George Clooney and Frances McDormand in Burn After Reading Courtesy of Focus Features

Burn After Reading

For their follow up to their Oscar-winning No Country For Old Men, the brothers Coen, Joel and Ethan, are back in darkly comic territory familiar to fans of The Big Lebowski and Barton Fink. Burn After Reading reunites them with their Intolerable Cruelty and O Brother star George Clooney for the final installment of what they fondly refer to as Clooney's trilogy of idiots.

Part sex farce, part social commentary, and part spy movie, Burn revolves around the sexual shenanigans of several Washington DC residents and a missing CD of what is purported to be sensitive material but is really nothing of the sort. The result is occasionally very funny and frequently extremely black but is missing the spark that would elevate it to the list of classic Coens — that said, a lesser Coen is, to my mind, better than almost anybody else's work.

Clooney (wearing his Syriana beard) plays Harry Pfarrer, a bed-hopping Federal Marshall who is engaged in an affair with Tilda Swinton's pediatrician Katie Cox. Cox's foul-mouthed CIA analyst husband Osborne (John Malkovich) has just been fired and is determined to write an explosive memoir as a rebuke to his former bosses. Meanwhile, Frances McDormand's plastic surgery-obsessed gym employee Linda Litzke (who is desperate for plastic surgery) stumbles upon a CD containing supposedly sensitive information in a locker room, and together with fellow employee Chad (Brad Pitt hamming it up in Lycra and turning in a side-splitting comic performance) attempt to blackmail Osborne before trying to sell the disc to the Russian. And then Clooney's Harry meets Linda via an Internet dating site and the plot takes another even more convoluted comic turn.

Burn runs out of steam towards the end, by which point at least one major character has died and the feel-good factor kicks in somewhat. Beneath the screwball comedy and shameless mugging, the Coens are, however, clearly making some serious points about society today — every character is undergoing some personal or professional crisis and desperate for a change, while Swinton's Katie is angry at everybody. They also make a few salient points about the perils of Internet dating.

JK Simmons contributes a droll cameo as a sweep-everything-under-the-carpet CIA boss, while the contraption Clooney's character knocks up in his basement as a "gift" to his wife has to be seen to be believed.

Valentino: The Last Emperor

"I know what women want," says legendary Italian fashion designer Valentino at the start of Matt Tyrnauser's terrifically entertaining fly-on-the-wall documentary. And after 45 years at the top of his profession, designing dresses for everybody from Jackie Kennedy and Audrey Hepburn to Julia Roberts and Gwyneth Paltrow, who can argue with him? The film follows the flamboyant fashion icon and his long-time professional and personal partner Giancarlo Giammetti for more than a year as the jet-setting pair prepare Valentino's Spring/Summer 2006 collection, micromanaging the creation of every hand stitched dress, holiday on their yacht, and oversee a 45-year retrospective in Rome as investment bankers wait in the wings to take over his business empire.

The film isn't shy about showing the rough as well as the smooth. From cleaning their dogs' teeth, to mixing with Hollywood and fashion elite, Valentino and Giammetti make a wonderfully touching double act, bitching and moaning like the two old lovers they are, partners who have spent just two months apart in 50 years. "Your belly is showing," says Giancarlo at one point. "I don't look fat," snaps back Valentino who moans about the camera being too intrusive but then insists it follow him not anyone else. Affectionate, absorbing, and, above all, huge fun.