Donald Clarke

The unreal feels real. The real feels even more real. A decidedly decent slice of bog horror.

This is a wonderful comedy that savours its remote environment while keeping its subjects at the centre of the story. There are always new ways of telling the era’s most unavoidable sad stories. Not to be missed.

Hardcore fans will rejoice in telling us it is not for children. It’s not really for adults either. But the eternal inner adolescent that lives within us all will almost certainly have a swell time.

I Never Cry works best as a showcase for a terrific young actor with a nuanced grasp of a complex character.

For all the mad adventure, it feels like a Twilight Zone episode stretched out thinly to feature length.

Dupieux is flogging no message. He’s inviting us to take risks on a ride that is as unpredictable as it is spooky. And it’s all done in under 80 minutes. There is nothing else like it out there.

In short, domestic viewers in search of outrage may find themselves a tad disappointed.

Already established as a wizard with buried irony, Pugh politely steals the film with a witty performance that makes sense of even the silliest moments.

It’s not exactly a world you would want to live in but Jumbo, nonetheless, is awash with a sympathetic visual aesthetic that gives us some sense of where the odd passion springs from. It needs a strong actor to compete with that madness, and Merlant does not disappoint.

The plotting is, alas, a little slack in the later stages. There is a sense of flailing around en route to a reasonably satisfactory destination. Son remains, nonetheless, the work of a singular, oddball talent. Seek out.

Shot in chocolatey browns amid the more comfortable suburbs of Copenhagen, Another Round underlines its later, more cautious warnings by reminding us how inexhaustibly tedious the drunk seem to the sober.

The two flawless performances, presented in the polite shades of prestige British cinema, make a winning case for the virtues of seasoned affection. An irresistible treat.

It really isn’t worth trying to keep up. Immerse yourself rather in the sillier stunts and the genuinely sparky interplay between committed action stars: Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Jordana Brewster, Cardi B (!).

It’s well-meaning. It’s lively. It’s moderately funny. But it is no Finding Nemo.

Not everything works in the admirably bizarre In the Earth, but nobody can deny Wheatley is back in his freak-folk wheelhouse.

The set-ups are every bit as tense as before. The cast continue to throw themselves at the material with admirable gusto.

A highly original, singularly beautiful film.

None of this would work if the lead actors were not so firmly connected to their complex roles.

Cruella plays like the result of an endless script conference that generated only partial answers to the questions being asked.

Absolutely essential.

Freed from the pretensions of his DC projects and working with the Netflix charge card, Snyder has a ball proving that trash can triumph on the largest stage if played with elan and enthusiasm.

Cowboys nonetheless gets by on goodwill and a passion for compromised Americana. Only a lowdown dirty heel would cuss it out.

Apples works both as an unintended record of the times and as a wry comment on the ancient human condition. Dare we call it “memorable”?

Viewing the entire film as it finally arrives to video on demand, one remains staggered that sentient human beings who walk upright and use cutlery believed this was a respectable use of their valuable time.

Joshua James Richards’s poetic cinematography – allowing in sunsets that drag us back to the America of John Ford – contributes to the queasy sense that redemption can come from landscape. Those sorts of conflicts are everywhere in a film that is quietly at war with itself throughout.

Made within the communities it satirises, I Blame Society thrives on its own crotchety energy.

House of Cardin drags out fascinating archive interviews to tease and tantalise. Cardin is articulate about his creative strategies, but the man inside remains something of a mystery.

Promising Young Woman nonetheless remains an entertaining, imaginative exercise in creative score-settling.

All this might be unbearable were it not for some lovely performances and, despite the familiar tropes, a commitment to treat Louis and his condition with respect.

We end up with a philosophical comedy that is not afraid to aim the odd joke below the belt or, as resolution looms, to give in to sentimentality. It’s a little bit Capra. It’s also a little bit Beckett.

Few viewers will find themselves unengaged during The Mauritanian, but there are too many middlebrow beats either side of the jarring chords. Definitely worth a stream. Unlikely to change many minds.

That overqualified cast works hard with the mindless plot, but the stars of the piece remain the venerable beasts themselves.

We are left with a perfectly respectable, eminently professional slice of prestige arthouse. Nobody with even modestly open-minded sensibilities will walk away in a blind fury. Few will leave in an ecstasy of transcendence.

It would be nice to say that Judi Dench, inevitably the headmistress, elevates the project, but even she can’t get gas back into the plummeting Zeppelin (wrong war, I know).

For all that good work by a strong cast, the word that hangs over this overlong film is sluggish.

A thrilling picture. But also a sobering one.

Nobody with a sense for contemplative cinema will be left unsatisfied by Notturno.

Time moves so slowly one begins to fear it may turn backwards and return us to the far distant opening credits.

Williams and her contemporaries are excellent. The senior actors do, however, steal the show. It’s lovely to see both having such a disreputably good time.

For all its abundant flaws, The United States vs Billie Holiday is clearly the work of a man with hot celluloid running through his lymphatic system. I guess that is a compliment.

