Fionnuala Halligan

El Conde comes across as a well-funded toyshop for Larrian to play in, indulging flights of fantasy, paying homage, and exacting a retribution which could, should, have been a far more effective sandblast from a man who has spent much of his creative life holding this particular vampire to account.

By focusing on the touring footage, Howard’s picture distinguishes itself by allowing us to remember them as they started out while emphasising their skill as musicians (there’s an interesting comparison with Schubert and Mozart) and the endearing closeness of their unit.

Its sly irony is muffled by a convoluted, fatally tedious plot.

It can feel as if London Road is making the same point throughout, and in the same way – some thematic depth might have added bolster to the film’s dazzling artistic heft.

A significant, ambitious and entirely impressive film by a dazzling young French director in full command of her ship.

Hacksaw Ridge returns to the themes which have professionally and personally motivated 60-year-old Gibson for his entire life; he’s never been subtle, but he’s certainly effective when it comes to delivering his heart-felt message.

Structured to an unusual beat and often stuck in its own feedback loop, The United States…is a flawed film, much like its protagonist, but Day doesn’t set a foot wrong throughout, even as Daniels’ adoring camera traces her every breath in full close-up.

Very British and proudly Black, Edwards’ film juggles tones and formats we’ve never seen put together before and it’s a pleasure to see a first-timer flex her muscles in a part-musical, wholly dramatic story of a recently-released prisoner who takes a shine to his partner’s micro red frock.

It’s a title to be admired, certainly, but for all its visual fireworks, Far From The Madding Crowd doesn’t truly ignite an emotional spark.

The actors are reasonably charismatic and the film grows increasingly lovely to look at, while failing to really make a case for itself beyond the superficial pleasures.

Bouquets all round: Stephen Frears goes broad in Florence Foster Jenkins, and the appeal should be wide.

Like wrapping yourself up in a beloved book, Unicorns takes you to a new place, returning you charmed and changed.

Oddly enough, in trying to capture a time that was wracked by scarcity, by the idea of make-do-and-mend, by the plucky spirit of the men and women under the might of the machines, Blitz just fires far too much heavy artillery.

Although MEMORY follows some templates of the format, trying to lock Alien into a cultural and political framework, the film itself transcends that obviousness.

In true, blunt Aussie fashion, Last Stop Larrimah takes this wild-west story as it comes, and Tancred tells it well.

Whenever Herself settles into predictability, the strength of Dunne’s performance pulls that comfortable rug away. And if her screenplay and her acting helps audiences understand what it is to be homeless, to be vulnerable in this way, Herself will have been a A-grade build by an A-list team.

Together Together makes for comfortable viewing elevated by Harrison’s sparky presence.

Loveridge doesn’t seem to trust Maya’s natural significance and strains for the doc about her to achieve UN levels of relevance. Taking her for what she is would have been more than enough.

Structurally inventive, if not downright format-twisting, it takes a Jacob’s Ladder to 1990s China, where a beleaguered police detective tries so hard to unravel a killing that he spins himself into seeming madness.

The result has a definite voice – even when its protagonists struggle to find their own.

Emily Watson leads the cast delivering, yet again, a stinging reminder of her talent.

Moll is a director who is adept when it comes to loading the screen with tension; actors swerve in from the side of the frame, silhouetted against the plateau, all playing characters who are clearly not walking a straight line mentally.

If Saroo’s story seems out-of-this world, the team behind this film have risen to meet the challenge it sets. There may be a sense of inevitability about Saroo’s ultimate destination, but what counts here is the journey.

The trouble with a high-stakes “small” British project like this is that everyone involved tends to want to play it safe.

Between the extensive VFX creature work – led by Mike Stillwell and Andrew Simmonds - the performances, the tone, and the life-or-death subject matter, experienced shorts director Pusic has given her debut her all, and observers will take note.

A Nazi Legacy – What Our Fathers Did comes to a climax in Lviv, but the film is a layered examination of brutality, self-deception, guilt and the nature of justice which is compelling throughout.

Occasionally schematic, albeit only in the service of pricking our consciences, Petra Volpe’s tense drama is a shot in the arm of undiluted empathy for the over-stretched, under-valued nursing profession.

The film-making itself can stumble - this isn’t always a smooth watch; and such heartfelt sentiment sets it apart from more savvily sophisticated similar dramas.

Despite its vaguely-generic title, this well-crafted close-quarters suspense from British-Iranian director Babak Anvari is firmly-written, -shot and -acted.

