Sean Durkin's Martha Marcy May Marlene is out in UK cinemas today. It's really good.

Why? Well, I could go on for days about Zachary Stuart-Pontier's inspired editing (he also cut Catfish) and how it gently blends the boundary between present and past using the tiniest gestures (a dip in a lake, the stirring of a glass of water). Or I could rabbit on for hours about how Durkin and his DoP Jody Lee Lipes spend the whole movie gradually zooming in closer on the fractured and vulnerable Elisabeth Olsen. I could happily shout in your face for hours declaring my undying love for Olsen's mesmerising performance - balanced out by John Hawkes' intimidating presence - or the careful unravelling of Marcy May's chilling attempts to escape the grasp of a cult.

Instead, I'm going to convince you to see Martha Marcy May Marlene in 3 minutes and 57 seconds...

Director: Brad Peyton
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Josh Hutcherson, Michael Caine, Vanessa Hudgens, Luiz Guzman
Certificate: PG
Trailer

Centuries of French literature, film and fantasy fiction and it has come down to this: Are The Rock's nipples bouncy enough to make Journey 2 fun? The answer is easy: Yes.

You see, Dwayne Johnson, for all his limitations, possesses that one crucial thing: charisma. And the ability to play the ukelele. So that's two things. (Four things if you include both his pecs.)

Shoved in a sequel to a film that people seem to dislike - despite it being rather good - Johnson effectively plays the lead as step-father to Alex (Hutcherson), the least memorable (yet only surviving) character from Journey to the Centre of the Earth 3D. Hutcherson is fine as the geeky teen, but Alex is such a non-entity that we need someone to root for. In case The Rock's nipples can't cut it, we also get Michael Caine as Alex's granddad. Riding a giant bumblebee. 

So really the question is this: Is Michael Caine riding a giant bee enough to make Journey 2 entertaining? That one's easy: hell yes.

Director: Josh Trank
Cast: Dane DeHaan, Michael B. Jordan, Michael Kelly, Alex Russell
Certificate: 12A
Chronicle trailer

If you've seen the trailer for Chronicle, you've either groaned at the thought of yet another found-footage movie or been bored by the idea of yet another superhero with a gritty, modern origins story. But Josh Trank's sci-fi takes that tired genre and the tried-and-tested format and comes up with a brilliant play on both.

Did Spider-Man spend his formative months pranking people at the supermarket? Did ickle Magneto shuffle around parked cars for a laugh? Andrew (DeHaan) does. He also gets beaten up by his alcoholic father (Kelly) on a nightly basis. And carries a video camera around with him all day.

I love me a good infographic. And this one from Film3Sixty (who run the shiny new quarterly Film3Sixty magazine, about to hits its third issue in March) is definitely one of them - even if it does prove that I'm abnormal.

Based on the largest film consumer survey ever undertaken in the UK (18,00 people over six months), it sheds a fascinating light on film watching culture in this country, from piracy and Facebook to downloads and cinema trips.

For example, people who admit to pirating films regularly go to the cinema over four times more than those who don't each year. Is it a way of trying a film before spending money on it? Would people spend more at their local cinema if they weren't pirating at home? Either way, piracy is clearly popular (37 per cent of people admitted to piracy) but it's not a replacement for the big screen just yet.

Then there's the fact the average person in the UK watches 120.37 films per year - 17.29 of those being in the cinema. I probably see over 120 odd a year in the cinema alone (and pay for a lot of them). As someone who doesn't regularly pirate films, that puts me quite a way from the bell curve.

Thanks, Film3Sixty, for statistically confirming that I'm abnormal. And looking pretty while doing it.

Read on for the full infographic - you can get a detailed breakdown of the interesting stats by reading this interview over at Screen Daily.

Director: Jason Reitman
Cast: Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, Patrick Wilson, Elizabeth Reaser
Certificate: 15
Young Adult trailer

Mavis (Theron) is driving back to her childhood town of Minnesota. She has one aim: to win back her old flame, Buddy (Wilson). So what if he's married and he's got a kid? Everyone knows babies are boring. Mavis sticks in an old cassette tape of 90s music. The Concept by Teenage Fanclub comes on. "She wears denim wherever she goes. Says she's gonna get some records by the Status Quo," she sings. "I didn't want to hurt you, ohhh yeah..." She stops. She rewinds. She listens again.

Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly
Certificate: 15
Carnage UK trailer

“Why are we still in this house?” cries Kate Winslet after 80 minutes. She plays Nancy, wife of Alan Cowan (Waltz). Their son assaulted another boy with a stick at school. And so they go round to talk things through with his parents, Penelope (Foster) and Michael Longstreet (Reilly). Things start off amicably. Smiles. Coffee. Apple and pear cobbler. Half an hour later, they’ve descended into total carnage.

If you haven't seen Liam Neeson in The Grey yet, here's the entire film summed up in seven seconds:

Liam Neeson does a great job as Abe Simpson, while Joe Carnahan's direction and the superb production design (they sound edit the heck out of that snowy wilderness) nail the existential despair of human survival. At one point Neeson snarls at the sky, demanding answers from someone. The Grey is bare-boned, brutal stuff that doesn't pull its punches. And it's as gripping as hell.

Go and see it now. You won't regret it:

Director: Tomas Alfredson
Cast: Gary Oldman, John Hurt, Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong, Toby Jones
Certificate: 15
Release Date: Monday 30th January
RRP: £19.99

"I'm retired." Those are the first words spoken by George Smiley (Oldman), and they don't occur until 15 minutes in. But even before then we've spent enough time with Tinker Tailor's hero to know what he's about. We see him forced out of MI5 ("The Circus") alongside the paranoid chief, Control (Hurt), and follow him home during the muted opening credits. Throughout, Smiley says nothing.

It's a hugely effective sequence that sees allegiances change, powers shift, and paperwork go up and down in a lift. Welcome to Tomas Alfredson's take on John le Carré's world. It's a quiet, tense, and stylish place to be betrayed. How British.

BlogalongaBond. One Bond film a month until Bond 23 turns up.

Bond walks out of an Indian casino. He tips one of the waiters. "That will keep you in curry for a few weeks," he says.

Octopussy is a weird Bond film. In between its casual racism, hollowed-out crocodile boats and islands full of scantily-clad women, there’s an almost-discernible plot. It moves from a fake Faberge egg in a rather neat auction scene (taken from Fleming’s short story) to nuclear warheads at enough speed to trick you into thinking it’s an intelligent story. The problem is that it does this via casual racism, hollowed-out crocodile boats and an island full of scantily-clad women. And, at one point, Roger Moore dressed up as a clown.

As always, the stunts are impressive, but when an ancient Roger Moore constantly sends himself up because even he realises it’s impossible to take him seriously, you’ve pretty much hit the bottom of the franchise. He used to look like a vampire feasting on young, unaware virgins. Now, Moore's Bond looks like a corpse, animated by Cubby Broccoli for his own sick amusement. In one scene, Bond is chased by an elephant. It's hard to tell them apart. Yes, Steven Berkoff’s psychotic General is wonderful and the return of Maud Adams is a welcome sight, but neither are enough to wipe out the memory of Roger Moore swinging through the trees and emitting a loud Tarzan yell.

Octopussy is big. But it’s certainly not clever.

Fortunately, just as Moonraker was rescued by the fact that it actually ends, Octopussy benefits from a typically impressive title sequence. Why single these credits out from the franchise? There are better openings to analyse (an honourable mention here to Daniel Kleinman’s recent work from Goldeneye to Casino Royale) but it’s either a Maurice Bender tribute now or a look at John Barry’s excellent score – and the music is one of the few good things I can talk about next month in A View to a Kill.

So, how can you follow Octopussy’s example and make your own iconic 007 introduction? Here’s a handy guide to designing your own Bond title sequence, written by the expert...

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is out on DVD on Monday. It's hard to put into words just how beautiful Tomas Alfredson's adaptation of John le Carré's novel is. The ugly wallpaper. The massive glasses. Gary Oldman's face.

So rather than try and describe that atmosphere of distrust and period decay, we've distilled the essence of being George Smiley into an elegant, stylish and sophisticated Flash game (that's the first time you'll hear those words together).

There's a mole at the top of The Circus. Can you find the traitor amid the thesps? Can you separate the sneaky beast from the double-crossers? Can you bash its face in with a metaphorical shovel?

This is Tinker Tailor Whack-a-Mole. 

Drake Doremus' superbly moving anti-rom-com Like Crazy is out in UK cinemas today. Here are five reasons why you should see it...