Edinburgh 2009: It's hard not to fall for characters so easily likeable as Gael Garcia Bernal's and Diego Luna's in Carlos Cuaron's film. The chemistry between the two leads that made Cuaron's father's film Y Tu Mama Tambien so exciting is back in droves and their fraternal relationship is really the most entertaining thing about this light comedy. It's not a movie destined to change the world, but it's full of heart and plenty of big laughs - not least Bernal's frankly flawless music video - and it'll certainly entertain.

Edinburgh 2009: Talk about your under-the-radar sci-fi gem. Exam sets its small group of cast in a room and keeps them there for its 97 minutes but through the way it tells its story it treats us to a virus-plagued alternate-future world that's totally believable. This is challenging even when a film throws hundreds of millions of dollars at the screen in the endeavour of creating vast CG skylines to convince us of its universe, so it's all the more impressive in Stuart Hazeldine's indie, literally doesn't leave its featureless exam room for the run.

Hazeldine is already working with the studios as a screenwriter, having done work on both The Day the Earth Stood Still and Alex Proyas' Knowing, but here he marks himself as a director to take very keen note of - if in his debut small British film he can create something this fresh, exciting, epic and, frankly, blockbuster-beating, imagine what could result when he does start making massive movies.

Edinburgh 2009: Mendes and company have definitely overdosed on Juno Juice in the formation of this little quirky comedy. John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph are to die for in the lead, and there's plenty of humour along the way - not least from Maggie Gyllenhaal who's simply divine in her limited screentime - but it's all just so also-ran. A film about pregnancy with a killer soundtrack, a quirky sense of humour and Allison Janney. Been there, done that.

Not quite sure what every girl in this flick seems to see in Jesse Eisenberg, but it's a charming American indie for the Juno generation. You get the sense that kooky teen flicks are on their ebb, so perhaps it's not as fresh as others have been, but it's full of belly laughs and eighties charm and Ryan Reynolds is particularly fun in his brief role. Kristen Stewart is destined to be huge. It doesn't make her a particularly remarkable actress, but she continues to prove she has chops above and beyond Twilight.

Most are too young to be even vaguely aware of Woodstock Music and Art Fair these days. But the impact of the three-day celebration of peace and music on a dairy farm in Bethel, New York back in 1969 marked the pinnacle of the hippie era and saw nearly half a million people descend on the 600-acre site. Acts included Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, The Who and Jimi Hendrix and the fest was an unprecedented event in music history.

Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock is the tale of Elliot Tiber (oddly renamed Teichberg in the movie), president of the Bethel Chamber of Commerce, who held the only permit for a music festival in the area (he planned to put on a chamber music show) and invited the event's organisers to the town when they were denied a permit in the nearby town of Wallkill. Based on his autobiography, we join him as a young man (Demetri Martin) struggling to maintain his parent's motel business and coming to terms with his sexuality.

When he reads that the permit for the Wallkill has been pulled, he pitches the idea of bringing the festival to Bethel to promoter Michael Lang (Jonathan Groff). Before long, plans are underway to run the show on Max Yasgur's farm, proving a much-needed investment of capital into Tiber's motel, which the organisers use to house themselves and their offices while the show comes together.

The film is really about Elliot's journey without moving. While struggling with his own identity and his responsibilities to his parents - a battleaxe mother (Imelda Staunton) and ailing father (Henry Goodman) - he welcomes an incredibly liberal collection of people to his town who teach him the value of personal identity. It's an incredibly powerful theme punctuated brilliantly by Liev Schreiber as a transvestite ex-marine, of whom Elliot asks if his father understands what he is. He replies, "Honey, I know who I am. That should make it easier for everyone else."

Maybe it's not surprising to see a film with powerful homosexual themes from Lee, who was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar for Brokeback Mountain, but he explores the subject with an impressively deft hand, making Elliot's journey remarkably genuine. The real Tiber was present for the Stonewall riots, which happened weeks before the film's timeline begins, but Lee and screenwriter James Schamus focus their adaptation on a young man whose sexuality isn't so assured before the film begins and allows the audience to take the film's journey with him.

It's not quite as successful in that respect as Almost Famous, another film about a young man's journey into the world of live music, as Patrick Fugit's character in that film is, perhaps, less affected by a history that isn't spelled out within the film. But Taking Woodstock is as much about Elliot's journey as it is about the foundations of the music festival. In the clash of big business and hippie ideals that gave birth to the show it's a film both funny and engaging. On the sidelines, Emile Hirsch as a Vietnam vet and Paul Dano as an Acid-dropping hippie provide drama and comedy respectively, while Dan Fogler is hilarious as the leader of an alternative theatre troop whose main artistic contribution to the world seems to be to dance around naked.

When the festival kicks off, Elliot is nowhere near the action - if nothing else, clearing rights to that material would have been mighty tricky - but Lee gives a comfortable sense of scale in cleverly chosen CG shots mixed, predominantly, with vast scenes involving extras.

It may not be on a par with Brokeback, nor as powerful as Lust, Caution, but Taking Woodstock is another triumph for Ang Lee, a director whose resume gets more and more diverse with every project he tackles.

