The piles of DVDs have been rising alarmingly up the walls at Parky at the Pictures HQ. So, there is nothing for it but to have a clear the decks dash through as many titles as possible in order to keep the distributors and PR companies off our backs. Apologies to those who were hoping for a more considered discussion of your wares, but the vast majority of these pictures have landed in this whistlestop survey for a good reason. The maxim would have it that no publicity is bad publicity. So let's hope that smoothes any furrowed brows.

ANIMATION.

The Hero of Colour City (Frank Gladstone, 2014) - Why on earth did talents of the calibre of Christina Ricci, Owen Wilson, Sean Astin and Rosie Perez agree to voice the risible characters in this crass Toy Story knock-off? The concept beggars belief - each night, crayons go to Colour City to have their points replenished while relaxing at the luxury spa. However, Yellow allows two doodles by her six year-old owner to escape from their paper and she has to join forces with the other colours to tame King Scrawl and his sidekick, Gnat. Unfussy toddlers might pay fitful attention, but any grown-ups watching will want to hide this cacophonously tune-filled nonsense to ensure it can never be watched again.

COMEDY.

The Grand Seduction (Don McKellar, 2013) - Hoping to persuade a company to open a factory in the Newfoundland backwater of Tickle Head, Brendan Gleeson discovers that a resident doctor is a prerequisite for any application. So he enlists the help of postmistress Liane Balaban to persuade visiting medic Taylor Kitsch to stay. Disappointingly sneering yokel comedy that manoeuvres its cardboard characters around the photogenic location with little affection or imagination.

DOCUMENTARY.

All This Mayhem (Eddie Martin, 2014) - Sobering account of the rise and fall of Melbourne skateboarding brothers Tas and Ben Pappas, who enjoyed a thrilling rivalry with American superstar Tony Hawk before they succumbed to the temptations of fame. Ultimately, both were jailed for drug smuggling, but this uncompromisingly frank cautionary tale will only interest devotees of street sport. However, it also reinforces the reputation that editor Chris King had forged on Banksy's Exit Through the Gift Shop and Asif Kapadia's Senna (both 2010).

My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn (Liv Corfixen, 2014) - Dane Nicolas Winding Refn is profiled by his wife as he films Only God Forgives with Ryan Gosling in Bangkok. The insights into directing a globetrotting feature are wholly superficial, but it's interesting to see Jang (as he is known) playing with daughters Lola and Lizzielou one moment and having his tarot cards read by Alejandro Jodorowsky the next. Not a patch on Phie Ambo's The Gambler (2006).

My Sweet Canary (Roy Sher, 2011) - Musicians Mehtap Demir, Tomer Katz and Martha D. Lewis trace the history of rembetiko music in this affectionate tribute to iconic Greek-Jewish singer Roza Eskenazi, who was born in Istanbul in the 1890s and survived the 1923 Greek-Turkish population exchange before giving birth to a son at the age of 15. Following the Nazi occupation of Thessaloniki, she exploited her affair with a German officer to save many from deportation to Auschwitz. But, while she remained popular in the Balkans, the final phase of her career was spent in the United States. Although less compelling when chronicling the origins of rembetiko than Eskenazi's eventful life, this offers some considered insights into European politics and culture in the first half of the last century.

Sirius (Amardeep Kaleka, 2013) - Muddled to the point of absurdity, so that crackpot conspiracy theories drown out any legitimate science, this is a hugely unconvincing diatribe on the American government's supposed bid to keep the public from discovering known facts about extra-terrestrial contact. At its centre is North Carolina medic Steven Greer, who not only runs The Disclosure Project, but who also wants Stanford professor Garry Nolan to confirm that the six-inch skeleton of the `Atacama Humanoid' found in the Chilean desert belongs to an alien. Far from convincing.

DRAMA.

Field Punishment No.1 (Peter Burger, 2014) - In 1916, the New Zealand government shipped 14 of its most outspoken conscientious objectors to Europe so that they could be subjected to brutal torture in the hope of breaking their spirit and coercing them into serving on the Western Front. Among them was Otago farmer Archibald Baxter (Fraser Brown) and this unflinching teleplay scripted by Donna Malane and Paula Boock exposes one of the most shameful episodes of the Great War with a trenchancy that was occasionally missing from Jim O'Brien's Alan Bleasdale-scripted mini-series, The Monocled Mutineer (1986).

