This week’s movie releases

Borat and Brüno creator Sacha Baron Cohen reteams with director Larry Charles and returns with a brand new comic creation in The Dictator. Admiral General Aladeen is the despot of an oil-rich North African republic who travels to address the United Nations in New York after the US threatens military intervention. However, after escaping a kidnap plot organized by his democracy-promoting uncle Tamir (Ben Kingsley), he finds himself adrift on the streets of the Big Apple. The movie is dedicated to the memory of Kim Jong-il.

Loosely based on Heidi Murkoff’s bestselling pregnancy manual, What to Expect When You’re Expecting is an ensemble comedy starring Cameron Diaz, Matthew J. Morrison, Jennifer Lopez, Elizabeth Banks, Anna Kendrick, Chace Crawford, Brooklyn Decker, Dennis Quaid and Chris Rock in a story of five Atlanta couples preparing for imminent parenthood.

A Hollywood stalwart of films such as No Way Out and Cocktail, director Roger Donaldson returns with Seeking Justice, which stars Nicolas Cage as a New Orleans family man and high-school teacher whose life is shaken up when his wife (Mad Men’s January Jones) is brutally attacked. As she recovers in hospital, he’s approached by the head of a mysterious vigilante group (Guy Pearce) who offers to enact revenge for free. However, he soon finds out repaying the favor will mean having to take a life himself.

Elephants and wolves

The latest from Argentinean director Pablo Trapero (Carancho), Elefante blanco (or, White elephant) features Ricardo Darin and Belgian actor Jérémie Renier as two crusading priests struggling to improve conditions and fight corruption in a Buenos Aires shantytown. Joined by social worker Luciana (Martina Gusman), their battle to help the locals pits them against the upper echelons of the Church, the government, drug traffickers and the police.

Lobos de Arga is a Spanish horror comedy starring Gorka Otxoa as a failed writer who returns to the Galicia town of his ancestors convinced he’ll be welcomed with open arms. Instead, though, he finds himself threatened by a plot to sacrifice him to lift a 100-year-old werewolf curse. Juan Martínez Moreno’s film also stars Carlos Areces and Secún de la Rosa.

Irish busker romance Once was a sleeper hit that won the Oscar for best original song in 2007 and made stars of actors Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová. Documentary The Swell Season is the story of what happened next, as the pair struck up a real-life relationship and embarked on a stressful two-year tour that threatened everything.