Cath Clarke

No one watches Gone with the Wind for historical accuracy. What keeps us coming back is four-hours of epic romance in gorgeous Technicolor.

Her is a keeper of a film, quietly dazzling.

Intense performances by Doupe and Bracken give it a real emotional pulse.

It works and then some, making for a noirish and complex emotional thriller. And Hoss is incredible, playing Nelly with the shuffling gait and haunted expression of a dead woman walking.

Cameraperson’ is a thoughtful examination of the role of the documentary-maker, showing us how it feels to be that person behind the camera.

You can watch The Innocents twice and walk away with different conclusions. Psychological horrors have imitated its ambiguous ending ever since. Few have pulled it off half as creepily.

It's dazzling and rambling, intimate and sprawling, and it's carried along by an infectious, off-the-cuff jazz score. As soon as it ends, you'll be dying to fly with it again.

This is a sweet, fuzzy movie, possibly a little soft-hearted. Still, I dare anyone to watch the final moments without a lump in the throat.

What a ballsy film and honest too.

As visions of apocalypse go, it’s rather lovely: a world lush with nature, animals learning to get by together.

Dreamcatcher is harrowing.

This painful, beautiful doc chronicles the fightback.

Don’t watch this doc for a lesson in the crisis. Maidan is hard work, with no voiceover or interviews and just the odd scrap of information written on screen to guide you through.

Vincente Minnelli’s 1952 movie about the movies wears its golden-era confidence as big and bold as Kirk Douglas’s shoulder pads, and it’s pretty close to film heaven.

This remarkable film feels like it could become a time capsule, showing future generations what it felt like in 2020 for those on the frontline.

Honeyland really is a miraculous feat, shot over three years as if by invisible camera – not a single furtive glance is directed towards the film-makers.

It’s a tender, painful, intimate film, made over several years as we watch four girls in the months before the dance.

This intelligent, honest documentary explores his complex personality without getting tacky or tabloidy, or ignoring McQueen’s dark side.

Part of the film’s genius is in how the images are put together, sometimes to absurd effect, at other times unnervingly.

If this documentary doesn’t make Hite a household name among a new generation of feminists, the biopic that should really follow it certainly will.

At times I wondered if the film is a bit too tasteful and tactful about the pain that Halim and Mina have to suppress, but still it’s a hugely compassionate and emotionally satisfying movie.

What follows is a race against the clock, cleverly constructed by director Maximilian Erlenwein and co-writer Joachim Hedén. Their script throws in plenty of calamities to nobble the diver’s escape, but didn’t quite manage – for me at least – to spark a vertiginous clammy terror.

Incredibly principled and brave, the librarians talk about their vocation and standing up for the young people for whom libraries are a safe space where they can discover their identity in the pages of books. They really are superwomen.

To say The Cave would break anyone’s heart feels flimsy. Like Ballour, it has a purpose: to focus the world’s attention on the suffering of Syrian people.

Miraculously, Möller turns a handful of phone conversations into a nerve shredder.

Calamy is utterly convincing, giving a performance that pulls us right into Julie’s inner world.

The film is grimly depressing in places. I covered my eyes during Google Earth time-lapse sequences showing the pace of deforestation in the Amazon; the violence of it is too much. And yet, there is Bitaté: still a teenager, he’s already a skilled communicator.

Dyer’s intelligent and sensitive performance does wonders for a character who, on the page, looks like a male fantasy: a cool-girl psychiatric case, fun-loving, free-spirited and up for anything.

It’s a touching film and a fascinating glimpse into one of those couples you can’t quite believe are still together.

What an intelligent, emotionally grown-up film. More of this please.

The film is, I think, just as Cunningham would have wanted it: cerebral, highbrow and mildly frustrating, with nothing so conventional as talking heads or context.

Is there something creepy about Franny’s aggressive generosity and need to be needed? In a film with a better script, yes.

It’s raw, funny and incredibly moving.

Holy Cow is sentimental in the best of ways, with its warmth and hope in human nature.

Brilliantly, Schoenaerts almost underplays Roman’s anger, lumbering slowly like a wounded animal, the downward slope of his eyes conveying a howl of rage. It’s an electrifying performance.

