Director: Matt Wilde
Cast: Warren Brown, Greg McHugh, Alistair Petrie

"Life doesn't always turn out the way we want it to. You have to find something that takes the edge off things. Mine is football." It's the kind of generic voice over you'd expect to kick off a feel-good British comedy. But Matt Wilde's indie flick, which won Best UK Feature at this year's Raindance, isn't afraid to embrace convention - or move beyond it.

The film follows Wigsy (Brown) and Cliff (McHugh), Wigsy's mate. One of them is pining for his ex-girlfriend. The other is tired of being decribed as "Wigsy's mate". Both of them are mad about football. That madness comes into focus when their team loses a crucial match and gets relegated. The reason? A disallowed goal, decided by the referee (Alistair Petrie as the brilliantly named Anthony Greaves). So Wigsy does the natural thing any sane person would: he kidnaps him.

It's a neat enough idea and the central duo run with it up and down the pitch. Warren Brown is admirably intense as the devoted fan, too busy yelling to listen to sense, while McHugh makes for an endearingly generous foil. The reveal of the act itself is laugh-out-loud funny, prompting an amusingly incompetent chase through the streets. It's a shame, then, that Robert Farquhar's script briefly enters stoppage time halfway through, as it tries to find a way to fill its 85 minutes: a detour to a church is coupled with a subplot about religion that draws an interesting parallel between faith and fandom, but feels clumsily introduced - one character is mocked for their faith before we are told about it - while a dream sequence mostly exists to allow for a enjoyable cameo. Danielle Bux, meanwhile, is wasted as Wigsy's former partner, Philippa - although she gets the best football-related putdown in the whole film.

But, true to form, this is a movie of two halves: for every substitute from the genre bench, there's an inspired lob or a free kick that curves past your expectations. An early set piece in a bar is eye-openingly brilliant - a visual marvel that singles out Matt Wilde as a successor to Edgar Wright - while Farquhar's use of narration is delightfully witty, combining split-screen and McHugh's knack for under-delivering lines to bring some crowd-pleasing guffaws. If the end result feels like a conventional follow-up to The Full Monty, though, there's nothing wrong with that: despite any minor injuries, this British comedy still knows how to make an audience feel good.

Director: Jesús Magaña Vázquez
Cast: Bárbara Mori, Stephanie Sigman, Claudio Lafarga

"Where am I?" asks Alice, as she enters Marialand. It's not the last time we hear that question. Jesús Magaña Vázquez's drama comes up with a grounded interpretation of the familiar fairy tale - but one that still carries all of its surreal confusion.

Marialand, we swiftly discover, is the vacuum in the life of Tonatiuh in the wake of his former partner, Maria. A writer who hasn't written anything successful, he was in thrall to the seductive, wild model - something that left their relationship doomed to crash and burn. Vázquez presents flashbacks to their time together with the finality of monochrome, cutting between the faded memories and the vibrant present, where Alice and Tonatiuh collide.

What follows is a dizzying study of the confusion that surrounded moving between relationships, as Tonatiuh falls head over heels without standing up from the last time it happened. Alice, meanwhile, is just as dazed, finding herself surrounded by remnants of feelings and projected ideals.

It's a fantastic set-up, which Vazquez presents with fantastical flourishes: an opening sequence, which interprets Maria and Tonatiuh as a lavish Hollywood sci-fi is stunning, while a dance sequence halfway through shimmies between greyscale and gorgeous oranges and blues with sass. The cast are more than up to navigating the maze, from Lafargo's deceptively controlled presence to Barbara Mori's fiery recklessness. Stephanie Sigman, though, is the one who steals the show: ahead of her turn in Spectre, and following her performance in Miss Bala, she reminds us just how captivating and sympathetic she is on camera, coyly smiling at her guide through the warped universe.

The script, though, never quite allows this world to convince: on-the-nose dialogue (one doctor in a hospital is even called "Dr. Robbit") and a wayward structure distract you from the disorienting effect of the premise. A scene involving Alice's mother, meanwhile, only hints at another angle on the same subject that could have proven more powerful - a revelation in the final act has all the chilling impact of Hitchcock's Vertigo, but is swiftly brushed aside. There are interesting questions here about resolutions and conclusions: how can one move on from the past, if one is haunted by it? And how can one create a new life, if they cannot remember it? But you can't shake the feeling that the film ends up as lost as its titular heroine.

