Donald Clarke

When the macabre does fully show itself, no concessions are made to taste or restraint. Though Weapons is lavishly shot and expensively acted – Amy Madigan is deliciously gamey in a role we won’t spoil – it ultimately settles into the rhythms of premium-brand pulp.

Alas, the film does slip towards industry-standard punch-ups in the last 15 minutes. But there is enough promise in this cheeky, witty, incisive shocker to let us look forward to inevitable sequels with something like enthusiasm.

Few will complain about the delicious perplexities of the opening hour. The film’s focus on the sadness of remote lives – everyone here seems alone – adds satisfactory emotional ballast.

Along the way, Scala!!! (the number of exclamation points varies) takes in the history of a wider culture. You could see the community under discussion as that swimming in the long wake of punk.

This fine documentary on the Palestine solidarity encampments at Columbia University, in Manhattan, makes much of comparisons with student protests against the Vietnam War in the late 1960s.

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

It would be a mistake to seek too many lessons from the film. Its great achievement is in the creation of a timeless nowhere that is both drawn from history and independent of it. That is the absurdist ideal.

If any recent release has the potential to become a cult classic it is this melodic warning from beneath the earth.

Civil War is wan as satire. But it’s an action stormer for the ages.

There is a sense here not just of Vietnam-era experimental cinema but of contemporaneous postmodern novels by the likes of Thomas Pynchon and the recently late John Barth. Smart and dumb. Fascinating and frustrating. An absolute blast.

This is the kind of issue-driven cinema that used to win Oscars. That Dark Waters and Just Mercy weren’t mentioned during awards season is as troubling as it is perplexing.

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.

None of which is to suggest the film backs away from great gags that, as it was in 1984, continue deep into hilarious improvisation over the end credits.

Passing is, in some ways, a slender story. But Hall’s feel for the period and her gift for folding potent discourse into the attractive visuals kicks it up to the level of high art.

The film is about the cost of success. It is about the emptiness of fame. It is about the companionship of women (in small groups and in vast stadiums). Those themes are expounded with an invention and wit that add bounce to a film draped in rich, oil-painterly gloom. Approach with the most open of minds.

For the most part, Hello, Bookstore potters along in anecdotal, amiably ramshackle fashion.

What keeps it ticking is the fiery gut-clenched romance between the two leads.

This is a straight-edge, inspirational sporting film of the old school – closer to Rocky than Hoop Dreams. Taking all the inevitable compromises on board, it could hardly work better within its chosen parameters.

This is a Macbeth for the head rather than the heart, but no less beguiling for that.

The film has bad news for us about humanity, but it also exudes a joy in the art of creative storytelling. All of which is a way of saying: pay attention throughout.

Copa 71 is conventionally told: talking heads interspersed with footage of the era’s pop music. But the rhythms are captivating and the story is irresistible. Highly recommended.

Craig Zobel’s breathless film is stuffed with delicious jokes and eye-watering Tom-and-Jerry violence.

A gorgeous, proudly unreliable glance over the shoulder. A tribute to an often maligned city.

An absolute treasure.

Exhaustingly beautiful, serious of purpose, the film knows where it’s going and, when it gets there, it stays for a very, very long time. A Hidden Life risks inducing Stendhal syndrome with its early overload of beauty. It risks something closer to narcolepsy in its repetitive final act. But even then, the singularity of Malick’s approach repels irritation.

The film does feel a little thin in its later stages, but the inventive performances – Rylance’s in particular – keep the film aloft throughout. No bogie. Comfortably a birdie. Not quite an eagle.

The two performances, rather than playing in a continuum, work as contrasting sides of a fractured psyche.

Jojo Rabbit works such tensions throughout: between laughter and groans, between emotion and sentimentality, between daring and bad taste. Such gambles are worth taking even if you believe the gambler is headed for the breadline.