ANOTHER YEAR: Starring: Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen, Leslie Manville. Dir: Mike Leigh.

There are many people who will not have the slightest interest in this film. Fair enough. A small, slow slice of life from working class England isn't everyone's cup of tea. But those who have enjoyed similar offering from Mike Leigh – Secrets and Lies, Happy-Go-Lucky – will welcome it.

Not much happens. There are four scenes, one taking place in each season and each opening with shots of the central couple, the happily married Tom and Gerri – yes, they mention it – tending plants on their small allotment (fitting a subtext of aging and time passing). The bulk of the film then takes place in their home, as they entertain friends and relatives, chat about their problems, the world, and well, nothing much really.

It's a fascinating film, one where the tiniest details are most revealing of character and where flaws and fears are subtly teased out.

While Tom and Gerri are contentedly growing towards retirement, their friends are less happy, particularly the somewhat neurotic Mary – the film's main source of dramatic tension.

From being merely an irritant she grows into a fully-rounded character and towards the end, where conversation fades to give us an isolated close-up of her forlorn face, becomes truly heartbreaking.

Lovely stuff, superbly acted and quietly wonderful.

David Jones marked himself as a director to watch with his debut, the very smart sci-fi story Moon. His second is a far bigger Hollywood project and yields mixed results. Source Code (***) tells of Jake Gyllenhaal's marine who is repeatedly sent back into the past (for a limited time only) to try and discover the perpetrator of a bomb attack on a train. Kinda like that Denzel Washington film from a few years back. It's all very classily done: well acted, well shot and with some nifty twists en route. But the set-up (which is actually more complicated than I suggest) is ultimately silly and the ending sappy.

In Daydream Nation (****) smart sassy 17-year-old Caroline is relocated to high school in Hicksville, where an industrial fire rages and a serial killer roams the countryside. It's an ultra-stylish coming of age story: funny, almost self-consciously hip, modern and disillusioned. These are teens behaving very badly and doing a lot of drugs; the adults aren't much better, and in no time Caroline is getting it on with both a cute teacher (Josh Lucas) and a fellow student. There is an unbridled smart-ass energy here which overcomes first time writer/director Michael Goldbach's tendency to flit between stylings of Lynch, Tarantino, Kelly and others, and to overload the story. Unpredictable, uneven, and exhilarating.

If ever a movie was created by a marketing department and made by committee it is Arthur (*). It must have seemed such a good idea to some cynical accountant: Russell Brand's a drunk – let's get him to play a drunk! And what about the butler? Let's make her a woman – Helen Mirren gives good box office! It's awful. Brand is stunningly charmless, an infantile rich idiot you just want to slap. Even worse are changes to rehabilitate the film to an era where being mega-rich and drunk isn't highly esteemed (unless you're Iron Man). Enter AA and… oh, it's just too horrible for words.

Nicolas Cage breaks out of hell to revenge his daughter's death with the help of a hot chick in a charger. Yep. Drive Angry (***) is an unashamed shot of grindhouse adrenaline, the sort of flick wherein Cage – modelling the latest in his line of unlikely hairpieces – can engage in a full-on slo-mo gunfight while continuing to have sex. William Fitcher has fun as ‘The Accountant', sent to return the escapee to the underworld, but the film is a little flabby and – surprisingly – fails to plunge far enough over the top for true cult classic status.