What’s this? A deliciously witty, wildly imaginative and visually spectacular 3D animated film that’s not by Pixar studios!? How did this happen?

Sony Pictures Animation showed promise with 2007’s Surf’s Up, but nobody could have forecast this; Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs is a rare gem of a film that will delight the whole family from first frame to last, indulging the audience with an infectious vitality and a constant flow of super-sized laughs. Come next year’s Academy Awards, Cloudy might have just what it takes to rain on Up’s parade.

As the 14th film of their illustrious career, Joel and Ethan Coen’s A Serious Man might just be their most accomplished, yet least accessible, work to date. It doesn’t boast a big name cast like Intolerable Cruelty and Burn After Reading. It’s not out to make Oscars like Fargo and No Country for Old Men (although it’s certainly not out of the question). Instead, A Serious Man is a minor work from the brothers akin to Barton Fink and The Man Who Wasn’t There that endeavours to question the likes of religion and morality in its bleak depiction of 1960s Jewish suburbia. Just don’t go in expecting to be fed the answers to these questions, as not knowing is butt of the joke; life is full of uncertainties, and as the Coen’s superbly illustrate, that’s what makes it so funny.

Foreign films can be a mixed bag of sweets, from crusty saccharine affairs to genuine glacé gems like Departures Okuribito). Directed by Yojiro Takita, this film gently probes at our modern contemplations of death. It follows the journey of Daigo Kabayashi (Masahiro Motoki), an ex-cellist who finds himself, accidentally, employed as an encoffineer (a funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry into the afterlife). His personal epiphanies and intimate encounters with death are subtly and mirthfully used to explore the meaning of life and living.

The protagonists in Pixar’s Up are not toys, fish, cars, rats or robots. Instead, they’re people, and I daresay one of the hardest things to get right in animation is realistically personifying a person. They pulled it off once before in 2004’s The Incredibles, but what Up achieves is something truly remarkable. In a short montage that chronicles the life and marriage of Carl and Ellie Fredericksen, Pixar capture the essence of humanity so profoundly, it’s one of the most touching piece of cinema I’ve seen all year. Academy, get you’re Oscars at the ready. A-gain….

Inglourious Basterds is what you get when you leave everyone’s favourite cinematic psychopath, Quentin Tarantino, in a room with baseball bat, a hunting knife and a history book. Once he whacked history over the head, he proceeded to cut away all the boring bits, leaving behind a blood-drenched war epic like no other. As far as apologies go — and boy did Death Proof require one — they don’t come much better than this. Welcome back Tarantino of the 90s, we missed you.

The September Issue is a documentary which follows Anne Wintour the Chief Editor of Vogue magazine through the fascinating process of creating the September Issue. Simply put, its brilliant. Whether you love Vogue or have never heard of it, this is still a very enjoyable film. Fashionistas will be in fashion heaven, and for those that prefer their trackies and sneakers will probably find the film humorous, and insightful into a whole new world of beautiful.

Imagine if Ocean’s 11 director Steven Soderbergh teamed up with shock-doc maker Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine, Sicko) to remake Free Willy…. except with dolphins. The result would look something like The Cove; an alarming documentary on the brutal dolphin slaughtering trade in Japan. Despite a title that could easily be mistaken for a horror film, The Cove is essentially all genres rolled in a single film that yanks away at every emotional string there is. It’s thrilling and chilling, amusing and moving, and if I could think of any other sensations that rhymed, The Cove would surely be those as well.

If there’s one thing taken from life on this Earth, it’s that some people don’t get the opportunity for a big break. No matter how hard they try. Then there are those that get close, usually on more than one occasion, but just can’t finalise the dream. For one reason or another, the latter would best describe the story of Anvil, the 1980s band that influenced the heavy-metal sounds of Metallica and Motorhead. Never heard of them? Perhaps that’s because they could well be Canada’s unluckiest bunch. But the bitterness is minimal; Sacha Gervasi’s documentary reveals a soft side to a metal exterior.