John Bleasdale

It's as if Wiseman has taken his cue from the old style librarians and has wanted to give a portrait of a community but without the inevitable noise that goes with it, issuing one long "shhhhhhhhh".

Two Days, One Night is well made, and Cotillard and the rest of the cast give assured performances, but its optimism is desperate. By no means the Dardennes' best work, one wonders if they shouldn't perhaps stray outside of their comfort zone.

It’s a pity that on this occasion Scorsese makes an admirable and fine film, but alas not a great one.

There is much to like about Elle, first and foremost a witty and bold performance from Huppert and the generally seasoned ensemble.

After all is said and done, ‘The House that Lars Built’ is an impressive construction for an obnoxious purpose. In fact, the best criticism comes from Talking Heads and their song Psycho Killer: “You’re talking a lot but you’re not really saying anything.”

Bradley Cooper’s soulful exploration of the depredations of fame is an effective melodrama boasting genuine star turns from himself and Lady Gaga.

For the occasional lapse...there is often a striking image or sly moment of humour to take away and overall, the film rewards persistence.

This is a confident dramatic voice emerging and it will be interesting to see what comes next.

Irony has a wearying effect after a while, ultimately leading to a flattening of the ethical landscape so that by the end of it we can’t help but feel they’re all as bad as each other.

Ash Is Purest White is a fascinating chapter in Jia’s ongoing chronicle of ordinary lives affected by unprecedented change in China.

Although not quite the bounty of its title, The Treasure rewards the patient viewer with a quietly enchanting drama.

Campillo doesn't edit for our comfort and we feel both the tragedy and the boredom of death.

Some of it is funny. Some of it is moving. More of it is plain dull.

That the drama should hinge on a series of bizarre novelistic coincidences and the irrational dopiness of the characters with whom we're supposed to empathise drains the film of realism and sends us into Mills & Boon territory.

De Palma is a timely reminder of one of cinema's most infuriating yet entertaining characters.

Cosmatos’ Mandy matches Cage grimace for grimace and achieves, at times, a transcendent midnight madness.

The King feels disconnected and unurgent. Despite some wonderful moments, it perhaps lacks the requisite majesty.

One feels its subject would have admired the boldness of its conception, if perhaps not its overly slick execution.

The journey through a nighttime New York is rich in realistic characters, observational details and some original locations.

Scenes come and go with a weightlessness that has nothing to do with zero gravity.

American Honey ticks off all of the indie clichés. Fireworks? Check. Standing up in convertible with your arms outstretched? Check. Grubby children? Check. But all of this could be forgiven, or at least put up with, if the film wasn't so long and meandering.

Sadly, the intriguing set up - along with Del and Bonnie - is left behind for a too nakedly state-of-America musing, with everyone Charley happens across having some social ill to portray.

The Eternal Daughter is very much a minor film for Hogg: a small chamber piece which could be watched as amusing marginalia to The Souvenir diptych. It’s a hangout film for those among you who can’t get enough Tilda Swinton and an incredibly cute dog, and as such it works. It doesn’t really have anything to say, and the meta-ness feels a little tired.

Both actresses are excellent, with Binoche given more to do and she flips between attempting to get into the skin of her character and back to her normal self. Stewart, on the other hand, has an easy naturalism as she moves from devotion to rebellion without ever being able to fully express herself.

It might be that the actor Dano baulks at taking the scissors to any of the performances of his fellow thespians, or that screenwriters Dano and Zoe Kazan are too faithful to Richard Ford’s source novel but this results in a deadening of effect that renders the melancholy monotonous.

As every section seeks to deepen and complicate the basic message of Mountains May Depart - that the incredible speed of technology and society has its prices and dangers - and the failure of the final section dilutes where it should intensify.

Last Breath makes for a very decent entry into the survival genre of films like Touching the Void with the added appeal of the submarine movie and all the claustrophobia and intensity that comes with that.

The final twist is so manipulative and cynical as to be actually enraging.

Panahi keeps everything as softly spoken as his own onscreen presence and yet some of those quiet observations are devastating.

Despite a first half of great promise, the film is ultimately ground down by the endless suffering even as it bloats with a bizarre lurch into satirical fantasy.

It’s impossible not to be beguiled by the sweetness of the comedy, the skill of the performers and sheer craft of the film. But hopefully next time out Kore-eda will use it in the service of a plot which is more believable.

As we pass from one story to another the relentless savagery does get a bit grinding. In addition, at two hours in length, Szifron's film is perhaps one skit too long. Regardless, Wild Tales is an inventive, occasionally hysterical ride.

As Personal Shopper progresses a rather predictable series of twists almost drain the story of interest.

