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Paul Thomas Anderson’s legion of fans will get their chance to see the filmmaker’s latest Inherent Vice – at least those in New York and L.A. after a long build-up of anticipation. Studio Warner Bros. is handling the director’s latest, set in a drug-laced L.A. in the 1970s. Barring some unforeseen cataclysm, the feature is easily going to be this week’s b.o. superstar and likely one of the year’s biggest per screen debuts. How it will fare against other fall b.o. knock-outs like Searchlight’s Birdman or TWC’s The Imitation Game remains to be seen. A slew of Specialty openers will coincide with the Inherent Vice juggernaut. A24 will open Oscar-nominated filmmaker Atom Egoyan’s The Captive day and date after an early fall bow in the director’s native Canada. Sundance Selects will expose Free The Nipple in New York...

Bill James's crime thriller is sexed-up and transplanted to France, with Isabelle Huppert in the lead. But the odd mix of bloody murder and comedy couplings means the movie belies its title

Tip Top – based on a crime thriller by British novelist Bill James – is a topsy-turvy sex comedy tarted up as cop drama. It's silly and wacky and rude and glib. A Punch and Judy show playing out on the set of Silent Witness.

Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Kiberlain play Esther Lafarge and Sally Marinelli, two internal affairs investigators parachuted into the police department in Villeneuve, Lille to uncover the mole who caused the death of an Algerian informant. They're joined by the snitch's handler, Inspector Mendes (François Damiens) - who's keen to shift the focus of the investigation from his shady dealings with his new shill (Aymen Saïdi) towards his chances of hopping in the sack with one or both women.

How do you turn a hostage situation concerning cocaine, eviction notices, and Algerian assassins into a stage for bureaucratic ineptitude and slum reform? Ask Angelo Cianci because his film Dernier étage gauche gauche [Top Floor, Left Wing] does it and more. A darkly comic take on generally serious circumstances, a normal day in the life of bailiff François Etcheveria (Hippolyte Girardot) becomes one he’ll never forget. The first apartment of twelve on his list to evict and catalogue property for compensation, no one could have known Mohand’s (Mohamed Fellag) home would be hiding the kinds of secrets it is. One desperate maneuver by son Salem (Aymen Saïdi), though, lands Etcheveria in the bathroom, tied up by tape, and looking down the barrel of a gun.

Both action and comedy start right after an opening credit sequence shows our main players passing each other on the street. Mohand is coming home as the...

Today's pick for the Sydney Film Festival Trailer of the Day is Top Floor Left Wing. Here's what the Sff Program says about the film: When cranky bailiff François (Hippolyte Girardot) attempts to collect a debt from Algerian father Mohand (Fellag) at the latter's council flat on the outskirts of Paris, Mohand's son Salem (Aymen Saïdi) - who's holding a sizeable stash of cocaine for a mate - becomes alarmed. The resulting hostage situation brings these three very different men together on the titular top floor, left wing - even as the authorities bumble their way through a response and the media ominously portend terrorist activity. It takes a unique talent to mine satirical comedy from real-life racial and economic strife, and debuting filmmaker...