Richard Glatzer employed a text-to-speech app on his iPad to help overcome the effects of the degenerative disease Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis to co-direct Still Alice with Wash Westmoreland, the husband with whom he also collaborated on Quinceañera (2006) and The Last of Robin Hood (2013). Adapted from a novel by neuroscientist Lisa Genova, this sincere attempt to depict Alzheimer's from the perspective of the sufferer disappearing from their own consciousness rather than from the viewpoint of their helpless friends and family earned Julianne Moore the Oscar for Best Actress. But, while she contributes a performance of rare skill, the discussion of the condition is often so verbose and superficial that this well-meaning drama too frequently feels like a `disease of the week' teleplay, albeit one that eschews easy tears.

Fifty year-old Julianne Moore teaches linguistics at Columbia University. She is married to medical researcher Alec Baldwin and has three grown-up children, Kate Bosworth, Kristen Stewart and Hunter Parrish. Everything seems fine until Moore forgets the word `lexicon' in the middle of a lecture and, shortly afterwards, becomes disorientated after getting lost while jogging in a familiar part of New York. Reluctantly, she undergoes a series of neurological tests to assess her short-term memory and is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's.

Moore is warned by doctor Stephen Kunken that the condition is inheritable and she tries to convince the broody Bosworth and husband Shane McRae to use IVF to avoid the possibility of passing on the gene. However, Baldwin is too wrapped up in his own career to offer his wife much support, while Stewart is preoccupied with her bid to become an actress in Los Angeles. So, Moore tries to disguise her ongoing struggle with everyday tasks and bumbles through classes at school. However, the students start complaining about her lapses and she is dismissed by the unsympathetic faculty.

Suddenly cognisant of the future she faces, Moore begins researching care homes and even makes a video message, in which she asks some simple self-defining questions and reminds herself that there is a bottle of pills hidden away to end things before they get out of hand. She secretes the clip on her laptop and tries to make the most of a family holiday at the beach. But her illness is starting to put more of a strain on those around her and she is distressed when Baldwin refuses to take a sabbatical so they can spend more of her remaining lucid time together.

As she feels the grasp on her personality slipping away. Moore realises her loved ones are starting to prepare for life without her and she gives a moving speech to the Alzheimer's Association that is warmly applauded. A few weeks later, she finds the embedded video on her computer. She opens it and has difficulty recognising herself, let alone following her own instructions. But she is interrupted by her carer before she can open the pills and her opportunity for self-willed escape passes. Not long afterwards, Baldwin lands a long-cherished job in Boston and announces his intention to accept it. Consequently, Moore is left in the care of the prodigal Stewart, who feels compelled to do her bit for the mother who helped mould her.

A line from the Elizabeth Bishop poem, `One Art', proves crucial to understanding Julianne Moore's accomplished performance. Following Judi Dench in Iris (2001), Gena Rowlands in The Notebook (2004) and Julie Christie in Away From Her (2006), Moore perfects `the art of losing', as she endures the frustration of seeing everything she has achieved slip through her memory and leave her helpless and alone as her sense of self diminishes with terrifying rapidity and finality. Moore has already played women on the verge to telling effect in Safe (1995), Far From Heaven and The Hours (both 2002), but never before has she conveyed such palpable vulnerability.

Yet, apart from having cinematographer Denis Lenoir reduce the field of view, Glatzer and Westmoreland do little to allow the audience an audiovisual share in Moore's encroaching interiority. Ilan Eshker's score is certainly not up to the task and the co-directors are exceedingly fortunate that their shortcomings are masked by Moore's excellence in sequences like the one in which the woman watching the suicide message bears little physical, let alone psychological similarity to the one on the screen. This acuity justifies the decision to switch the focus away from the family, although Stewart and Bosworth have touching exchanges that compensate for Baldwin's overly boorish display as the husband investing in his future while his wife is striving to hang on to her present. But, for all its tasteful tact and occasional deft humour, this is guilty of too many melodramatic lapses to feel like we are witnessing real life.

Playwright Debbie Tucker Green proves herself to be a more elusive storyteller with Second Coming. Having already won a BAFTA for her 2012 teleplay, Random, Tucker Green has made an impressive transition from the stage. But, while this teasingly non-religious biblical allegory has its moments of charm and drama, it often feels capriciously elliptical and struggles to convince in its latter stages. Played with laudable intensity, this presents an intriguing insight into the workings of an ordinary black British family. But, while it eschews the clichés of the ghetto genre, it lacks the potency promised by its audacious premise.