Babyteeth is a funny, vibrant and deeply moving piece of work. Its flaws are the flaws of youth, overcompensating for boredom with frenetic hyperactivity.

As the film drifts through dream sequences and diversions, the dramatic power of the chase fizzles in the damp of the woods.

As with Kaufman's own stunts, it's difficult to know what to take seriously.

With its surprising narrative twists and handsome visuals, Black Souls ends up being a far more original take on the Italian organised crime drama than first thought.

It is a demanding watch, but at the same time, Alonso's latest has a bizarre, beguiling quality which drifts towards the sublime even if it never quite gets to its destination.

A mix of Loachian social realism and Death Wish-style violent fantasy.

A dark and slightly hysterical portrait of fundamentalist fever.

Everything seems designed to disturb or perhaps infuriate the viewer.

Everything looks beautiful: sand the colour of peach fluff and skies, a cyan blue.

The truth is that The Truth is an above-average French comedy and Kore-eda has succeeded in a finely wrought act of ventriloquism and diva worship. But the Japanese director’s fans can be forgiven for thinking above average is not good enough for such an accomplished filmmaker.

Most powerful of all is Gulpilil's performance. His presence at the centre of the film is one of anger, humour and ultimately resilience.

The humour is as gentle as the girls are and, without sharp edges, the film occasionally veers towards schmaltz, but Kore-eda's deft touch and his eye for a subtle yet precise detail keeps the world grounded and consistently interesting, funny and at times moving.

Danish singer and actress Trine Dyrholm plays the diva with verve and energy, in a portrait which is also something of a reevaluation.

Your appreciation or otherwise of the film is going to be greatly influenced by whether or not you’ve seen the original, and as such Final Cut doesn’t really elbow its way to the front. However, if you can stand the slight whiff of decomposition then this deconstruction is fun and clever.

Berg's Little Girl Blue inevitably concentrates on the tragic parabola of the life without fully getting to the heart of the art.

Not exciting enough to be taken as straightforward thriller and not engaging enough for a dramatic character piece, Egoyan's The Captive is held back by its own lame script and a distinct lack of necessity.

The Measure of a Man is solid social document that offers insight into quiet lives lived by those who don't give in - despite every good reason - to desperation.

A Woman's Life is a modest chamber piece, a series of sketches revealing a life of quiet desperation, which eschews melodrama and, for the most part, platitudes but exhibits great tenderness and sensitivity.

It’s difficult given the premise of the film not to come out of The Workshop thinking of alternative directions the story could have gone in.

This is heartfelt, inspiring stuff and there is no doubt that this is a true story that absolutely merits wider recognition.

The more conventional thriller element demands that the transformation from enmity to something like love is too swiftly accomplished to be properly convincing.

Ozon's Frantz is, sadly, an underwhelming tale of a European union that didn't quite make it, its chocolate box sheen belying the emptiness at its heart.

Though it can't bear too much comparison with Sicario, Wind River is far better than its title suggests and a promising directorial debut.

Deladonchamps and Lacoste make for engaging leads and there is warmth and humour here too.

There is something of Scorsese to this rise and fall of a criminal family and Trapero crams The Clan with life.

Few American directors capture the contemporary urban nightscape as well as Fincher: a supreme genre filmmaker, which makes this perfectly fine film so disappointing.

For all the glib élan on display, there is very little being said, above and beyond the slickness of a well-tuned melodrama. The plot always risks revealing its essential silliness and there isn't much wit or humour to alleviate the mood.

There is much to enjoy here - especially at the beginning - and Östlund's ambition and vision are to be applauded. However, The Square would have been greatly improved had the director taken his scalpel and his demanding critical eye and applied it to the film itself.

As you'd expect from an actor-director of Amalric's pedigree, the performances are brilliant throughout and Mathieu himself has a wonderful eye for the telling tick and/or the revealing gesture.

The Wakhan Front's script is finely-balanced, allowing the possibly supernatural to slowly impinge without resorting to genre clichés.

The film can't be faulted for its attempt to argue for some kind of humane kinship and reconciliation, even if this attempt ends up dissolving the enmity in a sentimentality that, given what has come before, strains credibility.

Captain Fantastic is a slickly made comedy with a witty, politically articulate script and some wonderful cinematography by former Jacques Audiard regular Stéphane Fontaine.

The film itself is fairly conventional given the wildness of its subject matter and Jim Jarmusch's pedigree.

