Kate Taylor

Wonder Woman may not qualify as a particularly suspenseful First World War movie and it may not feature enough globe-spinning special effects to satisfy hard-core superhero fans, but it certainly is an intriguing combination of the two genres.

Natasha is, in fact, a deceptive and delicate coming-of-age piece – deceptive because it exposes a troubling underside, delicate because it does so with a measured and quiet intelligence.

Realism will only take you so far, and Stronger eventually opts for a conventional tale of rekindled romance and resurgent resilience.

The results are highly affecting – so much so, that viewers who suffer from motion sickness may find the film hard to watch. If the approach feels empathetic rather than pretentious, it’s thanks to a crucial anchor: Willem Dafoe’s subtle and humble performance conjures a pitiable van Gogh, shredded by doubt and estranged from people, yet urgently aware of his painterly vision.

The film is made watchable by a strong cast that renders the men’s vulnerability particularly sympathetic.

Some of these passages, especially a visit to North Korea, are fascinating in their own right but the film does risk getting sidetracked by tangential stories. Nonetheless, this intersection of nature and culture is filled with insight.

Ruben’s story may be as oddly illogical as any of his nightmares, but the animation here is a dreamy delight.

It is extremely difficult to make something as invisible and ineffable as religious faith seem real, let alone touching, on film; doing that is only one of the achievements of Fernando Meirelles’ unusual look inside the papacy.

So, romance-novel boilerplate that sounded clichéd on the page becomes outright laughable as it's transferred to the screen.

Wright's Darkest Hour is filled with many lush examples of the pathetic fallacy, which doesn't totally disguise the awkward truth that this is a film mainly about meetings.

Disney’s live-action revival of the Beauty and the Beast franchise is nothing if not lively, albeit occasionally overwrought: The dinnerware’s number, Be Our Guest, turns into a hallucinogenic sequence worthy of Busby Berkeley.

To watch German documentarian Thomas Heise’s marathon family memoir Heimat is a Space in Time, the viewer has to continually analyze the relationship between text and image.

Today’s YA generation is unlikely to appreciate the monosyllabic performances and stately pace, but Pilote delivers a beautiful film in the tradition of the Quebec canon.

Colette is a satisfyingly conventional biopic about a highly unconventional woman.

Love, Gilda reveals this but does not probe it. With various soft and admiring interviews, it relies mainly on Radner’s own words to hint at how dark things got.

For all that it tells a highly unusual story, Hidden Figures is a classic Hollywood feel-good movie. This has been a year of notable achievement for African-American performers and stories, from the surprising observations about masculinity in Moonlight to the gently told civil-rights saga of Loving. In that sober-sided company, Hidden Figures is a face-licking puppy dog of a film.

As the obscenities of wealth accumulate while a large cast of Asian and Eurasian actors render their many silly characters, the source of the laughter becomes troubling.

Along the way, the narrative does drag at times, but mainly the film slowly and steadily impresses as two excellent reporters – and two excellent actresses, Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan – go about their work.

The charming Johnny Flynn ultimately struggles to find the right tone for the boyfriend, not helped by a director who hasn’t quite mastered the rhythm required for his surprise ending.

With its claustrophobic unity of time and place, the disintegrating party feels highly theatrical and, of various classic screen adaptations from the stage, this wonderfully performed black-and-white film recalls in particular Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." Yet also, Potter's comic dissection of the London intelligentsia's personal and political angst is completely of the moment.

A fine bilingual cast, haunting period detail and a provocative approach to a twisting story carry the day.

The dialogue is often mundane...and the actors' lurching delivery of these lines, often flattened, sometimes speechifying, sometimes rushed, but never naturalistic, forces the viewer to question the point of the action as Lanthimos crafts a dark satire about responsibility, justice and retribution.

It’s ripe to the point of bursting and, with a plot that tilts to melodrama, Davies flirts dangerously with cliché, creating an over-wrought period piece where every wheat field is bathed in golden sunlight and every childbirth is announced by chilling screams.

Directed by Foley’s childhood friend Brian Oakes, the doc does raise some difficult issues – albeit very tactfully.

Based on the 2015 book of the same title, The Hidden Life of Trees is a documentary both simple and startling.

It is a busy narrative machine that raises expectations of a tidy ending; instead Almodóvar offers an artfully mysterious conclusion that seems unearned by the movie that preceded it – except, of course, for that lonely stag.

[A] fascinating documentary.