Filmgoers will either find Denis Villeneuve's latest art-house thriller to be a tantalising head trip or so much celluloid posturing, but there's no denying its contribution to the rise and rise of leading man, Jake Gyllenhaal. Racing up the outside track as a potential Oscar nominee for Nightcrawler even as he is making a (splendid) Broadway debut in the Nick Payne play Constellations, Gyllenhaal here gets to impress twice over and for a simple reason: Javier Gullon's script casts the hirsute star in two different, teasingly complementary parts. 

Thoughts of Jeremy Irons's career-best work in Dead Ringers come to mind, or the sort of conceit one might expect from David Lynch, whose shimmering reality-vs-illusion landscape comes to mind here. And while the surface narrative is apparent enough, its larger meanings remain up for grabs, and one can only begin to imagine the PhD students who are going to be probing every frame for its fullest meaning for some years to come. 

For now, let me just say that I admired Enemy more than I warmed to it, and that there are numerous other movies whose deeper resonances seem to me more immediately worth mining (Lynch's Mulholland Drive to name but one). But whether you tune out to this movie or (as some are said to have been) are freaked out by it, there's no denying the absolute command of Gyllenhaal, who over time has learned to put his puppyish appeal to one side in favour of a more forceful, declarative style of performance that should serve him in good stead as he gets older and less obviously "cute". Think of this as part of Gyllenhaal's thespian insurance plan for an ever more varied screen future. 

Roughly half the film casts Gyllenhaal as Adam Bell (pictured above with Isabella Rossellini, who plays his mother), a faintly nerdy college professor who seems to spend his time when not lecturing having sex with his girlfriend (Melanie Laurent), and who can blame him for that? At least, that much is true until Adam rents a film one evening in which he happens to espy a bit-part actor, Daniel aka Anthony, who looks uncannily like himself, bodily scar and all. As purposeful – almost ominously so – as Adam is indrawn, Anthony responds to Adam's obsessional interest in him by commandeering significant (for which, read sexual) aspects of his doppelganger's life, the stakes escalating as the subconscious and the supernatural begin to take hold as well.

What follows tells perhaps the battle of a battered psyche or suggests a veiled political parable about societal misrule as it is allowed to infiltrate even the most ordinary lives. Or maybe the film is just about giving its leading actor the opportunity to push in two separate if ever-intersecting directions. Some won't care whereas others will be rapt. You could do worse than ponder Enemy's Cronenbergian affinities (yes, him too) and allow respect for Gyllenhaal to override the more self-conscious meanderings of what looks set to be this new year's murkiest film.

Watch the trailer for Enemy overleaf

Discussing what appealed to him in Patricia Highsmith’s simmering thriller The Two Faces of January, first-time director Hossein Amini landed on the deliberate lack of character motivation: “She doesn’t really explain why people do things.” This very obfuscation drew attention at the time of the novel’s 1964 publication, when the reader at Highsmith’s publisher identified “a frightening sense of the neurotic” in her approach to drawing characters.

Television shorthand for something terrible about to happen includes the car journey where the happy mum is singing at the top of her voice with an even happier kid safely strapped in at the back. No, not that they’re about to do "Wheels on the Bus", I mean something even worse, like mummy getting her head caved in with a rock while daughter plays yards away by the water’s edge.

Claude Sautet’s gripping noir thriller “Classe Tous Risques”, originally released in 1960,  was an inspiration for Jean-Pierre Melville’s collection of peerless films set in the French underworld. Not surprising, as the script was written by the novelist and ex-cop José Giovanni, who also supplied the story for Melville’s classic “Le Deuxième Souffle”.

That Thorold Dickinson (1903-84) directed only nine features can be attributed to the British film industry's mistrust of the intellectual left-wing cineaste and union activist – and his own distaste for making pablum. That he didn't make 30 pictures, including his planned The Mayor of Casterbridge, was a major loss. He was not only a master manipulator of light, space, movement, sound, and actors, but a shrewd judge of psychological and sociological dynamics.

The Counsellor is a cinematic room divider: some people will like it, saying it is stylish and daring. Others will find it truncated, slick and pretentious. Whichever room you end up in, The Counsellor has a tang of its own. This violent, colorful thriller overflows with bravado and, like matching collars and cuffs, identical foreboding. The motto here is that bad things happen to bad people but when they're bad people we sort of like, it's different.

Ridley Scott’s latest thriller is the first original screenplay written by novelist Cormac McCarthy. The author, responsible for No Country For Old Men among many others, had the original screenplay published in October and it differs from the finished film in several ways, as most screenplays will. (Hardly anyone locks down a script these days.) What is interesting about this is that it stresses the difference between the media – books are not films nor vice versa. The story can be enjoyed, differently, either way.

The audience know they're in trouble. But as this is McCarthy, we'll hang on

The plot is easy to follow even if there is little explanation for those not paying attention. Counsellor is the handsome and successful lawyer (Michael Fassbender) at the centre of this crime thriller. About to wed his beautiful, understanding girlfriend (Penélope Cruz), he becomes embroiled in an enormous drug deal. Meanwhile, his pro bono work brings him into contact with a female convict (Rosie Perez) whose son is put in jail for speeding. He's carrying $12K on an expensive bike and he's in jail for a $400 fine? The audience can smell the heady stink of “get the heck out of there”. Counsellor cannot. After all, he just bought an enormous diamond for his lady from Bruno Ganz, who explains how diamonds are rated. In many ways, it's the happiest part of the film.

Meanwhile, peculiar gangster type Reiner (Javier Bardem) and his even stranger girlfriend, Malkina (Cameron Diaz, pictured with Cruz), have so much money to burn that she has silver fingernails and they spend the whole day watching a pair of tame cheetahs chase hares over the plains. A deeper discussion includes the line, "I think truth has no temperature." Hearing this, the audience know they're in trouble. But as this is McCarthy, we're attempting art, so we'll hang on. Oh, that  “car scene” – Diaz’s character rubs herself against a windscreen - is not as shocking as it sounds. Reiner’s reaction, however, is worth the ticket price. The whole sequence is sexy, off-putting and hilarious.

Enter Nudie-wearing drug dealer Brad Pitt who is testing out that "know when to fold ‘em" quote from the song The Gambler. He decides, after telling Counsellor how much trouble he’s in, to escape his life of crime and, presumably, go straight. But when there’s $20 million worth of cocaine from Juárez, this is not so easy.

Cold and calculating and too deft for the cheap seats, The Counsellor starts out with a stellar cast and a lot of class – from its production design to its cinematography. But it is a hard sell: a cold story with cold people in it, in a world that is ruthless, harsh and cruel. To paraphrase Thomas Hobbes, some may think The Counsellor is nasty, brutish and short - clearly edited down to 117 minutes. But it could also be called mysterious, upsetting and alluring. The jury’s still out. It may be for some time.

BRAD PITT’S BIG MOMENTS

Allied. Doomed but entertaining attempt to revive 1940s Hollywood

Fury. David Ayer and Brad Pitt take the war film by the scruff of the neck

Inglorious Basterds. Pitt is gloriously absurd in Tarantino WW2 alternative history

Killing Them Softly. Brad Pitt cleans up an almighty mess in Andrew Dominik’s high-calibre crime ensemble

Moneyball. How Billy Beane created a revolution in Major League baseball

The Big Short. Pitt’s on the money as director Adam McKay successfully makes a drama out of a crisis

The Tree of Life. Terrence Malick’s elliptical epic leads us through time, space and one family’s story

PLUS ONE TURKEY

World War Z. It's World War with a Zee as Brad Pitt battles the undead and a zombie script

Overleaf: watch the trailer to The Counsellor