This week's movie releases

The sight of Sean Penn in This Must Be the Place, Italian Il Divo director Paolo Sorrentino's first movie in English, might on its own be enough to put many off. Dolled up like Robert Smith of The Cure and talking in a Truman Capote-like voice, he plays aging rock star Cheyenne.

Wealthy and happily married for the last 35 years to perky firefighter Frances McDormand, he lives an otherwise listless existence shuffling around Dublin with his shopping trolley, trading shares on the stock market and organizing his Goth friend's love life. The incongruity goes off the scale, however, when Cheyenne is called to his estranged dad's deathbed in New York and sets about hunting down the Nazi he learns tormented his father in Auschwitz.

The amusing opening quickly endears you to Penn's performance, and while that audacious leap across the pond takes it on to shakier ground that some might even find offensive, it's also occasionally spellbinding. With the absurdity and the seriousness reining each other in, you're left strangely hovering between giggles and tears.

Revamping it up

A film remake of Dark Shadows, the cult 1960s daytime drama that featured werewolves, zombies and other monsters, surely had director Tim Burton's name written all over it from the start - though you have to admit his quirky gothic oeuvre is starting to look a bit tired these days. Frequent Burton collaborator Johnny Depp stars as vampire Barnabas Collins, who is released into 1970s Maine after 200 years entombed by a witch whose heart he broke. Featuring alongside him in the starry cast are Eva Green, Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Lee Miller, Chlöe Moretz and Helena Bonham Carter, not to mention Sir Christopher Lee and Alice Cooper.

Depp also briefly pops up in 21 Jump Street, the comedy remake of the 1980s TV show that launched him on the road to stardom. Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill star as two cops going undercover at a high school to find the supplier of a new synthetic drug.

Also out this week, Seis Puntos Sobre Emma stars Verónica Echegui as a young blind woman looking for the perfect sperm donor for her baby.

A grim portrait of contemporary Mexico, Miss Bala follows aspiring beauty queen Stephanie Sigman as she falls into the hands of a vicious gang after witnessing a nightclub shooting. Gerardo Naranjo directs this tough thriller from Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna and producer Pablo Cruz's production company.