Allan Hunter

A moving lead performance from Adele Exarchopoulos is the film’s strongest selling point.

Mrs. Fang is unreservedly voyeuristic, the camera maintaining its own vigil over Xiuying who is seen in lengthy, merciless close-ups staring straight ahead.

More conventional in its later stages, Brick is still a satisfying and watchable audience-pleaser.

You are well aware of the shameless manipulation and can second-guess exactly where it is going and yet resistance is futile. It tugs at the heartstrings with such determination and sincerity that there may not be a dry eye in the cinema.

A solidly engrossing political drama, anchored by a commanding central performance from Liam Neeson.

When Sichel attempted to write his memoirs, the CIA returned the manuscript with endless suggested redactions. They argued that if a journalist had written the book it would have been considered mere speculation, but with his name attached it would have become confirmation. The Last Spy affords him the privilege of having the final word.

A New Generation offers no earthshattering conclusions. There is no pretense of covering everything, just a chance to swim in Cousins erudite passion for film and answer his call to keep the faith.

The wider themes of the film grow more evident through individual elements in which nobody is prepared to listen to the other side of the story, or try to understand a different point of view.

The affectionate rapport between the actors and their characters is evident in every scene and manages to transport the wary viewer through an odd but not unappealing mixture of mystical road movie and family psychodrama.

Mary Shelley is ultimately the story of a woman finding her own voice and asserting her independence and that will be the heart of its appeal.

Grandma was clearly made on modest resources and can look a little rough and ready in places. Viewers will, however, be more than willing to overlook its imperfections - because it is so funny and engaging and because Lily Tomlin is such a joy to behold.

A tentative connection warms to something deeper in a poignant, slow-burn tale of hope and healing.

Woman Walks Ahead is a story of defying expectations, finding common ground and gaining knowledge.

Precisely observed but somewhat aloof in tone, The Girl And The Spider builds into a symphony of separation and solitude.

John F. Donovan may revisit a lot of familiar territory for Dolan but on this form it is good to welcome him home.

It makes for a demanding, overlong two hours but the intensity of the approach and some provocative moments sustain interest as good intentions pave the way to a kind of hell.

Entertaining, wide-ranging and insightful, Lady Boss leaves you with admiration for Collins and even a sneaking inclination to read her books.

Directed with brisk efficiency by Philip Noyce, the mix of adrenaline-rush emotion, manipulative melodrama and moralising is surprisingly entertaining in the moment.

A sober, thoughtful documentary that combines a lament for a lost Eden with a rousing call to action.

Miron’s cinema vérité approach still finds time for contemplation and appealing images of the countryside through the changing seasons. His very promising feature debut remains consistently engrossing through unexpected developments. He even surprises us with the sense of renewal and hope that suddenly blossoms from Kathy’s darkest hours.

It is a sad little tale but one that manages to find notes of hope amongst the setbacks and rejections of everyday life.

A sure-footed handling of tangled emotional issues creates an involving if small-scale feature.

Rheingold is a helter-skelter mix of coming of age drama, heist thriller, chaste romance and origins story for a star rapper. Akin comes up with some striking moments.

The switch towards something more unexpected is initially disconcerting, but ultimately reveals an ambitious filmmaker striving to subvert expectations.

Barraud offers a satisfyingly slippery tale in which we think we know where it might be headed but are constantly met by a little twist or discovery that puts everything into a different perspective.

An ensemble cast led by Maggie Smith, Kathy Bates and Laura Linney brings persuasive conviction to period heartwarmer The Miracle Club.

Couched in fondness and gentle irreverence, his impressionistic archive footage documentary offers whimsical reflections on a lifetime of duty and service.

A thoughtful biopic that grows more involving the more it shrugs off its tendency towards the reverential.

A little more venom or bite might have been welcome but this is still an entertaining skewering of celebrity and the way a single day can flip from triumph to outright disaster

Exploring a bewildering range of issues from ideas of masculinity to assisted suicide and the fraying of societal ties, Staying Vertical is wildly eccentric, darkly comic and filled with you-don’t-see-that-often moments which are liable to render it an acquired taste.

Lacking nuance in its early stages, it matures into a more considered, moving tale that effectively blends the personal and the political.

Rather than attack his subject with bristling anger, Arcand approaches it with world-weary wit and the kind of warming optimism that might not appear out of place in a Frank Capra classic. The result is a little old-fashioned but also surprisingly endearing and feels like some of his best work in a while.

Battaglia talks candidly as she picks over the pieces of a life that could easily stretch to more than one film.

A slight but ultimately moving drama.

In the end, The Upside is the sum of its good players and dubious politics, wrenching genuine tears from a story that celebrates the rich promise of life in all its shades of joy and heartbreak.

Wong’s indomitable spirit is what lends the film such an appeal.

It may have its failings but it is never less than entertaining.

Initially intriguing, Ashkal grows less satisfying as it struggles to do justice to the disparate elements of the personal, the political and the supernatural.

