Jonathan Romney

This debut feature by French director Clément Cogitore has a highly suggestive philosophical agenda, but at the same time functions as a gripping, subtly eerie drama which keeps you guessing even while it maintains its supernatural (or theological) undertow simmering beneath the surface.

A compelling drama that transcends its generic roots.

This small, engaging film doesn’t offer much in the way of introduction to Birkin for non-initiates - there’s nothing about her acting career, for example. But for the devoted audience of a star who can – for once – genuinely be called an icon, the film offers a tender and quite illuminating portrait of a mother-daughter relationship seen both within, and far away from, the public sphere of celebrity.

The film’s magnetic centre is a strong performance from Vysotskaya, working from a base line of initial testiness to rising anxiety and terror in face of the oppression that she realises she has been enabling.

A stripped-down drama built around a powerful and sometimes troubling performance by Christopher Plummer.

Amalric, these days persuasively settling into scuffed middle-aged roles, is effective as ever, but still maintains an anxious look; while Roy’s sometimes ethereal presence strikes a forceful but delicate note as a woman who is at once facing a mystery and who is at the same time a mystery herself.

While some may find Bang Gang a calculatedly chic opening salvo for a feature career, it carries a genuine emotional charge, and overall Husson shows she means business.

It’s basically espionage adventure, but with a science fiction backbone: Nolan ups the ante on “Mission: Impossible” by making the impossibility not just physical but quantum physical. And he goes about it expertly, bullishly and with giddily perverse intent to bewilder.

Tibetan road movie Jinpa is a playful, gently perplexing and distinctly stylish fifth feature from director Pema Tseden.

It’s very much its own thing, intelligent and inventive if somewhat ragged round the edges

What gives the film its emotional continuity is a commandingly downbeat performance from Servillo.

While the urgency of the message emerges powerfully, the details are often hard to absorb, as Gibney skips from political information to technical specs.

Michael Thomas’ imposing performance will be the hook for a film that, while executed with Seidl’s typical steely control, might strike his followers as being a touch too familiar – while non-adepts will find its darker dimensions altogether too bleak for comfort.

Colours of Time nudges its audience a little heavily, if cheerfully so, with its historical references, and self-confessedly (as per an end title) plays fast and loose in its accuracy, but is genially inventive in messing with the codes of period cinema.

A promising and emotionally mature romantic drama from British writer-director Harry Wootliff.

Certainly the film comes across in its revved-up, fragmented, ramshackle way as a modern Russian epic – with Limonov as a unique anomalous individual, yet at the same time somehow exemplifying the contradictions and neuroses of a tormented modern nation. He also comes across as a human, flawed figure, self-aggrandising, self-pitying, sometimes helplessly romantic.

A work that is uneven in form but arresting in content and especially vital as a commentary on contemporary African society, human rights and disability issues.

Rumours doesn’t quite maximise the potential of its incongruous encounter between the living dead and the great and good, or between urbane boardroom satire and psychotropic freakiness. What sustains it, though, are the performances, performed with relish by an ensemble cheerfully riffing on national stereotypes.

Like the bullets and bomb blasts that punctuate the narrative, Donbass only sometimes hits its target, but even so, it’s clearly the work of a director with an angry message to get across, in an idiosyncratically caustic way.

The Brutalist is defiantly its own kind of construction, but longueurs and narrative inertia make it not quite the resounding statement it aspires to be.

Dedicated, an end caption tells us, to the victims of martial law, Season of the Devil may be one of Diaz’s more downbeat, even languid works, but it’s no less angry and intense a cri de coeur, albeit one that’s often challenging to connect with.

In the hands of Romain Gavras – music video wiz and maker of 2010’s eccentric Our Day Will Come – and with a mischievously cast giving its best, the result is ebullient enough to feel fresh.

Laxe maintains rising tension throughout, although to frustratingly inconclusve effect and somewhat at the cost of conventional dramatic satisfactions, but the boldness of the undertaking will appeal mightily to cinephiles hungry for movies that take real risks.

It’s clear that this one is waving a flag for the positive possibilities of an empathetic, culture-centred approach to mental care.

While this is essentially a fireside chat atmospherically shot, Hopper/Welles is recommended viewing for anyone remotely interested in either personality, or in the history of American cinema.

Standing Tall can’t be faulted for energy and for seriousness - and offers a rare case of a troubled-teen drama in which the justice system is seen as entirely benevolent, and a source of succour to troubled souls.

Shirley will find an eager audience at a cultural moment which increasingly values emotional expression. But many will find the film an over-rich brew that arguably stresses Jackson’s visionary inspiration at the expense of the craft, canniness and lucidity of a writer whose work was characterised by supreme control, even if her troubled life wasn’t.

It’s McKirnan’s unflappable performance and energetic humour that hold it all together.