DETENTION
Dir: Joseph Kahn - Starring: Josh Hutcherson, Shanley Caswell, Dane Cook.

I had never heard of Detention before it arrived at the DVD store so I was doubly delighted to discover its hyperactive charms. Detention is a high-school comedy romp complete with a serial killer and sci-fi time travel. Mix Scream with Back to the Future and Scott Pilgrim Vs the World and you're getting close.

The plot is deliberately and insanely complex and pushed along at such a speed that repeat viewing to catch all the background gags and details is almost obligatory. At it's most basic it's about some teens about to go to prom, who are menaced (and some killed) by the delightfully named Cinderhella (who's, in the Scream manner, also had films made about him).

But that's not really central. It's mainly a film about young geek Riley who wants to be popular but keeps ending up in embarrassing situations as her crush Clapton (Hutcherson) falls for the wrong girl and is beaten up by the school bully.

But that's not it either. The main delight here is in the sheer mass of silly and imaginative stuff that the filmmakers continually throw at the screen, a barrage of sensory overload which would be tedious if it weren't so smart, funny and inspired. One out of the bag.

Mysteries of Lisbon, the final film from veteran Chilean director Raoul Ruiz has had the term 'masterpiece” thrown at it. But it's not a film for everyone. It's a four and a half hour costume drama in Portuguese and tells a complex series of interconnected stories in a manner so strange that it creates something of a dreamlike state. At first it seems surprisingly crude: the staging is minimal and the camera placement ugly. But then scenes of remarkable sophistication arise to prove it all a work of deliberate oddness. Characters' actions and reactions are similarly askew and unpredictable, and theatrical flourishes abound. The plot? Well, it centres round an orphan and a priest, gradually filling with details of theirs and several other lives. After struggling initially I was mesmerized.

Luke Wilson's everyman is having a bad day. He's lost his real estate job, his wife is giving him a hard time and now Samuel L Jackson has knocked on his door. Given that the film is called Meeting Evil it's easy to assume that Sam is even worse than his alarming personality suggests. And so it proves as a murderous car ride ensues and the sad-sack loser is forced to man-up and fight back. This is pure pulp territory: Jackson is 'testing” Wilson, or so goes his excuse for keeping him around while slaughtering half the neighbourhood. It's tense and efficient, rarely letting up from the opening minutes.

Sometimes films exceed expectations. Mind you, Battleship starts from a fairly low base, being an adaptation of a board game with no noticeable filmic qualities (story, characters, etc). But it's actually a whole bunch of fun. It's an alien invasion flick, an absurd but enjoyable story, pitting the US navy (led by Liam Neeson and Taylor Kitch) against 10 foot aliens with a mass of cool giant sci-fi hardware. Spectacular destruction unfolds. For a film – like the Transformers franchise – intended mainly to sell Hasboro merchandise, this is surprisingly good.

Wanderlust is the latest in a run of likeable rom-coms starring the immensely likeable Paul Rudd. This time he's hooked up with Jennifer Anniston and the unhappy couple flee Manhattan only to end up living in a hippy community. There they encounter about every hippy cliché going (Justine Theroux's commune leader is a hoot) but, fortunately, the gags flow freely and there is an affectionate undercurrent to proceedings which make for a painlessly humorous hour and a half.