Fionnuala Halligan

All of The Big Sick’s power has gone into its script and performances.

It’s only when Baumbach surrenders to the inherent theatricality of what he is creating, that Marriage Story finally takes wing and flies.

Part of what makes Brides so engaging — and not in a passive way – is its closeness to the truth: not just of the Begum story, but life truths.

While it’s a consistently entertaining and often poignant film which addresses a wide range of issues under the stealth cover of humour, I, Tonya also gives Robbie the chance – her first, really – to show her full range as an actress. And she shines.

Kristen Lovell has skin in the game of the story she tells, making The Stroll, an oral/archive history of the trans sex workers of New York’s Meatpacking District, a raw and tender memoir.

To say the performances are authentic is clearly stating the point, but the Blackburn family opens up to give an easily intimate portrait of themselves.

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

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 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.

Served up with star turns from Emma Stone and Steve Carell, Battle Of The Sexes slams a crowdpleaser across the net.

Strong, committed performances and the upsetting ring of reality anchor a highly-personal film which cycles through addiction, relapse and rehab in an episodic way, each high as inevitable as the low which follows.

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.

A film of a bumpy, brilliant debut novel which was ground-breaking at the time, Bahrami’s propulsive piece dazzles, and quibbles are easily quelled, even over 124 minutes.

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

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.

While attention, fairly, will go to the work’s visual and tonal acuity, Wells’ measured but relentless probing, her careful peeling away of the layers of this intimate piece, mark her out as one of the most promising new voices in British cinema in recent years.

With Spurlock and Takal throwing every horror trope on the screen, Rats is a delectably awful experience which, grimly fun though it may be to watch, hopefully won’t lead to a Cockroach sequel.

Writer-director Emmanuel Mouret’s lengthy but deliciously calibrated Love Affair(s) consists of talk, talk and more talk uttered by attractive protagonists in French settings that range from enviably nice to spectacular. This would fit perfectly in a time capsule under ’Unapologetic French Art Film’.

It may not know where to end, and it makes a surprising late-in-the-game play for sentimentality where it has previously been bracingly crisp about hot topics including abortion and post-natal depression, but it’s mostly a wry plea for tolerance when the world is most disposed to hear it.

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.

Footage is surprising, and, occasionally heart-breaking; not because of the disabilities onscreen, but because it recalls the idealism of the 1970s, long since gone.

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.

Those who can’t understand the tangled battle zones or tragic recent history of Iraq may take some comfort from Nowhere To Hide’s revelation that ordinary citizens of that country don’t understand any of it either.

Childhood is a mystery we endlessly come back to and a place the Leydens have never fully left; Ní Chianáin gives the viewer an intimate view of it in this unusual little story.

The Innocents successfully weds three elements: a strong, original concept distilled through a smart screenplay; excellent young performances; and a mise-en-scene which puts the audience in a child’s circular view of a very small world - tiny by nature of childhood itself, in which the smallest areas are unfathomably large, and also by circumstance on a self-contained housing estate.

It’s a sad, sad film about the tragic loss of a generation, but the thought of Brittain moving through the generations to deliver her message afresh is somehow a consolation in its final, rallying cry.

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.

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.