Joe (Martin Compston) is a shy young man who seems somewhat scared of the grim London world around him. However his loving brother John (Neil Maskell) helps bring a sense of stability and happiness to his life, which is abruptly ended when John is savagely murdered.

Finding it difficult to come to terms with his loss, Joe is visited by an odd man called Piggy (Paul Anderson), who says he’s an old friend of his brother. Piggy is an avenger who knows the authorities aren’t going to do anything John death, and slowly works his way into Joe’s head, convincing him of the need to take direct action. Soon the two men are out on the streets looking for the five men responsible for John’s death. At first Joe finds it difficult to stomach the violence Piggy gets him involved in, but soon Joe get increasingly violent himself as his world begins to further unravel around him.

From first-time writer/director Kieron Hawkes, there’s a lot of potential on show in Piggy, although it does suffer slightly from the freshman curse of being slightly heavy-handed. The music is just a little overbearing, Joe’s voiceover is a way too intrusive and unnecessary, and the storyline is a smidge too pleased with an ambiguity that’s more indecisive than illuminating. However while the movie has a lack of restraint and subtlety at times – particularly in the voiceover, which is the definition of using it as a crutch – underneath that the core of the film works well.

Joe is an interesting character and his journey over the first hour and a quarter is an engrossing one as his boundaries are tested and he tries to replace what he’s lost with violence and a sense of satisfaction in exacting revenge. Likewise Piggy is incredibly intriguing, as he’s almost a life coach in bringing out the aggression in a young man who’s used to being submissive and pent up.

The film brings up a lot of fascinating ideas, with the opening moments presenting Piggy almost like a superhero, but one who’s far too into the violence he’s dishing out. The movie then continually plays with the relationship between Piggy and Joe, almost teasing the audience to come to a twist conclusion in their own minds about what’s going on between the two of them. However in the final 20 minutes the film seems unsure what it wants to do with all the things it’s thrown into the air.

Piggy himself gets a wonderful speech about what he feels he’s given his protégé, but the rest of the conclusion is rather uneven. There’s nothing wrong with leaving some things up to the audience, but here it feels more like the film’s shrugging its shoulders and saying it doesn’t know than asking the viewer to go out and consider the ramifications.

Overall Verdict: A promising debut from Kieron Hawkes. There’s a lot of intensity to Piggy, but a tendency towards heavy-handedness and an uneven ending mean it isn’t everything it could be.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

Teen idol Zac Efron is now 25, so time for a change of direction. To update his image let’s takes on the role of a marine in the Iraq war, in a film adapted from the Nicholas Sparks, writer of Dear John and The Notebook. Does it work? The result is a definite no-score draw.

Firstly the positive news – Efron, hair shaved, pumped up and eyes glaring, does indeed look like a former marine who has two close shaves with death. In the first his platoon bump into another gang, who are both ambushed resulting in several deaths. Efron’s sergeant, Logan Thibault, then finds a laminated picture of a pretty woman, with the message ‘keep safe’ on the back. On the way home Logan’s truck hits a mine – he survives and becomes convinced the photo is a lucky charm.

Back in the US he tracks down the woman, Beth (Taylor Schilling), running a kennel with her mum (Blythe Danner) and young son. She assumes Logan is a drifter looking for work, and gives him a job cleaning and tidying up the farm. The ex-marine means to tell Beth why he is there, but can’t bring himself to.

Inevitably he falls for the hippy, pretty Beth, and she falls for his strong silent act, especially as she is being bullied by her former hubby. Will true love find a way?

The weakness here is certainly not the acting – Efron changes his physique and body language successfully and is a fine former marine, while Schilling does her best as a dizzy blonde. The problem is the funereal pace – how many shots of autumnal leaves and golden sunsets can you squeeze into 100 minutes? Also problematic is the portrayal of Schilling as a ditzy herb-growing young mum, who is sexualised at every opportunity – how many pairs of hot pants does the woman own? And it’s autumn, not summer.

The story takes an eternity to go exactly where it looks like it’s going from the first minute, and the ending is a classic Hollywood cop-out. There’s also a lengthy sub-plot with Efron befriending Schilling’s young son and bringing out his musical talents, although there’s no evidence that Efron is actually playing the piano, and his dancing is deliberately daft.