Perhaps overwhelmed by interviews, experimental movies and live footage, Winter allows few compositions to play at length. But the full man emerges in all his contradictions and confrontations.

Nobody without a spear through their head could sincerely describe Willy’s Wonderland as a good film, but it is trash with a commendable pedigree.

This is an awfully clean version of borderline anarchy. But the relationships are teased out so delightfully that few will feel it worth complaining. Even the sentimental denouement is forgivable.

An early contender for turkey of the year.

No sensitive viewer could deny the spirit of the original remains, but Jeremy Sims’s charming cover version reverberates with unmistakably Australian harmonies.

Older than Ireland is at its most moving when addressing the universal experiences that shape all lives.

It is a terrible story, but, in its constant discovery of bravery and compassion, ultimately a hopeful one.

This charming, beautifully made drama gets about halfway (maybe a little more, maybe 60 or 70 per cent) towards confirmation as a classic of English reserve before a stunningly uninteresting subplot concerning less charismatic characters arrives to deaden the closing scenes.

It is a strong, stoic performance from Talpe in a film that doesn’t allow its secondary characters much nuance.

The longer it goes on, however, the less fun and more earnest it becomes.

As the band explains in this excellent documentary from Frank Marshall (whose odd career has taken in Arachnophobia, Congo and Alive), it took them five months to go from obscurity in Australia to careering about swinging London with The Beatles.

There’s not much formal romance here, but there’s a great deal of love.

White Riot is here both to educate and to serve the nostalgists.

There is an argument here about the corrupting influence of religion on ordinary Americans, but it is made with such bellowing cacophony that tinnitus ends up blurring the syntax.

Jessie Buckley’s determination to stop her slippery part from wriggling out of her clutch is positively heroic. The Kerry actor becomes Everywoman and Nobody. Her sorrow is bottomless. Her uncertainty is painful. One can imagine no better guide through these mysterious swamps.

If we were previously in any doubt, Haneke is confirmed as the premiere European director of his generation.

There is a point to all this. As well as offering a delicious audio-visual feast, the film firmly makes the case that those who have least to blame for global warming — those living close to nature — will be the ones who ultimately suffer the most. If we have to be taught such a grim lesson then this is the way to do it.

Kechiche’s intention – fully realised – is to immerse the viewer completely in the nuances of the relationship. By the close, one feels (and this is not meant as a facetious dig) one has lived through the girls’ experiences in something like real time.

It is the breathless dynamics of Son of Saul that really sets it apart.

A truly extraordinary trick has been pulled off: Under the Skin manages to foster empathy with an entity as isolated from human experience as an avalanche or a weather system. Such achievements tend to allow films to be classed as masterpieces. That word may not be too weighty for Glazer’s towering curio.

All this delicious incident has the makings of a gung-ho entertainment – Ian Fleming as mounted by Nasa. Unfortunately that’s not what we get. Even if we were brave enough to try, we would not be capable of spoiling a plot so wilfully obtuse it demands repeat viewings to disentangle.

It mostly succeeds on old-fashioned smack-’em-up and sure personal chemistry.

Black Water Abyss is mostly composed of actors breathing heavily in studio tanks while torches bounce off dampened sets. The characters are dull, the tension poorly maintained and the outbreaks of violence deeply confusing.

Full marks for character and setting. Less enthusiastic hurrahs for narrative arc.

DW Young’s film, a study of New York’s independent and antiquarian booksellers, looks to have modelled itself on that aimless pleasure. Never aspiring to anything like a structure, it meanders from shelf to shelf, sometimes picking up a volume and placing it straight down, sometimes leafing more carefully through the pages.

Look elsewhere for virtual methadone to hold you over until the real stuff gets back in the supply chain. Just awful.

Sadly, the film itself is not quite as silly as it should be (something of an achievement given what you’ve just read). Everyone is taking it very seriously. We don’t get enough characters pulling their limbs together after being hacked to pieces by combine harvester. Some very good actors have been cast in the wrong roles. No matter. Theron makes it work.

The final impression is of a thesis only partially expanded into satisfactory dramedy, but, thanks to casting in depth and good writing on a line-by-line basis, Irresistible never feels like a chore.

Rarely in the history of cinema has so much tortured exposition failed so completely to explain such an undistinguished plot. It is like trying to pick up the story through overheard conversations with nearby drinkers who have just emerged from a screening. Stop telling us stuff and do something!

A well-meaning, but dramatically inert biopic.

Nothing Fancy is a rare documentary one would wish longer. The contemporary Kennedy is marvellous company: awkward, intelligent, amusing, realistic about mortality.

Prentice Penny directs her own script with verve. Mamoudou Athie, who’s been knocking on the door for a few years, is good enough to suggest that he’ll be unavoidable in a year or two.

Moving from his standard New York neurotic, Eisenberg does a convincing job of moving from frustration to a violent, active mania. Poots is better still as someone who can’t find the words to communicate her growing despair.