John Bleasdale

The delight is in the audacity and surprise of the film.

The film’s strongest element and most necessary comes with Luca Marinelli’s performance.

It seems ridiculous to call a film that is only 73-minutes long an epic, but that is what The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet feels like. Though it should be made clear, by epic there’s nothing grandiose; there is nary a special effect to be seen and hardly a cast of thousands. But at the same time, Argentine filmmaker Ana Katz’s sixth feature encompasses a life and very nearly the end of the world.

This is a good solid three star movie. Which is perhaps where Snyder should be anyway, away from the extremes of deification and vilification. When he’s not trying to be great, he can actually be quite good.

The Capote Tapes show a talent that seemed to go to waste while at the same time teasing us with the possibility that there is more yet to come.

It shows the desperation, the pain and the suffering, but it also reveals the spirit and fortitude of those tasked with caring for the sick.

Doing these usually faceless public servants justice is vitally important. But Totally Under Control somehow feels unfinished.

The alienness of humanity, when seen from another perspective, is evident throughout the film.

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

Not great, not hilarious, but not terrible or awful either.

Avi Belkin’s Mike Wallace Is Here harvests a vast archive of interviews and b-roll footage to create a fascinating profile of a combative, conflicted figure, who nevertheless substantially changed the face of how news was reported.

Ultimately, though it hints at moments of wit, Cuck never feels serious enough to be a convincing character study and not garish enough to head into genre territory. Ultimately, this sordid tale feels both real and inconsequential.

It’s open to debate whether this claustrophobic little parable means something. It’s devilishly clever but there’s a suspicion that this is beautiful calligraphy without words. And yet with the added circumstance of self-isolation, quarantine and quiet four-walled despair, Vivarium will undoubtedly resonate.

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ timely documentary on the Nobel Prize-winning novelist is a persuasive argument for rereading Morrison if you’ve already read her works – and if you haven’t, an imperative to get to it.

An acutely observed and frequently heartbreaking documentary.

Saturday Fiction certainly demands patience, shrouded at first in a smog of exposition.

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

Made up of a series of related but not necessarily connected vignettes, each filmed with a static camera, they resemble New Yorker cartoons scripted by Samuel Beckett.

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

Is The Painted Bird exaggerated? Does it go too far? Does it break the limits of taste? “Yes” on all counts. Walking out is an understandable and valid reaction but watching, getting angry, suffering and approaching understanding is also important too.

It might be that there’s a meatier version of the film – a Carlos-style miniseries perhaps – but as it stands, shifting between a lighthearted caper and more consequential political tragedy, Wasp Network is an entertaining fumble.

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

The film itself is utterly uncontroversial, solid, occasionally stolid, and perfectly fine.

Superficiality soaks the entire film.

Hopefully, Soderbergh’s film will raise more awareness as well as a chuckle.

Phoenix has created a masterful performance for a film which itself feels like a masterpiece: a cracked masterpiece.

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.

At the heart of Marriage Story are two career-best performances from Driver and Johansson. There is sensitivity, wit and intelligence in abundance, and in one barnstorming scene the kind of raw emotional nudity that’s rarely captured on screen: it’s the painful core of the movie which the laughter might ease but can’t erase.