Fionnuala Halligan

This genial comedy/noir is a genuine crowdpleaser – funny, sexy, clever and confident in building a low-key humour which hits the target over and over again.

It’s engrossing every inch of the way, with casualties, infighting, character flaws, war mongering, and some delicious grandstanding from Harrelson.

The questing duo has trusted ‘GTA’ and its trigger-happy denizens: they just need to trust the audience a little bit more that this new world can be enjoyed without the same old beats.

Two unrelentingly fascinating performances from Vic Carmen Sonne and Trine Dyrholm, and an exquisite black-and-while aesthetic which moves from leering vaudeville to something filthier and shameful, command attention.

A Quiet Place is the rare example of a creature feature which uses special effects sparingly (and possibly due to budgetary restrictions) in order to amplify the drama onscreen, not solely provide it. It employs the full register of sound, and the lack of any noise, as a dramatic player, informing all the action to the point where Krasinski’s film becomes a startlingly sensory experience.

With fresh access to her personal, self-serving and -aggrandising archives, Veiel lets Riefenstahl speak unedited: she puts a lot of issues to rest through her own lies, evasions and unrelentingly difficult personality.

It seems to encapsulate a generation’s dreams and disappointments, torments and triumphs. Even if it takes place on the other side of the world, it’s still a story we all know when we see it.

Lee is firing off rounds in all directions here. Some land, some distract, some feel like overkill. For cineastes, it’s a provocative redrawing of the canon; Coming Home or The Deerhunter, and even Stone’s so-called “definitive” work including Platoon now seem only part of the picture.

So lush with gorgeous detail it’s like a piece of highly-textured haute couture, there’s also a sharp social message behind the elaborate seams.

Bold and brave, like its protagonist, Pamfir gorges on its imagery, with the final visual marker sending shivers down the spine.

This gripping, muscular piece is markedly immediate - like its subject, who lives for the moment, in the constant shadow of his own death.

The Northman is often bloody smart entertainment, although, essentially, it is also the good time that doesn’t realise that the fun has stopped.

All Will Be Well is undoubtedly an old-fashioned drama, but it is no less effective for that classic structure.

Sicario is an ambush, a low-slung film about a dirty drugs war with Mexico which challenges and engages in equal measure. It moves with grim tenacity, confounding expectations until its very final sequence.

While the running time can weigh heavily on some of the sub-plots, the overall effect is as strong as Hui intended and the title underlines the bitter irony of the history involved.

Crowds will be pleased, tears will be shed and audiences should rally to the passion and drama onscreen. The stakes are high in Step.

With rigour and clarity of purpose, actor/director Fran Kranz holds the audience in his hands, probing at the unthinkable and daring to keep the faith.

Arrivals becomes an unexpectedly moving rumination on life’s bigger questions by its end. While it looks to other worlds, its main pleasure turns out to be the most intimate of questions.

Where some see coincidence, Wardle finds a true-life conspiracy, and pursues it all the way to conclusion after gripping conclusion.

Riders Of Justice is salty, violent, transgressive, button-pushing, non-PC and laugh-out-loud funny at times – and when you’re not gasping or laughing, it’s only to wonder at the mind which pulled all of this together.

No fiction could hope to match the strangeness and sadness of the truth here.

Loveling relies on the charm of its chaotic central family (an overweight son who insists on carrying a giant tuba around with him, for example) and the warmth of Teles to seduce and dazzle audiences into submission.

Nowhere Special is a tender story of a life which is ending and another which is beginning.

A courtroom drama with a committed, awards-worthy performance from Ricardo Darin, this tense, lengthy, frequently funny film stands with the best of the genre, but with added resonance.

Editing is clearly complex given the variable footage, but each emergency call and every character is successfully individualised and identifiable, and several arcs snap into the overall narrative drive.

It takes its narrative cue from the Bon Secours mother-and-baby home in Tuam, County Galway in which “significant” numbers of dead children have been discovered. Even though this is placed within a potentially-exploitative genre framework, it is still handled with sensitivity and sympathy by this latest female director to flesh out horror tropes.

The Eternal Daughter is at its most poignant when it plunges into the personal – in Swinton’s retreating mother and faltering daughter, you can sense the director’s power growing as she continues to acknowledge herself.

For all that it dances on familiar ground, Firecrackers ends on a pleasingly opaque note. It’s attractively shot by Catherine Lutes, and smartly cast with unknowns, making it more than just a calling card for its young writer/director. There’s much to take note of here foom Mozaffari and her all-female crew.