Oculus (15)

Directed by Mike Flanagan

In Oculus Mike Flanagan has come up with a modest but novel fright flick.

With a haunted mirror, two frightened children and their disturbed parents, Oculus may appear to be following the classic formula of hocus-pocus and psychological fears.

But writer-director Flanagan adds in chronologcal lapses as he switches time zones and throws in  de rigueur references to the classics.

The film features Tim (Brendan Thwaites) who, released from a mental hospital, is met by his sister Kaylie (Karen Gillan).

In a complex operation, she’s determined to destroy a mirror because 11 years earlier the two were attacked by a mirror hosting haunted souls.

Oculus succeeds simply because of  the powerful performances and Flangan’s skilful sleights of hand.

Jeff Sawtell

A Perfect Plan (15)

Directed by Pascal Chaumeil

After Pascal Chaumeil’s delightfully quirky and funny breakout hit Heartbreaker, A Perfect Plan is a rather contrived and disappointing rom com starring Diane Kruger.

She plays a woman who tries to circumvent the family curse of every first marriage ending in divorce by marrying and divorcing a complete stranger.

Kruger proves she is as adept at comedy as she is at drama. The problem lies in there being zero chemistry between her and co-star Dany Boon, who plays her patsy.

It all comes across as very forced and predictable as their characters find themselves in ever more ridiculous scenarios.

Maria Duarte

TS Spivet (12A)

Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Quirky, surreal and visually stunning, with madcap characters who you fall in love with instantly, this can only be a Jean-Pierre Jeunet film.

Unusually, his latest cinematic adventure is set in the US and stars Kyle Catlett as TS Spivet, a 10-year-old science genius who leaves his remote Montana ranch to travel across the country solo to receive a prestigious award from the Smithsonian Institute in Washington.

Catlett has the right mix of innocence and wonder to keep you invested in this bizarre road trip and he is more than able to carry the film with the help of Helena Bonham Carter as his bug-obsessed scientific mother and Judy Davis as the highly-strung head of the Smithsonian.

It isn’t as inventive as Micmacs but it is totally delightful and features the best use of 3D I have seen in a long while.

Maria Duarte

Belle (12A)

Directed by Amma Asante

Racism, social prejudices and the abolition of slavery in Britain are all explored in this Jane Austen-style romantic costume drama.

It’s inspired by a 1779 painting of two aristocratic-looking young women, one black the other white. They are pictured as equals, highly unusual at the time.

The film centres on Dido Elizabeth Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), the illegitimate mixed-race daughter of Sir John Lindsay (Matthew Goode),  a royal navy captain and Maria Belle, an African woman who was possibly a slave.

What is also known is that Dido was raised as an aristocratic lady by her great uncle Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson) and his wife (Emily Watson) alongside her half cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray (Sarah Gordon) and the married John Davinier (Sam Reid).

Her romance with the latter, along with the details of her day-to-day life, are sheer conjecture but help to highlight the social injustices in Georgian English society.

That’s particularly evident when Dido becomes a desirable heiress thanks to her father’s inheritance while her half cousin becomes a social pariah because she is poor.

That twist acts as a foil to explore one of the catalysts that spelled the beginning of the end of slavery in Britain, the Zong slave ship trial which was presided over by England’s Lord Chief Justice Lord Mansfield.

Despite its sumptuous look and superb performances Belle seems like two different films battling it out in one — Sense And Sensibility meets 12 Years A Slave. But it doesn’t do true justice to either.

Maria Duarte