George Clooney steps into his 4th feature as director and Democratic Nominee Governor Mike Morris.

It's the 15th of March and, with the Ohio nomination looming, his campaign managers Paul (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Stephen (Ryan Gosling) are employing their best manoeuvres and sexy interns to edge ahead of rival in the race Senator Pullman. The challenger, campaign leader Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), has his own tricks up his sleeve.

In this Hollywood Democrat's wet dream, Stephen and his campaign colleagues must make the unconventional Morris a polling favourite. Wonkish rants on non-religion and women's rights give way to nefarious dealings and the crumbling of Stephen's bright-eyed belief in pure politics. Maris Tomei's reporter Ida adds a healthy dose of reality to proceedings while throw-away missteps being to unravel into catastrophe of the personal and political varieties.

Clooney's mature direction contrasts with Stephen's wavering confidence as he wades out of his depth and into unpredictable territory. Meanwhile, masterful pacing allows the plot to unfurl, punctuated by noirish film moments and some of the most unnerving uses of the word 'fuck' in modern cinema.

The Ides of March's cast of strong characters is subjected to scrutiny, their weaknesses revealed like chinks in their armour. How they fare reflects their final standing; a pristine picture imbued with fresh subtexts. As Sorkin-less political dramas go, it's an arrow straight through the bleeding heart.

Today, I'll be appearing on The Movie Café radio programme on BBC Radio Scotland.

Tune in to hear me and the ever-eloquent Paul Gallagher review the new film adaptation of Kathryn Stockett's best-selling The Help, starring Emma Stone and Viola Davis.

We'll also be reviewing Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.

Tune in live at 1.15pm, or you can stream the programme live or later on the Movie Café homepage.

Read more: The Help Review; Bad Teacher DVD Review.

It seems Mr Francis Ford Coppola is on a mission to update and re-release every one of his films. After this year's cinematic and Blu-Ray re-release of war classic Apocalypse Now, The Outsiders returns to DVD and premieres on Blu-Ray this month.

Based on the coming of age novel penned by the then-teen S.E. (Sarah Eloise) Hinton, The Outsiders follows the territorial rift between the downtrodden "greasers" and their South-side preppy counterparts, the "Socs". The project is fabled to have reached Coppola through the letters of excited school kids from the Oklahoma town in which the film is set, spurred on by their teacher. Taking the 1960s bestseller and adapting it to befit an 80s audience, Coppola created an 80s Bratpack.

Filled with more recognisable faces than memorable performances, The Outsiders is Rebel Without a Cause before the appearance of James Dean, or Grease before they replaced their knives with combs and began to sing.

This re-release reintegrates 22 minutes of footage, including a new beginning and ending more true to S.E. Hinton's original story. Era-appropriate music also replaces much of Carmine Coppola's orchestral schore, injecting a little Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis to proceedings. Indeed, the new music is one of the film's highlights.

If The Outsiders is old hat, you can enjoy a whole host of new extras, including new audio commentaries with the director and stars Matt Dillon, C. Thomas Howell, Diane Lane, Rob Lowe, Ralph Macchio and Patrick Swayze; and a selection of deleted and extended scenes.

The new 2-disc Special Edition of The Outsiders is released on and on Monday 31 October.


Also released on DVD this month: Chalet Girl & Bad Teacher.

One winner will be chosen at random.

Good luck!

Read more: Bad Teacher DVD review; The Help review.

Cameron Diaz is a Bad Teacher. Elizabeth Halsey's goal in life is to take care of number 1 -- not her number 1 student. The unwinning, wily and highly inappropriate junior high puts the model in role model in this colourful comedy from Orange County director Jake Kasdan. After being dumped by her rich fiancé, she launches a scheme to win over handsome, spiritual substitute teacher Scott Delacourte (as in the fictional watchmaker, Justin Timberlake) - oh, and to save up for a new pair of tits to improve her chances. Shooting for the best teacher bonus, she has competition in the classroom and the dating game from the dedicated but ruthlessly competitive Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch).

Outlandishly unrealistic characters clash in an ambitious war of wills, with hilarious set pieces from sexy spy subterfuge to field trip dry humps. To our relief, Elizabeth never stops being bad, leaving plenty of room for unfailing opportunism in story and in grabbing laughs. An A for effort.

Bad Teacher (certificate 15) is released on BluRay and DVD on Monday 31 October. .


Read More: The Help Review; Footloose Review.

Apart from seeming like one of the friendliest people to walk the earth, documentarian Morgan Spurlock - the man with the 30 Day fixation - is fond of teaching us what we already know.

Following up his feature-length experiment with a certain fast food chain in Super-Size Me, Spurlock has turned to the power of product placement - or,  as it's now more sterilely known, "co-promotion". As 4 companies spent 75% of last year's total advertising (totalling $412 billion dollars), the commercial trend towards co-promotion is an idea worth investigating. Using a meta approach, the film is entirely funded by product placement. Taking place in meeting rooms across America, Spurlock's pitches explain the film's concept as he traverses the landmine site of brand personalities and tricky contracts.

While there are tidbits of interesting theories of advertising from the likes of Ralph Nader and of artistic integrity from various blockbuster directors, it comes as no surprise when Spurlock's seemingly forward-thinking brands of choice revert with immediacy to stock marketing techniques and safe-bet advertising.  A visit to Sao Paulo also serves the story well, throwing into sharp relief the sheer pervasive presence of advertising in our daily lives.

Though there's not much to be learned, Spurlock's dependably sharp ideas and jocularity shine through. Though he glosses over moments of frustration and confusion, his simple presentation provide facts to chew on, sending you back into the world feeling a little more aware of what's around you. Throwaway but enjoyable, it's documentary lite.

