David D'Arcy

Spender...has made a rare kind of documentary – muscular and refined, and a splendour for the eyes.

Like Cai, the doc is a crowd-pleaser which reveals its complexities in a careful viewing.

Censored Voices is a reminder that glorious myths of wars and the men who fight them wither under scrutiny, in Israel and everywhere else.

Silver infuses some novelty into his Perils Of Pauline narrative, thanks to an extreme performance by Burdge, who plays the credulous lovesick naif to the hilt.

Even with uneasiness dripping from Smith as Adrian, the acting in 1985 is like the script – stiff. 1985 gets the notes right, and its foreboding look takes us back to a dark age. It’s a lesson worth remembering. Yet with all the prejudice and pain, the film still feels a lot like a sermon.

There’s plenty of Lynch-light in dark interiors and empty staircases as Katz’s portrait of hipster La La Land winds through familiar territory. Gemini may not show too much that’s novel about that noir world, but we see new strengths in its lead actress.

If you’re looking for more than laughs, this comedy aspiring to drama takes you only so far.

The closer the documentary gets to individual musicians and their histories, the more engaging it becomes.

This film is proof that, with the right protagonist, a documentary seems to tell its own story. Rodchenkov is one of those characters who, as they say, you couldn’t make up.

No one says too much in this film’s underdeveloped dialogue, yet Ryan’s steely demeanor reflects the jumbled toughness and vulnerability of people dependant on land that isn’t giving them much.

Meyers’s drama depends mostly on what it doesn’t show you, and it works.

If tenderness is deployed to ease Shmuel’s grieving, those are not the scenes which give To Dust its special pungency, or what make you laugh. This film is at its best when it goes for the gut.

The film’s look is as striking as Fan’s performance.

The visual textures of The Lovers and the Despot, edited by Jim Hession — and the Kim audio tapes — make for vibrant cinema.

Even by cult documentary standards, this one finds absurd depths in the peddling of enlightenment.

It has plenty of heart and lots of fighting, but could use a little more magic.

Dark Night is a drama of grim inevitability.

It’s an inspiring story, acted with heart and grit by Paige and Wood, and film directed with adroitness by Rozema in a ruin of a set in the woods.

The debut feature by Janicza Bravo takes on a perennial comic genre yet, like its main character, it’s best described as a work in progress.

Sing is colourful, yet at almost two hours, it is also long. Still, if kids aren’t drawn to one singing animal (or familiar voice), there’s always another around the corner, holding up the tentpole.

The Seagull, Anton Chekhov’s classic play about failed hopes and tangled attractions, is solid and satisfying in Michael Mayer’s intimate retelling for the screen.

Kelly’s film is a competent feature debut – elegantly filmed and paced to keep viewers with Franco on an improbable ride. Yet the script views Glatze from a distance, never really entering his head to penetrate beyond the character’s own apologia for a bizarre life change.

The spectacle gives you enough action from enough famous names to sustain the momentum of its legacy.

Anesthesia comes from the heart, as few films do these days.

It’s a radiant debut for young newcomer Joe Alwyn, who plays a Texan war hero uneasy in his own land. It’s a shakier curtain-raising for Lee’s ambitious weaponising of new technologies.

Magnus Carlsen, called the Mozart of chess, became world champion in 2013 at the age of 22. Benjamin Ree’s rousing documentary shows us how this taciturn prodigy got there, and how his family keeps him sane.

Spain’s J. A. Bayona is essentially stirring the same Jurassic pot here, with little that’s inspiring from his cast, unless you count the dinosaurs.

A film directed by Katie Holmes (and produced by Tribeca co-founder Jane Rosenthal) is a curiosity, and in this case a competent curiosity - no less competent than most of the independent films out there.