Amber Wilkinson

The ending is simultaneously satisfying and slyly subversive, allowing an unravelling of ideas that should lead audiences to think about what they have watched.

[Boden and Fleck] marry splashes of dry humour to gallons of blood, and feature every musical genre from punk to hip-hop while connecting the stories to a strange green glow in the sky. If the end result never quite achieves the style and bite of the likes of Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, it is still a lot of fun.

Frida is not just a broad brush affair; the artist is noticeably present.

While the first half of Rotting In The Sun may be overly self-indulgent, once Silva gets himself out of his system, he gives his skills and Saavedra an opportunity to shine.

Allen-Miller achieves the Holy Grail of all great rom-coms in making us desperate to see the pair get together for good, while simultaneously not wanting this first flush of romance to end.

As with a lot of first-time feature filmmakers, Smith shows a tendency to want to throw everything a her film stylistically – including, at one point, the random use of bright yellow subtitles – which makes certain sections feel unnecessarily skittish.

While Holofcener doesn’t ultimately dispute that it’s nice to be nice, she does suggest that it’s worth remembering constant positivity has its own negatives.

Oldroyd attacks with a pace that makes his plot twists more shocking and shows an economy that harks back to the golden age of noir.

Through it all, Connelly and Englert completely sell their conflicted yearning for one another’s love but because this section is a late arrival, the revelations have to come thick and fast..

The Pod Generation blends its tech parody with more quirky observations of the anxieties of impending parenthood and, if Barthes doesn’t always sink the satire’s talons in quite as far as she might, the film’s sweet-natured hopefulness and charming central couple should see it win over distributors and audiences.

This heartfelt if, at times, slightly uneven drama marks the debut fiction feature from documentarian Roger Ross Williams and is a warm and celebratory film.

The winning performances and Haapasalo’s careful attention to them help to compensate for the sometimes frustratingly fragmented nature of the storytelling.

If Sick of Myself runs out of narrative road towards the end, there’s still a decent quotient of dark humour along the way.

Comedy is a serious business and it is Earl and Hayward’s deadpan delivery, coupled with Archer’s maintenance of a documentary shooting style in the face of the ridiculous, that ensures the situation generates physical and verbal laughs.

The subject is an important one but would benefit from a shorter running time.

We are encouraged to find these people stupidly brutal or comedic without being given the slightest idea as to why they might be that way.

Although the access is intimate, what emerges is not particularly surprising.

It feels as though it would have been better served as a six-part sitcom, where its sentimentality, broad comedy and fantasy elements wouldn't rub up against each other so badly.

Their improvisation has been honed to the point where the jokes land solidly without losing naturalism.

Johnson and co-writer Mark Heyman may be exploring familiar territory but they do so with a warmth, subtlety and honesty that marks it out.

The film hinges on the bond between dad and daughter and on the expressive face of Fanning, as we see her shift from a sort of nervous adoration of the unpredictable, if loving, Joe, to something more steely and independent.

This is an impressively clear-eyed and deeply moving portrait.

The plot strong-arms the characters into increasingly contrived and overly familiar positions that leave you longing for the more relaxed vibe of Shelton's earlier films.

Forbes has a delicate but unsentimental approach, which gives her film the same infectious energy that blesses and curses Cameron. The end result feels good without feeling superficial.