Something 4 The Weekend by Paul Bullock

Welcome ladies, gentlemen and film fans everywhere to entertainment manchester's weekly feature 'Something for the Weekend'. If, as Forrest Gump once might have said were he a film fan, cinema really is like a box of chocolates, then think of us as your mini-menu, steering you away from the coffee creams and towards the Turkish delights of the movie world.

"Volver is a meeting of Mildred Pierce and Arsenic and Old Lace, combined with the surrealistic naturalism of my fourth film, What Have I Done To Deserve This?" Welcome to the weird world of Pedro Almodovar's Volver.

The film (whose title means 'to return' and is pronounced Bolber) is another typically hard to place Almodovar effort which charmed the Cannes film festival, earning Penelope Cruz and her fellow female co-stars the best actress prize. It follows three generations of women throughout their lives.

There's Raimuna (Penelope Cruz) who is married to an unemployed labourer and has a teenage daughter (Yohana Cobo). She is joined by sister Sole (Lola Duenas), her aunt (Chus Lampreave), neighbour Augustina (Blanca Portillo) and, most intriguingly, her mother (Carmen Maura), who recently died in a fire along with her father.

It certainly sounds like an interesting concept, promising a film about the past and its effects on our future, or, as Almodovar himself puts it in his director's statement: "It's a film about the culture of death in my native La Mancha...The way in which the dead continue to be present in their lives, the richness and humanity of their rites means that the dead never die."

Heavy stuff indeed, and definitely not to everyone's taste. So, if you're more interested in films where the dead stay dead, you could check out Severence, a horror film described as "The Office meets Deliverance" in which a group of office workers go on a team-building weekend to Hungary...AND DIE!!!!! On the plus side, it stars Percy from Blackadder. On the negative side it also stars Danny Dyer. So probably best avoided.

If death doesn't really grab you this weekend, there's You, Me and Dupree, a comedy starring Kate Hudson and Matt Dillon as a newly-married couple whose best man, Owen Wilson, outstays his welcome. It's certainly got potential, written as it is by Joe and Antony Russo, who have contributed to lauded TV series Arrested Development and the casting of Matt Dillon promises a bit of edge. However, it all really depends on Kate Hudson, who I often find rather bland in this kind of movie.

Finally, if that doesn't tickle your pickle, there's the absurdly titled Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing and Charm School, a sentimental looking comedy-drama starring Robert Carlyle as a man who recovers from his wife's death at the titular dancing school.