How refreshing to watch a film in which the sexuality and desire of women in their 70s is portrayed not as a novelty but simply part and parcel of their lives; and since this French movie is a lesbian drama, there’s two of them – even better.

The medical side of things is shown in documentary detail, and it’s fascinating.

Tragedy and slapstick run through the film and it is very funny.

With a blend of archive footage and re-enactments the film-makers skilfully recreate the urgency, passion and energy of their protest.

What a man. Just writing this makes me want to watch the documentary all over again.

Often music documentaries feel padded out with filler but honestly I could have spent another hour in Copeland’s company.

The movie is saturated with emotion and colour, though its novelistic depth brings with it the slightly effortful running time of two hours and 20 minutes.

Watching Raw is a bit like seeing a toddler crawl toward a four-lane highway. You can’t tear your eyes away, but at same time you want to squeeze them shut. This is a film that doesn’t just put you through the wringer; it scrapes your insides out. It left me trembling for hours.

For a film posing the metaphysical biggies, there is tenderness and laughs. Its bonkers approach to storytelling and life may drive some nuts. The rest of us will soar with the birds.

What’s interesting about Revenge is that it’s told from a female perspective – and by a female filmmaker.

Àma Gloria is a small-scale film, barely over 80 minutes, but it leaves an almighty impression.

The Grand Bizarre is a film that will alienate many with its video-artiness but the focus here on looking and looking again with wonder at the everyday stuff around us may strike a chord at the moment.

What the film does very well is show how doping became so normalised. It’s as much a part of the team’s routine as a post-race rubdown.

There is just too much going on, and the movie doubles in hecticness with every minute that passes, which may have you rummaging around for a couple of paracetamol.

There’s plenty of white-knuckle footage from the archive, as well as reflections of old muckers. Fiennes says that in his darkest, diciest moments in peril he imagined his heroes – the father and grandfather he never met – watching over him.

A little of the intimacy is gone, and I have to admit to not being 100% sold on the cowboy-inflected songs, which feature quite a bit of dime-store sentimentality. But Springsteen is undoubtedly magnetic, his voice a honeyed growl.

Like watching a statue for two-and-a-half hours, there’s nothing to do but sit back and yawn.

It’s tender and poignant, but might be a bit cloying were it not for Norton, who underplays it beautifully with a performance of tremendous depth and empathy.

It’s watchable, but don’t expect your mind to be blown – more gently prodded.

Chumbawamba split up in 2012. They’re still mates and come across here as extremely likable, not taking themselves at all too seriously. Scenes of them nattering together, having a giggle now, are lovely.

This woman has plenty of blunt wisdom to share.

If it wasn’t so violent, the simplicity of the metaphor – how the abused and outcast will rise up – would work for young audiences. And you won’t beat it for dog acting.

It is a thing of beauty: too beautiful perhaps, running a real danger of prettifying poverty.

Loud and zappy, The Jungle Bunch trots out predictable be-kind-be-brave platitudes, but lacks anything distinctive of its own.

Compassionate and honestly told, it is a real empathy machine of a movie.

Intelligent and moving.

Their film pushes the limits of documentary filmmaking and will likely push the tolerance of viewers. This is a demanding watch, the arthouse cinema equivalent of the marshmallow experiment, testing the attention span of audiences.

It’s a quiet film, and Panigrahi plays Mira with such poise and intelligence, conveying her innermost thoughts with a slight lift of the chin here or lingering look there.

Cummings presents us with a guy whose heart is in the right place – he just can’t control himself. But, like me, others may find their tolerance for a clueless white man’s anger issues has maxed out.

A little of the personality has been lost in adapting Shaun’s world for sci-fi (the Wallace and Gromit movie Curse of the Were-Rabbit pulled off horror with a little more finesse). It’s a minor quibble; Shaun is by no means past his prime.

It’s a very funny film, sending-up human absurdities without being too mean. Cruz is a talented comedian, but she smartly plays it straight-ish here. You never doubt for a moment Lola is the real deal. Nor that Cruz is either.

What an engrossing film – and the gender reversal of a male muse inspiring a female painter has got to be one small step for art-world equality.

Nicole Holofcener has a reputation for making Woody Allen-ish chick-flicks. Which sounds like a snidey compliment. Enough Said is her best yet.