The director is Scott Hicks, who made the glorious Shine in 1997 and has gone mainstream and dull ever since. If this is an attempt to bring the talents of Efron to a more adult audience it may succeed, if it’s an attempt to make an Iraq film people might actually watch it’s probably a failure. As a story in its own right it’s dull, slow and full of more clichés than you can shake a stick at – and yes, I know that’s a cliché.

Overall verdict: Soapy, dreary romantic drama almost saved by Efron’s solid lead performance. He deserves better material than this.

Reviewer: Mike Martin

So here we are then. Four years after Samuel L. Jackson turned up at the end of the first Iron Man movie with talk of “putting a team together”, through innumerable script and crew changes and a whole bunch of okay-ish films introducing our various superhuman warriors, The Avengers (or in this country, for reasons we’re still not totally sure of, Avengers Assemble) is finally landing at a cinema near you.

One may be forgiven for being sceptical about this amalgamation of Marvel’s various superhero franchises – after all, it has plenty of factors set against it. First and foremost, it’s a Hollywood action movie, a genre whose output has been consistently sketchy since, well… ever. Secondly, with a galaxy of big stars and a mega-distributor (Disney) behind it, this looks from the outset to be a case of too many cooks spoiling an already unsteady broth and many critics, myself included, have been bracing ourselves for the over-hyped, three-star disappointment of the summer. Well, I think I hear the waiter arriving with a huge portion of humble pie, because I’ll be damned if The Avengers isn’t Marvel’s finest achievement and, Christopher Nolan notwithstanding, the best superhero movie of this era.

Those approaching the franchise for the first time may be a little apprehensive, especially with at least four films worth of background to catch up on, but writer/director Joss Whedon excels in making everything as accessible as possible, no matter what your experience of the Marvel Universe.

Loki (Tom Hiddleston), brother of Thor and all-round nasty piece of work, has arrived on Earth with his eyes firmly on the Tesseract, the unpredictable but powerful artefact that served as Captain America’s major plot device in last year’s film. With the help of a shady new ally, the only thing stopping Loki from using it to take over the world is a bunch of disparate and unpredictable characters of varying power. Sound complicated? Not really. Basically: Source of Ultimate Power + Nefarious Evil-doer + World in Danger = Team of Superheroes Required. The real challenge here is balancing that equation and it’s a task that Whedon succeeds at with aplomb.

With all the huge personalities and massive action sequences required from a film such as this, the biggest threat is if it fails to become the sum of its parts. However Whedon has always been the master of balancing out potentially difficult concepts into watchable material (see Buffy, Firefly and, most recently, the peerless Cabin In The Woods) and here he succeeds again, by not giving any one element precedent over the other. A lesser director might be tempted to give perhaps one hero the ‘lead’ role, turning the entire piece into Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jnr) And Friends, but Whedon spreads the wealth magnificently, turning out a true ensemble piece of the highest order.

Another obstacle expertly steered around by both the director and actors is the potential loss of empathy for the team, but again Whedon comes up trumps, injecting each character with enough heart and personality to endear them to the audience, both as individuals and as a group.

He’s helped in this respect by a solid group of performances, again with each actor never attempting to rise above any of his or her peers. Downey Jnr is, as usual, at his charismatic best as billionaire inventor Stark and Scarlett Johansson provides great substance as Black Widow, holding her own in what is largely a testosterone driven movie.

The highlight of the cast, however, is new arrival Mark Ruffalo, facing the huge challenge of being the third actor in a decade to portray Bruce Banner, the man behind the Hulk. Ruffalo walks the line between previous incumbents Eric Bana and Ed Norton perfectly, who were too athletic and smart-arse respectively, producing a humble, thoughtful Bana, closer to the classic television version of the character and all the better for it.

A common complaint with films of this nature is that they often expend all their energies on one set piece, making the film as a whole a weaker experience, but again here’s that word again – balance. Whedon has made it so that no one part of the experience feels like a too early climax, each set piece perfectly weighted, leading to a superb climatic battle on the streets of Manhattan, which puts anything Michael Bay has done in the shade.

