Belle (2013)

Somewhat stilted period drama directed by Amma Asante. 

The premise is intriguing enough – the upbringing of an illegitimate girl is entrusted to William Murray, Earl of Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice (Tom Wilkinson), who lives in Kenwood House, Hampstead. The girl's mixed-race background is a cause of controversy within the Earl's social standing.

This is based on a true story inspired by the 1779 painting of Dido Elizabeth Belle, but – frustratingly – events have been changed and fictionalised for the purposes of this film. Why invent parts of the plot when the truth is more interesting? 

The older actors are impressive – Penelope Wilton, Emily Watson and Tom Wilkinson – but the two would-be sisters Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Sarah Gadon, are surprisingly flat for such important roles. And annoyingly, it wasn't even filmed at Kenwood.

Cosmopolis (2012)

A super-rich, super-powerful businessman in search of a haircut travels across New York City in a hi-tech limousine. Strange, scary, violent things happen. He’s joined at various points by expert advisors – on financial markets, on modern theoretical thinking, and (by Juliette Binoche) on buying art.

This disturbing film is David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s short novel from 2003. It’s difficult to work out if it’s more Cronenbergian than DeLillo-esque. The former’s deliberately ugly visuals and horror elements are distinctive. The latter’s ultra-dry, play-like dialogue is also prominent, although it’s less funny here than it is on the page – even though (or perhaps because) the film adaptation is fairly faithful to the novel.

Robert Pattinson stars as Eric Packer and Sarah Gadon plays his “wife”, although their marriage is more of a farcical abstraction than a reality – another of the deliberately absurd elements that push the narrative into surreal and existential territory.

The problem with the film is that it succeeds so well in its aim to be cold and cerebral that you wonder what you might actually gain from watching it. If the characters don’t care about anything, why should we care about them? And therefore it starts to feel as shallow and empty as its subject matter.