Harry Windsor

A cheerful spirit of open inquiry drives the documentary Queer Japan, in fact, which is tender, impressionistic rather than highly structured, and largely inexplicit — that amusingly candid vox pop notwithstanding.

The director and her cinematographer Eduardo Enrique Mayén never stray far from their leading lady’s face, and the Tianjin-born Chin delivers a performance of impressive minimalism, one that feels true rather than ingratiating.

A tender portrait of the man's highs and lows that sheds new light on the broken years that directly preceded his suicide at 37.

Crass, colorful and hanging together by the barest of threads.

The chief drawcard here is the conga line of old pros at the helm.

As a family film in that vein it largely succeeds, buoyed by Black’s typical exuberance, Blanchett’s typical slyness and a richly evocative rendering of a Rockwellian suburb sprinkled with goofer dust. Less interesting, as is the way with many audience-avatar YA protagonists (sorry, Harry), is the main character, and Vaccaro’s rather hyper-articulated performance doesn’t help.

In jettisoning the focus on family of the previous films, it gives us characters whose interactions with each other feel less than detailed, and who are more archetypal than real. But it’s good clean fun nevertheless, and the set pieces expertly supply the tension-and-release satisfactions of the genre.

Following a thoroughly predictable rom-com template to thoroughly satisfying effect in a manner rarely seen in Australian cinema since Strictly Ballroom, Ali's Wedding hits all the beats while deftly capturing the tensions of the first-generation immigrant, torn between the norms of the country he calls home and those espoused by his family.

The result is one of the most visceral essay films ever made, with Peedom and her Sherpa altitude cinematographer Renan Ozturk unfurling a series of glistening images that should be seen only on the biggest of big screens.

It's certainly never boring, and Maringouin makes the madness feel queasily real.

Buoyed by a reliably appealing star turn from James, this handsome tearjerker mostly sidesteps the tweeness of its title to become, somehow, both an old-fashioned romance and a detective story trumpeting gender equality.

Miike’s facility for the sharply sketched portrait, in between bouts of bladed mayhem, remains as shrewd as ever.

River ends with relief, followed by a reversal that’s the last thing you expect from this unvarnished, unsentimental tale of self-preservation: an act of quietly powerful heroism.

Girl Asleep might be about an awakening, but it’s not a sexual awakening, and this is one teen comedy in which, at long last, the geek doesn’t get the girl.