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.

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.

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

Director: Paris Leonti
Cast: Billy Zane, Robert Fucilla, Geoff Bell, Kirsty Mitchell, Vas Blackwood
Certificate: 15
Trailer

“And Billy Zane.” There aren't many words in the English language that can contain the same exciting potential of amazing brilliance - or spectacular crap. This is, after all, William George Zane Jr., the guy who starred in Titanic, Dead Calm, Back to the Future, Back to the Future Part II. And The Phantom. But not even The Zane's latest hairpiece can rescue this low-budget mess.

It begins, almost promisingly, in Serbia. A military coup sees a group of fighters shoot their way into the president’s house and kill him. It’s quick, it’s bloody, it’s trashy. And it features a bad guy called Olodan Cracovic – a name that even William George Zane Jr. would be jealous of.

Director: Alexander Payne
Cast: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Matthew Lillard, Nick Krause
Certificate: 15
Trailer

“My friends on the mainland think because I live in Hawaii, I live in paradise. Like a permanent vacation, we’re all just out here drinking Mai Tais, shaking our hips and catching waves…”

That’s how Alexander Payne’s latest film – his first in seven years – begins. With a clichéd voiceover that sticks out like a sore thumb covered in neon fairy lights.

Matt King (Clooney) is a father whose wife Elizabeth is in a coma after a jet-ski accident. His kids don't like him much and he's also facing a tough decision about selling off the oodles of Hawaiian land he's inherited. To top it off, it turns out Ellzabeth was cheating on him. All of these things we can work out without his unnecessary opening monologue, which seems to exist just for its closing sentence: “Paradise? Paradise can go fuck itself.”

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum, Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas, Michael Fassbender, Bill Paxton
Certificate: 15
Trailer

“Don’t think of her as a woman. That would be a mistake.”

That's Kenneth's (McGregor) take on Mallory Kane (Carano), a lady with a lethal streak as blunt as her name. A newcomer to cinema, the MMA star doesn't so much act as pummel her way through the screen, tearing up everything in her path like a machine with the dial switched firmly to "kill". And thighs switched firmly to "squeeze".

Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Jeremy Irvine, Tom Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch, Eddie Marsan, Niels Arestrup, Peter Mullan
Certificate: 12A

Let’s face it. You don’t go into War Horse without knowing exactly what to expect. It’s a film by Steven Spielberg. About a horse. You’ll either leave the cinema bawling your eyes out or puking into the nearest potted plant. Spielberg being Spielberg, he manages a messy mix of both. Either way, bodily fluids will run. The only question is in what order.

Albert (an excellent Jeremy Irvine) has been brought up well by his parents. He’s a lovely boy, even if his dad (Mullan) is a wounded alcoholic and his mum a waste of talented actress Emily Watson. Between his pa's gimpy leg and their farm’s poor harvest, how can the family survive financial hardship and avoid being repossessed by the nasty local landlord?

Inevitably, the answer is: a horse.

Director: Michael Dowse
Cast: Seann William Scott, Liev Schreiber, Alison Pill, Jay Baruchel
Certificate: 15
Trailer

Dum dum dum do-da do-da, dum dum dum do-da do-da, dum dum dum do-da, dum dum dum do-da DO-DA.

The tune, of course, from popular Belgium-Holland dance group 2 Unlimited’s hit single, Get Ready for This. Or, as it’s better known, the theme music for SNES game NHL 96 – widely regarded (by me) to be the most realistic presentation of ice hockey ever. EVER.

But now, Nintendo have some competition in the form of Goon. Written by Jay Baruchel and Evan Goldberg, it’s a sports comedy about Doug Glatt (Wiliam Scott), a nice-but-dim youngster with a talent for lamping people round the head. Naturally, he becomes an ice hockey player.

Director: Michel Hazanavicius
Cast: Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, James Cromwell, John Goodman, Malcolm McDowell, Uggy the Dog
Certificate: PG
Release Date: Friday 30th December
Trailer

After a year of rapes, killings, break-ups and Michael Bay movies, sometimes you just want to watch a film that’s happy. And wonderful. And black-and-white. And silent. Perhaps something that involves tap dancing. Or moustaches. The Artist is all of these. And it has a dog.

That’s what everyone says about The Artist. But really, a black and white film in 2011? That's just silly. We’ve had colour cinema since before Star Wars – could they not afford it?