The Disaster Artist (2017)

Just like the mirthful viewers who still years after its release fill theatres for midnight screenings of Tommy Wiseau's The Room, director, producer and lead actor James Franco and his co-stars (his brother Dave and an enormous number of celebrities appearing in cameo) gather in this adaptation of Greg Sestero's making-of account to rejoice in The Room's utter awfulness and to revel in Wiseau's ineptitude as a filmmaker and actor.

★★★☆☆

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The Interview (2014)

I had assumed the controversy surrounding its release - because it centres on a plot to assassinate a living leader - was a marketing ploy to overshadow the fact James Franco and Seth Rogen's comedy was a laughfree bomb, but in fact, despite myself, I enjoyed this audacious - and immature and unnecessarily violent - comedy greatly boosted by the genuinely touching relationship that develops between Randall Parks' Kim Jong-un and Franco's dopey celebrity shockjock, Dave Skylark, enlisted by the FBI to kill the leader during a staged, ratings-boosting interview.

★★★★☆

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Sausage Party (2016)

Food fetishists and stoners will enjoy the antics of this brazen exercise in bad taste, an adult-themed animation about supermarket produce items searching for the meaning of shelf-life, while everyone else can marvel at how such a temporally weak premise is so creatively stretched to full movie feature length.

★★☆☆☆

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This Is The End (2013)

Some of Hollywood's most obnoxious personalities gather at James Franco's house for a party, and pretty soon the world decides to end rather than put up with another minute of their incessant shouting about drugs, semen, masturbation, and rape.

★★☆☆☆

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Bad Neighbors (aka Neighbors) (2014)

New parents endeavour to shut down a riotous frathouse that keeps them and their baby awake at night, in this crude but often funny comedy that smashes together the world of the young, wild and wilful with the world of the middle-aged and totes-uncool, but the movie squanders the most interesting aspect of its story: Zac Efron's fratboy's inability to look beyond fraternity life, an idea with darkly humorous potential, introduced then abandoned..

★★☆☆☆

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Steve Jobs (2015)

Biopics often feel like narrative-free highlight reels but Danny Boyle's cleverly constructed one about the co-founder and CEO of Apple tells a fascinating story with great heart, humour, emotion, and is full of character, about the flawed genius, his vision for Apple, his family and key professional relationships.

★★★★★

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