A restrained production favours story over splatter but eventually delivers a fair amount of gloopy, tentacled creatures and exploding host bodies. That should be enough to satisfy Adams aficionados.

Skin is a little pedestrian and obvious in its early stages, skirting with the feeling of a television production. It is the nature of the story and the scale of the mountain that Widner had to climb that finally makes it into something more compelling.

The feature debut of Vladimir De Fontenay is an accomplished piece with a committed central performance from Imogen Poots, but the emotional impact is lessened by an air of predictability and the sense that every bit of fresh hope is destined to end in disappointment.

Jump, Darling travels along predictable roads as family secrets are revealed, ghosts of the past confronted and separate generations discover the strength to be true to themselves. What makes the journey worthwhile are the performances.

The overly busy story provides countless opportunities to create imaginative worlds and strange characters, but it also tends to feel like a string of set pieces rather than something that builds dramatic tension or momentum.

Lurker is sometimes a little too on the mark.

An increasingly overwrought approach undermines its better instincts and creates an uneven affair.

Cottontail does not hold any great surprises and, while understanted and full of grace, also lacks bite.

Galloping across the decades, the film becomes increasingly sketchy and superficial. There is so much detail and substance in the 1970s stretch of this epic that the twists of fate and rueful reflections of later years inevitably feel less authentic and closer to soap opera.

The film is hugely impressive in the scope of those interviewed.

Ma’ Rosa is atmospheric and involving to a degree but also feels as if we are in familiar territory.

[A] charming, quirky, dramatically inert new feature.

The slick assurance of Bakhshi’s approach makes for an accessible, pacey melodrama but one that can also seem to trivialise the life and death matters at the core of the story.

One of the issues with Where Hands Touch is that whilst some of the details and specifics feel fresh, the drama often feels desperately hackneyed.

The abiding impression is of an intermittently fascinating film that is a minor work in the ever burgeoning Herzog canon.

Hailey Gates’ ambitious debut feature Atropia is full of comic potential that is never quite realised. The mixture of war games satire, deadpan farce and sweet romance provides amusement along the way without cutting as deep as it sometimes promises.

The film itself has a commendable logic and credibility, but perhaps lacks a little of the pulse-racing intensity that might have made it a more obviously commercial proposition.

There are plenty of elements to admire in Amant Double but the endless twists and revelations grow tiresome.

This is a well crafted and often stylish film but you suspect it could have had a greater impact with more room for the individual elements to breathe.

Director Nathan Morlando makes a concerted effort to inject dynamism and emotion into the telling of Mean Dreams, but fights a losing battle against the cliched writing and some risible plotting.

Marc Forster’s meandering, slow-burning tale has elements that might have attracted Polanski or Almodovar but eventually settles for a psychological thriller that is a little too enigmatic for its own good.

It does cross your mind that this might all be some jolly wheeze of a mockumentary with Ginghină as a David Brent figure but apparently it is all to be taken seriously.

The material may be slicker but the novelty of the format has faded.

There is never any doubting Doillon’s sincerity or artistry but his film is overly cerebral, unfolding in a series of encounters that fade to black and never build a dramatic momentum.

The film almost works as a love letter to a seemingly ageless, bikini-clad Stone who invests her character with endless energy and enthusiasm. If she is engaged in a losing battle with the lack of originality or spark in the material, then nobody seems to have told her.

You have to admire the sheer giddy enthusiasm of filmmaking friends who are fizzing with ideas and able to make a modest budget stretch a long way. The film has a certain visual allure in its gaudy colours and low-budget special-effects. Yet you also long for them to put all those energies into a more focused, far funnier project.

The problem with City Of Tiny Lights is a plot that is all too easy to second guess and stretches of dialogue which fail to sparkle.

It is a manic, hit and miss affair complete with slapstick antics and wisecracking one-liners.

It achieves stray laughs and some clever moments, but not enough to render it more than a strained curiosity.

Elements of craft and performance are very persuasive but the slight storyline and recourse to awkward flights of fancy make it a film that never quite gels.

Full of interesting concepts and accomplished animation, Children Of The Sea is less than the sum of its many parts and just seems to lose its way after a very promising beginning.

London Fields overflows with interesting ideas but they are frequently buried under lurid fantasy sequences, blunt-edged satire and the sense that it is much more amused by its own wild daring than we are.

No matter what Oplev throws at us, the film refuses to catch fire and just grows sillier and more contrived as it unfolds. It never feels distinctive and often has the air of just another entry in the Final Destination series.

The issue of immigration couldn’t be more timely or poignant, but everything else in Desierto feels strictly by the book and it is a book we already know from cover to cover.

There is a mixture of styles in Dead In A Week that never quite gels.

Plays like an unnecessary revival of the provocative cat and mouse thrillers that were once a speciality of screenwriter Joe Ezterhas.

Ultimately the visual polish and subplots merely serve as fleeting distractions from the weary familiarity of this two-fisted tale.