Kindred literary spirits who overlapped in any number of ways make for riveting stuff in Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation. Filmmaker Lisa Immordino Vreeland folds archival footage of the legendary writers together with recitations from their life and art spoken by Jim Parsons and Zachary Quinto.

“The only child I’ve ever had is you,” the artist’s wife (Lena Olin), spits at the artist, her considerably older husband (Bruce Dern), who retorts, “That was your goddamn choice so don’t blame it on me.”

The problem with much neo-noir is that it’s ersatz – too self referential for its own good. Peter Medak’s noir is as dark as it gets, but the hell he portrays is a shade too knowing, tainted with irony and excess.

“I get to see all these beautiful places and look passengers right in the eye and say the word trash.” Meet Cassie Bowden (the excellent Kaley Cuoco), flight attendant on Imperial Atlantic Airways. In firm denial about her alcohol problem, she knocks back myriads of vodka miniatures onboard, parties hard in cities the world over, has one-night stands after black-out benders (“Thank you for the effort.

Eddie Murphy – one of the biggest stars of the 1980s – has taken his time in making a sequel to the enormously successful Coming to America, which was released in 1988. In that film, directed by John Landis, Murphy played another of his cheeky, quick-talking and knowing comedy roles; as Akeem, a prince from the fictional African nation of Zamunda.

Stuttgart-born auteur and film theoretician Paul Leni, whose illusionistic production designs and direction of Waxworks (1924) helped define German Expressionist cinema, was 44 and approaching master status when he died of sepsis on 2 September 1929.

An initially off-putting erotic comedy thriller about the relationship between a webcam dominatrix, “Scarlet” (Julia Fox), and the Internet gambler, Jack (Peter Vack), who becomes obsessed with her, Ben Hozie’s sexually graphic PVT CHAT becomes increasingly resonant as it proceeds – and surprisingly endearing. 

"A candied tarantula" is one of the many great descriptions of Truman Capote that light up this conventionally made but enjoyable profile of the American author most famous for Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood.

"Three plus versions of the same album. It’s ridiculous, but I’m glad.” The first paragraph of Richard Hell’s text in the booklet accompanying Destiny Street Complete lays it out. There are, indeed, three versions of his and his band The Voidoids’s July 1982 album Destiny Street on this double-CD set. It seems excessive.

One of the finer episodes in Raven Leilani’s startling debut (which contains an embarrassment of fine episodes) comes about halfway through, when Edie, our young, struggling black narrator, starts working as a rider for a “popular in-app delivery service”. The gig gives her tantalisingly brief contact with a spectrum of outlandish New Yorkers and their equally peculiar needs.