Film reviews: Beginners | Horrible Bosses | Socialisme | The Big Picture

Beginners (15) ****

Directed by: Mike Mills

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer, Mlanie Laurent, Goran Visnjic

With this autobiographical sophomore feature, Thumbsucker director Mike Mills provides Ewan McGregor with his best role for nearly a decade and McGregor rewards him with a performance of surprising subtlety and tenderness. He plays Oliver, a lonely graphic artist grappling with relationship issues in the aftermath of his father Hal's recent death. Hal (played by Christopher Plummer) remains at the forefront of his thoughts largely because he came out as gay at the age of 75 and proceeded not only to have a happy and fulfilling love life with a much younger man (Goran Visnjic), but also develop a more open relationship with Oliver.

Set in 2003, the film jumps back and forth in time tracing the evolution of Hal's complicated path to happiness while gradually showing how Oliver's understanding of his dad's situation is affecting his budding romance with French actress Anna (Mlanie Laurent). Mills deploys a number of stylistic tricks and narrative quirks here that, in less sure hands, could have seemed precious. Instead, these innovations (including an adorable Jack Russell whose conversational thoughts we're made party to via subtitling) underscore how the detritus of an unhappy life can be reassembled to make it finally feel whole. It's charming and disarming stuff.

Horrible Bosses (15) **

Directed by: Seth Gordon

Starring: Jason Bateman, Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell

Revolving around three disgruntled employees who plot to kill their tyrannical bosses, the macabre premise of this wannabe black comedy writes a cheque its mainstream execution can't cash. Jason Bateman, PJ Byrne and Jason Sudeikis are best friends whose respective employment woes – intimidation, sexual harassment, all-round dickishness – lead them to hatch a flawed plan to murder one another's superiors, Strangers on a Train-style, so as to maintain their jobs while avoiding their crimes being traced back to them. Needless to say, nothing goes quite to plan, yet because the film strives to maintain this trio's likeability at all times, nothing is quite as funny or as edgy as it could have been either. Having said that, as the titular bosses, Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston and Colin Farrell are suitably noxious and over-the-top, with Farrell's turn as a coke-snorting, combover-sporting bell-end striking the right balance of self-mocking humour and scene-stealing weirdness. There are a few laughs to be had from Jamie Foxx's cameo as a tough-talking barfly who exploits the heroes' racial prejudices for cash by agreeing to become their "murder consultant". But such things just make you wish Horrible Bosses didn't repeatedly bottle out.

Socialisme (PG) *

Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard

Starring: Catherine Tanvier, Christian Sinniger, Jean-Marc Stehl

Anyone erroneously complaining that Terrence Malick's recent The Tree of Life is "non-narrative" (it has a very clear narrative, it's just non-linear) should try and get their head around France's most famed auteur's latest – and apparently final – film, to get a sense of what that term really means. Or maybe not, since Jean-Luc Godard's Film socialisme certainly doesn't warrant the effort it requires to try to make sense of it. Impenetrably cryptic, this assemblage of seemingly random images, film clips, celebrity cameos (oh look, there's Patti Smith) and unattributed philosophical musings seems designed to prevent us from working out what – if anything – is going on. It certainly doesn't help that Godard has opted to subtitle the film in what he has referred to as Navajo English (a sort of pidgin translation comprised largely of nouns). So unless your French is up to scratch, it's liable to be even more baffling. Annoyingly, I discovered after watching it that Godard – the wag that he is – has posted on YouTube a four-and-a-half minute trailer comprised of a fast-forwarded version of the entire movie. The curious would do well to check it out; it's about as coherent.

The Big Picture (15) ****

Directed by: Eric LarTigau

Starring: Romain Duris, Marina Fos, Catherine Deneuve

After a few too many years coasting in so-so family dramas and fluffy comedies, French star Romain Duris gets back to something like the form he exhibited in The Beat that My Heart Skipped in this intelligent existential thriller. He plays Paul, a wealthy, self-loathing lawyer whose life is shaken to the core when he discovers his wife's infidelity and accidentally kills her photojournalist lover. Deciding against informing the authorities, he instead fakes his own death, assumes the dead man's identity, adopts his nomadic career and disappears – leaving behind his wife and his beloved kids. Motivated in part by a desire to spare his children the heartache of a jailbird father, but also by his own regrets about not pursuing a promising career in photography when he was younger, Paul starts to find a little bit of success and contentment as he decamps to Montenegro and starts shedding his old identity. It's an intriguing and satisfying twist on the kind follow-your-dreams cliches cinema normally assaults us with, and even though there are few plot holes that make some of his decisions a little hard to buy, Duris's understated performance adds layer upon layer of complexity to a character suddenly forced to wrestle with who he is in an extreme situation.

Treacle Jr (15) ****

Directed by: Jamie Thraves

Starring: Aidan Gillen, Tom Fisher, Riann Steel

Like The Big Picture, Treacle Jr features a middle-class man walking out on his family life, but there the similarities between the two films end. Instead, this latest film from Jamie Thraves (The Lowdown), has a much sweeter, and even more enigmatic, vibe to it, one that allows the film to explore the way encounters with strangers from polar opposite worlds can sometimes help us reconnect with what's important in life. That it does so without adopting the properties of its title is an added bonus: this is a film that remains defiantly unsentimental, preferring instead to revel in organic, character-driven humour.

The title actually refers to a kitten belonging to Aidan (Aidan Gillen), a down-on-his-luck, Ratso Rizo-esque optimist whose sunny disposition tends to grate on those he meets. That's certainly the case with Tom (Tom Fisher), a married man intent on becoming destitute, having left his Birmingham home for London and thrown away his wallet. The reasons why are never divulged, but his non-specific depression contrasts brilliantly with Aidan's overbearing buoyancy and, through their delicate friendship, they bring a kind of harmony to each other's lives.

Film reviews: Beginners | Horrible Bosses | Socialisme | The Big Picture | Treacle Jr