The one phrase that has consistently appeared on Twitter after preview screenings of The Avengers is “perfect popcorn movie” and it’s difficult to argue with that assessment. This is really a masterclass in how to direct an action film. Likeable characters, a simple but engaging plot, superb pacing and set pieces that thrill but never become tiresome, along with some witty dialogue. Fans of Buffy, Angel and Firefly have been worshipping at the feet of Joss Whedon since the late 90s, but, if this is anything to go by, their temple is about to become mighty crowded.

Overall Verdict: What was billed as the ultimate comic book movie turns out to be just that. A rip-roaring, smart, funny action film that ticks every box on its way to becoming an instant classic. If this is the standard to beat in Summer 2012, we’re in for a hell of a year.

Reviewer: Alex Hall

Whit Stillman, remember him? The heir apparent to Woody Allen, making chic, sophisticated, beautifully-shot movies about well-dressed, moneyed people trying to make sense of their brittle lives? It’s been 13 long years since his last film, a gap he puts down to three years of writing a book and 10 years of trying to get several scripts produced.

So here at last is the follow-up to 1998’s Last Days of Disco, but is this the work of a more mature, profound Stillman? In short, no.

Now very much a middle-aged man, Stillman still has the same obsessions – young people with more money than sense or any culture, obsessing about their looks and being ‘cool’. Stillman still writes dialogue that stretches a simple idea into what feels like a long undergraduate essay. There are the occasional gems and a couple of laughs, but boy do we have to sift through the mud to find them.

The problem with Damsels In Distress is it bears a striking resemblance to Heathers. Three posh, snobbish High School girls – Greta Gerwig, Carrie MacLemore and Megalyn Echikunwoke – take on a project in the form of Analeigh Tipton, a geeky loner who they decide to school in the arts of perfume, crisp clothing and being snotty to boys. Tipton played a big drip of water in Crazy, Stupid Love, and here plays another big drip of water. At least she can see through her gang’s amazing lack of depth of subtlety, and attracts some male attention in the form Gerwig’s former boyfriend, and her best friend’s French beau.

Gerwig and her gang can’t understand it, but do they learn that it’s not just looks that are important – do they heck? Instead they obsess about running the local suicide watch group, soap and inventing a new dance.

Whereas Heathers had dialogue as sharp as a razor and a genuine sense of darkness – including teenage suicides – Damsels seems to get more superficial as it goes on. It has nothing to say about snobbery – it even seems to condone it – and the characters get dumber, dopier and learn absolutely nothing. And yet…

The whole film would be borderline unbearable were it not for the presence of the wonderful Greta Gerwig. She’s being lauded as the queen of indie, and Stillman has come up trumps casting her as the gang’s leader. She is always watchable, and sympathetic even when her characters are not – certainly the case here. Obsessed with curing suicides with tap dancing – yes, really – the whole film comes alive when she stages a dance to a Fred Astaire song. The closing credits feature her new dance, a sequence that will leave you feeling two hours of watching her dancing would have been infinitely better than watching Damsels In Distress.

Overall Verdict: Over-wordy, nerdy snore bore saved by a fantastic central performance by Gerwig, and some pretty photography.

Reviewer: Mike Martin

Winner of the Queer Palm at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Beauty is one of those films on queer themes which stretches beyond just a gay audience. It’s a thought-provoking film full of tension, which will stay in your head long after the credits role.

Francois (Deon Lotz) is a middle-aged man living in South Africa. On the surface everything seems perfectly fine, although his marriage seems utterly devoid of any sign of affection. However his life is actually a morass of contradictions, so that he hates gay people, but goes off to retreats to have sex with others men (although gays and blacks are banned from these occasions). He seems to have everything pretty much under control though until he meets Christian (Charlie Keegan), the son of a long-lost friend.

His secret interest in the handsome young man gradually turns into an obsession, with Francoise following him around at a distance and watching his interactions with various people. Things gradually build to a crescendo, especially after he sees what could be a note of affection between Christian and a male friend.

Beauty is a wonderfully intense character study that looks hard at its subject and asks the audience to really think about what they’re seeing. There are numerous shots just looking at Francois, inviting the viewer to peer into the darkness inside him. It creates a wonderful sense of tension, as at any moment it feels he could either explode into dangerous self-destruction or start to find a way towards some kind of genuine happiness.

