This week’s movie releases

After Paco Plaza’s efforts to inject a dose of comedy into the REC franchise in the wedding-set part three, his co-director on the first two movies, Jaume Balagueró, is all at sea in his own solo – and said to be final – entry in the Spanish zombie saga. REC 4 follows directly on from the second installment as TV reporter Ángela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) escapes the Barcelona apartment block where the supernatural virus first let rip and is taken to a quarantine ship stationed miles offshore to remain in isolation. Needless to say, with a bunch of weird experiments going on and a storm brewing, she and the virus don’t stay shut up for long.

Set in 1930s North Carolina, Serena unites Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence for a third big-screen outing after their winning collaborations in Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle. The pair plays a married couple looking to expand their logging empire by any means possible, and when strong-willed Lawrence finds out she can’t have children, she only turns more insanely ruthless. Directed by Danish Oscar winner Susanne Bier (In a Better World), it also stars Brits Toby Jones and Rhys Ifans.

Writer-director Jeremy Saulnier’s scruffy American indie Blue Ruin is a exemplary revenge thriller that scooped the Fipresci critics prize at this year’s Cannes festival. Macon Blair plays a shambling drifter prompted into an act of bloody revenge after learning the man convicted of killing his parents has been released from prison. But that’s just the start of a film that layers on the tension by keeping you permanently off balance as to where it’s headed next. The bloody finale might feel a tad more conventional, but the journey there is a constant heart-stopper.

Much less gory, but no less scruffy, The Boxtrolls is a beautifully rendered stop-motion children’s animation about a tribe of inventive, garbage-gathering critters and the orphan boy, Eggs (voiced by Isaac Hempstead-Wright), they bring up beneath the streets of turn-of-the-19th-century Cheesebridge. When the town’s mayor devises a plan to exterminate the trolls, Eggs heads above ground to the rescue. Elle Fanning, Ben Kingsley, Toni Collette, Jared Harris, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Richard Ayoade and Tracy Morgan provide the vocal talent.

Cops out

Following in the footsteps of Taken, Unknown and Non-Stop, A Walk Among the Tombstones sees Liam Neeson continue in grizzled tough guy mode as a washed-up New York cop-turned-illegal-private eye investigating the kidnapping and murder of a heroin dealer’s wife. Shot by writer-director Scott Frank, it’s based on the novel by Lawrence Block.

Another troubled lawman takes center stage in Filth, an adaptation of Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh’s novel. James McAvoy plays a manipulative, corrupt Edinburgh policeman whose mind gradually starts unraveling as he investigates the murder of a Japanese student. Director Jon S. Baird’s movie also stars Jamie Bell, Eddie Marsan, Imogen Poots and Jim Broadbent.

Directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, documentary The Salt of the Earth looks at the work of globe-trotting Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado.

Meanwhile, last, but by no means least, En tierra extraña (or, In a Foreign Land) is Spanish Even the Rain director Iciar Bollain’s documentary about the 700,000 young Spaniards who have been forced to find work overseas as a result of the economic crisis. Centered on Edinburgh, home to over 20,000 young Spanish expats, it features interviews with experts, as well as the youngsters trying to make a new life for themselves far from home.