Read more: The Help Review; Footloose Review.

At the risk of outing myself as a child of the 90s, this film was a lot of fun. More fun, in fact, than the original.

Shifting our smouldering lead Ren McCormack from Chicago to Boston and trading his troubled family for a recently departed single mother, our loveable hothead is transformed into a multi-talented craftsman in the hands of possible up-and-comer Kenny Wormald. Meanwhile Julianne Hough steps into Lori Singer's dancing shoes as preacher's daughter Ariel Moore, native to the now-Southern town of Bomont, Georgia.

While this remake is more MTV than John Hughes, it also doctors a number of inefficiencies in the original script. Softened around the edges, both lead characters are infused with deeper backstories, tendencies towards confrontation over fisticuffs, and some serious moves. An updated but faithful soundtrack adds to the dynamism of the ever-awaited dance scenes, infusing that 80s charm with country flavour and a sprinkling of hip-hop beats. Between the serious and the salacious, a peppering of action sequences and fiery crashes fail to speed up the proceedings of a slow-moving story, but are pulled off with comparable aplomb.

Awkward dramatic moments and casual sexism put the film's third act into throwaway territory, but behind the odd bungle there's a cast of loveable hicks with big hearts and real community spirit.

Hammy, dramatic, but ultimately buoyed with euphonic energy, your toes will tap despite themselves.

Footloose is released in UK cinemas this Friday 14 October. If you're a sucker for the original, it's repeated this Saturday 15 October at 6.55pm on Film 4.

After a long summer of blockbusters and lacklustre rom-coms, one can’t help but crave the hearty Southern-style sustenance offered by The Help. Set in Jim Crow's Mississippi, actor-director Tate Taylor’s adaptation of Kathryn Stockett’s best-selling novel takes on the trials and tribulations of the help: granddaughters of black house slaves, part of the tradition of home-keepers and child-rearers for the affluent whites.

When white-girl Skeeter (Emma Stone) returns from Ol’ Miss and lands a job as the Jackson Journal’s “domestic maintenance” columnist, she enlists a friend's maid Aibileen (a quietly powerful Viola Davis) for help. Rocked by old pal Hilly’s (Bryce Dallas Howard) treatment of her maid Minny (Octavia Spencer), Skeeter decides to interview the maids to tell their side of the story, embarking on an illicit bid to publish their tales.

Emma Stone shines as an ambitious 23 year-old smothered by old-world expectations, keeping worldly wisdom under the wraps of a youthful façade. In direct opposition, Bryce Dallas Howard resurrects a little matriarchal magic, but the true mammy is Minny, who encapsulates the frustration of disaffected labourers of the time.

Mississippi's maids gain honour and respect in this war of wills, and though no literal war is won, The Help is an ideological heart-warmer.

The Help is released in UK cinemas on Wednesday 26 October.

You can hear me and Paul Gallagher review The Help and The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn on BBC Movie Café on Thursday 27 October.

In the film industry, sometimes the only way to get your movie made is to fund it yourself. First Night is one such film.

Starring Richard E. Grant, Sarah Brightman, and Mia Maestro (yes, really) in a similarly self-serving stately home opera production, this is a film custom-made for the hoity-toity class. Enter a rag-tag (as far as the term can apply) bunch of opera singers from various backgrounds gather at Sir Adam Somethingorother's (Grant) estate, employed to put on an outdoor performance of Mozart's Così Fan Tutti. Armed with enlarged egos and insecurities, all manner of rehearsal-related shenanigans ensue.

Achieving dramatic notes shriller than a glass-shattering scream, First Night is approximately as subtle as it is dreadfully flat. With distractingly ham-fisted sound mixing and equally hammy acting from ever-grinning conductress Celia (Sarah Brightman), its enjoyable moments total 10 minutes.

Having had the distinct displeasure of watching this truly terrible opera drama twice, I can confidently issue a one time offer for an ear-shattering scream in place of a ticket to this monstrosity.

Going once, going twice...

Released in early September, noted British film critic Mark Kermode followed up It's Only a Movie with another rant-filled tome entitled The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex. At Edinburgh International Book Festival, tour dates across the UK, and podcasts across the interwebs, Kermode has offered verbal versions of his proselytizing about the lost art of film projection, the state of British cinema, American remakes of perfectly good foreign films, and more.

The book offers much of the same, acting as a detailed written basis for his Wittertainment soap-boxing and all manner of excuses for a good whinge. While we've all heard the Zac Efron anecdote and 70s stand-up style slagging of minimum wage cinema workers thousands of times, there are topics of note hidden in the later chapters of this latest book. 'Why Blockbusters Should Be Better' became the basis for an excellent article (published in the Guardian) and discusses the state of modern blockbuster cinema and tales of big-budget movie-making gone awry, plucking some choice anecdotes from film history and serving them up as caveats to some interesting points.

However, more often than not the rants and reservations ('The Inevitable Decline of 3D', anyone?) are over-argued by our friendly neighbourhood quoiffed berater. The extension of such arguments gives Kermode's (admittedly niche) audience little credit, as Wittertainment listeners and Kermode Uncut viewers have heard it all before. Stretching some over-used material out over 250 pages leaves a well-worn tether, but there are, nonetheless, gems to be found in the pages of this extended oration.

Stout fans and light readers will enjoy another episode of hand-flap free rants and raves from one of Britain's most reputed and lively film critics. But let's not hold our breaths for part three.

Want to read The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex for yourself? I'm giving one copy away!

For a chance to win, all you have to do is

• Comment telling me your favourite Kermode-ism OR just tell me your favourite film of the year so far.

Read More: Inside The New York Times (Interview with Andrew Rossi); How to Leave Twitter.