Cannes 2009: I've talked about Precious more than any other film out of Cannes this year and I think it's because I may have some issue with believing what I'm saying. Starring Mariah Carey, Lenny Kravitz and Mo'Nique, Precious is one of the best-performed films I've seen in years... And that sentence just doesn't seem like it should exist.

Lee Daniels is clearly a fine director of actors. There's no real flair to the technical level of the direction here, and it's not even necessarily very well paced or of a tone that lends itself to fine drama, but across the spectrum its performers drag you into the story and make you believe everything you're seeing. Carey becomes a social worker, Kravitz an orderly, and not even the greatest of well-known actors can shrug off a strong personality like that, let alone a pair of musicians for whom image is all part of the act.

But the Oscar must surely go to Mo'Nique, who serves up one of the most harrowing performances of the decade. It's a brave length to go to for an acting job and that makes the transformation all the more remarkable. There's no describing it - this is one performance that demands to be witnessed first-hand.

Gabourey Sidibe makes her feature debut here as the titular lead, and she's similarly wonderful. Daniels really knows how to empower his performers to let themselves go, because it's clear each of the actors in this piece are reaching for real honesty that can only come from such selflessness for the material.

Cannes 2009: After introducing audiences to a new kind of horror with his vengeance trilogy - Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy and Lady Vengeance - and then following swiftly with the surreal rom-com I'm A Cyborg But That's OK, the idea of Korean director Park Chan-wook sinking his teeth into a vampire tale was always going to be an intriguing one. Thirst is everything you'd expect from Chan-wook - violent, surreal, different - and it's full of moments of genius that breathe new life into the genre. But it delivers far less than it promises.

Father Sang-hyun (Song Kang-ho) is conflicted by carnal feelings for his friend's wife and gives up the cloth to go to Africa and participate in a medical experiment designed to eradicate the Emmanuel Virus, which causes painful boils on the skin and, eventually, death by blood loss. The antidote they're developing is ineffective and he contracts the virus, finally undergoing a blood transfusion in an attempt to save his life. It fails and he's pronounced dead. But when he comes back to life and all of his symptoms have dissipated, the God-fearing folk of his home town believe their local priest to have been saved by the Almighty.

On his return home Sang-hyun finds he's become a local celebrity, but the feelings he went to Africa to escape are still deep within him and stronger than ever. The object of his desire is Tae-ju (relative newcomer Kim Ok-vin) and, reunited with her, he discovers a force inside demanding him to ignore everything he's been brought up to believe to be with her. As his virus symptoms start to reappear, Sang-hyun realises he has a strong attraction to blood, and only drinking it will heal his skin of its ailments.

What follows is a good 90 minutes of this burgeoning relationship set against the continued exploration of his new abilities. He's blessed with super strength, never tires, can scale massive heights and seems to be impervious to harm. Unsurprisingly, the film's strength lies in the moments in which Sang-hyun is questioning his new identity. Having devoted his life to God and the Catholic desire to do good, he finds himself powerless to answer calls to cure sickness and heal wounds, all the while feeling a new desire to put these people out of their misery by exsanguinating them.

Sadly, these moments are all too fleeting, and instead we focus on the relationship with Tae-ju. There's promise to begin with, as she struggles to understand her own attraction to the priest, but as she starts to fetishise his vampirism and he starts to fight his need for blood, we feel we've seen shades of this relationship play out before between Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise (in Interview With a Vampire). At one point the priest hints at his desire to only drain the blood of the suicidal parishioners who come to confess to him, reasoning that he'll assist their desire to move onto the next life, but no real examination of that part of his struggle is ever committed to screen.

It's a real shame, because the idea of a conflicted priest who becomes a vampire and has to ignore everything he believes in is a fascinating one, particularly in the hands of one of the world's most exciting directing talents. Certainly Thirst is entertaining, and Park directs with a flair that reinforces reputation, moving his camera confidently, challenging preconceptions about his characters and their situation with extreme commitment and ultimately giving birth to some of the finest scenes in vampire cinema.

Picking up on the priest's relationship with Tae-ju, by far the least interesting aspect of the premise, Park spends more than two hours getting us from A to B. And it's not because that relationship is as complex as to warrant the extended runtime, rather that he seems drawn to explore some of those other themes along the way but never allows himself to bring them to conclusions.

As much as the film's ultimate journey is disappointing, though, Thirst is at its best when it's defying convention. That alone makes it worth a look, if for no other reason than to savour its final scene which, without going into detail, is simply brilliant. Thirst may not be the greatest vampire movie ever made, but Park's willingness to try something different makes it a decidedly fresh take on the genre.

Cannes 2009: Andrea Arnold's gritty social realism is tough going at the best of times, and its flaw is that you can feel its beats before they hit, making the experience drag even longer than its already heavy running time. But its young lead is exceptional, and it's a nuanced and never-cliched look at broken Britain.

Finally, we're in the era of Rudd the star. With Jason Segel to bounce off the pair craft an emminently watchable comedy that dares to be different and plays to the Apatow crowd. Hilarious.

Raimi ditches Lycra for Lamia as he returns to horror after a good few years away making the dull as dishwater Spider-Man movies. Brilliant.