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With an extra dose of attitude and energy, this Irish comedy-drama hits us like a punch in the nose, launching at full speed and never letting up. It's a funny and edgy portrait of three generations of a family stuck in a cycle of criminality and ignorance. While writer Alastair Siddons and director Adam Smith kind of lose the plot along the way, at least they aren't interested in preaching at us. Instead they create a group of unforgettable characters in a seriously messy situation.

The leader of the family is the patriarch Colby (Brendan Gleeson), who rules the community of caravans with a macho smirk and ignores the law as if it's still the good old days. His son Chad (Michael Fassbender) never learned to read, but wants his children (Georgie Smith and Kacie Anderson) to go to school. Colby thinks that's ridiculous, preferring to educate the kids by taking them along on badly planned robberies. Chad's wife Kelly (Lyndsey Marshal) wants out of this situation even more than Chad does, and she's increasingly annoyed that Colby is putting their children in danger. Will Chad have the nerve to stand up to his imperious dad?

Miraculously, the actors underplay these larger-than-life characters, creating eerily realistic, charming people whose clashes are a direct result of the changing world around them. Fassbender and Gleeson bring terrific detail to their roles and then spark off each other with such power that we don't know quite where to look. It's utterly riveting, drawing out personal grit along with darker themes. And it's not surprising that other characters are less fleshed-out. Marshal is most impressive in the scenes in which the seriously tough Kelly locks horns with Colby. And a couple of side characters register nicely: Rory Kinnear as a beleaguered cop trying to get the drop on this gang and Sean Harris as a mentally unstable family member.

Continue reading: Trespass Against Us Review

When archaeologists Shaw and Holloway (Rapace and Marshall-Green) figure out that ancient civilisations share a map to a specific star system, the Weyland CEO (Pearce) funds a two-year mission to get answers about the origin of humanity. Led by Weyland crony Vickers (Theron) and Captain Janek (Elba), Shaw and Holloway are accompanied by a helpful android (Fassbender) and a team of not-so-enthusiastic scientists. But what they find on this distant moon isn't what they expected, and the remnants of this civilisation aren't as dead as they seem.

Continue reading: Prometheus Review

Five friends are hiking in the wilderness when they discover a young girl, Anna (Boyd), buried in a box. The most adept climbers (George and Newman) go for help following a shortcut that involves a dangerous descent, while the others (Speleers, Magowan and Sweeney) take Anna on a safer route. But they're being chased by a pair of merciless killers (Harris and McCole) who need to get Anna back so they can collect ransom money from a shady Eastern European (Roden).

And as things turn very violent, everyone gets increasingly desperate to survive.

Continue reading: A Lonely Place To Die Review

This is a prime example of what is common referred to as a geek show. In the olden days, that meant that carnival goers were ushered into a back tent (and usually asked to cough up a few more dimes) to view a geek doing geek things, like biting the heads off chickens or swallowing worms. It was the lowest rung of entertainment, the 20th century equivalent of bear baiting.

Continue reading: Creep Review