Leslie Felperin

Technically this is competent if not remarkable film-making.

A lot of ideas about class, post-imperialism and spiritual values peek up out of the surface of the text, but they're not developed with much rigor compared to what Diop conjured with more intensity and less time in A Thousand Suns. All the same, this is a striking work.

As a teaching and consciousness-raising tool, it will be an indispensable resource.

Don't tell anyone I said this, but the result is not only pleasingly emotionally purgative, but also has some elements worthy of genuine admiration, despite the fact that the third word in the title is one that should now be entirely banished from the English language for its precious, psychobabble connotations.

It’s hard to dislike this pleasant, earnest work.

A little more nuance and historical depth would have been welcome, but this will be serviceable entertainment when it gets to streaming, as long as viewers have a supply on hand.

Nattiv's bio-drama has its flaws, but the performances across the board are outstanding. ... Nevertheless, there's something a bit queasy-making about the film's full-on plunge into melodrama in the last act.

The incessant bloodshed is delivered with imaginative aplomb in this witty reboot of the 90s trash franchise.

Pure dead gallus (that's Scots for 'wonderful').

But we’re not fooled. This is an elaborate Dadaist joke, the funniest part of which is that it’s not in the least bit funny.

Enigmatic but oddly entrancing feature debut.

It’s clear that they want to run it as meritocratically as possible, but what’s interesting is how the criteria for what talent is and who gets to judge it come up for debate.

Undeniably uplifting, even if the string-laden score strains too hard to tweak the tear ducts, this US-made documentary tracks a running group of recovering addicts and paroled convicts who train for marathons together.

Wickedly funny, fascinating and niftily made.

It all works pretty well until the abrupt ending lets all the air out of the balloon. The dream-team pairing of Abbott and Wasikowska, two of the most interesting, subtle and risk-loving performers of their generation, is a huge compensation.

Even the most racing-averse auds will have to agree this entertaining whiz around the 2010 Isle of Man TT racing event puts across the thrill of the sport.

[It] will evoke comparisons for many with The Babadook, and while this is more generically conventional than Jennifer Kent's breakout thriller, it still taps potently into parental anxieties and primal fears.

The cast commit gamely to the material, although the script is a bit underwritten, making sudden shifts in character a little odd and a bit random.

Audaciously cerebral and unabashedly granular, writer-director Scott Z. Burns' political thriller The Report, a dramatization of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee's 2014 probe into the CIA's use of torture in the wake of 9/11, is practically pornography for policy wonks.

Any way you slice it, and even if you're not entirely in agreement with the various subjects' positions on Medicare for all or the Green New Deal, this film is a winner by a landslide.

Remarkably, it never comes across as fawning or hagiographic. Instead, Crosby and his interviewers collaborate to create something that feels honest and insightful.

The book Animals is based on, a well-reviewed literary work originally set in Manchester, has been adapted by the novelist herself, Emma Jane Unsworth. So why does the end result feel so inert and contrived, even if it's exceedingly pretty to look at?

There’s something so fluid, almost nebulous, about its construction that a chasm starts to open up where you would expect to find some kind of unifying thesis.

It’s a thoughtful, honest and touching work, especially for women who love women, and also love canals.

The script’s twists are a little predictable and some might query the way the Jewish characters are essentially noble ciphers. But, given the rise of the far right in Hungary at the moment, this is a timely tussle with a nation’s collective sense of shame.

The big treat is seeing Jett herself talk and watching her still-strong bond with producer and best friend Kenny Laguna: two leather-clad old mates, constantly bickering but inseparable.

This documentary by Morgan Neville reveals that he really was just what he seemed to be at first innocent sight: a kind-hearted, square but saintly man who genuinely loved and understood children.

Hosoda has a lovely, light touch and leavens the proceedings with dry, well-observed humor.

The script crackles with such bleak little jokes like this, relieving the tension in a work that could otherwise prove overwhelmingly depressing and borderline melodramatic.

It is a story seemingly meant to be funny but only fitfully successful in this mission, and way too pleased with its own brand of deadpan wisecracking.

The assembled dames are so smart, witty and strong-willed, it’s a wrench to have to part company from them at the end of the film.

This making-of-a-star drama is old-fashioned and corny, and not in a good way.

