David Parkinson

Drags in places and deosn't even try for a true-to-life portrait of the great theatre entrepeneur but it's shiny and big spectacle with impressive choreography.

A sometimes over-simplified but often affecting look at forbidden love.

Charming but uneven, director Améris's film doesn't know whether to make us laugh or cry, and ends up doing neither. Still, a smart script offers plenty to keep incurable romantics happy.

Lushly photographed by Andrei Zhegalov and impeccably played, it’s a long-overdue corrective to the kind of wildly patriotic war film produced in the Soviet era.

Superb star turn from Maria Alexandra Lungi but this doesn’t grip as it might.

A rich and imaginative evocation of a family in turmoil.

Once the political correctness is side-stepped, this contains classic chemistry from its two leads.

Powerful art cinema that challenges political and social unity in Iran.

Angry, impassionate filmmaking that demands - and deserves - serious answers.

The result is both audaciously amusing and provocatively sophisticated.

Unflinching in its depiction of rural reality, this may be a dour drama, but it has been made with sincerity and an exceptional sense of place.

The father and son chemistry give this blackly-comic slice of social realism a dose of Ealing-lite wit.

Forman and screenwriter Michael Weller brought a sense of coherence to the original freewheeling structure and Twyla Tharp's choreography imparted an infectious dynamism. But, the profanity, nudity and disregard for the fourth wall that had made the stage show such a sensation were lost in the translation.

Captivating and poignant portayal of life on the edge for the disregarded of our societies.

Rinko Kikuchi's superb core performance and some striking photography stand out in the latest feature from the Zellner Brothers.

Ironically, it lacks journalistic rigour but it's a fond, nostalgic look at the gilded history of the Grey Lady.

Tautly scripted by director Per Fly and bullishly played, this is soap for the ciné-sophisticate.

A smart and incisive look at race, identity and dysfunction in modern French society.

A deeply disconcerting provocation about the future of civilisation: a powerfully performed vision of an insignificant humanity.

For all its self-conscious pizzazz, this is irresistibly entertaining.

Although there are fine homages to Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Eisenstein and Harold Lloyd here, this is a scattershot offering full of apolitical mockery.

Cocteau has produced a bizarre, interesting although at times tedious movie.

Bold and beautiful, this is a mystery worth puzzling over.

The life and crimes of Virgil Starkwell, a petty hoodlum who finds love with a laundress, Louise, in between botched blags and stints on a chain gang.

Despite visceral moments, it often feels like an excuse to use footage that didn’t make the 2010 film.

Poetic but bleekly pessimistic version of the Danish tragedy.

Packed with cultural references and sly satire, this is also a hugely entertaining comic romp.

Harrowing and complex, this study in terror is not for the faint of heart.