Director: Tamara Jenkins
Running time: 110 minutes

****

They are words too often spoken (usually with regard to Cate Blanchett or Nicole Kidman), but is Laura Linney the finest actress of her generation? You'd be hard pushed to argue the case against.

She first came to our attention in the mini series of Armisted Maupin's Tales Of The City novels, followed by magnetic performances in The Truman Show, You Can Count On Me, The Life Of David Gale, and more recently Love Actually and The Squid And The Whale.

In The Savages, Linney finds herself in equally strong company as she and Philip Seymour Hoffman play the offspring of a man dying of dementia (Philip Bosco).

Linney is the bitter playwright, struggling for funding and affection in her life, and Hoffman is a laidback academic with a similar grudge against the world around him.

Their father's increasingly disruptive behaviour at the care home lands him in their care, and it quickly becomes apparent that both have been shaped by his lack of parental affection in their youth.

What then takes place is an intelligent, witty and incredibly moving role reversal as Linney and Seymour Hoffman struggle to accept their lot.

I'M A CYBORG, BUT THAT'S OKAY (15) £19.99

Director: Park Chan-Wook
Running time: 105 minutes

***

Anyone who has watched Chan-Wook's Oldboy, Sympathy For Mr Vengeance or Lady Vengeance, will be familiar with how the Korean director loves to leave his audience reeling by combining morality, violence and awe-inspiring poetic visuals in a cinematic assault every time he takes to the camera.

Here, Park opts for a far less in-your-face style with I'm A Cyborg, the tale of a young girl, Cha Young-goon (Su-jeong Lim) who is committed to a mental asylum for believing she is a cyborg. Her 'condition' means that she only wants to interact with machinery – to the extent of licking batteries – but she finds kindred spirits in the patients she meets at the asylum. In particular she falls in love with a fellow psychotic called Park Il-sun (Korean actor Rain, who can be seen in Speed Racer at the moment).

With a mesmerising, technicolour storyboard employed by Park, the slightly uneventful and slowly executed storyline can almost be forgiven. Hopefully this is just a blip in the director's body of work, but it is worth seeking out for its sheer unique imagination if nothing else.