Brad Wheeler

The film is dialogue-heavy, easily imaginable as a two-hander for the stage, but watching the ice-thawing process between the two enemies is less compelling on screen.

An immersive, compact and unpolished documentary from the Kurdish-born, Oslo-based filmmaker Zaradasht Ahmed.

What it is, is a delicious black-widow mystery, in which the deep-gazing actress Rachel Weisz rocks the veil.

Scored intensely and photographed vividly, the electric film imagines a small slice of doomsday with horrific believability.

The film’s director, who would make an excellent character witness for the defence, raises the questions but frustratingly doesn’t answer them in an otherwise compelling documentary.

Played adroitly by Patrick Sabongui, this guy wouldn’t hurt a fly. Or would he? A couple of nice plot twists overshadow the predictable sound-of-sorrow ethnic wail that closes the film.

A modest, hard-faced film, offering a nervous study of humanity and civil disobedience in a societal-bullying era.

Amir Bar-Lev’s excellent, definitive film on the Haight-Ashbury acid-testers is long – four fly-by hours – but there are very few wasted moments.

Although it’s a kick to see the rough conditions and the full-on roughhousing of old-world golf, the scenes on the links are repetitive. And while the ending takes a severe dogleg turn to soft-focus sentimentality and the soundtrack hounds us to take this thing seriously, the movie is easily resistible.

Handled by veteran Scottish director Michael Caton-Jones, Urban Hymn is an unimaginative drama, carried by solid acting – Isabella Laughland is chilling as the possessive, menacing Leanne – but let down by an unspectacular script.

Some might find it stimulating. Others will find it bonkers. Watching Jude Law do a slow-motion howl, for example, is certainly … something.

As for the winner and new champion, it has to be Kuosmanen, who never met a boxing-film cliché he couldn’t discreetly avoid.

The resolution of that conflict is dishonestly implausible, thus ruining a perfectly mediocre movie. The worst of it is that Fred the one-eyed cat was probably winking at us the whole time.

Sublime documentary.

For fans of horror maestros John Carpenter and Stuart Gordon, nothing fills a void like good, old eighties-fashioned gore. Which is what we get from the writer-director team of Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski, unabashed fans of Reagan-era blood, slash and goo.

Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds and others float around one another for an intense but spark-free 103 minutes, their characters barely sketched.

After 107 well-packed minutes, Dotan’s film (which curiously fails to mention current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) arrives at a pessimistic outlook. A settlement on the settlements is nowhere in sight.

Spiritual questions and thoughts on the importance of flesh-and-blood relationships are raised, but the strength of the you-can-run-but-you-can’t-hide drama is the dewy charisma of the two young co-stars.

The performances are pitch perfect; the soundtrack is evocative; the photography is artful. Nothing is overdone, and nothing is really resolved.

This is a story of villainous oppression, unfortunately told with oppressive earnestness.

Writer-director Zandvliet has crafted a handsome, affecting and questioning film about post-war revenge and forgiveness. On a tough field to navigate, he makes it to the other side, commendably.

The problem is that somewhere around the middle of the film, one begins to realize it probably isn’t going any place worthwhile.

A stunningly unnecessary comedy, Fist Fight perpetuates unoriginal characters, a preposterous premise and a half-hearted stand-up-for-yourself message.

A post-tour lawsuit levelled against “motherly” Madonna by two dancers is barely dealt with; the Express Yourself singer herself isn’t interviewed. As a result, the affecting film is absent of the truth or dare it had the potential for.

With its jazzy score and drizzly nighttime moods, where The Comedian works best is as a salute to New York stand-up scene, with looks into the Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village and the New York Friars Club.

A shameless pastiche of Starman’s alien-on-Earth sci-fi, The Boy in the Plastic Bubble’s medical pathos and any number of young-lovers-on-the-run stories, The Space Between Us may set back the Earth-Mars relationship light years.

Civilization has the wealth and the technology to start dealing with the threat, but does it have the wisdom?

The problem with Shyamalan’s spin on dissociative identity disorder is that for all the dissociation, why are all 23 identities cool with locking terrified girls in a basement?