John Bleasdale

It's all so random and the 3D Kodachrome colours, poised performances and careful framing can't disguise the fact that The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez has very little to say.

The Age of Shadows is a bloody and breathtaking piece of filmmaking which confirms that Kim can do pretty much anything.

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

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.

Paradoxically, the wide-eyed awe produces a narrow vision, heavy on the photogenic, with modern life corralled onto a SIM card and loaded with a platitudinous inquisition.

Amirpour is a talented director with a wonderful eye but her style lacks substance and her obvious influences - the Mad Max franchise and the wonderful LQ Jones film A Boy and his Dog - are so superior as to almost completely nullify her derivative contribution to the genre.

One More Time with Feeling is a bold poem in itself, a portrait of the artist struggling to understand the essentially incomprehensible.

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

Despite some imperfections, Arrival is a close encounter with the best of intelligent, thoughtful science fiction.

Adapted by Cianfrance himself, The Light Between Oceans feels overly tied to its previous form.

For all its postmodern smarts, La La Land has a heart as big as its Cinemascope screen. This is primarily down to the two leads, without their performances it would only be an empty, if impressive, exercise in dizzying technical skill and style.

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

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 performances are fine across the board and Nørgaard keeps things moving efficiently, but this is stylish but televisual fare, ram-packed with familiar hardboiled and shopworn tropes.

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

The President has an urgent relevance to all too many countries around the world, including those touched by the Arab Spring; a darkly comic and poignant portrait of an Ozymandian fall from grace and the subsequent damage that ensues.

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

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.

This is a rich and complex take on guilt and anger.

A dark and slightly hysterical portrait of fundamentalist fever.

Guiraudie's humour is self-referential and at times hilarious. His tendency to shock might seem adolescent but he's also careful to identify taboos that perhaps shouldn't be taboos at all.

Though the farce is occasionally funny, it's as bloated and windy as its comedy policeman Inspector Machin.

At almost three hours, Puiu's latest is as long as most family events are, but the observations made are brilliantly bright and there is love here, after all.

A superb character study of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The whole set-up risks being all too winsome, but Jarmusch has always been a quiet punk: his most radical assertion is believing, despite everything, in the essential goodness of people.

Gnecco has both breadth and subtlety. His Neruda is a complex and fascinating character study, a man fastidiously vain of his status but unconvinced by his own performance even as he enraptures a nation.

Penn's film doesn't entertain greatly nor does it have much coherent to say.

The nighttime tungsten orange of the street lighting and the urine-coloured neon of the interiors makes for a grueling visual experience which is why the daylight of the latter-half offers precious relief.

Following the disappointing period dalliance of Jimmy's Hall, Ken Loach's latest I, Daniel Blake is something of a return to form. It stands as a succinct and furious raging against the dying of the light, or more accurately the snuffing of the light by a privatised and punitive system more intent on lowering the figures than caring for those in need.

The film reveals its twists and turns with a delicate hand and always manages to stay one step ahead of the audience, even as most of those watching will surrender to the hypnotic erotic charge that runs through the film.

The material is weak, overly familiar and cliché-ridden. Dolan throws the cinematic sink at it but his latest feels like a shorter, not particularly watchable sequel to August, Osage County.

Despite treading some familiar territory, British director David Mackenzie's new film Hell or High Water proves itself a brilliantly executed, sharply written genre gem.

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

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.

It should confirm Nichols' reputation as a mature filmmaker of great tact and intelligence.

The fact of the matter is that Refn has now become so predictably shocking that the truly shocking thing for him to do would be to make a film without attempting to shock.

A run-of-the-mill, plodding drama, the 'social realism' of which never feels particularly real.

There are numerous delights for the patient and the two leads give prize-worthy performances but at just under three hours this is one drawn-out gag that almost outstays its welcome.

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.

Eisenberg avoids, for the most part, doing a Woody Allen impersonation, but his bumbling guilelessness is wearing and Stewart seems out of place, unable to ever quite get over being Kristen Stewart in a Woody Allen movie. In fact, both young leads seem nervous to have been invited and often appear simply pleased to be there.

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.

The Wait consistently defies common sense in order to sustain the thin narrative.

The dénouement when it comes doubles down on the madness and 11 Minutes is never boring, but neither is it quite as revolutionary as it thinks it is.

Sweet Red Bean Paste is a modest film which seeks profundity in the detail of life.

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.

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

Its aspirations to high-end production values and the inventive use of urban cityscapes filmed from carefully selected futuristic angles are all very well, but it could have done with something a little looser, more punk, more grimy, more stoned.

All of this is intoned with such a humourless sense of self-importance that anyone who genuinely loves their music (such as this reviewer who [full disclosure] would rate Funeral and Neon Bible as two of the best albums of recent years) finds themselves alternately stuffing their fingers in their ears or, when it gets too excruciating, their elbows.

The thoughtfulness of Plummer's performance is not matched by a script that forgets human logic in favour of narrative tricksiness that ultimately undermines the initially intriguing premise.

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

Although the narrative risks becoming arbitrarily episodic towards the end, Neon Bull is a genuine celebration of its characters and their grounded physical life as well as their obstinate ability to dream.

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

Francofonia is a chatty and occasionally brilliant rumination on art, history and death.

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

The Childhood of a Leader is a dark, enigmatic piece of work that hovers between visionary greatness and petty domestic triviality. Corbet's inaugural stint behind the camera marks a stunning debut.

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

Doremus doesn't appear to take the world he has created at all seriously. The rules shift and bend, are observed - or aren't - according to the exigency of the narrative, which ultimately renders the whole exercise fundamentally unconvincing and fatally irksome.

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

The acting throughout is superb, with Swinton sitting back and watching with obvious pleasure as Fiennes gnaws up the scenery and beach furniture with genuine vim. Schoenaerts once again proves himself a charismatic and compelling actor alongside the excellent Johnson.

Anomalisa might be bizarre, surreal and far out, but it always feels paradoxically real, grounded and deeply true.

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.

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

Fukunaga and his actors - especially the two leads - have managed to create a riveting drama which is suitably appalling.

Ultimately, Everest is not concerned with the why, but with the how and it's grimly efficient at building up the drama, helped on by Clarke's wonderful character study, even if the film as a whole never quite reaches the dizzying heights of its subject.

An entertaining and suitably gruesome gangster thriller which nevertheless feels like a missed opportunity.

An expertly handled and brilliantly performed feel-good comedy with an original twist.

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

Rams is a truly remarkable, eccentric work.

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.

Like the Barry Lyndon of martial arts movies, every shot has been composed, lit and executed with such care and attention by Hou and his cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-Bing that The Assassin is totally absorbing in its spectacle, from the meticulous details of the interiors to the astonishing, breathtaking locations, from forests and waterfalls, to mountainsides and in one unforgettable moment cliff tops.

Son of Saul is not simply a good film, it feels like an urgent and important one, a warning from history.

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.

Artfully, his films tracks the tragic decline of a good man gone bad, who finds murder too insignificant not to do again and again, a worthy addition to William Shakespeare's ever growing filmography.

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.