As fascism in South America, North America and Europe is rising from the grave, it needs a properly-aimed and delivered stake, rather than complacent sniggering

The film is often remarkable, gorgeous even - many of the shots in Youth would make excellent closing shots, including the opening shot - and funny. It's a work of wonderful moments, but it's less than momentous and, significantly, you'll never believe a single word of it. This is a pity as the performances are excellent.

Plá's film is a caustic, genuine swipe at a selfish and insincere society which is content to make money from the suffering of ordinary people.

There’s so much to enjoy in Ema that it comes as a surprise that there’s so little there.

The fraudulent nature of the mystery makes Wonderstruck feel like a technical exercise: albeit one which is enlivened by some great visuals and excellent performances, particularly the wonderful Millicent Simmonds.

There's no getting away from it, Gibson has produced another bombastic, crowd-pleasing and obviously blood-soaked movie which expertly glorifies that which its hero was against.

Osborne, who initially got his kicks with Kung Fu Panda, doesn't trust his source material and the film becomes about collecting the pages of the story and the effect the story might have on the people who hear it, rather than the telling of the story itself.

Mia Madre is an intimate and sincerely made family portrait, which ends up betraying its own indifference to anything beyond the confines of the family.

An effective thriller, Sisters is an intense tightly executed slasher, which fans of the directors later work will revel in.

Benjamin is a charming metropolitan rom-com which is ultimately too lightweight to escape the gravity of its influences.

Adapting Melanie Joosten's novel, Shaun Grant has been unable to recapture the grimey darkness of everyday evil of his previous script Snowtown. Instead, we get a sojourn in place of trauma.

As the family resolves problems of the film's own making, the satisfaction gleaned is relatively minor. The threatened and/or promised explosions fizzle out frustratingly, leaving behind the lurking impression of Louder Than Bombs as a well-crafted, well-played, slickly-written misfire.

Once beyond the babble of the Mindfulness merchants, the latter half of the documentary, however, is far more interesting and compelling as Shen has his experts round on the noise pollution that so disrupts our lives.

Party Girl may tread familiar ground but Theis-Litzemburger is utterly convincing as the self-absorbed, beguilingly unaware lead.

At its very best his Venus in Fur is a clever and often comical two-hander, with Amalric and Seigner both giving tour de force performances.

An unnecessarily loud ending is an unwelcome jolt that will likely divide audiences down the middle, but Chronic is an otherwise unique character study of endearing depth.

The first forty minutes or so are – as you would expect – a harrowing recreation of the bombing and the crime.

The performances are pitch perfect, particularly that of Marceau, who is superb in riding through the conflicts of the situation and the moments when the strong emotions riding over the niceties finally come to the fore.

Black Mass is ultimately a decent film with some great parts, but unfortunately it falls short of the canon to which it aspires.

There are moments in the film that just feel wrong, sometimes complex and wrong and sometimes just plain wrong.

This affectionate portrait in failure is more in the tone of Darren Aronofky's Venice winner The Wrestler, carried mainly by a brilliantly swollen performance by Schrieber, full of humour and bluff and yet with an intelligence to learn his lessons, slowly, but learn them.

Even at ninety minutes Popstar feels too long. The funniest moments are the songs.

Kore-eda has unquestionably added a new, intriguing angle to his meditation on family life in contemporary Japan.

Crimes of the Future still has its strengths. Howard Shore’s score lends a tragic, almost stately emotional counterpoint to the steel of the wit.

Seidl is a filmmaker of both talent and merit, but the blatant manipulation of his subjects and the nakedness of his own intentions and dribbling fascination make In the Basement irrelevant as a comment on Austrian society as a whole, and only passingly interesting as an unsurprising picture of what some very odd people do in the privacy of their own homes.

It's gorgeous, lush and fun, but there's an underlying silliness to the endeavour which, despite occasional archness, constantly threatens to trivialise events.

The acting throughout is supremely naturalistic, and the social milieu of both family life and the theatre are carefully observed and lightly rendered.

The House By the Sea is ultimately a deeply satisfying and occasionally moving experience.

An earnest, forensic examination into the slaying of the Israeli Prime Minister.

There are moments of real wonder and delight and Quentin Blake's original illustrations are occasionally glimpsed in the set ups. This isn't an epic of visual wizardry and there's zero irony or clever wit. Rather, Spielberg's latest is an old-fashioned children's tale told simply and with plenty of heart.

The Danish Girl is as handsome yet disappointingly flat as a painting on a chocolate box. It should certainly be applauded for bringing to light an unsung hero of the transgenderism, but in its unremitting tastefulness and sentimentality - even a beating has beautiful setting and a lovely bit of blood - it ultimately left this reviewer as cold as a dip in a Danish bog.

A neat little thriller which unfortunately never achieves plausibility.