Fionnuala Halligan

It’s a halfway house between reality and the desires and dreams and disappointments of a 40 year-old woman, and should be appreciated as such by Francophone audiences everywhere.

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.

Even if it tells the age-old story of the filthy rich getting richer and the poor going nowhere, Betting on Zero is still rather shocking.

Although the seams may show on a narrative level, and some may find it over-cooked, this is a luxurious slide into female neurosis.

The dialogue in Mank is fabulously fast, hard and quippy throughout, a real tribute to the man himself. If sometimes all that detail obscures the bigger picture, Mank is still a treat; for those looking for more, we always have Citizen Kane to fall back on, after all.

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.

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.

To a certain extent, Alam, which marks Khoury’s feature debut after a well-regarded career in shorts (in particular, Maradona’s Legs) follows some clear conventions, but there’s enough that is still raw and urgent at the film’s soul to make it stand out.

As the story of the mysterious Cordona plays out, the persuasive personalities of the three women both then and now strike a chord.

Copa 71 may have a packaged air to it, but the story speaks – loudly – for itself.

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.

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.

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.

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

Its running time may make it more digestible than some of Weerasethakul’s more ambitious pieces, although it straddles the line between full-feature and his short films and experimental work quite beautifully.

Weisz shows her Oscar-winning talents by hitting precisely the right notes throughout My Cousin Rachel: from warmth to guile to chilly practicality.

A well-executed, unusual and historically-tinged horror [film] ... drenched in the atmosphere of Second World War colonial dread.

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.

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.

Jackson’s film is best enjoyed for the quality of the performances and the typical richness of Hare’s screenplay.

A handsome, earnest drama ... This is a tasteful, respectful and thoughtful film about what it means to be a true friend in the darkest of times.

Newton is fascinating in the role.

Whether it’s a self-portrait, a series of sketches, an artist who is continuously working over a painful loss, Honore’s film betrays mixed emotions that may never be resolved as he carries the losses of that time with him forever.

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

In the slim but powerful documentary He Named Me Malala Davis Guggenheim attempts to colour in a shy, yet deceptively stout-hearted schoolgirl and her symbiotically-close relationship with her father, indicated by the film’s title.

The team effort of the story flows into and becomes a part of the team effort onscreen, and the fight continues.

Bond has seen it all before, this team has done it all before, and the production juggernaut hits every beat with a carefully calibrated precision which can be deeply satisfying but also risk coming across as rote.

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.