For all that’s been said about Orson Welles – usually focusing on his towering genius and sizable ego - he was above all a great contrarian. In interviews he was often genial and self-effacing and of course a scintillating raconteur. During his later years he could be avuncular, entertainingly unpredictable and very funny, like a mischievous lecturer. His The Lady From Shanghai (1947) is so loaded with eccentricity it’s positively cock-eyed and Welles was of course an outcast in Hollywood, that is until he cast himself out.

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who think The Three Stooges are funny and those who just don’t get it. People in the first category are much better people.  

Hitchcock was fond of the locked-box mystery, but never in the obvious form: whether it’s the leads in Rope, stuck in their apartment with a body shut up in a trunk, or the survivors from a ship murderously bobbing along together in Lifeboat, the trap was all. James Stewart as LB Jefferies in Rear Window is another man locked in a box, this time kept in his apartment by his broken leg. But clever old Hitchcock – he sets the mystery outside the box.

There's not exactly an excess of colour in Shadow Dancer, the IRA-themed thriller that unfolds amid a bleached-out landscape of browns and greys, windswept waterfronts and drab, unwelcoming enclosures. But amid the drear, the director James Marsh (Man on Wire) has fashioned the most psychologically intricate and exciting film of the year so far and the first in a long time to restore the violent bequest of the Troubles to the cinematic primacy we associate with the likes of Cal or The Crying Game.

In 1994, a boy vanishes from Texas. Over three years later, he is found by Interpol alive in Spain and shipped back to his family in San Antonio. As improbable as this is in itself, it marks the beginning of an even more incredible story revealed in gobsmacking glory by writer/director Bart Layton. This documentary proves not only that truth is stranger than fiction, but that sometimes truth is so strange it makes even the wildest imagination cower in the corner.

The potential minefield that is the run-up to marriage brings filmgoers back to the altar once again courtesy The Wedding Video, an English romcom that is quite a bit better than one might at first expect. A mixture of pro forma slob comedy (what, no Rhys Ifans?) possessed of a genuinely endearing twist, director Nigel Cole's latest feel-good venture actually does cheer the heart, even if there are ample passages of grimace-and-bear-it shenanigans that have to be got through along the way. 

The great Leonard Cohen has brought his trademark poetry and pain to a whole host of film and TV soundtracks: the cynical “Everybody Knows” accompanied the bump and grind of Atom Egoyan’s Exotica; the raggedly beautiful “Hallelujah” brought soul to Watchmen and best of all is his melancholic musical backdrop to Altman’s heartbreaking McCabe & Mrs. Miller. In fact we’ve already seen one film this year take its title from a Cohen song – A Thousand Kisses Deep.

We haven't had a Bourne movie since 2007's Bourne Ultimatum, so Hollywood naturally felt it was high time to reheat the much-loved franchise. Back comes Tony Gilroy, screenwriter for the first three Bournes and now writer/director on this one. In the mix, too, are brief cameos by some familiar faces from the earlier pictures, including Joan Allen, David Strathairn and Albert Finney, who are used to emphasise the way this new instalment grows out of the dark and dirty covert shenanigans we've seen in its predecessors.

Many an English actor has found himself playing a suave and supercilious Hollywood villain, but none has done it with the exquisite finesse of George Sanders. His performance as Jack Favell in Rebecca only brought him a handful of scenes in a movie running over two hours, but he's not just one of the major pivots of the drama, but perhaps the most memorable character in a film teeming with splendid turns.

Animated 11^th-century Scotland is a great place to live for a girl with a bow and arrow, until your mum decides to marry you off to any young numpty who wins a clan tournament. No wonder the female audience comes predisposed to love Merida, the star of Disney Pixar’s Brave. She’s a snappy, arrow-shooting, red-haired Scottish princess who’ll do anything not to end up like her mum.