Director: Paul Bettany
Cast: Anthony Mackie, Jennifer Connelly
Showtimes: 18.45, 30th / 16.30, 3rd

"For the people who live in front of my building", reads the caption at the end of Paul Bettany's directorial debut, Shelter. It's a dedication that raises all kind of questions, but what could have been an exercise in romanticising poverty or projecting a story onto a disadvantaged stranger emerges as something far more moving and subtle.

The film tells the story of two homeless people connecting: Hannah and Tahir. Both their tales involve loss and tragedy, but what's remarkable about Shelter's understated script is the way it handles them. Facts and exposition aren't wheeled out immediately, because that's not what people are like. Tahir and Hannah aren't lonely hearts waiting for love; they're guarded, trying to get by as everyone around them either gives them something or takes it away.

Bettany presents the streets of New York as a harsh place, where things come at a cost - be it money, sex or dignity - and possession is what defines you. As winter arrives and storms batter the pavements, those with homes are safe and warm inside. Those without shoes, on the other hand, are visibly not part of society. Tahir guards his drums, which he uses to make money, fiercely, but Hannah, who steals his coat early on, mostly longs to possess more heroin.

Anthony Mackie is wonderful as the illegal immigrant, polite and gentle but always intimidating. He's matched every step of the way by Jennifer Connelly, who is unrecognisable as the desperate runaway. One has made peace with what he has; one cannot stop craving what she doesn't.

A standout sequence halfway through sees the pair break into a rich family's home, dressing up in their clothes and drinking their wine. As they sit down for a lavish meal at a borrowed dining table, the couple suddenly seem more human. Philosophy, French and religion become the conversation du jour and back-stories float to the surface without seeming forced.

Bettany captures this gradual acquisition of objects and intimate knowledge with a sensitive touch - one brief, poetic flourish, which sees the pair fall into a puddle, only to tumble through a slow-motion ocean, is a beautiful watershed moment - but there's a grim reality throughout that suits the low-budget production. As we learn more about these characters, the climax makes it harder to care about Hannah's plight, but the cast's stunning performances smooth over any melodramatic cracks in Bettany's debut script. The result is a accomplished, smart drama that aims for the head as much as the heart; less the cliched story of an unlikely romance and more a study of identity and humanity from a distance. Bleak and moving, it's a reminder that, no matter what you own, emotional shelter can be as effective as physical.

Director: Brian McGuire
Cast: Robert Murphy, Farah Mokrani, Lara Heller, Mark Fletcher
Showtimes: 20.30, 28th / 14.10, 2nd

"I don't know if I should be dating, but I'd rather meet someone than stay at home," says a guy in 1 World 100 Lonely. You believe him. That raw sincerity has become something of a trademark for Brian McGuire, a director who returns to Raindance with another tale of loneliness in the modern age.

After Prevertere's rough romance over one night and Window Licker's portrait of one man's madness in a digital, media-saturated world, this serves as something of a halfway house between the two, combining McGuire's knack for emotional honesty with an understanding of how technology has subtly changed our everyday existence. Out of the mosaic of storylines here, all dealing with love and loss, it's no surprise that one involves online dating.

McGuire intercuts his stories with on-screen conversations, using texts and pictures to recreate virtual messages between an American and his Iranian correspondent, who eventually meet up. Miscommunication is immediately evident, but that gap opens even wider in another narrative, which sees a guy ranting at his ex-girlfriend while driving with terrifying passion. Devices not only help us connect, but disconnect too - something that's reinforced by McGuire's decision to shoot once again using only mobile phones.

There is happiness to be found, but as the title suggests, it's accompanied by that same pang of intimacy as the sad moments. The wobbly camerawork may alienate some, but it fits with the natural ensemble cast, who appear to improvise most of their dialogue (the excellent actors are credited as co-writers on the script). The same is true of the production values on the OkCupid-style messaging, which adds to the lo-fi, unpolished air.

The focus feels less crystallised as Prevertere and WindoW Licker, which benefited from a narrow focus to fit their small lenses, but the sweeping scale of 1 World 100 Lonely is testament to McGuire's ambition to chronicle human relationships on a bigger stage (it's a treat to see London in his work, as well as America). Regardless, all of the stories are united by the same uncertainty of whether they should be dating, the same habit of interpreting another person (and their messages) through the perspective of our own feelings. The result is a fragile drama that is definitely lworth going out to see rather than staying at home.

Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Aksel Hennie
Certificate: 12A

"I'm going to science the shit out of this," decides Mark Watney (Damon) near the start of The Martian, after the astronaut finds himself stranded on Mars.

It's a simple motto, but that's the secret to both Mark's potential survival and the movie's success: it reduces space travel down to a string of problems that need to be solved. No water? Fine. How do you make it? No food? Ok. How do you grow some? The formula begins even before Mark's isolation, as the rest of the crew of shuttle Ares 3 face a more essential conundrum: with a severe storm hitting their base, should they evacuate without the missing Watney and survive, or wait to find him and possibly all die?

It's a tough call for Commander Lewis (Chastain) and co (Mara, Peña, Hennie), but it's over and done with in 10 minutes, because Drew Goddard's script knows that there are more challenges still to come. What follows is a series of theoretical and practical exercises, each one seemingly dry on paper but thrillingly urgent on-screen, where they mean the difference between life and death. It's like watching the final act of Apollo 13 remade into an entire film.

That unique mindset grounds everything: because we're focused on the basic challenges of day-to-day existence, our brains don't question that this is all taking place on an alien planet; the stunning scarlet landscapes (shot with unfussy style by Ridley Scott) are second to the mathematical athletics on display; the prospect of space travel is nothing compared to the mind-bending number of disco tunes in the possession of Chastain's guilt-ridden leader - if there's one thing Blade Runner was missing, it's Abba.

The downplayed mood extends to Damon too, who uses his everyman charm to narrate events with a surprising amount of humour. He doesn't make grand speeches or weep into his helmet; he makes fun of himself in video diaries and swears at NASA via text.

On Earth, people are just as flummoxed by Watney's situation. Sean Bean is enjoyably gruff as the veteran in charge of the crew, Chiwetel Ejiofor is composed as the boffin overseeing the mission and Jeff Daniels avoids being painted as the bad guy as his NASA chief tries to avoid any bad PR. In fact, there isn't really a villain at all: cutting between the people in the control room and the person on Mars, Scott and Goddard craft a tale that presents space exploration as one huge team endeavour. There's no difference between people in China, the US or even in space: they're all just clever humans solving problems. Isn't being smart cool?

From Damon's passion for homegrown potatoes to Halt and Catch Fire's superb Mackenzie Davis as an enthusiastic control room assistant, it's hard to think of another sci-fi with as much emphasis on the science. More than the flawless visuals, nuanced performances and consistent laughs - watch out for one cheeky movie reference - it's a treat to see a big budget blockbuster that celebrates intelligence over explosions. The Martian is essentially one long, two-hour equation. And it cinemas the shit out of it.

Director: Cyril Tuschi
Cast: Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, Daniel Ellsberg
Showtimes: 14.15, 26th / 12.10, 27th

There aren't many people who haven't heard of Edward Snowden or Julian Assange. Are they heroes fighting for liberty and transparency? Villains of the state? Cyril Tuschi's documentary puts aside those questions to ask another: is it worth exposing such secrets to then live life as a fugitive?

It's a provocative subject matter for what proves to be an unsettling, relevant film. Tuschi traces his "traitors" all the way back to the daddy of them all: Daniel Ellsberg, who blew the whistle on the Pentagon's plans for Vietnam. Cutting together contributions from him, Assange, Snowden and Thomas Drake, Tuschi finds intriguing parallels between his protestors - and some differences too, especially when it comes to Drake and his decision to stay working for the government (unlike his colleagues) and trying to fight things from the inside.

From the opening frame to the final shot, Tuschi also lines up revelation after revelation about just how much data about us is given over to authorities, voluntarily, as we live in an increasingly online age. Your phone? GPS. Your Google history? Logged. Your Facebook account? A treasure trove of information that once would have taken weeks for the secret service to collect.

But in trying to raise so many big issues, Digital Dissidents ends up muddled, losing sight of its initial question halfway through and never really finding its focus again. An ex-British spy doesn't get enough screen time to offer full insight, while footage of a former Stasi prison balances precariously between heavy-handed and hugely powerful.

