You'd have to go a long way to find a film as truly, mind-bogglingly bad as A Long Way Down, which trumps A New York Winter's Tale as the worst celluloid entry in this still-young film year and may likely set the bar for some while to come. Adapted from the darkly comic 2005 novel from Nick Hornby, the movie about four suicidal malcontents who find solace in one another's company manages to trivialise and cheapen every aspect of human behaviour that it touches.

Anyone who secretly liked High School Musical or is a fan of Mean Girls or Glee will find something to like in Darren Stein's candy-coloured high-school satire, which detonates some teenage culture bombs (albeit some of them years behind the curve) while giving some hearty laughs.

Given the world’s most famous crime organisation hails from Italy, it’s odd that we associate the best crime movies with elsewhere, notably Hollywood (not least its quintessential Mafia films, The Godfather and The Godfather Part II). But Italian directors have been contributing some memorable additions to the genre of late. And following The Consequences of Love and Gomorrah comes the scintillating Salvo.

Director David MacKenzie has made a prison drama for those who don’t like the genre and an ace in the hole for those who do. Starred Up is an example of how quality filmmaking captures an audience no matter what the topic – and here, that quality includes skilful cinematography, a tight script and tremendous performances from both leading and supporting cast. The result is that we get to see how the horror of prison life reflects the violent pockets of society outside.

Like his father Ivan (Ghostbusters) Jason Reitman has shown himself to be a sure hand at helming comedy, and his less commercial sensibility has resulted in films as spiky and interesting as Young Adult, Juno, Up in the Air and Thank You For Smoking.

In a Q&A at the London Screenwriters' Festival last year, Welsh writer/director Caradog James and producer John Giwa-Amu already had fans. If that Q&A is any indication, the team at Red & Black Films have a brilliant career ahead of them, all thanks to The Machine, a dark science fiction tale of artificial intelligence and human scheming that is finally released this week.

As she proved in her exquisite debut Love Like Poison, French director Katell Quillévéré has an astonishing knack for delicately told stories which, in their sensitivity to character and credibility, pack a weighty emotional punch. And so it goes in her follow-up Suzanne, an aesthetically sunny story of unconditional familial love and the grand, gut-wrenching folly that comes from being romantically entangled with a dubious character.

Terry Gilliam’s career currently resembles Orson Welles’ declining years, and not just in both men’s seemingly impossible quests to finish a film of Don Quixote. Gilliam too is trying to work outside a Hollywood system that has tired of his maverick talent, finding himself in far-flung European corners with motley casts of famous friends and fans, doing him favours in the hope his old lightning will strike.

Ten-year-old Ahlo is the energetic, cheeky, joyous centre of Kim Mordaunt’s drama The Rocket (Sitthiphon Disamoe as Ahlo, main picture), which follows him through a series of challenges towards a triumphant and redeeming final act. That may sound like a familiar narrative arc, but it’s told with new freshness and considerable humour in the film, which is billed as the first ever to come out of Laos.

The history of computer games being turned into movies has not been a happy one (Max Payne, Battleship, Lara Croft), but the blockbusting Need for Speed car-racing franchise fares rather better. This movie version is of course simplistically plotted and completely ludicrous for almost every one of its 130 minutes. But the action is frantic and non-stop, the stunts are performed by stuntmen rather than computer software, and the cars are freakin' awesome.