Out of Blue is one of those films you're not sure if you really enjoyed viewing, but you're immensely glad that it exists, cheered to know the film industry still has room for maverick, boundary-smudging work like this.

Final Score puts a cheeky British spin on the set-up.

One senses that Billingham is not always at ease with the narrative demands of filmmaking. But his startling eye for the common made strange is very visible here, and hard not to hope that he’ll make further forays into filmmaking after this very auspicious debut with a work that feels so close and true to his earlier material.

The frequent zigzagging back and forth between the 2010s, the present, the early 2000s and Arulpragasam's childhood becomes quite dizzying over the long haul, and the film almost starts to feel like a work that's gotten lost in the editing suite as the director and subject struggle to say everything about globalism, fame, identity and whatever else comes into their heads, until the film is at risk of saying nothing much at all.

The end result is pleasant but bland.

The look is cute, deceptively simple and suggestive of the illustrations in children’s books, however, the 2D minimalism is executed with a high degree of craft. It is hard to make something like this look so easy and effortless.

For all the faith-based platitudes baked into the script, it has to be conceded that directing brothers Andrew and Jon Erwin steer the ship steadily and draw out sincere and persuasive performances from Finley, who really can sing gloriously well, and Quaid, who even with a now ravaged visage is still just as dangerous, compelling and sexy as ever.

Stubby’s minimal anthropomorphism makes him a believably doggy sort of dog, whose expressions and behaviour clearly indicate that the animators spent many hours studying the real thing.

A friend who watched this with me said that it’s the kind of film she’d like to see again when she’s dying. That pretty much nails its meditative, melancholy tone and suits the kind of work Goldsworthy does, which is all about the ephemeral and the enduring; time and the tactile qualities of the instant.

Parker, a more competent and imaginative director than Mamma Mia!’s stage-show holdover Phyllida Lloyd, likes to assemble the musical numbers in such a way as to recall the very earliest days of pop videos, with snappy editing or Busby Berkeley-style overhead shots of choreography veering on abstraction.

As a film this is anything but banal, and operates as a potent reminder of the randomness, and casual cruelty of modern terrorism, the way it leeches out the humanity of victims and perpetrators on both sides.

On a beat-by-beat basis, writer-director Matt Palmer’s feature debut skates close to the edge of cliche – only to swerve suddenly in an interesting new direction almost every time.

Half the Picture is a vital, comprehensive documentary on a subject that's so fundamental to the industry it's about, you have to wonder why dozens of movies on this scale or bigger haven't already been made.

The flavorful cast inhabit vividly drawn characters, and, perhaps most of all, the film exudes wall-to-wall, high-grunge atmosphere. That’s a lot of checked-off boxes, and yet the effect is efficiently wild rather than wildly involving, entertaining but not indelible.

[A] simply lovely comedy-drama.

Newton’s storytelling is skittish and a bit too on the nose at times, but his palpable generosity toward his cast is rewarded with committed, passionate turns from the ensemble. However, Nicholson, a performer all-too seldom given a chance to lead, is the big door prize here, offering an intricately layered performance that lifts the whole film up a notch.

Dvortsevoy deserves praise for making a film willing to show a woman ready to do anything she can to live, unafraid if those choices make her character unsympathetic.

Although the narrative is structured through a highly unbelievable instigating conceit — Zain is trying to sue his own parents in court for giving him life in the first place — Labaki lures such outstanding performances out of the almost entirely non-professional cast and sketches such a credible view of this wretchedly poor milieu that the flaws are mostly forgivable.

At heart, it's more concerned with capturing the feel of the early '80s, the paranoia but also spirit of communal life in crowded apartment blocks.

Ultimately, Loznitsa builds up a portrait of a bitter clockwork world where the faces of the doomed are above all part of a landscape.

Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski's latest film, is bittersweet and unbearably lovely, a sad ballad of two lovers who can't stand to stay apart but also sometimes can't stand each other either.

British thriller Beast takes a fistful of tired old tropes — like a hunt for a serial killer, and the ‘ol Joe Eszterhas-style is-he-or-isn’t-he-a-baddie tease — and manages to fashion something fresh, fierce and quite striking from them.