Tuschi spent years researching his material for another project, before being hired to assemble this for German TV and, unfortunately, it shows: occasional mistakes in subtitles and establishing shots that linger for too long make the mixed pacing more noticeable, while footage of Snowden talking at a hacker conference is almost undermined by the distracting sight of Ellsberg fiddling with broken headphones. While the polish is lacking, though, there is some gloss to the presentation, as Tuschi links together his segments with effective, flickering animations and (best of all) drone shots of Berlin and London - a decision that lends a chilling immediacy to the whole movie. The result is uneven, but undeniably important. Snowden re-appears near the end to suggest it's not about sharing their viewpoint, but about finding your own principles to believe in. It's a great message, but it's different to the one the film promised to deliver.

Director: J.P. Davidson
Cast: Matthew Jure

Showtimes: 18.30, 26th / 10.10, 27th

A man's home is his castle, so the old saying goes. But in the UK, that saying feels older than ever: after years of Right to Buy, buy-to-let and nothing being built, the nation's facing a crippling housing shortage, sending prices soaring and trapping a generation in rented accommodation. God's Acre doesn't just capture that feeling on screen; it builds an entire movie around it, complete with a roof and chimney.

The film stars Matthew Jure as Malcolm, a developer who's fallen foul of the recession, spiralling into debt. The only thing to his name? A property that needs to be done up and sold on, if he's ever going to get his life back on track. Jure is superb as the desperate man, all frazzled facial hair and frantic eyes; he spends his days cowering in the gloom, occasionally wielding a hammer.

As the pressure on him mounts, that hammer gets used more and more often, less a tool than a weapon to fight back against his problems. But it soon uncovers something rotten in the brickwork; a creeping unease that seeps through the entire frame. It's a fantastic directorial debut by J.P. Davidson, whose experience as an editor pays off in dividends: chopping the film together with Teddy Bekele (veteran of The X Factor and The Great British Menu), the dread is palpable, as the fast-cut visuals combine with whispering voice overs, creaks and tinkling wind chimes (not to mention Christopher Campbell's atmospheric music). There's a very real sense that the walls are closing in; even Malcolm's only friend, Sonny (Richard Pepple), turns out to be mostly interested in reclaiming owed money.

Never really leaving the confines of the property, God's Acre ramps up the claustrophobia to unsettling extreme. On paper, a horror flick about home improvement sounds daft, but on the screen, this is a scarily literal take on the notion of dispossession and being possessed; you'll never look at the phrase "haunted house movie" in the same way again. Just how contagious the clammy mood is only becomes apparent when an innocent neighbour wanders in for coffee. With the windows open and the sunlight streaming in, the startling nastiness of Malcolm's existence is exposed, throwing the curtains wide on an age in which a home is less like a castle and more like a prison.

Martin Stitt
Cast: Jack Gordon, Rebecca Calder Certificate: 15

Showtimes: 21.00, 26th / 21.15, 29th

If the lyrics of The Beatles skip through your head as you sit down to watch Love Me Do, you're not alone. The classic song, which pledges both truth and passion, is a simple plea for union distilled into three words. When they appear on the screen in Martin Stitt's film, they're divided by diagonal lines. Love looks detached. Me appears isolated. And the verb on the end feels more emphatic than ever.

The movie follows a decidedly odd couple. Antonia is an investment banker with a hard nose and singular focus. Max, on the other hand, is an out-of-work actor, at the opposite end of the financial spectrum. She's gunning for someone else's job; he's still waiting for his break. It's hardly a natural match. But hook up they do in a bond that proves mutually beneficial and destructive, each of them a trophy for the other's arm, plus the means to reach an end.

Essentially a two-hander, the cast are magnetic to watch. Jack Gordon is suitably chameleonic as the actor, believably intense, even if his sudden (and extreme) loyalty is hard to swallow. Rebecca Calder, meanwhile, is blistering as the determined career lady; you can't take your eyes off her.

The pair wind around each other with fierce conviction, but that class gap slowly eats away at them. The couple find themselves questioning their own ambitions - and their resolve to achieve them. What will they for themselves and, as darker desires come to the surface, what will they do for their partner? That pressure to succeed stems not just from the characters, but the city they live in; the insidious rat race of London is captured by Stitt (making his feature debut) with an impressive claustrophobia, one that is channeled by the white-walled home of Antonia. Exactly the kind of place successful people live, be that success economic or creative, the importance of surface appearance is echoed by Max's profession - everything is a performance, to some extent. The result is a intriguing study of a relationship where self is as important as passion. It's not always about whether you love someone; it's about what you do.