A palpably well-made documentary if an uber-voyeuristic one, The Princess attempts an immersive approach into the life of Diana, while examining the attitude of the public to her – and the royal family – during that time.

Tenet is as generous as any Bond when it comes to a big-buck opening sequence and regularly-scheduled, muscular set pieces. If anything, it showers the viewer with too much, over-balancing a ticking-time-clock finale which is only saved by Elizabeth Debicki’s raw acting talent.

Italian artist Yuri Ancarani’s mostly-silent travelogue captures the Arabian peninsula without comment, its repetitive, dreamy imagery providing an insight to an age-old sport which plays out within the trappings of extreme wealth.

There’s a lightness to the film and a loveliness to Feña’s open-hearted struggle.

If nothing else, Deepwater Horizon makes a case for going back to basics with action films. It’s classically framed, executed, and feels like the real deal, and while it clearly boasts some fine effects work, it manages to lose the cartoonish aspect of so many recent tentpoles.

Apart from being a series of comic vignettes, The Meddler is also framed partially as a romance, and a very endearing one at that.

It truly growls in its depiction of the brutal nature of girl friendship and the shock of the menstrual metamorphosis.

Layering the life of Irish folk singer Joe Heaney through a flickering lens and leaning on the natural, unadorned voice of the sean nos [old style] singer, this doc/feature hybrid film isn’t perfect, but it is quite perfectly-made.

Conventional to a fault but about as solid an indictment of corporate greed as could be wished for.

All in all, it’s the strength of vision which impresses — the confidence and the brio of a film-maker adapting a novel and losing herself inside it, making no apologies for her interpretation.

American Animals requires many cuts and perspectives which are second-nature to an accomplished documentarian, yet the drama here also seems effortless and seamlessly integrated.

It’s a piece which is deliberate, but not sterile; disturbing, but too grounded in reality to be truly frightening, even though it probably should be given it attempts to blend the fears of body horror with climate change.

A superb performance by Affleck, who constructs a touching and believable rapport with his 11 year-old co-star, grounds his low-key directorial and feature-writing debut.

As a screenwriter, Ford has made some brave choices in a difficult, complex adaptation. As a director, though, he veers between delivering far too much, and yet not quite enough.

This doc/animation hybrid is an eccentric little gem of a story, a tall tale told with irreverent cheer and considerable charm. Chief amongst its many attractions is the actor Alan Cumming, lip-syncing to an audio tape and delivering a performance that is quite uncanny.

A film to respect for its audacity, admire for its lead female performance perhaps, but also view as dramatically contrived.

While the film doesn’t quite work as a horror, and can stumble as a character piece, Abrahamson has pulled together a sumptuous production which is more than sufficient to keep viewers engaged throughout.

Whether it’s the sheer weight of the narrative repetition - which involves rewatching a brutal rape - or the two-men/one-woman perspective, which results in an underwritten character and a strained performance from Comer, The Last Duel is crushed by the weight of its own armour.

Like protagonist Pete Davidson, on whose life it is loosely based, The King Of Staten Island is a loping, amiable, sweetly-funny film, and yet you sometimes wish there was a bit less of it.

It’s joyous, it’s crazy – cars skydive out of aircraft in Azerbaijan, no less - it’s exhaustively long, and, still, it’s clunkily lovable.

The imbalance between the sketched, what-if nature of the film and the weight of its visual wizardry is keenly felt.

Debut director Geremy Jasper has said Patti is part-modelled on his own life, and there’s a real empathy on display here for her internal and external struggles, a gift which Mcdonald makes the most of in her own debut.

It’s fair to say that Final Reckoning delivers ever more thrills and spills, even though the links between the action are ever more frayed.

Glassland is impressive, although Barrett struggles to give this carefully crafted narrative a coherent resolution.

This magnificently-realised film moves from feeling like a long, dry history lesson to becoming an angrily-direct and emotional tribute to the reformers of the past.

There’s probably an excellent 66 minute film in Desert Of Namibia as well. Yamanaka certainly has talent. But fine-honing is not a strong point.

Solondz’s latest is morose and jaundiced and, although uneven, a relentlessly clever little film.

The extent of Kroc’s greed is The Founder’s unique playing card, and John Lee Hancock delivers it with a depressingly special sauce.

Abbasi has made an Iranian noir which, even though it dares to poke around the spiritual capital of Iran with its largest mosque in the world, isn’t an assault on the Iranian government per se, but a crime thriller which shows how far fundamentalist morality can be twisted and how banal the face of evil really is.

