David Jenkins

It’s not a film that does anything particularly new, in the dutifully linear way it tells the story to the ultra-functional shooting style. Yet its satisfaction comes from its careful release of information, it’s ambience of encroaching dread and the subtle psychological twists that push Julie ever closer to that euphoric breaking point.

While there’s certainly fun to be had watching a cute penguin (named Juan-Salvador) waddling around the school, chugging sprats and mimicking his master, the film never amounts to more than a piece of superficial fluff.

Malek’s icy performance does little to endear the viewer to Charlie, while his ultra-tactile relationship with his wife – presented in gauzy flashbacks – never feels entirely authentic.

From its slow build-up comes a rousing finale, with Penelope setting an impossible feat of strength and agility as the benchmark for her new marriage material (as it should be!).

When Autumn Falls strays into some interesting, ethically thorny terrain, but Ozon always opts for the easy, often crowd-pleasing solution rather than to have things become too dark or alienating.

This 20th anniversary refit/remaster of 2004’s cult rock- shock-doc Dig! proves that no amount of inadvisable retroactive tinkering can diminish the quality of a core product that’s this good.

It’s a slow, detailed procedural, one which carefully draws you into its dismal intrigue – and it’s engrossing for much of its runtime.

While a fair majority of the scenes and set-ups lack for deeper resonance, there’s a surface-level sheen that does deliver some superficial thrills.

The throbbing interpersonal strains intensify with a gentle logic, even if, tonally, the film does sometimes stray into a mid-tier streaming dramady serial at times.

Its recourse to human suffering as a way to jerk a viewer to react feels tiresome after a while, and it’s not helped by an ending which serves as a quick-fix band aid suggesting that sublime happiness is just an unlikely plot twist away.

Shields is a worthwhile subject and her accomplishments are incredible, but this film is perhaps one for underdog sports enthusiasts only.

It’s a film about making art that feels good in the moment, as the act itself can be as rewarding – and possibly even more so – than the delivery of that art to an audience.

The film’s thesis is often a little obvious, yearning for a return to a brand of architecture whose half-life isn’t so slim, but ignoring the arduous and exploitative construction methods that were used to produce those grandiose structures of yore.

Where Gump managed to steal a nation’s heart with its hokey aphorisms and up with people outlook, Here actively repels with its generic insights into the evolution of family, society, civilisation, the whole bit.

The film is not wanting for alluring, dramatic situations, but the filmmakers seem at best haplessly blind and at worst blithely dismissive of their potential.

It’s Sonne’s remarkable, multifarious performance that really lifts this one above the pack. She uses her face with the expressiveness of a silent film actress, so when the big emotions eventually come they hit especially hard.

It was an exciting prospect to see what someone like Jenkins would do while up against the Hollywood machine, but it unfortunately feels like the machine won this bout, if not by knockout, then definitely on points.

It’s predictably rousing, and Tolkien heads will probably enjoy many of the callbacks to the original trilogy, but as a film in its own right, it’s all a little overblown and unnecessary.

It’s a hot-waxed shrine to its subject, an official version which drips with hollow trivia and is happy to namecheck that thing it knows you like rather than reveal something that you didn’t.

It’s all competently performed and executed, with loud booms of sound cued to each scene change as an attempt to ramp up the tension, and lots of behind-the-head tracking shots of cardinals anxiously pacing through corridors and stairways.

The film mutates a little bit from playful essay to necessary advocacy doc, yet in its final passages Sankey also manages to ingeniously thread the needle between her two subjects.

While there are passages of uncertainty and twists that take their good sweet time to arrive, things come together beautifully, and a finale that combines a series of clever emotional call-backs and another heartening plea for human empathy that’s worthy of only the finest John Lewis ad.

It’s not so much a study of corruption as it is lethargy and the difficulty of feeling compassion towards someone who just looks like he makes mischief.

It’s an amazing, hypermodern concept for a film, one which operates as a brutal critique of the class system, while also acting as a metaphor for geopolitical relationships and the moral and ethical lapses we sometimes overlook in the name of making rent.

As slipshot and lazy as it all is, it passes the time as air-headed escapism, and does manage to save all its vaguely-original moves for a bulky final act that delivers some decent spectacle.

The film avoids polemic and instead presents itself as informed and inquisitive blueprint for the ways in which we discuss anti-colonialist action.

As a writer, Lowe is someone who can elicit a laugh from the deadpan line reading of a single word, yet the impression that the film leaves is quite different: a confessional, self-lacerating howl into the void; an expression of confusion and disappointment; a film which refuses to explain its heroine’s literal generational trauma with self-help platitudes.

It’s a rare bird indeed in that it’s a work of art that actively practices what it preaches, a celebration of unfettered creativity and farsightedness that offers a volcanic fusion of hand-crafted neo-classicism while running through a script of toe-tapping word-jazz that merrily dances between the raindrops of logic and coherence.