The British romcom is in crisis. Once a pretty reliable source of charm and laughs, these films channelled the spirit of the UK's reliably brilliant sitcoms through the silver screen. Our romantic comedies can be great because we hold no truck with cheesy romance; moments that could be mawkish are undercut by self-deprecation, calamity and even politics. See Hugh Grant's bumbling speech in Four Weddings, the polemical Brassed Off, or Shaun of the Dead which gave us romance with added zombies.

However, recent efforts The Decoy Bride, Not Another Happy Ending, I Give It a Year and About Time have been plain disappointments or mixed bags. Into this climate of prevailing mediocrity comes Cuban Fury - a film with energy, good gags, no time for sentimentality and talent to burn. And still...

Cuban Fury is a film in which a fat chap dances his way into his hot boss's heart and has all the surprises and subtlety that suggests. Nick Frost plays Bruce Garrett, whose childhood history as a champion salsa dancer, bullied into discarding his passion, is unpacked in the time it takes to rattle through the opening credits. We join Bruce in his late thirties to find him overweight, stuck in a romantic rut and working at a firm specialising in industrial machinery. His colleagues are the amusingly indifferent Helen (an underused Alexandra Roach) and the sociopathically obnoxious Drew (Chris O'Dowd).

Bruce's spirits are lifted by the arrival of new manager Julia (Rashida Jones, pictured right) - and when he finds out she salsas, well then it's back on with the dancing shoes. Ian McShane is interestingly cast as a curmudgeonly dance teacher with whom Bruce reconnects, with Olivia Colman reliably lovely as Bruce's excitable sister and Kayvan Novak camping it up as a fellow salsa enthusiast.

Sitcom director James Griffiths's feature debut takes its cue from the energy and visual humour of Edgar Wright but - though his film zips along and is further enlivened by its dance sequences, including a bizarre and entertaining car park dance-off - visually it feels highly derivative, like a poor relation of the aforementioned's Cornetto trilogy. Jon Brown (Misfits and Fresh Meat), who pens the script, proves himself a competent gags man but the plot is hugely predictable, rushed and sometimes illogical (the unprepared-for final dance competition had me slapping my head).

In addition, one of the most frustrating aspects of Cuban Fury is that it moans about how beautiful women are too superficial to find men like Bruce desirable, but fails to acknowledge that, for a long time at least, Bruce has based his infatuation with Julia solely on her looks. And that's what it comes across as, an infatuation - there isn't much in the way of getting to know her, so when Bruce for example compiles a mix-tape, or turns up at Julia's flat it looks extremely creepy and you'll be willing her to get the funk out of there.

This is a story told from a male protagonist's perspective, granted, but it's still a shame that the female lead wasn't allowed much of a personality, especially given Jones' effervescent charm (see Parks and Recreation and the self-penned Celeste & Jesse Forever - much better platforms for her considerable comedic gift). But if Griffiths's first film is significantly flawed, it's far from awful with the likeable cast papering over some pretty hefty cracks to keep things predominantly amusing. Cuban Fury is undemanding, toe-tapping fluff which just about passes muster as an evening's entertainment and which works best (and only) if you savour the gags and switch your brain to unquestioning acceptance for the remainder. Meanwhile the wait continues for the next great British romcom.

Overleaf: watch the trailer for Cuban Fury

Whenever someone wants to dispel the gender simplification that female directors only make feelgood films, they wheel out Kathryn Bigelow, whose action movies are cited as being tougher than any man’s. It’s a spurious debate, admittedly, but if we were to play that game I’d definitely bring Denis into Bigelow’s corner. The Frenchwoman doesn’t do action, per se. But her films can be tough as nails, black as pitch, and as disquieting as they are marvellous.

The opening days of the Berlinale have seen mixed reactions to high-profile English-language offerings. With its stylish sense of mittelEuropa, the festival’s premiere, Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, apparently went down a treat. Much less kudos, though, went to George Clooney’s The Monuments Men (released in the UK this week, reviewed on theartsdesk today).

