Creed, essentially a Rocky spin-off/reboot, is actually not a bad piece of work. Yes, the Rocky sequels became increasingly ludicrous (with Rocky III being the only one to progress the story in an interesting way), but this film proves that a dead horse can occasionally be flogged into a satisfactory resurrection.

The plot here concerns the illegitimate son of Apollo Creed, Adonis (Michael B Jordan), who uses the surname Johnson rather than Creed because he wants to create his own legacy as a boxer. After a tumultuous childhood in which he was in and out of juvenile detention centres, Adonis is eventually adopted by Apollo’s widow Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad), and later crosses paths with Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) in an attempt to get the Italian Stallion to train him for professional matches. Of course Rocky at first refuses, but inevitably…

Yes, you get the idea. The plot beats of the first Rocky come back into play, only this time with Rocky proving a great mentor, as well as Adonis finding love with singer Bianca (the wonderful Tessa Thompson). Thematically this is very familiar stuff, with triumph of the underdog woven in with the other themes that really made the original film so special, ie courage, forgiveness, never quitting and all manner of inspirational metaphors about boxing that apply to life. Yes it’s clichéd, but it works. On a spiritual level, what I liked most about this film is that it is a story about a man trying to prove that he “isn’t a mistake”.

Director Ryan Coogler tips his hat to the past just the right amount, whilst making sure Creed has just enough new ideas to make it its own beast. There is some good location work, and the fight scenes as ever are very well staged. The cast are all good, and like the film’s predecessors, there is some good use of music to punctuate the fights, training montages and so on.

Ultimately, whilst Creed is unlikely to make anyone’s top five boxing movies, it is a very solid, satisfying reboot worthy of its association with Rocky, and well worth a look for fans of the genre.

The financial crash of 2008 has been explored in a few films and documentaries, but with The Big Short, director Adam McKay no doubt intends to try and make the most accessible version of the story to date. Opting for comedy and sort-of biographical drama, The Big Short is, for the most part, funny and compelling. It is also a scathing condemnation of a banking system so gone wrong that words like corrupt feel completely redundant.

Essentially the film revolves around four bigwigs in the world of high finance, each of whom predicts the collapse of the housing market. They bet against the economy to make some serious cash, but are amazed when the credit ratings of the banks continue to remain in place, despite the obvious disaster occuring around them.

What The Big Short does well is to strip down the jargon used to deliberately confuse the great unwashed, and explain it in easy terms, often accompanied by fourth wall breaking by celebrity cameos (eg “Here’s Margot Robbie in a bath to explain…”). Frankly this gets a little distracting at times, but the excellent cast, which includes Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling and a stand-out Steve Carrell, makes up for that. Here seems as good a point as any to warn about f-words and a few strippers, for those who appreciate such warnings.

Where The Revenant made you experience a freezing physical ordeal and Room made you experience traumatised floods of tears, The Big Short makes you experience proper anger. This film lifts the lid on a very important topic and points the finger of blame at the scumbag bankers that destroyed so many lives, exactly where it belongs.

Or does it? Just how much you believe The Big Short to be based in truth will depend on how deeply you think this conspiracy rabbit hole goes. Frankly, I find it hard to believe the banks were failing this badly without the knowledge of the government (who obviously arranged a bail-out), so if you believe in this stuff, whatever shadow governments also knew, and so on down the line.

Whatever the truth, it does seem that despite the disaster of 2008, the banks have returned to their old tricks. A truly depressing thought, but a very entertaining movie.

Every so often, I see a film that hits raw nerves to such a degree, causing me to be emotionally gripped to the point that I will essentially overlook any other flaws. This is definitely the case with Lenny Abrahamson’s Room (not to be confused with notorious so-bad-it-has-a-cult-following The Room).

