco, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine
Certificate: 18

Spring Breakers is that rare thing: a film that manages to be about something and yet at the same time about absolutely nothing. A vacuous, exploitative pile of trash that satirizes vacuous exploitative piles of trash, it celebrates the culture that surrounds Spring Break while firmly sticking two fingers up at it. And wearing a ski mask.

Director: Francois Ozon
Cast: Fabrice Luchini, Kristin Scott Thomas, Ernst Umhauer
Certificate: 15

There's nothing like a good page-turner - and that's exactly what Francois Ozon has created in this adaptation of Juan Mayorga's play. Secondary school English teacher Germain (Luchini) is handed an essay by eager student Claude Garcia (Umhauer), who weasels his way into fellow student Rapha's home - and then writes it up with scornful excitement.

"The room was full of the scent of middle-class woman," he snarks, half judgmental, half aroused by his classmate's mum. Germain can't get enough of it, holding him back after class to give him tips on how to improve his writing - and, at one point, even compromising his job to make sure he gets the next chapter. 

Director: Lisa Barros D'Sa, Glenn Leyburn
Cast: Richard Dormer, Jodie Whittaker
Certificate: 15

Who is Richard Dormer? I have no idea. But he’s excellent as Terri Hooley in this feel-good movie about Northern Ireland’s punk scene. Who is Terri Hooley? The music industry had no idea, but he was excellent at running a music shop.

Well, I say excellent. He barely ran it, had no money and ignorde his wife (Jodie Whittaker) in order to do it. But somehow, in between his bearded shambles and visibly passionate love of music, he found the time to found the Belfast punk rock movement, launching a record label and giving the world the legendary track Teenage Kicks.

All in all, it’s quite amazing.

Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson, Vincent Cassell
Certificate: 15

“It used to be that all you needed was a lot of nerve..."

That's auctioneer Simon (McAvoy) talking to us about how to steal a work of art. On those grounds, Danny Boyle would be an exceptional thief - because Trance hasn't just got nerves; it's got balls. It's got balls coming out of its ears.

Director: Gary King
Cast: Christina Rose, Joe Schermann, Mark DiConzo, Debbie Williams
Trailer

Almost exactly six months ago, I saw a film called How Do You Write a Joe Schermann Song? at the Raindance Film Festival. A post-modern musical about writing a musical, it's a toe-tapping, show-stopping, ear-pleasing marvel - an indie film that thinks big enough to make you forget about its budget and exactly the kind of thing that Kickstarter was made for. 

Which, of course, means diddly squat to you as its not coming out in cinemas any time soon. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, though, it is available through video on-demand from today (iTunes, PS3, Xbox Live and blinkbox). I cannot recommend it enough. Read on to hear why.

Director: Carlos Reygadas
Cast: Adolfo Jimenez Castro, Nathalia Acevedo
Certificate: 18

There's something about cinema, more than any art form, that mimics memory. From Tabu and Memento to Trance, films have always played with the idea of memories unspooling on screen - instantly watchable as soon as they're recalled, regardless of order or meaning. Post Tenebras Lux (literally "light after darkness") takes that visual potency and turns into something interesting, yet stubbornly unfathomable.

A young girl stands in a sunny field surrounded by cattle and dogs. Slowly, the sky dims, the animals disappear. Lightning and thunder arrive. She cries quietly out for mummy. The screen fades.

It's a striking start to what is essentially a string of striking sequences. We see Juan and his wife Nathalia playing with their daughter and son. Then we watch as they go to a swingers club and surrender their bodies to strangers. And, every now and then, something completely disconnected: a glowing animated demon stalks through the house. A man decapitates himself.

Director: Matteo Garrone
Cast: Aniello Arena, Loredana Simioli, Nando Paone
Certificate: 15

Matteo Garrone cut through society like a caustic cheese wire back in 2008 with Gomorrah, drama that revealed organised crime at every level of the country. His follow-up, Reality, couldn’t be more differenct but does much the same thing, tackling Italy’s obsession with celebrity, which has saturated everything in soggy aspiration and fluffy delusions of grandeur.

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Many years ago, I used to work at a cinema – a multiplex chain, complete with bouncing hot dogs, baseball cap, coloured shirt and name badge.

It wasn’t in, shall we say, the nicest of areas. The kind of place where they put metal detectors over the entrance to a cinema screen, where people would break into fights after being caught trying to steal pick’n’mix. The kind of place where, after I was promoted to “Supervisor Ivan”, customers thought that “Supervisor” was my first name. And stopping an under-age child trying to see 15-certificate film was automatically branded racist.

But worse than that were the working conditions. With the employee rota cut by head office for financial reasons, the understaffed cinema had to deal with thousands of people every Friday and Saturday night. The result? Long queues, angry complaints, an exhausted Ivan and not enough breaks for staff members. Usually, no breaks at all.

I made it clear that I wasn’t OK with that, but I was still required to go and tell staff that they wouldn’t be able to have a full lunch or dinner. Did I say no? More than I'd like to admit, no. I was caught in the middle, obliged to go along with orders from management, even though they also meant no breaks for me.

Director: Seth Gordon
Cast: Jason Bateman, Melissa McCarthy, Amanda Peet, John Cho, Genesis Rodriguez
Certificate: 15

Identity theft is no laughing matter. Thank goodness, then, that Seth Gordon has made a film that treats it as such. Other films might have trivialised this potentially life-ruining crime, filling their runtimes with laughs aplenty, but not Identity Thief. It has no jokes whatsoever. Unafraid to treat the subject seriously, it delivers almost two hours of resolutely unfunny cinema.