Thirtysomething Nadine Marshall works at a benefits office. Following a series of miscarriages, she was informed after giving birth to her 11 year-old son, Kai Francis Lewis, that she would never conceive again. So, she is deeply concerned when she starts to experience the symptoms of pregnancy, even though she hasn't been intimate with husband Idris Elba for several months. Feeling unable to confide in mother Llewella Gideon and aware that sister Seroca Davis sneers at her for being a government lackey, Marshall confides in best friend Sharlene Whyte and wonders whether she should have an abortion. But she loves being a mother and is as curious and excited by this seemingly miraculous development as she is confused and scared by the fact she starts having nosebleeds and hallucinates that water is pouring through the walls and ceiling when she is alone in the bathroom.

Elba works as a maintenance man on the railways and is hardly ever home because of all the overtime he claims. He is a decent father and Tucker Green shows us snippets of domestic contentment, as the family watch videos together, prepare meals and visit relatives. Yet, there is an atmosphere between Elba and Marshall and Francis Lewis regards them at such moments as carefully as he watches birds in the nearby park. But, while he willingly takes care of an injured blackbird, Elba is far less accepting when Marshall breaks the news about her condition and their son views their heated argument from a discreet distance with a mounting sense of dread.

The boy's fears prove well founded when his mother attempts a drastic course of action. But, even though Tucker Green uses captions to count down the weeks to the possible birth, she fails to generate sufficient suspense or affection for the characters to make this sincere study of the pressures of motherhood as compelling as it might have been. She should be commended for spinning out the crux of the matter and for presenting several key developments from a child's eye view. But a good deal of the symbolism is as heavy handed as Luke Sutherland's ominous score and the blues and greys that cinematographer Ula Pontikos employs to convey the miserable London weather.

Marshall and Elba respond admirably to the challenges of playing characters whose complexities are often internalised. Elba seems to be a committed family man. But hints are dropped that he might not be as reliable as he likes to appear and these suspicions help explain why Marshall would be so reluctant to tell her husband the truth from the outset. However, her own behaviour often borders on the peculiar and Tucker Green allows the viewer to speculate about whether the entire episode might be taking place solely in Marshall's overwrought imagination. But this mix of social realism and psychological thriller never quite melds and this exposes the conspicuous calculation of the cryptically fractured structure.

It has taken a while for mumblecore to start exerting its influence on the American mainstream and it will be interesting to see how many of this fiercely independent coterie's big names manage to resist the temptation of sacrificing creative control for the promise of commercial success. Two of the group's more intriguing figures recently had releases in UK cinemas and it's worth noting that the more peripheral of the pair has remained truer to the mumblecore ethos than one of the prime movers of this neo-no wave. In Andrew Bujalski's defence, Results is the 38 year-old's fifth feature, while 29 year-old Alex Ross Perry is only making his third after Impolex (2009) and The Colour Wheel (2011). But there is no question that Listen Up Philip is by far the better picture.

Still basking in the critical glory of his debut novel, Join the Street Parade, rising New York literary star Jason Schwartzman has been assured by editor Daniel London that he will go stratospheric when his sophomore effort, Obidant, hits the shelves. However, from the moment he berates ex-lover Samantha Jacober for daring to be late for a meeting, it is clear that Schwartzman is an insufferable narcissist who takes obnoxious hubris to a new level. Indeed, he is so certain that he is about to be proclaimed a genius that he cancels a promotional tour at the eleventh hour, brushes aside the adulation of would-be groupie Dree Hemingway and retreats to the apartment he shares with photographer girlfriend Elisabeth Moss to await the cascade of plaudits.

However, as narrator Eric Bogosian reveals, the rave reviews simply never materialise. London cowers as he breaks the news that the New York Times is lukewarm at best. But Schwartzman dismisses the ignorance of the critic and accepts an assignment to profile fellow scribe, Keith Poulson, whose book The Exploding Head Trick has been warmly received. Yet, instead of fawning over Poulson, Schwartzman calls him out for a fight and the resulting fracas causes Poulson to take his own life when it becomes public knowledge.

Dismayed only that he didn't get the last interview with a dead celebrity, Schwartzman refocuses on himself. Brushing off Moss's accusation that he is no fun any more, he accepts an invitation to stay with his fallen idol, Jonathan Pryce, who is every bit as conceited and detached from reality. He invites Schwartzman to spend some time at his country home to and take advantage of the peace and quiet to write. However, Pryce (whose reputation has dipped since he tried to cap the landmark novel Madness and Women with A Woman's Perspective) is every bit as demanding of attention as his guest, especially when he has the wind taken out of his sails by adult daughter, Krysten Ritter, after she interrupts his sordid attempts to seduce a gullible middle-aged woman.

While Schwartzman finds himself in the middle of a domestic dispute, Moss tries to move on with her life. She tells sister Jess Weixler to sort herself out, gets a cat and sees her career prospects start to improve. Yet, for some reason, she can't get over a man who barely acknowledges her existence, let alone her achievements. Meanwhile, things go from bad to worse for her estranged beau, as Pryce finds him a position teaching creative writing at a liberal arts college and he rapidly alienate all of his students and his colleagues. French tutor Josephine de la Baume agrees to a date, but their tryst is not a success and Schwartzman returns to Brooklyn to discover that Moss has thrown him out of their apartment and that his novel has bombed so badly that he is as hopeless as he is homeless.

Philip Lewis Friedman is Schwartzman's best role since Max Fischer in Wes Anderson's Rushmore (2008). Indeed, they have much in common and Perry often seems to exploit the similarity, as much as he does the fact that Pryce's character, Ike Zimmerman, has a name that resembles Philip Roth's alter ego in The Ghost Writer, Nathan Zuckerman. References to Roth abound, although Perry has revealed that he borrowed the idea to rack focus away from Schwartmen and on to Moss and Pryce from William Gaddis's first novel, The Recognitions. Having previously modelled Impolex on Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, it is perhaps not surprising that Perry sprinkles his myriad cinematic homages with the odd literary cue. But, given the current state of print publishing, there is something affectionate and romantic about the reverence shown to books here, even by characters as reprehensible as these.

Allowing glimpses of the fragile vulnerability beneath their pomposity, Schwartzman and Pryce are magnificent. But there isn't a false performance from the splendid ensemble, who are forever being eavesdropped or spied upon by Sean Price Williams's handheld and restlessly intrusive Super 16mm camera. Moss does particularly well with an underwritten character whose loyal yearning for a pretentious braggart provides the screenplay's biggest stretch. Even the unseen Eric Bogosian comes close to matching Alex Baldwin's superb voiceover in Wes Anderson's The Royal Tennenbaums (2001). Perry indulges himself with the occasional quip that sounds like something someone would say in a Woody Allen satire on hipsterdom, while other scenes ramble in the manner of a John Cassavetes improvisation. But, while he periodically risks sounding as smug as his gruesome twosome, Perry lets them carry the can while he picks up the accolades.

The Preston Sturges brand of screwball seems to have inspired Stephen Greene's Accidental Love. But there is very little to smile at in this adaptation of Kristin Gore's 2004 novel, Sammy's Hill, which has been patched up and pushed into cinemas in a cynical bid to make back some of the money that seemed to have been wasted when David O. Russell walked out on the project in 2010. Back then, the film was known as Nailed, and Russell quit after budgetary problems and a creative dispute with James Caan had caused the shoot to be closed down on nine separate occasions. This is, therefore, an Alan Smithee venture in all but name, as Russell has long since disowned it and so have the majority of the cast, who were conspicuous by their absence when the picture was rush-released to a unanimous chorus of disapproval Stateside.

Given that Obamacare has made a nonsense of the storyline, it's difficult to see why anyone would want to watch a political satire that is five years out of date - even if its source was penned by a Vice-President's daughter. Gore finds herself alongside Russell, Matthew Silverstein and Dave Jeser in the credits, but she can surely take little pleasure from seeing this clunky comedy being dusted down from the shelf. Russell will also be reluctant to recall this period of his career that saw him follow such acclaimed outings as Spanking the Monkey (1994), Flirting With Disaster (1996) and Three Kings (1999) with the risibly misfiring I Heart Huckabees (2004). However, given that he has since bounced back with The Fighter (2010), Silver Linings Playbook (2012) and American Hustle (2013) - which have amassed 25 Oscar nominations between them - he can be forgiven for merely shrugging and going back to post-production on Joy, a comic biopic of inventor and entrepreneur Joy Mangano that reunites him with Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper.

The story starts with state trooper James Marsden preparing to propose to Jessica Biel, a roller-skating waitress at the retro Fancy Gondola diner. However, a workman falls off his ladder and manages to embed a nail in Biel's skull and she is rushed to hospital. But, before surgeon Bill Hader can remove it, an administrator bursts into the operating theatre to announce that not only does Biel not have health insurance, but also that parents Beverly D'Angelo and Steve Boles can't afford the $150,000 for the procedure and aftercare. Dropping everything to go to lunch, Hader sympathises and warns Biel that she can expects to experience mood swings and a possible loss of sexual inhibition, providing the nail doesn't shift and reduce her to a drooling vegetable.

Having tried a little DIY surgery under the supervision of bibulous vet Kirstie Alley, Biel decides to go to Washington to lobby for a health service caters for the victims of bizarre accidents like her own. Despite breaking off their relationship because he feels intimidated by her increasingly unpredictable lustfulness, Marsden wishes Biel well and she joins forces with defrocked priest Kurt Fuller (who is unable to calm a raging pill-induced erection) and onetime bodybuilder Tracy Morgan, who is suffering from a collapsed anus. This troubled threesome head to Capitol Hill in the hope of persuading up-and-coming Congressman Jake Gyllenhaal to draft some legislation on their behalf. But, even though Gyllenhaal is very taken with Biel, he is in the back pocket of House Whip Catherine Keener, who is more interesting in fulfilling her ambition to fund a military base on the Moon.

The cookie choking death of Speaker James Brolin throws a spanner in the works and Gyllenhaal loses his nerve and goes into hiding, as Keener launches a smear campaign against him. But Marsden remains loyal to Biel and he tracks down the fugitive politician and brings about a reunion with Biel that inspires Gyllenhaal to press on with a bill to help the freakishly afflicted.

Even if it had been released before the reform of the American health service, it's hard to see this muddled farrago doing anything else but tank. Closer in tone to such Washington misfires as Jonathan Lynn's The Distinguished Gentleman (1992) and Barry Levinson's Man of the Year (2006) than masterpieces like Frank Capra's Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939) or Sturges's The Great McGinty (1940), it has the semblance of a half-decent idea at its core. But the execution is excruciatingly awful and one wonders why so many talented artists were drawn to such a dismal plot.

In her defence, Jessica Biel works hard to make a fist of the impossible assignment of mining humour from brain damage, mood swings and nymphomania. But the majority of her co-stars either gnaw at the scenery or skulk around (after realising what they have let themselves in) the hope of not doing too much lasting damage to their reputation. At one point, Biel catches George A. Romero's zombie gem Night of the Living Dead (1968) on the television and one is supposed to chuckle at the satirical connection. But, given how this feature has been pieced together from disparate parts, it surely comes closer to Frankenstein. It could have been worse, though - imagine how terrifying this might have been if Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler had been paired instead of Biel and Gyllenhaal.

By contrast, it's hard to see how any cast changes could have improved Fouad Mikati's Return to Sender, which sees Wadham College alumna Rosamund Pike revisit familiar territory after her Oscar-nominated display in David Fincher's Gone Girl (2014). In their defence, screenwriters Patricia Beauchamp and Joe Gossett are making their respective debut and sophomore outing. But this is a lazily derivative and wholly implausible melodrama and it raises questions about Pike's judgement that she would accept a role so similar and so markedly inferior to the one that earned her so much glory.

Small-town nurse Rosamund Pike has ambitions to work in the operating theatre and never misses the chance to watch the surgeons perform through the student viewing window. Ward receptionist Camryn Mannheim thinks Pike should find herself a man and settle down and pals Rumer Willis, Alexi Wasser and Donna Duplantier are forever offering to set her up with eligible bachelors. But she prefers to ice cakes for their birthdays and keep an eye on her ageing father, Nick Nolte, who works at the local hardware store.

Pike is less than amused when Nolte's over-enthusiastic dog, Benny, tears her new dress and she swears that she will tame him if it's the last thing she ever does. However, her immediate focus is on moving house, as she has grown tired of her old-fashioned cottage and sets her heart on a modern property picked out by estate agent Illeana Douglas.

Feeling in a good mood because the deal has gone through, Pike agrees to a blind date and is getting ready when there's a knock on the door. She is slightly surprised to see Shiloh Fernandez looking so scruffy when she would have expected him to smarten up to make a good first impression. But she invites him inside and tells him to make himself comfortable while she finishes dressing. She gets flustered when he handles the pen in a package she opens and realises something is wrong when he locks the front door. Unable to resist, Pike is forced down on the kitchen table and raped and Fernandez escapes just as Billy Slaughter arrives holding a bunch of flowers.

Although badly bruised and forced to remain in hospital, Pike remembers seeing Fernandez at the restaurant where he works and he is swiftly arrested. Nolte sits by his daughter's bedside and curses the coward who attacked her. But not everyone is so empathetic. Douglas breaks the news that the buyer has withdrawn their offer, as they don't wish to live in a crime scene. Moreover, when she returns to work, Pike is ticked off by snooty doctor Samantha Beaulieu for letting her standards slip. Her friends try to cheer her up by buying her the children's game, Surgery. But she struggles to keep a steady hand and cant even manage to ice a cake without smudging the piping. When she loses her temper with a stroppy pierced clerk at the dry cleaners, Pike realises she has to do something positive to reclaim her life.

She starts tidying the front garden and makes plans to renovate the house so that it belies its reputation. Nolte is glad to see her keeping busy and is grateful that she is able to pop round and feed Benny while he is working. However, he has no idea that Pike has started writing to Fernandez in order to ask him to let her visit so she can get closure on her ordeal.

After several letters are returned unopened, she receives an envelope with `You Win' written on the back. Pike arrives towards the end of visiting time and barely recognises Fernandez, as he has cut his hair (as has she). She tells him she has not come out of self-pity, but admits that she isn't sure what to say now that she is here. When he tries to apologise, Pike turns her head. But, instead of crying, she asks him what the food is like and they smile uneasily at one another.

As time passes, Pike becomes a regular at the gaol and she learns that Fernandez is something of a handyman. But, while she is always polite to him, she shows an undue interest in a scar along his side after he is attacked by some of his fellow inmates and allows her finger to glide along the glass screen across the length of the wound. Shortly after Christmas, however, she comes to offer him a chance to help her fix up her house and he can scarcely believe that she could forgive him to this extent. Pike insists she trusts him and needs the work doing quickly, well and to budget and Fernandez promises not to let her down.

Nolte is distraught when Benny dies suddenly. But he is apoplectic when he discovers that Pike has hired her assailant and tells her he disowns her. Fernandez works hard and puts up a screen door on the porch. However, he feels faint after Pike brings him a glass of homemade lemonade and asks if he can use her bathroom while they are painting a rocking chair together.

When he wakes, Fernandez is strapped to a bed in the basement and he realises that Pike has flipped when she tells him that she used the same poison on Benny. She plays air hockey on a table beside his bed and taunts him about how long she has been waiting for her moment of retribution. When someone knocks at the door with a parcel, she tapes his mouth and returns to frighten the life out of him with a rubber hand. He begs for mercy, but she mocks him by saying she felt nothing during the rape because he was so inadequate. But she shows him how she has resolved that problem by pulling back the bedclothes and Fernandez wails in horror at what he sees.

As the film ends, Pike assures Nolte that Fernandez won't be coming around any longer. But the script leaves it hanging whether she finished him off or left him to endure the consequences of his emasculation. Whatever the outcome, it's pretty dismal. Yet it seems apposite for a picture that lurches from one improbability to another and insults the intelligence of its audience at every turn.

The characterisation is desperately thin, with Fernandez appearing from nowhere and remaining something of an enigma as he flinches under Pike's gaze one moment and roughs up his cellmate the next. Pike is also saddled with a cipher, but she her performance is too impassive to allow the audience to gauge what is going on behind her eyes. But, while Mikati is able to generate a modicum of tension, it hasn't been honestly earned and, thus, the shock ending falls risibly flat. Not since Ronald Reagan asked `Where's the rest of me?' in Sam Wood's Kings Row (1942) has the handiwork of a sadistic surgeon been greeted with so many unwanted guffaws.