The news that Richard Curtis will not direct any more films after About Time (which he also wrote) was met with sadness in some quarters and undisguised glee in others. Curtis co-wrote Blackadder, Not the Nine O'Clock News and Mr Bean, created Comic Relief and is an all-round good egg, but none the less stirs up real venom in those who find his other creation, the modern British romcom, sickeningly sweet.

“Hannibal Lecter meets Jason Bourne”: that’s how director Ryuhei Kitamura unbeatably sells No One Lives’ indestructible serial killer hero. But his film is at its most interesting before it’s clear who Driver (Luke Evans, pictured below) is, or where we stand with anything that’s happening.

Paolo Sorrentino's latest opens with a Japanese tourist keeling over at the mere sight of an ancient Roman vista: he takes a snap and wipes the sweat from his brow before his fatal fall to the floor. As the Small Faces sang in "Itchycoo Park", for this gentleman at least, "It's all too beautiful." The Great Beauty (La Grande Bellezza) is a love letter to Rome, in the vein of and as grandly ambitious as a Fellini, but don't be fooled by the title. Sorrentino's sixth narrative feature isn't merely a celebration of the city's already much celebrated beauty.

Michael Bay’s fleet-footed, queasy crime-comedy stars Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson and Anthony Mackie but the less you know, the more you might like it. This is because the more you know, the less it seems an acceptable source of entertainment. Not that Hollywood and movies in general have any qualms about morality, ethical behaviour or what constitutes "entertainment": we shouldn’t laugh at the cry of “She’s in the attic!” when discussing an actress’s bad performance as Ann Frank, but, unfortunately, we do. Terrible stories often grip us the most.

So, let’s get the true horror out of the way first. Pain & Gain is based on a series of articles written by Pete Collins and published in Miami New Times in 1999. (In 2013, Collins wisely timed the publication of his book on the case around the film’s release date.) He tells of a gruesome crime – torture, kidnapping and murder – by some bodybuilders at a particular gym in Florida. The real story is pretty horrible. Look it up if you must.

Shalhoub is completely compelling if not totally heartbreaking

However, the film itself is a bright, breezy, cartoon-like take on cruel and stupid things people do to get rich. Three hapless bags of muscle (Wahlberg, Johnson and Mackie) want more out of life. Daniel Lugo (Wahlberg) is whipped into an idiot’s frenzy by the great lifestyle enjoyed by Victor Kershaw (Tony Shaloub, pictured below), one of his new personal training clients. So, naturally, Lugo decides to extort all of Kershaw’s wealth. Accomplices are Adrian Doorbal (Mackie) a 'roids-impotent bodybuilder and Paul Doyle (Johnson), an iron-pumping Christian ex-addict ex-con who reluctantly becomes part of the threesome after he beats up a priest.

Botched tries at kidnapping Kershaw culminate in a horrendous attempt to kill him. He survives, but having already signed his money over to the criminals. As the police don't believe him, he engages Ed Du Bois III (Ed Harris) for justice. Meanwhile, the trio have blown all their money and decide to do this whole thing all over again to a phone sex magnet and his wife… You can see where this is headed, only now there’s dismemberment, accidental death and more. This story is so bizarre it almost seems normal because anything goes in crime comedies. Besides, we know all the actors.

Pain & Gain is funny. The cast is wonderful. Shalhoub’s Kershaw is completely compelling if not totally heartbreaking. Johnson is absolutely adorable as the chunky, tried-his-best-but-not-quite overgrown manchild. Mackie is tremendous too, with a nervy, crazy energy, lopsided logic and comedy chops we haven’t seen before. Supporting cast includes Ken Jeong and the omnipresent Rebel Wilson. Bay's pace is so dizzying it's almost nauseating: will this bizarro-world story ever end? Pain & Gain is painful, mad and sad - an enjoyable yet guilty pleasure.

Overleaf: watch the trailer to Pain & Gain

Shane Carruth directs films in the same way as Aaron Sorkin writes scripts: seemingly oblivious to the fact that we are trailing in his wake. Sorkin can sometimes leave you floundering with his spitfire recitations of information and dazzling repartee, Carruth with the opaqueness of his ideas. Does either expect, or wish us to keep up? I suspect not. Buying into their work is a tacit agreement to be stretched.

Coming-of-age films have frequently featured inebriated antics and ill-advised hook-ups, but it's usually the teenagers behaving badly. The Way Way Back sees a family decamp to an East Coast beach house for a summer vacation described witheringly by one teen as "Spring Break for adults". The film is the directorial debut of Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (two of the Oscar-winning screenwriters of The Descendants), who also pen the excellent screenplay and take supporting roles.

You’re Next has chutzpah. It’s a home invasion horror made with the vigorous energy and imaginative violence of a Warner Bros cartoon. Feeling like a record that starts at a stately 33 rpm and finishes at 45, it becomes progressively more crazed and comic, even as the screen swims in gore.

The notion of childhood as any sort of state of grace gets exploded big-time in What Maisie Knew, a largely blistering celluloid updating of the 1897 Henry James novel from The Deep End team of co-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel. True (for the most part) to the spirit of its literary source if by no means to the letter, the movie on its own terms captures the terror that adults can inflict on children, a bequest that a brilliant cast makes painfully plain.

We're the Millers is a road movie which sees a group of outsiders learn how to fill traditional roles and find happiness. It's a film that flirts with rebellion but ultimately reveals itself to be boringly conformist. Director Rawson Marshall Thurber had a memorable hit with his debut Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story but, in the manner of one of that film's KOs, he falls flat on his back here.

Neil Blomkamp’s got a thing for crafts. Spacecrafts, that is. With his first feature, District 9, alien ships hovered over Johannesburg in 1982. Now it’s 2154 and Elysium, a nirvana-like space station for the elite, floats in Earth’s orbit, using all the global resources and leaving the planet ravaged, polluted, riddled with crime and simply dreadful.