Demetrios Matheou on Couples Retreat and the rest of the week’s movies.

Oh, what promise they had. In 1996 Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau made Swingers. A witty, winning buddy movie about showbusiness wannabes in Los Angeles, written by Favreau, the film aptly enough kick-started both men’s Hollywood careers. But while on paper those careers are soaring – Favreau’s notably as a director, Vaughn’s as a leading man – creatively they stopped swinging long ago. Indeed, the dire comedy Couples Retreat ought to have both men out for the count.

This might be seen as a spiritual reunion of sorts: co-scripted by the old friends, perhaps as an acknowledgement that they are no longer the lean and hungry young men of Swingers, but middle-aged and established. Whereas Swingers was about guys striving for money, career and love, in Couples Retreat they have it all, but are in danger of throwing it away. Not that the film is in any way profound. Rather, it’s mired in formula (the exotic locations that add to the stars’ amusement if not ours, stereotypical Europeans, sexy masseurs and amorous yoga teachers) and the sort of exhausting belligerence that Vaughn and Favreau have, since Swingers, constantly mistaken for comedy.

Four couples head off to a paradise isle, one to repair their marriage, the others for a luxury holiday, all finding the resort’s mixture of sun, sea and therapy wholly destructive. Ostensibly, then, it’s an eight-hander, but the women in particular (including Sex In The City’s Kristen Bell) are sidelined, as motor-mouth Vaughn and scarily bull-like Favreau deal awkwardly with their machismo.

At the opposite end of the spectrum – in terms of craft, sensibility, ambition and the audience’s own satisfaction – comes Goodbye Solo. Another fine example of the new wave of low-budget, ultra-realist American independent filmmaking, its deliberately narrow focus belies its emotional resonance.

Souléymane (Souléymane Sy Savané), aka Solo, is a Senegalese taxi driver in a North Carolina town, an ebullient chap working hard to pass the exams needed to be a flight attendant. Meanwhile, an elderly loner, William (Red West), books a ride in two weeks time to a well-known suicide spot. Solo takes William’s deposit, while setting out to deter him.

The film follows their developing friendship – driving the streets, drinking, playing pool, the grouchy old man softening under the compassionate Solo’s attention, yet sticking to his guns – as well as Solo’s difficult home life with his pregnant Mexican wife and step-daughter. Director Ramin Bahrani’s approach is low-key and detached, allowing the actors to draw us into these ordinary lives, with their no less powerful tragedies. It’s a very moving piece of work.

The title of Pontypool is misleading. First, it does not refer to the Welsh town, but a Canadian one. In any case, the story takes place entirely inside a radio station, so we’re cunningly obliged to imagine the locale. Further, if Pontypool suggests a certain quaintness, maybe a folksy tale of locals yanking each others’ chains in gentle mischief, think again. These are altogether more dangerous.

It starts in a freezing early morning, as over-the-hill shock-jock Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) arrives at the radio station for his early-hours show. Mazzy is still a pro and, as he goes on air, he tries his hardest to eke some interest out of the dull local news and phone-ins. Then reports start coming in of a riot, which turns into a massacre, as the townspeople start turning on themselves. Mazzy and his two female producers wonder if they’re just being had. But they lock the doors anyway.

The horror that ensues is reminiscent of John Carpenter’s work – not the gory mode of The Thing, but the creeping paranoia and foreboding of The Fog. If it seems that director Bruce McDonald had to raid his piggy bank to make it happen, he equally seems to relish the modest means, relying on a funny, sometimes barking-mad script and a deliciously over-the-top performance by McHattie to keep us riveted.

Thirst continues the current bloodlust for vampire movies (we have the sequel to Twilight next month), with a typically boisterous offering from that supreme Korean stylist Park Chan-Wook. The director of Old Boy comes up with an enjoyably quirky spin on the genre – his vampire is a goodly Catholic priest who has to find blood without killing anyone. But then, as so often, Park over-eggs, introducing an unnecessary crime of passion, a much hungrier vamp and buckets and buckets of blood. Shame.

Couples Retreat (15)

Director: Peter Billingsley

Goodbye Solo (15)

Director: Ramin Bahrani

Pontypool (15)

Director: Bruce McDonald

Thirst (18)

Director: Park Chan-Wook