Producer Joel Silver once devised a simple formula for success: you take a white guy and a black guy with completely different backgrounds, give them a mystery to solve together, have them take part in a few action sequences, say a couple of funny lines, and the box office cash rolls in. This method worked for years, as films like Lethal Weapon, 48 Hours, and more went on to have incredible box office success. Now writer/director John Michael McDonagh has taken that formula, given it an Irish twist, and created one of the best comedies of the year.

Featuring terrific turns by its stars, tremendous chemistry between its leads and an unorthodox approach to a familiar set-up, The Guard is a screamingly hilarious comedy with a great deal of heart. Taking an equal-opportunity-offender approach, the film is a dark comedy in every sense of the word, but everyone will be too busy laughing to care about the boundaries being pushed.

The story centres on Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson), a police officer who serves in the west of Ireland. Upon learning that a team of three international drug smugglers (Mark Strong, Liam Cunningham, David Wilmot, all brilliant) are in town, Boyle is forced to team up with an FBI agent named Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) in order to bring them to justice. Though they resist working with each other at first, Boyle and Everett are unified after witnessing a wave of corruption, bribery and blackmail and refuse to back down until the job is done.

The main reason for the film’s success is the pairing and dynamic between Gleeson and Cheadle. Because their characters are so deftly written and layered, all aspects of Boyle and Everett’s personalities bounce off each other perfectly. From Boyle’s casual racism to Everett’s wealthy upbringing; Boyle’s lack of worldliness to Everett’s fish-out-of-water situation, everything about the two is crafted with purpose and makes the film all the funnier.

Beyond the script, however, The Guard’s entire cast also gives amazing performances. As Boyle, Gleeson is required not only to be incredibly laid back - but thanks to scenes with his dying mother, is also a good and responsible man. The range shown in each actor’s performance is amazing. The film’s real scene stealer, though, is Mark Strong as a criminal who has become bored by what he does. Strong has been frequently typecast as a stereotypical baddie in the last few years but here he shows that he can play deep and complex characters when given the right material, as he had in BBC’s memorable and seriously underrated “The Long Firm”.

Because of John Michael McDonagh’s relationship to Martin McDonagh – they’re brothers – and the fact that both films star Brendan Gleeson, The Guard is likely to earn a lot of comparisons to In Bruges, which isn’t entirely unfair. Both pictures aim for the same audience, have similar senses of humour and adroitly mix darker character and story elements with hysterical ones. There are, of course, some sections of the audience which may not take too kindly to McDonagh’s brazen and unabashed approach to comedy, but those that appreciate irreverent humour when they need a laugh are going to adore The Guard. Unmissable.

Adapted from the novel Mygale (Tarantula) by Thierry Jonquet, Almodóvar and his brother Agustin spin this stylish tale and locate it in the lush and beautiful setting of the surgeon's mansion. Some of the story elements are at times unknowingly hilarious, but also consciously played for laughs, with the director showing his penchant for confounding our expectations in all manner of ways.

Eventually, he manages to create a skin that would shield the recipient from harm. To test it out he seeks out his trusty accomplice Marilia (Marisa Paredes) and a test subject named Vera (Elena Anaya) who's being groomed for the purpose, wishing the subject to resemble his late wife as much as possible.

Vera spends much of the film in yoga positions, wearing a flesh-coloured body stocking to protect her "inner self" as the doctor gets to work. Surrounding all of this, family secrets are revealed in flashbacks: which is how we meet a young junkie (Jan Cornet), the surgeon's daughter (Bianca Suárez) and a middle-aged man obsessed with his object of desire.

In less skilled hands the convoluted machinations of The Skin I Live In could have turned sour, but Pedro Almodóvar cooks up the ingredients into a spicy dish of overpowering melodrama that invigorates the tastes buds.

There are points in common with just about every film Almodóvar has ever made, especially his 2009 Broken Embraces. "Science is leading us into an abyss and we don't know where we'll end up. In the future humans may be totally transformed."

Nobody concocts this mix of dark comedy, high drama and sublimated desire better than Spain's most flamboyant export. It's not normal - but this is Pedro in full flow.

Following decades of wild western confrontation between cowboys and indians, a unifying third presence emerges to get both together – creatures from beyond our world. The high concept Cowboys & Aliens manages quite capably to blend two genres, producing a surprisingly entertaining two hours of screen-time.

Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) wakes up in the desert with little knowledge of who he is and how he got there. Despite being confronted by a trio of erstwhile bounty hunters, he dispatches them fairly efficiently, establishing immediately that here is a guy who can handle himself. Wandering into the dusty town of Absolution, Jake discovers that he’s a wanted man - and just when he’s about to be trundled off to the gallows by the town’s sheriff (Keith Carradine), aliens swoop in and save him.

The aliens have landed and have a particular interest in abducting the local dustkickers. But when the loser son of the ruthless local land baron, Col. Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), is captured by the mysterious other-worldly creatures, a posse is formed. The search is on to bring back the missing, come hell or high water as they used to say in them parts.

This sincere attempt by director Jon Favreau (Iron Man) to recreate the look and feel of an authentic Western works well despite the overall clichéd nature of the narrative. Adapted from a popular graphic novel this is an unambitious outing that won’t really spawn many sequels. This likely one-shot genre mash-up borrows more from the Western than from science fiction. While the big bang action conclusion is typical and won’t surprise many cinemagoers, the set-up is intriguing.

Relying on a recognisable cast led by Craig and Ford, it is hard to not recommend the film for the camp value alone. And the script smartly gives Ford a chance to be bad (he’s down-right ruthless early on), and then it gives him an opportunity to redeem himself. Craig is well-cast as the lean, dangerous leading man, who has acquired a futuristic weapon that attaches itself to his wrist. This weapon, probably meant for use by the alien invaders, is wielded better by the trained gun-slinger than any of his clumsy outer space foes, but there is a lot going on in this probably overlong adventure containing arguably too many characters.

And the sheer number of characters introduced is as impressive as it proves distracting. Probably because filmfans are so intimately familiar with typical Western elements, we accept that every Western town has a bar-owner named Doc, a worldly preacher, an honest sheriff, an orphan kid, and a dog. It helps that these roles are filled with familiar faces. Sam Rockwell makes a solid Doc, and the preacher is played by a grizzled, bearded Clancy Brown. Veteran actor Keith Carradine, who has played cowboys before in films like The Long Riders and Deadwood, dials in the right vibe for the sheriff. This experienced talent gives the film a little weight that defies its comic book origins. But that points up the inherent limitations of something as ridiculous sounding as Cowboys & Aliens: it is not meant to be taken seriously, regardless how dedicated its fanbase may be. And although I found the mere entertainment value of the film to be satisfying, it isn’t a transcendent mix of two otherwise important film genres. The movie is at its core an action picture. It’s loud and comically violent and sometimes nice to look at, but it won’t really do down in the pantheon of cinema as the moment that something unique was created.