America’s space program may be reduced to a remote-controlled joyride on Mars, but know that Hollywood continues to dream big: Virtually every shot in Alfonso Cuarón’s technothriller is a stunner. Earth dwells blue, airy and massive on the bottom edge of the frame, while shuttles and satellites pirouette with Kubrickian grace.

Two classic John Candy films directed by the legendary John Hughes. UNCLE BUCK:

1955. A fun time if you were a kid. We meet four of them: Billy, Paddy, Archie and Sam. Individually you might not notice them but together they formed a force called the “Flatbush Four!” 58 years later they get together celebrate the wedding of one of their own in Las Vegas. My how things have changed.

This genial biopic of the ‘Godfather of Belfast Punk’, Terri Hooley, is a litany of rock-movie clichés: battered transit vans, seedy dives, heroic outsiders, shifty label execs, abandoned spouses, missed chances, take-all gambles and industrial quantities of cheap lager. None of which stops ‘Good Vibrations’ from being an impassioned, funny and monumentally likable myth-making comedy.

Preston Sturgess is often regarded as the classic master of the romantic comedy. Closer to our generation many may suggest that mantle was taken up by the late, great Nora Ephron. But to me, the filmmaker who consistently gives us the best of love and laughter is Richard Curtis.

By Peter Travers, Rolling Stone Magazine October 11, 2013 The facts made global headlines back in 2009. Richard Phillips, captain of the Maersk Alabama, found the commercial ship boarded by Somali pirates, who held him for ransom on a lifeboat for five days until the Navy SEALs came to the rescue. Over and out. End of heroic story.

Any film that tries to encompass most of Nelson Mandela’s long life carries an enormous burden of expectation. How can one film do the man justice? And in attempting to do so, how can it be vital and compelling rather than merely well-meaning and didactic?

Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) lives comfortably with his wife and children in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., in the early 1800s — a time when far too many black people are far less fortunate. But for Northup, everyday life has nothing to do with slavery. An impressive violinist, he moves freely through white society and dresses in the style of a gentleman.

There’s lots of talk about economy, but for all the pontificating and bloviating about taxes and jobs and poverty, is there any one person who can explain what happened, how we got here, and how we might fix it?

A Kevin Macdonald film puts its protagonist in peril and plunks you into the churning waters of the real world – all with bracing cinematic style. Films such as Touching The Void and The Last King Of Scotland have proven how, even in very different registers, he delivers.