The Nazi war machine had great taste: it wanted all of the world’s art treasure for itself. Someone had to stop them .Based on Robert M Edsel’s book, George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s screenplay takes a starry stab at telling a culturally serious World War Two story. Shot in both the UK and Germany, its moral values are high, but this tasteful war heist/thriller hits the ground flat-footed and doesn't get better.

José Padilha’s glossy reimagining of RoboCop is entertaining but mostly forgettable. Geared towards the profitable 12A market, its good looking but illogical action sequences are no replacement for the grimy, grubby and magnificently realised dystopian world from Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 scathing satire.

Delve into the personal life of Charles Dickens and she emerges, revealing another side of an author whose stories seem so wholesome. According to The Invisible Woman author Claire Tomalin, Ralph Fiennes’ film about Charles Dickens’ secret mistress is very different from the book upon which it is based. Scripted by Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady and Shame), The Invisible Woman, in which Fiennes stars and well as directs, gives us a more complex view of Dickens-as-man, albeit through a dark lens, literally and metaphorically.

Extreme physical transformation is a double-edged sword for actors. Setting aside the metabolic repercussions of shedding huge amounts of weight from an already lean frame, as Matthew McConaughey did for the role of rodeo cowboy and accidental AIDS activist Ron Woodroof, there’s a risk that the aesthetic will distract from the work.

This is a performance for which McConaughey is almost guaranteed to net the Best Actor Oscar next month, composing the highest peak yet in what has been one of the most efficient and absolute career turnarounds ever witnessed in Hollywood. It’s a full-blooded, ferocious turn, and a much-needed shot of adrenalin to the heart of Jean-Marc Vallée’s oddly staid drama.

We’re introduced to Ron days before his diagnosis with advanced AIDS in 1986, doom already writ large on McConaughey’s emaciated form. The calm before the storm unfolds in brutal, staccato snapshots: the presumed moment of his infection, his day job as an electrician interrupted by abrupt bloodshed, his eventual collapse. As a red-blooded, openly homophobic Texan and renowned “pussy addict”, Ron’s kneejerk response to his death sentence is belligerent denial, followed swiftly by proactive denial.His never-say-die tenacity leads him into semi-inadvertent battle with the FDA – in a bid to extend his own life, he drives across the border to Mexico having been denied access to the still-in-trials drug AZT, and ends up instead with an early version of the AIDS "cocktail" still widely prescribed today. Where AZT had only landed him back in hospital, the cocktail restores him to some measure of health, and thus begins the caper movie element of Dallas Buyers Club, with Ron dreaming up increasingly inventive ways to smuggle and distribute these medications to a growing HIV-positive community.

Running alongside all this is the touching relationship between Ron and fellow patient Rayon (Jared Leto), a transgender woman whose blithe sweetness gradually sands down Ron’s rougher edges. While the erosion of Ron’s bigotry isn’t always convincingly drawn – his cartoonishly thuggish friends are rolled out as less-than-subtle benchmarks – every moment between McConaughey and Leto feels genuine.But as the film becomes more bogged down in a half-hearted morality story about federal government and a related subplot surrounding Jennifer Garner’s bland doctor Eve (pictured left), you’re left longing for more time with Leto’s achingly moving performance. Garner does nothing to improve what’s already a clunky role; spouting indignant lines like “What do the FDA know about treating patients?”, she’s a morality delivery device rather than a character, which makes her dynamic with Ron ring hollow.

It’s Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack’s script that most consistently rankles; the strangely sporadic use of title cards to mark the passage of time is symptomatic of an overall awkwardness. The thread of Ron’s motivation – much like in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, the question is where the line sits between shrewd business sense and genuine philanthropy – becomes less and less well defined, but McConaughey’s work is so rigorously consistent it’s hard to notice.

Dallas Buyers Club feels closer to a wasted opportunity than a triumph, although its success in bringing a remarkable and little-told story to a wider audience must be lauded. It’s a dated, often clumsy drama buoyed by two eminently fresh and graceful performances. 

Overleaf: watch the trailer to Dallas Buyers Club