A surprising hit, this one. I thought it was going to be another of those comedies that is trying too hard and misses the mark. It wasn’t perfect, but it was funny throughout and actually did make me care about the characters, which is all you can ask for really.

I’ve got mixed feelings about this one. On the good side, it was a unique idea, a new story and a new set of twisting plotlines, and it was well written to keep the pages turning without getting frustrated along the way. On the other hand, it was an uncomfortable read, abuse of illegal immigrants and patients under the care of a mental institution, leaving you feeling helpless and angry.

I wasn’t sure what to expect with Cake, knew that Jennifer had received commendations for her work on it, and that it was an indy film about chronic pain - that didn’t sound too riveting, but as always with this type of film, the genius is in the characters and the subtle moments of drama.

The good thing about this film is that it seemed new and unique, a fresh idea with what could have been interesting characters. The combination of ambitious family guy, hoping to retire guy, and sweet but simple guy was interesting but somehow they didn’t quite gel as I would have hoped.

This is the brief story of an English RAF pilot who is taken prisoner on a remote South Pacific island by the Japanese. He’s lucky enough to have a friendly captor, and makes something of a life for himself on the island, following the final moments of the second world war from the point of view of the Japanese.

At first glance, this one seems like it’ll be a bit of a low-budget sci-fi thriller but it actually stood up to the Film Watch test far better than I thought it would. The special effects were almost perfect, the location stunning (I HAVE to stay in that hotel at some point), and the high tech stuff completely believable. Domnhall was good, redeeming himself from the About Time nonsense, and although slow-paced, the film was never really boring.

The story is pretty simple but the film never gets boring. Even though there are moments where you’re just watching minutes of drumming, it’s still intense and worthwhile at every stage. I thought Miles and J K put in some fantastic work, all that sweating and shouting and bleeding. The obsessive nature of both was clear and portrayed really well, sometimes so that you felt sorry for them, and at other times despised them for their actions.

Another film that delves into the history of black and white America, Selma felt like a solid but unspectacular addition to the pile. There seem to have been a lot of films like this recently, and this one was certainly very good but it didn’t stand out particularly.

There’s a hundred words to describe this, artsy, indie, kookie, weird and wonderful, but really you just have to watch it to get the full impact. Poots tells the tale with an incredible accent that I spent the rest of the night imitating, and the footage flips between her current day narration and the Instagrammed story unfolding.

A comedian’s tale of one tour through England (and Ireland), ruminating on the differences and similarities of each stop and deciding what is to be made of national identity and stereotypes. There are some pretty hefty themes in the book, surprisingly, but they’re handled well, with great points that spark interest and are thought-provoking for future topics of conversation.

As a celebrity, Portia de Rossi’s battle with anorexia and bulimia was well documented by the paparazzi, but here you get to understand the real story behind her struggles with self-esteem, weight and diet, as well as coming to terms with her own sexuality. I’ve got mixed feelings about the book - it’s engrossing, I couldn’t put it down, and it’s intensely honest but is that to a fault?

Making up for everything bad about Blackhat, Focus was a fabulous fun ride. I love a good con film and this had all the right elements - clues dotted here and there to keep you guessing, and the big fantastic reveal in which you realise you got it all wrong.

It’s an interesting premise, this one, but it didn’t quite deliver on what could have been a great story. As the title suggests, there’s a serial killer on the loose - but the victims are all bad types who ‘deserve’ it. We follow the detective trying to figure out who’s behind it, as well as the security firm that he calls in to help crack the case.

Production values were shockingly bad. The overdubs were awful. In fact, there were bits of the subtitled Chinese conversations that were also dubbed but not well - as though we weren’t meant to notice because we should have been too busy reading.

However, the good stuff was great. Having seen the first, it was wonderful to catch up with old friends, Sonny’s infectious manner took over once more, and almost every line he came out with should have been on an inspirational poster. The hotel inspector situation was fun, if a little predictable, and Richard Gere and Tamsin Grieg made good additions to the cast. It was also fun to boo the pantomime villain of Nighy’s ex-wife, and watch the burgeoning relationship with Celia Imrie and her driver.

The second of the James Bond films clearly had a higher production value than the first, and it felt like it weaved the story better - but unfortunately the story wasn’t as strong as its predecessor. The twists and turns of who is on which side weren’t as interesting as they could have been, but there was far too much opening and closing of doors on the train.

I was worried about this one, because for reasons I haven’t quite got to the bottom of, some military films I can watch and some I just can’t. This got off to a seriously slow start, to the point where they clearly thought we had all day, but it gradually got interesting, if going a bit too Hollywood in places.

