The struggle of the migrant journey from Mexico and Central America to el Norte has been much in the news recently, and, coincidentally, it’s a theme that cinema has been following too. After Diego Quemada-Diez's recent The Golden Dream, about teenagers who set out on that difficult route, Marc Silver’s drama-documentary Who Is Dayani Cristal? shows us a similar experience, though through a somewhat different lens.

There’s so much high drama and scandal surrounding the production of Orson Welles’ feverish cruise through the dark side of human nature it’s no surprise the resulting film is a bizarre labyrinthine of twists and tightly strung lunacy. Welles’s exorcism of personal and professional demons in this impassioned and witty tale of moral bankruptcy remains as compelling and confounding today as it was back in 1948.

A Grecian palace on a studio lot. Gods wander about among the plywood and polystyrene looking deific. As a child is raised to the heavens a voice(over) is heard to intone the following legend.

Oracle: You don’t want to believe those myths you’ve read in boys’ own books about the heroes of ancient times. That Roger Lancelyn Green is so tediously on-message. Take the dozen labours of the demi-god Hercules…

The Purge is the night each year when the US government turns off the law and lets mayhem rule, allowing crimes including murder and rape. Just let it all out of your system, citizens, goes the official logic, and crime on the other 364 days will plummet.

David Gordon Green is a director who's certainly not afraid to confound. His CV includes indie gems George Washington, All the Real Girls, comedy smash Pineapple Express and medieval misfire Your Highness. His previous feature Prince Avalanche was made in secret and starred Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch as mismatched highway workers; it was sensitively shot, unpredictable and determinedly oddball.

Divine is a lot more than dog poop. The minute you mention Divine – born Glenn Milstead in Baltimore, star of John Waters’ cult classics such as Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos or Female Trouble – mention of the famous scene in Pink Flamingos where the performer actually does consume canine faeces is almost obliterated.

Finding a new angle for a forbidden romance film must be tough. Telling the story of a couple where one is married, in a relationship or in some other situation impeding the path of true love or lust is not enough. New settings are needed. In the French drama Grand Central, the problem is solved when love blossoms inside a nuclear power station and the surrounding encampment.

Humankind's desperate struggle for survival is exquisitely rendered in this post-apocalyptic set sequel to 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Matt Reeves, the director of another end of the world type scenario in found footage film Cloverfield, takes the reins of this smart and attractive franchise and runs confidently with visceral wanton destruction and a blunt message about gun control.

In the opening scene of Lav Diaz’s Norte, the End of History, the cash-strapped Fabian (Sid Lucero), a law school’s star student until he dropped out, sits in a trendy café pontificating to his friends about the absence of truth and meaning in the Philippines of the 21st century.

What makes an exciting “genuine” photographer is fairly simple: what do you see in the photographs? Do they compel you to look at them? How evocative are the images? How interesting are the compositions? These are among the criteria which separate the merely good from the truly great – and who would have expected that there are truly great photographers yet undiscovered, or even some that didn’t want to be discovered? This is the backstory of Finding Vivian Maier, an exceptional and exceptionally compelling documentary co-directed by John Maloof and Charlie Siskel.