Road to Paloma (Jason Mamoa, 2014) - Not content with acting and directing, Jason Mamoa also produces and co-scripts this redemptive road movie that follows a Native American fugitive as he motorcycles to the Teton Range to scatter the ashes of his dead mother. However, as Mamoa murdered the man who raped her, he is pursued by snarling lawman Timothy V. Murphy. Robert Mollohan makes a genial travelling companion as a musician needing to come to terms with his divorce. But this is no Easy Rider-style bromance, as Mamoa explores the plight of Native American women with some trenchancy, while Brian Andrew Mendoza's cinematography consistently evokes the classic Hollywood Western.

The Square Circle (Amol Palekar, 1996) - Boldly seeking to blend tropes from the Bollywood masala with the realist restraint of Parallel Cinema, this study of gender politics in rural India struggles to strike the right balance, with the result that its valid themes are frustratingly undermined. Nirmal Pandey and Sonali Kulkarni respectively impress as the itinerant female impersonator and the girl he helps disguise in male clothing in order to deceive the brothel heavies who kidnapped her before her wedding. The insights into the status of women remain dismayingly pertinent, but the approach always feels self-consciously arch.

HORROR.

Dead Snow 2: Red Vs Dead (Tommy Wirkola, 2014) - Dismal sequel sees sole survivor Vegar Hoel join forces with gay museum assistant Stig Frode Henriksen and a trio zombie-hunting American siblings to confront the defrosted Nazi horde that is threatening an isolated Norwegian community with its tank. Mercifully, Hoel has been fitted the arm of undead general Ørjan Gamst and it changes sides to revive the corpses of some Soviet POWs. Overblown and under-funny, this is solely one for boozy late nights with some undiscriminating mates.

The Haunting of Radcliffe House (Nick Willing, 2014) - Olivia Williams transports husband Matthew Modine and their daughters to a ramshackle Yorkshire pile to restore it to its former glories. But she soon discovers a bricked-up cellar and a Rosicrucian mosaic in a secret attic and the gathering clues appear to point to the fact that the original owner killed his wife 150 years earlier. Despite a steady start, the scares are far too predictable and the shivers simply fail to materialise as the spirits try to terrorise the interlopers into repeating a sinister black magic ritual (to Simon Boswell's over-insistent score).

Out of the Dark (Lluis Quilez, 2014) - Glutinous and highly derivative saga set in Bogotá that sees Julia Stiles and Scott Speedman become convinced that a 500 year-old Conquistadorean curse is behind the poltergeist-induced illness afflicting young daughter Pixie Davies. However, Stiles discovers that factory-owning father Stephen Rea is harbouring some guilty secrets about the treatment of his workforce. Blubbing crocodile tears about the exploitation of the developing world, this eco-chiller lacks novelty, suspense and conviction. But it's been slickly made by a first-time director who makes evocative use of the Colombian landscape.

The Samurai (Till Kleinert, 2014) - Set on the German-Polish border, this battle of wits between orphaned cop Michel Diercks and sword-wielding, cross-dressing lycanthrope Pit Bukowski is played with admirable gravitas against environs atmospherically designed by Tomoko Okada and Sandra Fleischer and photographed by Martin Hanslmayr. As grim fables with a gay subtext go, this errs a touch too much on the pantomimic side. But the debuting Kleinert packs the schlocky proceedings with plenty of knowing nods to such diverse genres as the Heimatfilm, the doppelgänger melodrama and giallo.

SCI-FI.

Dark Planet (Fedor Bondarchuk, 2009) - Echoes of Yakov Protazanov's Aelita (1924) reverberate through this sci-fi offering inspired by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's novel, Prisoners of Power. Set in 2157, it follows astronaut Vasily Stepanov in his bid to help the oppressed Degenerates of a distant planet overthrow the bureaucratic tyranny of Maxim Sukhanov and his sidekick, Fedor Bondarchuk. A romantic subplot involving Yulya Snigir adds little to a formulaic fantasy that is allowed to drift and only rarely suggests that it is the most expensive production in Russian screen history.