This week’s movie releases

Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel play a married couple trying to reinvigorate their love life in comedy Sex Tape. After filming themselves working their way through the entire Joy of Sex, the pair’s three-hour epic accidentally gets posted online, forcing them to set out to recover the copies before their friends, family and colleagues can see it. Jake Kasdan, who previously directed Diaz in Bad Teacher, calls the shots, while Jack Black and Rob Lowe also make appearances.

Director James DeMonaco follows up his low-budget horror-thriller hit The Purge with The Purge: Anarchy. Like the original, it’s set in a dystopian future US that keeps the crime rate down by legalizing murder, robbery and rape for a 12-hour period each year. This time round Frank Grillo, Michael K. Williams, Zach Gilford and Carmen Ejogo are among those preparing for another night of unrestrained mayhem.

Boasting the snappy tagline of “They suck at school,” Vampire Academy is Mean Girls director Mark Waters’ fantasy comedy about a Dhampir, a half human/vampire played by Zoey Deutch, and her peaceful Moroi vampire friend (Lucy Fry) at a dangerous boarding school for bloodsuckers named St. Vladimir’s. Based on Richelle Mead’s novel of the same name.

A big hit with critics, US indie drama Short Term 12 is first-time feature director Destin Daniel Cretton’s story of a dedicated twentysomething carehome worker (Brie Larson) trying to juggle the tribulations of her personal life with her job helping disadvantaged teens.

A Touch of Sin is a portmanteau work bringing together four tales inspired by real-life events in today’s rapidly changing China. Auteur Jia Zhangke’s film won the Best Screenplay award at last year’s Cannes festival.

Orthodox methods

From Israel and set in Tel Aviv’s Orthodox Jewish community, Fill the Void finds 18-year-old Shira (Hadas Yaron) having to put on hold her arranged marriage to a man she likes after her elder sister unexpectedly dies in childbirth and her parents, after learning their son-in-law is thinking of taking the newborn abroad, offer him her hand in marriage. Rama Burshtein’s film – the first to be directed by a female Orthodox Jewish director targeted at an outside audience – is a touching drama about the struggle between duty and the heart.

The Extraordinary Tale is an oddball English-language boy-meets-girl black comedy from Spain about the semi-fantastical relationship between two youngsters (Ken Appledorn and Aïda Ballmann).