Following the investigation of a serial killer who is tracking down prostitutes and trying to save their souls, this story takes the slightly different tack of an outsiders point of view, rather than the detective. This time, we’re coming at it from a therapist’s angle and that gives it a slightly fresher take on the traditional crime thriller.

I like reading about people upping sticks and moving to a new country for a fresh take on life, but this one had the balance of the new French abode being a summer home rather than a full time lodging. Visits at least twice a year describe how the rickety old house is gradually whipped into shape, and how the family and their many visitors fall in love with the place - and the surrounding villagers as well.

To celebrate some exam success this week, I was whisked off to the Apple store to purchase some Beats goodies - bluetooth in-ear headphones, and their mini portable speaker, the Beats Pill. Both are a lot of fun, however it was an impromptu off-the-shelf purchase that has turned out to be the real revelation. I’m always keen on gadgets that make photography more accessible. In this day and age of leaving the house with powerful photographic equipment tucked in your pocket, adding peripherals can make things even better. One of my key criteria though, is that they shouldn’t make you and your camera any less portable.

I quite enjoyed Dawn French’s first book about a family working through some drama, told from various points of view and in very different voices. Oh Dear Silvia takes a similar form - each chapter from the point of view of a different character - but the story is vastly different. Anchored around the hospital bedside of Silvia, who is in a coma after falling from a balcony, the characters talk to her, tell their tales, and gradually the story comes together.

Most of the reviews I saw of this were less than positive but it has such a good cast I couldn’t resist giving it a peek. Really shouldn’t have bothered. Not sure how so many awesome people can make something that is so dull and unfunny.

I can’t say that I particularly wanted to watch this one, and was pretty conflicted right up until we pressed play. When everything was kicking off between Sony and their hackers, I sort of fell on the side of those thinking it was unwise to make a film about a current world leader who is unpredictable at best.

Everything about this adventure sounds terrifying - canoeing from the source of the Congo river in Zambia, through to where it meets the Atlantic Ocean in the DR of Congo, through hippo and crocodile infested waters, passing by villages where white faces are understandably treated with suspicion but also with a gun, and generally surviving on rice and fish.

I can’t think that I would have read this if it wasn’t for the film, and oddly I’m glad that I saw the movie first. It really helped to have images of the characters in my mind already, as I think I would have struggled to place them otherwise. But as I did have that image, it was an enjoyable read.

I wasn’t particularly bothered about reading this one until I saw the trailer for the film and thought I should probably read the source text before indulging in the big screen version. I’m not sure it was the best decision as the book didn’t sell the story to me at all.

Taken is a film series we have something of a love/hate relationship with. Many people make fun of the first film, but I really loved it. Kick-ass action, and those particular set of skills which really set Liam Neeson off in a new direction. The trouble being, of course, that since then he’s done barely anything but have those skills and it’s not really bringing about anything new.

Having completed the X-men trilogy, there wasn’t really a need to squeeze this film in before starting on the reboot trilogy, but somehow we still wanted to watch everything in the order it came out. So, it was to Wolverine’s back-story that we went, and I quite liked it. I know that Hugh Jackman has said he wasn’t really a big fan of how this one turned out, and I can see that if he was hoping it would be totes emosh then it didn’t quite hit the spot… but for an X-men movie, I thought it was exactly right.

I was surprised with how much I enjoyed this one, although it had bonus John Goodman in it, so it was bound to be a hit. Marky Mark was great, I can’t say I related to his gambling side, given that I wouldn’t bet more than a tenner on anything, and his teacher side was downright terrifying. Somehow I still liked him though and wanted him to succeed.

It took me a while to get into this one, I couldn’t quite figure out why we were following a detective that had all but solved his case, alongside a woman bitter about the sexism in her office. It was a slow start but once things came to a head and our hero Jane Tennison took over the investigation, it was far more interesting.

This book accompanies the TV series of the same name, with Karl Pilkington discovering the highs and lows of what makes people happy, why they do certain jobs, and how various cultures deal with death. I haven’t actually seen the TV show, and only picked up the book as it was in a sale, but I have previously enjoyed the Ricky Gervais podcast with Pilkington’s wry look at life, so thought it would be interesting.

When I could concentrate long enough to watch the film, I really liked it. The audacity of Frank and how ridiculously easy it was for him to get away with his tricks - it’s that age old thing of just having the confidence so that everyone else believes you too.

From the trailer, I thought this was a fun little film, very much like Kick-Ass except for spies, but I hadn’t anticipated the great story and the self-awareness that made it what it was. Packed full with a fantastic cast, some great cameos, and plenty of little inside jokes and secrets, it grabs you right from the start and pulls you in.