Today sees the start of one of the most exciting events in the UK film calendar: the Raindance Film Festival. Now in its 23rd year, the festival - which has premiered the likes of Pulp Fiction, Memento, The Blair Witch Project - is one of the largest festivals dedicated to indie film in Europe.

Together with its courses, which introduced Guy Ritchie to Matthew Vaughn many moons ago, and its Web Fest - the only festival in the UK devoted to independent digital and streaming series - Raindance is a wonderful force for supporting indie film-makers. And, equally exciting, is the kind of place where you'll see films that you simply wouldn't find anywhere else.

Teaming up with VODzilla.co, which is supporting both straight to VOD Raindance titles and the Web Fest, I'll be covering the 2015 Raindance festival in as much detail as is humanly possible over the coming weeks. With 90 features, 200 odd shorts and a whole heap of events, that's a lot of festival. To start with, here are the top 23 films to see at the 23rd Raindance Film Festival.

Director: Wes Ball
Cast: Dylan O'Brien, Kaya Scodelario, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Giancarlo Esposito, Aidan Gillen, Barry Pepper, Lili Taylor, Ki Hong Lee, Patricia Clarkson
Certificate: 12A

The Scorch Trials manages the impressive feat of containing more running than The Maze Runner, a film that was mostly about people running. The problem is that after escaping their labyrinthine prison at the end of the first film, our defiant teens need something else to run from. They take their lead from Marlon Brando's similarly rebellious Wild One: Whaddaya got?

At first, the answer seems to be a vaguely suspicious shelter for teens immune to the virus wiping out humanity. It's run by creepy-man-of-the-moment Aidan Gillen, whose job title is unclear, but mostly seems to involve curling the corner of his mouth every time someone gets hurt. You don't need to hear the words "paradise", "lucky chosen ones" and "never seen again" to guess things aren't all they seem.

When outside of the compound, though, that reason changes to the zombies now populating the planet - freaky, dull-eyed, black-veined creatures that don't waste time shuffling around like the Romero monsters of yesteryear. Or is it the humans trying to survive in this burned-out society, the kind of scavengers desperate enough to fire a gun, chain someone from the ceiling or sell out their friends? Perhaps it's the sinister organisation WCKD, which wants to harvest the kids for their cure-carrying blood?

Our teens spend the whole film rushing between this endless string of threats, stopping only to look shocked, surprised or remind each other to keep running. Dylan O'Brien remains likeable as leader Thomas, but is reduced to jogging to the end of the frame and staring, open-mouthed, into the distance at the next oncoming peril. The rest of the gang, meanwhile, rely on their actors' natural charm (Thomas Brodie-Sangster remains a talent to watch) to get through the script: the majority of the dialogue consists of the words "Quick!", "Run!", "You're almost there!" or a combination of the three.

Wes Ball directs it all, at least, with an impressive urgency; after tackling sci-fi with his first outing, he leaps into horror with the same energy and strong sense of world-building. The abandoned skyscrapers and eerie corpses are all brilliantly, creepily brought to life - although, despite being edited for a 12A certificate, this is really not suitable for those under 15. The newest members of the cast, meanwhile, are obviously having fun: Breaking Bad's Giancarlo Esposito is enjoys himself as, essentially, a desert pirate, while Lili Taylor tries to bring gravitas to the film's science as a former member of WCKD - you can tell a company is bad when their name is one letter away from a lucrative sponsorship deal with an alcoholic beverage. The excellent Kaya Scodelario, meanwhile, out-acts them all as Teresa, who becomes increasingly conflicted over the whole situation.

But the threads holding the plot together are woefully thin: Rosa Salazar is wasted as a token romantic interest, who is introduced just for the sake of having a love triangle, while Alan Tudyk's role as a sleazy bar owner could have come from a completely different film - another person inserted solely to extend the runtime. There's much to be said for a film aimed at younger audiences daring to tackle the same moral dilemmas as Channel 4's brilliantly dark series, Utopia - the use of the divided ensemble to foreground the debate of the kids' lives vs the future of the world is effective - but writer TS Nowlin is so busy being ambitious, he forgets to be entertaining. This is a big step down from The Maze Runner's taut, gripping structure: the maze, not the running, was the secret to that film's success. Here, our heroes even flee from the weather in a scene that brings to mind Mark Wahlberg trying to outrun the wind in M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening. Without the confines of the franchise's maze walls, this sequel dashes all over the place - but it feels slower than ever.