One can never quite tell with Dumont if he’s deadly serious about all this or laughing up his sleeve. That’s sort of what makes his work fascinating, although in this instance, viewer patience is severely tested.

Adams displays terrific range and an incandescent screen presence as she effortlessly incarnates Shante over a 10-year period, from puberty to young motherhood.

A documentary that, like its subject, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is eminently sober, well-mannered, highly intelligent, scrupulous and just a teeny-weeny bit reassuringly dull.

This woman, for all her flaws, is clearly a warrior first and foremost.

Perhaps fittingly given the downturn in the repetitive final act, over the long haul the joke starts getting old in every sense.

Thanks to inventive camerawork, mesmeric performances and incisive yet elliptical editing and storytelling, the claustrophobia becomes a feature instead of a liability.

No matter when the action is set, some things never change in Park’s world. Nor should they.

It’s commonly thought that artists seldom make stories about happy, stable marriages because where’s the drama in that? Ethel & Ernest, a deeply affecting feature-length animated film, disproves that assumption by unfurling an emotionally rich story about the lifelong marital love affair between two kindly, modest people living in an inconspicuous corner of suburban England.

An airy, prettily accoutered but essentially vapid feature debut for writer-director Stephanie De Giusto.

With its creepy music and only-just-adequate performances, this will serve nicely at future slumber parties for thrill-seeking tweens.

The script’s nuanced treatment of the complex relationships and a feel for the many-faceted, multicultural city in which it’s set – a unique urban blend of hedonism and tradition, bound together by hummus and history – redeem any shortcomings.

This arresting work, starring Margaret Qualley, Julianne Nicholson and Melissa Leo as well as a celestial choir of up-and-coming young female actors, mesmerizes as it probes a uniquely female-dominated milieu where passions — both religious, sexual and a combination of the two — run hot under those starched, lily-white coifs and black habits.

Davis and Kaye’s script lacks the black humor and high-wire comic timing that made The Celebration such a breakthrough, and the antics of the three main leads just become a bit sordid, inexplicable and oddly tiresome by the end, even though the performances are admirably committed.

Despite the strain of what they go through together, Beatriz and Stahl-David have a combustible chemistry together that adds credibility and Thompson clearly has a knack with actors, coaxing sharp, believable performances from all involved — even from actors with relatively small roles.

Every bit as perfectly tuned, cruelty-free funny and kind-hearted as its predecessor, maybe even more so.

Although the treacly soundtrack overpunches on the sentiment at times, this is undeniably moving stuff – especially scenes where some of the doctors see footage of patients they helped save, still very much alive and thriving today.

Writer-director Attila Till’s plucky comedy-drama isn’t quite the radical representation of disability it seems to think it is, but has its heart in the right place.

This is certainly an entertaining-enough watch, even for those without much rooting interest in Gaga.

Unfortunately, something at the center just doesn’t hold, and it flies apart over the course of 133 minutes into confusing shards of plot, legalese-heavy monologues and, perhaps most surprising of all given Gilroy’s bona fides, a touch of soggy sentimentality in the home stretch.

The dry, strictly observational shooting style means the doc stays in the moment and rarely ventures out of the room where the programme unfolds, adding immediacy.

This exquisite, exemplary science documentary, directed by Irish editor turned helmer Emer Reynolds, recounts the rich and fascinating story of the Voyager mission, arguably Nasa’s finest, noblest contribution to scientific understanding.

This is yet another hyper-competent, boyishly devil-may-care character that offers Cruise, famous for his derring-do on set, a chance to do his own stunts and fly a plane; it’s not a role all that far out of the ageing megastar’s wheelhouse.

Salty, sweet and fun to chew over — sort of like taffy, but not so hard on the dental work — Fun Mom Dinner is a palatable addition to that growing subgenre of bawdy, female-centric comedies.

The set-up is a bit schmaltzy and the only guesswork is how bitter the bittersweet ending will be, but Haro coaxes strong performances from the cast.

The extemporized feel to some of the dialogue makes their rapport seem all the more credible and consequently there is something open-hearted and friendly about the performers that keeps the film watchable, for all its faults.

Although the story unfolds at a steady pace over two hours, the filmmaking is sufficiently elegant and metronomically efficient as to make every minute gripping, especially after the tragic twist halfway through the story.