I knew I was going to love this film, having watched the trailer a gazillion times and giggled to myself at the big, puffy, Michelin-man style Baymax trying to squeeze through a gap far too small for him. I’m glad I wasn’t disappointed, as there’s always the possibility that kids films don’t work for adults too - thankfully, this was brilliant.

This is the story of a former technology security officer who is called back from a yoga retreat in the Bahamas to investigate the potential undoing of a young startup company about to undergo its IPO. There are a lot of technical parts to this story that make it quite unwieldy and difficult to follow in places. There’s also a bit of a mismatch between which parts are explained and which aren’t.

As a film to watch after some pretty serious endeavours recently, this was perfect. Teen movie, girls being bitchy to each other, some great one liners and jokes, and generally a lot of fun to be had. It’s not perfect, but you can see why it has the same cult status as Clueless - a film of a very similar nature.

This book in the 87th Precinct series raised the stakes a little. Rather than one murderer or a single crime to solve, this one was a series of connected incidents that were leading towards a huge plot to rob a bank. Seeing the cops struggle to connect the dots was both frustrating but also intriguing - would they get there in time?

I put this one off a little, knowing that it was going to pull at the heart-strings, but it couldn’t be denied forever. And of course it did, I cried for about twenty minutes - although oddly my tears came halfway through rather than at the end. Whereas this was clearly a love story about Jane and Stephen (based on her book, it kinda had to be), I was more interested in the biopic side. Thus the scenes where you can see him fighting but having to come to terms with his diagnosis, and his limits, that’s what got me.

I was allowed to lift my head from my study books for two weeks recently, to head to Belgium for a fortnight work trip. It was crazy busy and there wasn’t a lot of time to be a tourist, but I did manage to snap a couple of pictures in Brussels. It’s a lovely place, full of juxtapositions of old and new, and a big mish-mash of languages. I wish I could have had more time to spend nosing around, but had to settle for just a few glimpses of the sights.

Going into this, I knew it was Oscar-worthy, that the trailer looked intriguing but that it was a bit… weird. Having now seen it, I still can’t put my finger on how I feel about it. Clearly, it was a masterpiece, an exquisite work of art, but did I like it?

As soon as I started reading this, I realised I didn’t know much about Scotland’s history. A vague awareness of Skara Brae, and of course the infamous Hadrian’s Wall, but other than that not a lot. This book filled in all the details, and thankfully did it in an approachable and friendly way. Although a lot of time is spent on the lineage of kings and queens through the years, it’s not too hard to track each and figure out the permutations of who was in line to the throne.

I’ve always enjoyed Jacqueline Wilson’s books for kids, even when I should really have grown out of them. There’s something so open and honest about them, all the way through, that you can’t help but fall in love with the characters, no matter how flawed they may be.

I was keen to see this one only because it was clearly Pierce Brosnan doing another James Bond film without actually being allowed to don the 007 suit and tie. A highly trained spy, on a mission, pretty girls, reasonably fast cars, lots of twists and turns and double-crossing, and plenty of alcohol.

The memoirs of an MSF doctor working in three different African locations, all with their own issues and requirements from the medical staff trying to help them out. Detailing the incredible highs and horrific lows from his time spent in the field, Damien is refreshingly honest about the situations MSF staff face, as well as his own reactions to the situation.

This so nearly could have been the best of the three prequels. Hayden seemed to come into his own, picking up his acting skills and it was incredible watching his character getting darker and darker - physically and mentally. The descent was almost unbearable, but brilliant to see.

If you put to one side the fact that Hayden is a bit wooden for about 80% of this film, I actually really enjoyed it. Padmé lost her accent and gained some kick-ass skills, getting completely involved in the action. I liked the mystery of tracing the poison dart, through the Jedi Archives and then to discover the clones - great reveal, that one, especially when you see their uniforms.

A properly oddball film, this one has to tread the line carefully between being smug about rom-coms whilst also being a blatant entry into that category of movies. It was fantastically quirky with little insert scenes, dressing up, the heart on your sleeve thing and some one-liners delivered so deadpan that you almost miss them.

A collection of short stories about time travel? Heaven. This book collates old and new from across the genres to pull together an epic book stacked full of time travel goodness. I love the concept of time travel so this was right up my street. As with any collection of short stories, there are some that appeal and some that don’t, but there were far more hits than misses.

This third book in the Inspector Morse series took on a slightly different form to the previous two. The detective was still particularly obtuse with giving away any details, and I do still wonder how Lewis manages to put up with him - doing all the work and being kept in the dark for so long.

This one started off okay, and the premise of three intertwining stories, with such a strong cast, felt like a great idea. It quickly went downhill, the middle section dragging as you just waited for something to happen. Many of the characters weren’t particularly sympathetic, I couldn’t stand Anna and the guy in Rome was behaving very oddly.