An extraordinary central performance from Brie Larson looks deservedly set to win an Oscar, yet we experience the story through the eyes of Larson’s five year old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay). Larson’s character (simply called “Ma” for much of the film) has been abducted and imprisoned in the “room” of the title. Jack is a product of rape, though I must be very clear at this point – this is absolutely not an exploitation film in any way shape or form. This issue is not ducked, but no sexual abuse takes place onscreen at all. The film handles every aspect of its difficult subject matter tastefully, through Jack’s innocent eyes, in a way that actually makes it all the more quietly devastating. Again I cannot stress this enough: do not be put off by the subject matter. The only thing that might be deemed offensive in the film are a few contextually justified f-words.

Anyway, the plot rapidly and brilliantly establishes how Ma has told Jack, to protect him, that the world outside the room is outer space, and that the things he sees on television (birds, trees, etc) are not real. When circumstances involving their captor (whom they simply refer to as “Old Nick”) cause them to try and plan an escape, Ma then begins to tell Jack the truth.

Room is so brilliantly directed by Abrahamson (with a screenplay by Emma Donoghue, adapting her own novel), again, through Jack’s eyes, that it becomes a very positive, empowering experience; a heartfelt journey of discovery and wonder. The film doesn’t duck the appalling psychological damage that has been done to this boy, but it is ultimately, at its core, a profoundly moving study of the immensely powerful bond between mother and son. There is one sequence just shy of the halfway point that had me in absolute floods.

Yes, it could be argued that the more episodic second half lacks the momentum and tightly constructed drama of the first, with certain characters (such as William H Macy’s grandfather) hinting at plot threads that ultimately go nowhere. Speaking of Macy, it’s worth noting there are some other good supporting actors here, including Joan Allen and Tom McCamus.

In summary, despite its flaws, you’d have to have the emotional range of a concrete breezeblock not to be moved by Room. I highly, highly recommend it.

Last night, whilst leading a trapping expedition in the uncharted American wilderness circa 1823, I was attacked by a tribe of Arikara – a terrifying ambush that killed over half our party. Then I got mauled by a bear, betrayed and left for dead. Somehow I came to, and dragged myself through miles and miles of hostile terrain amid blizzards, frozen rivers and mountains, constantly under threat from Arikara attack. This truly hellish journey was punctuated by the occasional quasi-mystical vision, and at many points I had to do horrific things in order to survive (including one encounter with a horse that I will spare you the details of). Yet amid the horror of that ordeal, my obsessive quest for revenge on the one who betrayed me spurred me ever onward. All things considered, it was an exhausting (and absolutely freezing) evening.

No, wait a minute… That was the film I went to see, director Alejandro G Iñárritu’s The Revenant. It’s easy to get confused, because this movie gives new meaning to adjectives like “immersive”, “visceral” and “gruelling”. Survival adventure stories do not come any more brutal and gripping than this so yes, here are my usual warnings about very strong levels of (contextually justified) violence and gore, swearing and so on. It also contains my all-time favourite mauling by a savage beast. If possible, I recommend seeing the film as I did, ie with a cold, to really get the shivering levels of out-of-body-experience cinema. The word intense seems pathetically inadequate. And yes, for goodness sake see it on the biggest screen you can find.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance as Hugh Glass will almost certainly win him an Oscar, and yes I do think he is very good. However, a slightly cynical part of me is aware of the extremely tough shoot, and can’t help but consider how such horrendous sub-zero conditions would hardly have impeded his performance. It’s the kind of turn Oscar loves, giving new meaning to the term “committed”, but I’d rather see the statuette go to someone like Michael Fassbender for his sterling work in the underrated Steve Jobs. Really DiCaprio should have won his Oscar a while back, for The Departed.

DiCaprio is well supported by the likes of Tom Hardy, Domnhall Gleeson and Will Poulter in key roles. Iñárritu’s direction, aided by Emmanuel Lubezki’s jaw-dropping cinematography and Lon Bender’s phenomenal sound design, is 24 carat cinema. The initial ambush alone, which features an extraordinary, pass-the-POV shot, is worthy of the admission price. Yet that is merely an opening salvo for what follows, with image after image that will stay with you for the rest of your life. I think my personal favourite was an incredible crane shot which gradually moves towards DiCaprio trudging across a frozen lake. The sheer loneliness of that bleak landscape haunts me just thinking about it.

To be fair, the film doesn’t really have anything especially profound to say that hasn’t been said before in Werner Herzog movies dealing with man-vs-nature, nor does it offer fresh insights into the subject of vengeance that haven’t been seen in dozens of other revenge movies. But I cannot recall a film where such themes were packaged and presented in such an all consuming way. Yes, you could argue it is too long, but surely that is the point. The Revenant is a bold, brilliant and utterly draining piece of filmmaking.

If you are a fan of Quentin Tarantino, you will know what to expect from his films. Therefore, the warnings I normally give for potentially objectionable content seem somewhat futile, but let’s get that out of the way upfront. His new western The Hateful Eight contains extremely strong bloody violence, swearing, racist language, nudity, crude sexual references and scenes of facial hair that some viewers may find disturbing. Actually, Kurt Russell’s moustache is rather magnificent.

To the matter at hand then: is it any good? Well, mostly yes and partly no. The set-up is interesting, as a bounty hunter and female prisoner are forced to take shelter in a cabin with various potentially shady characters during a Wyoming blizzard. Shot in ravishing 70mm, Tarantino makes magnificent use of the ultra-widescreen format, apparently shooting with the very lenses that filmed William Wyler’s Ben Hur. Unfortunately most venues only show digital prints, but nevertheless the snowy landscapes look magnificent. So do the interiors, where the film is largely set. Although the plot is theatrical, Tarantino’s interior compositions make superb use of space.

The cast all do well too: Kurt Russell’s bounty hunter and Jennifer Jason Leigh’s prisoner are joined by the likes of Samuel L Jackson, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, Zoe Bell, Walton Goggins, Demain Bichir and various others. The music score by Ennio Morricone is sparingly used but well done, although Tarantino can’t resist playfully chucking in a few other bits of music too, including a track from Last House on the Left and a Roy Orbison song. That said, The Hateful Eight isn’t as infuriately self-aware as some of his other work, although it does deliberately play with the genre. At first it appears to pay homage to the Sergio Leone westerns, but it later becomes something of a murder mystery. At one point one character slips into full-on Hercule Poirot mode, gathering everyone together and explaining the murderous conspiracy, before lurching in another direction altogether.

Although unquestionably overlong, The Hateful Eight contains exactly what you expect from a Tarantino film, ie colourful characters, amusing (and lengthy) banter, dark comedy, and a bit non-linear jiggery pokery before everything degenerates into an orgy of Grand Guignol bloody violence. And I do mean bloody. At times there are shots that even recall horror movies such as Brian De Palma’s Carrie.

What most lets the film down, for me at least, is that all the main characters are so downright, well, hateful. Yes, Tarantino specialises in films about vicious loonies, but there is normally someone or some event that give his films, if not exactly a moral centre, then a point of identification for the viewer. Mr White’s sudden attack of conscience in Reservoir Dogs for instance. Or the various peculiar paths to pseudo-redemption taken by key characters in Pulp Fiction. Uma Thurman and Jamie Foxx’s characters in Kill Bill and Django Unchained respectively are also good examples, given their largely understandable quests for vengeance. Incidentally, I definitely prefer Django Unchained to The Hateful Eight, despite the former’s deeply flawed finale.

Ultimately this film is too self-indulgent to rank alongside the lean, innovative genius of Tarantino’s best work (ie Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction), but he is still a singular cinematic artist whose work demands to be seen. With that in mind, for the appropriate audience, The Hateful Eight is, despite undoubted flaws, a good if jaw-droppingly violent evening’s entertainment.