It’s a film where you start out with hope for Francois, who’s a rather sad figure, trapped by his inability to see past the strictures thrust upon him growing up in a conservative, white South Africa during Apartheid. The film’s most poignant moments contrast the buttoned down Francois, with the easy freedom of young people, for whom sexuality and race aren’t major issues, something the older man seems incapable of even imagining for himself. Indeed at the film’s most disturbing moment, part of its power isn’t just the brutality of what happens but the almost sweet patheticness of what leads up to it. Francois’ obsession with Christian is at least partly an envy of what his life could have been if he was 20 years younger, which makes the conclusion all the more affecting.

Francois is a wonderfully complex creation given impressive life by actor Deon Lotz, who manages to make him both tragic and yet despicable, cruel and yet almost forgiveable (up to a point) due to his misguided, blinkered views that seem to be beyond his control. You can understand exactly where he’s coming from, trapped in a prison of his own making. At first it makes him rather sad, until you realise how cruel and dangerous he is and how it poisons all those around him.

It’s a film where one viewing isn’t really enough to get the full measure of the movie, as it’s so rich and asks so many questions of the audience that you need to watch it twice to really let it all in. Director Oliver Hermanus shows himself to be a real talent to watch out for with one of the most powerful movies on gay themes in recent memory.

Overall Verdict: Beauty certainly packs a punch with its penetrating, wonderfully acted character study of a man trapped in prison of his own mental making.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

I think it’s safe to say that if you want a nice, jolly couple of hours, The Divide probably isn’t the best movie to watch. It’s dark, relentlessly pessimistic, often unpleasant and more than a little depressing. It’s certainly not completely without merit, but it ain’t fun.

In the great, no fuss opening, a nuclear explosion is tearing through New York City and a group of random people race for the safety of a basement/slash bomb shelter. The owner of the basement, Mickey (Michael Biehn), doesn’t want them down there, but with radiation swirling above, he doesn’t have much choice.

The survivors don’t know what to do or how they’re going to get through this, and soon start bickering. Things get even more desperate after men in hazmat suits invade and take away the only child amongst the group, leaving the rest behind and welding them in. As the days pass and with radiation slowly leaking in, everything begins to go rather Lord Of The Flies, with people losing their minds, factions developing and even the best of people starting to do things they never thought they would. In the quest for power and survival, the situation becomes ever more dangerous and degraded, with the threat of rape and violence growing ever greater as all the trapping of civilised behaviour disappear.

The Divide is definitely not a movie that takes a positive view of human nature. While it’s very dark and some of the scenes are likely to induce a wince or two, the film’s problem isn’t where it ends up, but where it comes from. Things could undoubtedly go very Lord Of The Flies in such a predicament, but the movie spends very little time setting the people up before everyone starts turning on one another. It means that when everything quickly falls apart it doesn’t feel psychologically satisfying as it hasn’t taken us on the journey to get there.

By not giving us a genuine sense of how and/or why these people can turn utterly depraved, it results in a movie that will be fine for those whose view of human nature is already pretty pessimistic– and who just assume everyone’s an asshole underneath a civilised exterior – but will feel unpleasant for the sake of unpleasantness to many others. It would have helped if we got a proper sense of how much time is passing, but we don’t really get that either.

The film’s red herrings are likely to drive some people nuts too. The opening scene of the city exploding is purely to get the people in the basement – which is the only thing the movie is interested in. However when hazmat suited strangers turn up, it seems like the film is opening up and starting to question what’s going on outside the claustrophobic bunker, especially when Josh (Milo Ventimiglia) discovers a bizarre lab just outside the basement. However this turns out to be nothing more than a rouse, seemingly only included to play with those expecting a more typical horror-thriller set-up and further unsettle the inhabitants.

It’s a shame the early part of the movie doesn’t really work and largely just serves to confuse what the film is trying to do and muddy where the characters are starting out from, because while The Divide gets incredibly dark, the film does a lot of good stuff in the second half. However due to the lack of satisfying set-up, it still doesn’t quite work. That said, it certainly provokes a reaction, which is a lot more than most films manage, and there are some decent performances (along with a couple of slightly dodgy ones). Heroes star Milo Ventimiglia in particular certainly sheds his good guy image with an intensely unhinged performance.

Overall Verdict: If you’re going to present such a nihilistic view of humanity, you need to provide the set-up for that, rather than just assuming we’ll all agree. And that’s where the provocative The Divide will, well, divide audiences.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac