In the opening scene of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, we are met by vibrant shots of a suburban neighbourhood basking in the glow of a warm summer sunlight. As a man suffers a crippling stroke, the camera does something unexpected. We pan away from the catatonic victim and stumble, deep beneath the grass, on a hoard of crawling, festering insects. Lynch makes his point beautifully. Beneath the pleasant façade of suburbia lies a creepy and infested underworld; behind the picket fences and crimson roses are people we know nothing about – people riddled with secrets.

How much do we really know about our neighbours? Aside from the polite “good morning” and mandatory Christmas cards, do we truly know what’s going on behind the closed doors of people who live a matter of feet away from us? It’s a curiosity explored endlessly on screen. Ricky Fitts’ video camera in American Beauty reveals the peculiar nude workout routines of a man’s mid-life crisis; a vain young girl desperately seeking attention from men; and his own personal favourite – an insecure teenager who feels she’ll never find anybody who loves her. What his camera doesn’t pick up is his own father’s repressed homosexuality (masquerading as intense homophobia); Carolyn’s adultery; or even Lester’s infatuation with his daughter’s 16 year old friend. These are things no neighbour could ever know because they are hidden so well.

In 2004, Marc Cherry was inspired by American Beauty to create a TV series about the mysteries of one’s neighbours hidden behind the beautiful surface of suburbia, Desperate Housewives. With each new season, a different neighbour joined the street, always disguising a sinister past that threatened to break free. The picturesque Wisteria Lane became synonymous with closeted skeletons, and the female protagonists represented the “everyman”, inquisitive but clueless about the lives of their neighbours. It doesn’t matter how “ordinary” one may seem – everybody has secrets they want to protect.

Suburban life is all about exhibiting a shiny façade. It’s about Stepford Wives-type figures, perfectly prim and presentable, ready to offer a batch of warm cookies to passers by, whilst concealing the fact that they’re actually robots. It’s about the ideal family unit and community spirit displayed by Truman Burbank in The Truman Show – a man who is all the while unaware that his life is part of a scripted TV series. Jeffrey Beaumont never expects to discover a severed ear in his neighbourhood in Blue Velvet – why would something so disturbing ever find its way into his quaint little community? But as long as everybody feels safe – as long as they believe that no harm could ever come to their homes, the façade may continue and life can go on.

But how should we treat our neighbours if we do find out something unsavory about them? Todd Field’s Little Children is one of many films to deal with this difficulty. Should a community band together to enrage one another against a convicted paedophile living amongst them, or does he deserve a chance at anonymity and redemption? In Rear Window, is L.B. Jefferies right to take his suspicions of his neighbour – whom he’s been watching from across the street through binoculars – into his own hands? Does Claire have justification to slander her enigmatic neighbours to her husband and friends in What Lies Beneath? Curiosity always gets the better of us, it seems.

The most effective examination of the neighbourhood network is probably demonstrated by the soap opera. A myriad of characters share the screen for brief vignettes, each simultaneously contributing to a larger picture of a disconnected yet closely associated community. We all emit different personalities when we’re out and about to when we’re sitting in the comfort of our own home. This is what film and TV loves to explore. The medium lends itself perfectly. Just like Ricky Fitts, filmmakers are able to push their cameras deep into the private world of the most fascinatingly revealing place of all: the home.

★★★☆☆

With Avengers: Age of Ultron being the 11th Marvel Studios film since 2008’s Iron Man, one would be forgiven for assuming the franchise must have outworn its welcome by now. Fortunately, this is not the case. This summer’s most anticipated film serves as a suitable sequel to 2012’s The Avengers, but this latest installment in the Marvel “megafranchise” is let down by a convoluted script, with too many characters – old and new – and the general feeling that it is a ‘necessary’ installment in the series, one that doesn’t really further the overall plot.

Tony Stark has created a world-defending artificial intelligence programme, Ultron, chillingly voiced by James Spader, which instead begins to believe that it can only protect the world by destroying humanity. Ultron finds initial allies in two awesome additions to the cast, Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s super-fast Quicksilver, and the telekinetic Scarlet Witch, played by Elisabeth Olsen, who hold a grudge against Tony Stark, after his weapons killed their parents. The six returning Avengers are joined by the newly created android Vision, whose loosely-defined powers seem to be made up as the film progresses. Alongside the team are another entire cast’s worth of supporting characters from previous films. If you think such a large roster of Marvel heroes would lead to a rather overstuffed film, you’d be right.

The main problem with this film is that there’s just too much going on, and not enough time to see much character develop- ment and interaction which was so perfect in the first film. Even the new characters aren’t given much chance to expand. The producers clearly felt it was time the Hawkeye character be explored, yet when we see his life outside of the team, it feels it’s been shoehorned in just to please fans.

Thor’s playful mockery of his mortal teamates gets tiresome, and with Loki not appearing, this film may simply prove that Thor as a character requires a ‘yin’ to his ‘yang’. The introduction of a love story between Black Widow and Bruce Banner is scarcely touched upon and though well portrayed by Scarlett Johansson, it feels superficial, the filmmakers ticking off another box. The quips and witticisms of the Avengers are not lacking, but the moments of interaction between the teammates that made the previous film so memorable are few are far between, and this talented ensemble is given little opportunity to showcase their abilities.

There is a distinct lack of focus – one moment you’re in South Korea, the next you’re in London – and whilst the action is still as exciting as ever, and the visuals no less spectacular, they are entering the realm of Transformers- esque messiness. Ultimately the central plot is confused, and the problem resulting from the Avengers’ own actions renders the narrative somewhat redundant, meaning it’s a film that neither does much to advance the series’ overall plot, nor excels in being a particularly good ‘stand-alone’ Marvel film.

Ultimately, it seems a “necessary” installment, in that the audience needed to see the team together once more before they are divided in next year’s Captain America: Civil War. There is little inherently bad, and following up its 2012 predecessor would be a difficult task by any standards, but it’s both overstuffed and lacking at the same time. Avengers: Age of Ultron is enjoyable, but its convoluted script is wasted on outstanding visual effects and a talented cast.

When Cloud Atlas was released, it polarised critics and barely broke even at the box office. Based on David Mitchell’s wonderfully complex 2004 novel, the film contains multiple plotlines and narratives spanning six different eras, genres, and settings. Only the creators of The Matrix and the visionary director of Run Lola Run could adapt this supposedly “unfilmable” book, dividing directorial duties between them and assembling an all-star cast that includes Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent and Hugh Grant.

The film presents one of the most complex narratives ever attempted on screen. Mitchell’s novel was split into chapters devoted to each separate “period”, but the filmmakers decided to interweave and flip between each era simultaneously, accumulating a mosaic narrative of interrelated storylines. Some have called this “messy”, but it is one of the most heroically ambitious endeavours of modern cinema.

There’s an uncompromising depth and beauty to the sheer vastness of the narrative. We jump from explosive sci-fi action to a quaint Cambridge love story. There’s even a touch of Terrence Malick in the sprawling sublimity of the film’s central philosophy. It passes beyond mere sentimentality in order to ask more fulfilling questions about humanity. At its heart, there is the age-old “butterfly effect” question – how do our actions influence each other? Are we all connected?

It’s also very funny. The cast seem to be genuinely enjoying themselves. Broadbent is effortlessly hilarious when trapped in a sinister nursing home; Tom Hanks sports hysterical Scottish, Irish and English accents in his eclectic range of characters; and who wouldn’t want to see Hugh Grant as a can- nibal? It’s an immensely charming film.