Poor Katie Holmes – all of her acting career will be forever judged through the lens of Tom Cruise’s occasional craziness. It’s a shame because she’s actually quite good sometimes.

Written and directed by Peter Hedges of Gilbert Grape, About A Boy and Dan In Real Life fame, Pieces Of April is about an estranged daughter (named April) and her efforts to put on the perfect Thanksgiving for the family who are coming from out of town to visit her and her boyfriend in their run down apartment in the city. April’s mom (an Oscar-nominated performance by the excellent Patricia Clarkson) is terminally and this is their chance to leave behind a past relationship of anger and antagonism to create one last “good memory”. Following April’s struggles to bring together the Thanksgiving meal and the family’s adventures on the road trip to the city we explore what these characters are willing to do and how much pride they are willing to sacrifice for the sake of valuing family and active verb love.

Others may well find this film trite or contrived but if you step away from your cynicism for a second, it’s a film about interconnectedness, relationships and transcending the crap that keeps us apart. I guess I’m just a sucker for a story about grace and redemption.

The LoveFilm randomiser has sent me two films starring Javier Bardem this week. I suppose I should go see Biutiful at the cinema to make a hat-trick.

I think I’ve finally worked out that I just don’t really get the Coen brothers’ recent films. Fargo and The Big Lebowski, great, but A Serious Man, Burn After Reading and No Country For Old Men all just left me feeling like it would’ve made no difference if I hadn’t bothered. I’m sure the problem is with me and I imagine I’ll still go and see True Grit but if that’s the same then maybe I just need to accept that I’m not the kind of person they’re making films for and give up on them.

Starring Bardem, Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson and making the most of the scenery and architecture of the city of its setting, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is easy on the eye but that’s about it.

With Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan doing well at the cinemas, someone at the BBC decided it was time to show this harrowing story of 4 related lives individually and collectively torn apart by addiction to illegal and prescription drugs. Aronofsky’s films don’t pull any punches and certainly by the end of Requiem one of the major feelings you’re left with is relief that it’s over. That’s not to say that it has a happy ending – it doesn’t – there is no redemption for these characters.

The dream whose loss is mourned is the American Dream. Each character’s hopes for the future are laid out for us to see – whether it’s retiring on a pile of ill-gotten drug money, opening a dress shop, or appearing on TV as an example of success – and then shattered by addiction or just the reality of life.

It’s not a film filled with hope or even any kind of narrative philosophy at all. The slow crumbling of these lives is treated very matter-of-factly and as it accelerates the characters become increasingly powerless to stop even when they catch a glimpse of the destruction they are bringing on themselves and their relationships. At the beginning of the film, these are just normal people with hopes and dreams but who, once seduced by the initial glamour of their chosen drugs, find that the slope is very slippery and the reality far from the promise.

I’m keeping it brief at the moment – Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams both put in very believable performances and the vignettes of their blossoming romance 7 years ago and the falling apart of their marriage in present day had a definite authenticity to them due to a notably good script – worth a DVD rental.

I don’t have much to say about Casey Affleck’s mockumentary in which Joaquin Phoenix quits acting to become a gangster rapper. I suppose it has something to say about the nature of celebrity and blah blah blah but apart from the awkward scenes with Ben Stiller and P Diddy which were quite funny, I just wasn’t particularly interested.

In Danny Boyle’s latest film, based on a true story, James Franco plays a lone thrill-seeker who while climbing in Utah’s slot canyons dislodges a boulder that falls and traps the lower part of his right arm against the canyon wall. Unable to free himself or shift the boulder and not having told anyone where he was going, he gradually comes to realise that if he wants to leave the canyon alive, it’s going to have to be without his arm!

A bit of a break-out role for James Franco (who’s previously probably most famous for playing Harry in the Spiderman films), the cinematography is stunning, the use of music and sound excellent and when the inevitable time comes, the gore is enough to make you feel it but not gratuitous. That said, it’s not for those of a fragile constitution – you could feel the whole cinema was wincing and gasping as one. The whole film is pretty edge-of-the-seat stuff!

I haven’t seen Scott Pilgrim but I imagine this film is what clinched that role for Michael Cera. Indeed, Nick and Norah seems as though it could have been a first draft for Scott Pilgrim. Muso Nick plays guitar in an average indie rock band and, having recently been dumped by his shallow girlfriend, meets Norah in a bar and they have a night of trials and adventure in NYC searching for a secret gig by underground sensation “Where’s Fluffy”. The bitch gets her comeuppance, Nick gets over her, Norah gets over her issues, everyone grows – classic stuff.