The movie is about how people ruin everything with their destructiveness, but also about the beauty of the human heart. It’s so inventive and imaginative that I wanted to love it more, but in the end found it a little bit psychologically uninvolving, perhaps because of its nonstop swirl of ideas and stories.

This is a family film with an IQ higher than the average – though before you book your half-term tickets, ask yourself if your little one is ready to watch a kid take a DIY flamethrower to the face of a scary monster.

It’s an emotionally involving rather than harrowing film, with scenes as beautiful as oil paintings.

This documentary makes a pretty convincing case for the admission of the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint into the boys’ club of abstract art, alongside Kandinsky, Mondrian et al.

The film is a reminder of just what a brilliant writer Bourdain was.

It’s a disorientating, unrelaxing two-hour experience, but rewarding.

Like Bujalski’s early mumblecore work, this is sensitive and meandering – and just a little bit patience-testing. But it’s also infectiously sweet and honest-feeling.

At times, there is something almost spoofy about this film’s relentless miserableness. Its 30-minute long hallucinatory dream sequence didn’t work for me – it might be that you need a degree in Russian history to make sense of its allegory on the nature of power.

This documentary about [Moth's] life, directed by the actor Lucy Lawless, is a fascinating portrait of a woman who had two mottoes: “no regrets” and “don’t be boring”.

Tracks might be a bit slow for some, but it’s one of those films that quietly creeps up on you.

It’s a blow-by-blow account in measured – but nailbiting – detail, told by the American diplomats in charge of the high-stakes negotiations. You could imagine John le Carré basing a character on one of these polite, ferociously bright people.

Sir Ian McKellen is a pleasure to watch as an elderly Sherlock Holmes, though the drama isn't as compelling as it might have been.

Poekel’s style is far too authentic-indie and unaffected to get slushy or sentimental about Christmas; through his lens Christmas tree lights blink like police lights. But in its own low-key way, he pitches his film just right for a little squeeze of festive warmth.

It’s a film with the texture and truth of life, and at its heart is a beautiful performance by Cliff Curtis, who never in a million years will be nominated for an Oscar, but deserves one.

The film is a parable about the dangers of blind faith in religion and authority, but it’s also warmly compassionate and accepting of human nature.

This Jungle Book has the bare necessities, and then some.

It’s a delicate, thoughtful film, moving and real.

What gives the film its distinct flavour is a slightly feverish tone and dream-like logic. In places, it’s hard to see what the magic realism adds, and the script’s ideas about gender and gaze feel underexplored. Perhaps in the end, this sense of unreality opens the door to its characters finding love in this harsh and hopeless place. A touching and moving film.

[A] wickedly funny black comedy, all fatalism and gallows humour, with both a beating heart and an inquiring mind lingering beneath its tough-guy bluster.

Now Breakfast at Tiffany’s is iconic in fashion circles and Holly Golightly seen as a proto-Carrie Bradshaw – a trailblazer for women who use their ovens for shoe storage. Re-released by the BFI, it’s as ditsy and delightful as ever – with charm enough to forgive it plenty. [Review of re-release]

As a memorable teen character, she’s almost up there with Cher from ‘Clueless’ or Ellen Page’s Juno. Watch and wince.

Intelligent and screwball-funny with clever and complicated female characters.

A beautifully acted but disappointingly stiff period drama.

Newcomer Florence Pugh is like a lightning bolt, totally electric as Katherine, who’s up there with Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina in the literary heroine stakes.

With her funny, light-hearted documentary, Penny Lane lets the sunshine in, focusing on the Temple’s message of open-mindedness and inclusivity – LGBTQ followers speak of a sense of belonging.

There is surely a sly attack here on the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin’s suppression of liberal values and demonisation of the LGBT community. As the tension escalates, there are some poking between the ribs questions too about free speech and facts in the post-truth era.

This really is Wonder Woman coming to the rescue of the DC Comics universe.

The focus is on his star quality and the qualities that made him a pioneer: sunniness, grit, passion for his sport, the unconditional love and support of his mother, and his unbreakable confidence to be himself. It’s undeniably heartwarming.

This isn’t much more than a series of ridiculously dotty sketches, and might have worked better as a sitcom, but it’s surprisingly hilarious.

Catching Fire looks and feels epic. Hands down it’s one of the most entertaining films of the year.