The Ozarks, situated mostly in Missouri, are not on most tourists’ itineraries when they visit the United States. The area is not as pretty or dramatic as the Appalachians or the Rockies, and the mining and backwoods country is considered different, remote even, by many Americans. And while it has a distinct dialect and a rich oral and musical culture from its pioneer heritage of Irish, Scots and German immigrants who settled on the vast plateau in the early 19th century, the only representation many know of Ozark people is The Beverly Hillbillies.

What a difference the Atlantic makes. An abused, underprivileged boy tries to escape his neglectful mother and through the kindness of an unrelated adult discovers he has a rare talent that - a few ups and downs notwithstanding - eventually brings him a happy and fulfilling life.

For 15 years after the death of his demon muse Klaus Kinski, Werner Herzog made documentaries about equally obsessive visionaries, climaxing five years ago with Grizzly Man’s tale of Timothy Treadwell, who loved and was eaten by bears. Though the documentaries continue, Herzog is now finally re-engaging with feature films. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done was made back-to-back with Bad Lieutenant and shares some of its cast.

Oedipus rex - what, that's not a verb? - havoc anew in a film called Cyrus that has nothing to do with Miley and everything to do with the eternal triangle of mother and son and competitor for mum's affections, in this case John C Reilly playing an apparent no-hoper who, by his own admission, looks like Shrek.

Oedipus rex - what, that's not a verb? - havoc anew in a film called Cyrus that has nothing to do with Miley and everything to do with the eternal triangle of mother and son and competitor for mum's affections, in this case John C Reilly playing an apparent no-hoper who, by his own admission, looks like Shrek.

A drop of menstrual blood spatters the ground in the opening shot of The Runaways, an insolent enough metaphor for the unstaunchable female energy that drives writer-director Floria Sigismondi’s bracing biopic of the pioneering all-girl teenage 1970s rock band until it heads up a narrative cul-de-sac. The blood is leaked by future lead singer Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning), experiencing her first period while scampering to a club with her less innocent twin sister Marie (Riley Keough), who’ll soon be left in the slipstream of Cherie’s fame to become a drudge.

If Cold Comfort Farm and Hot Fuzz got chatting down their local one night, the conversation might go something along the lines of Tamara Drewe. Putting the “sex” in Wessex, Stephen Frears’s latest film loosens the corsets of the Hardy pastoral, pitting town and country against one another in the dirtiest and most gleefully anarchic of fist-fights. Heaving bosoms, brooding farm-hands and a herd of murderous cows all await you in this rural idyll of a comedy, which proves that bucolic nastiness is not always confined to the woodshed.

There's a fascination that comes with films/ plays/ you choose the art form that contain within them their own critique: the sort of thing you find, for instance, in Chekhov done badly when one character or another opines about how "boring" proceedings have become, and you are tempted to nod in assent. But it's been some while since I sat through anything that shoots itself in the foot with such witless insistence as Dinner for Schmucks, the sickliest and most craven of the numerous "bromances" to come down the cinematic pike of late.

Ever since his award-winning debut From London to Brighton (2006), Paul Andrew Williams has been an exemplary British filmmaker of sparky, low-budget genre tales. Cherry Tree Lane is Straw Dogs in suburbia, a schematic and brutal home invasion film, full of fearsome but unfulfilled ideas on the terrors waiting at your front door.

Step aside Prince Charming – there’s a new fairy tale in town, and your only substantive contribution fits into a small plastic sample pot. At some point in the last few years the Shangri-La, the unattainable dream of romantic comedies, shifted from man to baby. Hollywood started asking itself what happened after Happily Ever After, and the answer – they started trying for a baby, went through several painful, unsuccessful courses of IVF before he cheated with a work colleague – wasn’t pretty.

This middle adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium crime trilogy will be followed almost instantly by the last. Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), the elfin abuse victim and avenger who is the heart of the Larsson phenomenon, remains compelling. But after the surprise UK success of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo earlier this year (Swedish-language, like this), there is the strong whiff of the distributors offloading the rest while they can.