What’s it about?
After his wife Ellie passes, 86-year-old Irving Zisman’s (Johnny Knoxville) quest for a new, prime “piece of tail” is invigorated.  This dream is short lived when he’s forced to deliver his grandson Billy to his father after Billy’s junkie mum is jailed.  Queue the precocious kid/dirty old man road trip.

What did we think?
Elodie says: You would think that taking a small Jackass skit, adding a scripted storyline and combining it with the traditional Jackass hidden-camera pranks to make a full length movie would fail big time, but it doesn’t.  This movie is not for the faint hearted or those who would despise a dude dressing up as an old man for shits and giggles. Bad Grandpa is crude, it’s daring, but most of all it’s hilarious!

What’s it about?
A middle-aged divorcee (Julia Louis Dreyfus) wrestles with the many relationships in her life and discovers that experience is a very different thing to wisdom.

What did we think?
Dan says: This delightfully funny film captures the heart of real relationship trials and tribulations. Imagine that you and your friends were slightly funnier than you are when you’re drunk and that you had a chance to do a second draft of everything you said and you’d almost have this film.
Story buffs will leave feeling unsatisfied but the real meat is in the relationships and the interplay between this extremely talented ensemble doing what they do best.

What’s it about?
After rescuing his son Dalton from the spirit world called “The Further”, Josh Lambert is suspected of the murder of family friend and spiritual guide Elise Rainier. But it appears the ghostly woman who once haunted Josh as a child may have returned to the real world with him with a deathly agenda.

What did we think?
Hilary says: For Halloween this year, I watched Insidious (1) to prepare for this sequel and thank god I did. Insidious: Chapter 2 picks up right where the first left off and hops back and forth between the two films towards the end, with little explanation about crucial elements such as “The Further” from the first film, which could turn fear into frustration. While a little slow to get going, I ultimately found Chapter 2 a more complex, stronger and scarier film than the previous one. The full return of the cast (including the excellent Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne) was a definite win for famous Aussie writers James Wan and Leigh Whannell, of Saw fame.

What’s it about?
A surreal love story centered around a woman (Audrey Tatou) who suffers from an unusual illness caused by a flower growing in her lungs.

What did we think?
Mood Indigo is a surreal but wonderful visual feast that delights the senses but occasionally fails to engage the heart. Definitely worth seeing if you appreciate foreign films but the unrelenting nature of the unfettered imagination will leave you exhausted by the end. When I say surreal I mean super surreal as director Michel Gondry truly lets loose. Apparently there’s a much longer director’s cut but I have to say that much surrealism may just be too much for the human brain.I found it both tiring and enchanting.

What it’s about?
Filmmaker Ridley Scott and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men) team up for this thriller about a respected lawyer’s (Michael Fassbender) one-time involvement in an illegal drug-trafficking deal that spirals out of control.

What did we think?
Hilary says: The cast alone – Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem and Brad Pitt – is undoubtedly a crowd puller and the vivid characters they play (especially Malkina by Diaz) is definitely a highlight of this film, but this is McCarthy’s first-time screenplay and it shows. The Counselor’s slick, good looks can’t make up for the fact the story is tediously indulgent and incomprehensible for the majority of its two-hour running time. But it does contains some of the best monologues in recent memory, and you won’t want to miss Diaz’s auto-erotic sex scene and the recounting of it by Bardem.

What’s it about?
The tragic true story of 22-year-old Oscar Grant III, who was fatally shot by an Oakland transport-police officer on the morning of New Year’s Day, 2009, following an altercation on a train. Viral video footage at the scene showed he was completely apprehended and posed no threat.

What did we think?
Alex says: We follow Grant (Michael B. Jordan, who fans of The Wire will remember as the equally ill-fated young Wallace) on what is to be the final day of his life. He’s no angel and has done time in prison but he is turning his life around and genuinely cares for his girlfriend and daughter. After his mother’s (The Help’s Octavia Spencer) birthday, Grant and his friends celebrate a fateful New Year’s Eve on the town. A very well-acted dramatisation that is thoroughly deserving of its two Sundance awards. Not a feel-good hit.