London, 1961. Duffle coats are the ne plus ultra in hipster cool, everybody smokes like fury and black people are known as negroes in enlightened society (and even enlightened society wouldn't want them moving in next door). In the congenial, shiny-surfaced world of this coming-of-age comedy, the Beatles' first LP is still two years away, and so is sexual intercourse, but not for Jenny. For Jenny, 1961 is an annus mirabilis, the year in which this skittish 16-year-old schoolgirl acquires a wealthy, worldly older admirer.

Blame it on the bloody menarche. The combination of schoolgirls and horror is so intoxicating it's a wonder there haven't been more films like Carrie, Suspiria or Ginger Snaps to exploit that tricky adolescent surge of oestrogen. So I'm sorry to disappoint you, but Jennifer's Body isn't worthy to be set alongside The Craft, let alone any of the aforementioned titles. It has all the ingredients for guilty pleasure - cheerleader transformed into man-eating succubus, high-school students played by actresses in their mid-twenties, girl-on-girl snogging, indie rock musicians who've sold their souls to the Devil, black goo vomiting and so on. And it fudges them, one by one.

You always know it's the witching season when squads of zombie and vampire flicks lurch into town to take bites out of your wallet. Creeping on the heels of Zombieland and Pontypool, this week's avatar of the former genre is Colin, a low-budget feature whose principal claim to fame is its budget, officially £45 (that would just about buy you eight copies of the DVD, which goes on sale on Monday). The question remains, though, whether the result is a treat or a trick, an instant lo-fi classic or a tacky gimmick that turns into a pumpkin at midnight.

A rubicund major-general leaps up from his desk, scrunches up his face in concentration, breaks into a run and belts towards the office wall, intending to race through it. Sadly, in this opening sequence of The Men Who Stare at Goats, he falls flat on his face, and so does the joke; so does the whole film, actually, come to that. It has an unrivalled comic premise and a terrific all-star cast including George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor and Kevin Spacey.

It would be an understatement to say that the auguries weren't good for Wes Anderson's first animated movie, the world premiere of which opened the London Film Festival last night. The distributor - Twentieth Century Fox, by a neat coincidence - was coy about screening it to critics, the trailer (below) was teeth-grindingly unfunny and an uncommonly candid feature in the Los Angeles Times earlier this week reported deep tensions on the film's London set.

Terry Gilliam set toupees a-flutter with a feisty piece in the Sunday Times about the pandemonium surrounding the release of his new film, firing off broadsides at Tracey Emin and gossips who spread malicious rumours about the late Heath Ledger, and deploring the bureaucratic bloat which he reckons has capsized the BBC. “I’m good at being angry – it’s an occupation,” he growled.

A familiar Herzogian weirdness was on display at last night's Herzog documentary double bill. And not all of it was cinematic. The organisers of the Herzog retrospective had matched up out-of-the-way venues to specific Herzog movies, and these movies to suitable companion acts. Last night’s two documentary portraits of American evangelicalism, Huie’s Sermon and God’s Angry Man, were separated by a live gospel choir, which cajoled and corralled the audience into spiritual, vocal and happy-clappy fervour.

Woody Allen has made four. Christopher Guest starred in and co-wrote the best one of all time, then directed some damn fine examples of his own. Sacha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais have built their careers and reputations on them. Now the Uttoxeter-born writer-director Shane Meadows has thrown his hat into the mockumentary ring with Le Donk & Scor-Zay-Zee, the profile of a bitter, weather-beaten and entirely fictional roadie.