Once upon a time we got films based on video games, but here director Snyder goes one better – or worse – in bringing us a video game, forget the film, forget a plot we can get involved in, forget characters we care about … hey, it’s a video game.

AN uninspiring Hilary Swank plays high-school teacher Erin Gruewel who encourages disadvantaged kids to write their own stories in Freedom Writers (Paramount, €24.99).

Buffralo Soldiers stars Joaquin Phoenix as Ray Elwood, a drug-dealing thief who keeps his fellow soldiers at a US army base in Germany supplied with the bare essentials.

The Berlin Wall is about to come down (the story is set circa l989) and we meet a group of US soldiers bored and behaving badly.