The unfolding of this unusual friendship, however, and Henry’s lively performance against Lawrence and their resulting rapport, make it a sound prospect to spend some quiet time with.

&t does effectively plunge the viewer back in those choppy seas for an object lesson in how politics can rapidly inflame a situation to dangerous levels, even when both countries had agreed the best place for him was Cuba.

Renee Zellweger gives the performance of her career in a film which is certainly an awards-friendly biopic, but strikes a darker, more maudlin note than expected.

Although this doc is slender, it’s also fascinating, playing into nostalgia and current-day politics in equal measure.

Diallo has a lot of things to say here. Yet sometimes words aren’t enough: a straight-up drama won’t bring audiences to the place where Diallo wants to take them. Rest assured she makes her points crystal clear within the genre trappings: the only question left is where next for this talented new director.

Whether Hill’s debut as a writer-director is drawn entirely, or partly, from personal experience seems a moot point: there’s a sufficient clear-eyed skill to the project to elevate it out of the memoir arena and mark the actor out as a directing talent to watch.

Perhaps it’s the effort of introducing so many new characters that has sucked out the spontaneity from Deadpool: still, it’s nothing that can’t be sorted for the likely next installments.

This is a big-hearted song and dance spectacle for the entire family in which everyone laughs at the same jokes.

For a film industry determined to open itself to a diversity of voices, this is very much a safe, back-to-basics play for British audiences in need of some reliable comfort food.

It’s a long, flat, no-frills journey which struggles to engage despite its many bloody shocks.

Smothering the screen with good intentions, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (adapted from Annie Barrow’s best-selling comfort novel of the same name) is British security-blanket film-making at its finest.

A classic, if downbeat, addition to the canon.

Working with writer (and co-editor) Amy Jump again, Wheatley wades into the prescient 1975 text, delivering a complex, fluid interpretation which is respectful and almost-faithful while still being its own beautiful, crazed beast.

Ultimately, first-timer Langlois is unable to find a discipline within the excess that might keep these Queens on course over feature length. In fairness, his shorts were also over-long, so this won’t be a deterrent to his core crowd.

Animals is a smoothly-made, beguiling tale of female friendship, which, like its protagonist Laura (Holliday Grainger), sometimes feels a little lost, in need of a home.

Using the Great Hunger as a backdrop for a revenge western is an interesting way to exorcise old ghosts, but the end result drains pathos from the tragedy while muting The Proposition-style genre elements.

Slow, deliberate and often unexpectedly funny, Michael Tully’s (Ping Pong Summer) contribution to the ever-growing Irish horror catalogue is refreshingly original even if it lacks the jump scare pay off to its heavily-signposted creepiness.

Photograph’s deliberate pace does bring some rich rewards for the patient viewer, while a lovely ending feels like a throwback to the old-fashioned big screen romances of yore.

This is an idiosyncratic hop around Fassbinder’s life by his Danish film historian friend Thomsen.

Suffragette’s strength lies in the fact that, even though some of the characters and events depicted seem archetypal, and they’re certainly composites, they turn out to be more than that.

What sets it apart is Thornton’s deep spirituality, examined here as the titular ‘The New Boy’ encounters – and explores – Christianity. But it is not a two-way street: Christianity will never accept who he is.

Whitney Can I Be Me delivers yet another tragic lesson in the toxic mix of fame and talent and children: it should be required viewing for all those who seek to follow this diva’s path to fame and fortune.

Ethan Hawke delivers an intense, committed performance as the hopelessly drug-addicted trumpeter Chet Baker in the odd, erratic Born To Be Blue, written and directed by Robert Budreau as a bumpy free-form improvisation on the hopeless-wreck-makes-musical-comeback biopic.

Gitankali Rao’s debut feature is a stunningly realised work of animated film-making.

Wilde’s mighty struggle with himself, with his heavenly talent and earthly lusts, and the meaning of it all resonates so strongly with the direction and performance that The Happy Prince is easily elevated past period Victoriana (and that wallpaper) to move and engage in equal parts.

Zimbalist’s film is all about the highs: at no point will it dig deep. There is zero sense of perspective past the obvious.

The spirit king of the Greek Weird Wave has produced a profoundly puzzling, dizzyingly disturbing and dark-hearted set of loosely-connected stories which manage to be discordantly amusing and strangely exhilarating – a cinematic salt-rub.