Leslie Felperin

An overview of African-American gospel sounds whose dazzling talent-display should exhilarate viewers regardless of religious leanings.

All In offers compelling visual history and civics lessons that will still serve an educational purpose long after the next presidential inauguration.

Admittedly, there are a lot of documentaries like this, made by citizen journalists recording uprisings in their homelands, but this is one of the best of the recent crop, and a timely reminder of a conflict that's slipped out of the headlines of late.

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.

The last half hour, so finely underplayed, is quietly devastating.

[A] striking and auspicious feature debut ... Saint Maud seeds the clouds with an eclectic mix of influences, but it works, creating a film with its own strange weather.

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.

Berg’s account of the child abuse cases that led to the imprisonment of Warren Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), doesn’t reveal much that hasn’t already been in the news or written up in books, but it does provide a comprehensive, disturbing and utterly fascinating historical overview.

The endgame is disappointingly predictable, but writer-director-cinematographer Jeremy Saulnier has a lovely touch with faces, light and telling details.

Director Jill Soloway's comedy-drama isn't perfect – the leitmotif about open eyes feels over-workshopped, and the ending's a bit pat – but it nails with self-lacerating precision the manners and mores of a certain type of hipster parent, the bourgeoisie's muddled attitudes towards sex workers, and the precarious foundations of friendship.

Like a lot of topline Korean films, this prestige action thriller is a little too long at 137 minutes, but it’s consistently entertaining throughout, and quite well-suited given the length to being viewed on a streaming platform.

Writer-director Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor’s script leans perhaps a little too hard on the show-don’t-tell theory of construction, but she and her team make evocative use of simple but effective flourishes.

Hardcore Ozon fans will have fun arguing about where exactly this falls in the ranking of his substantial body of work, but it’s surely somewhere in the top 10 or even the top five, a rock-solid demonstration of his control over storytelling, technique and ability to get the best from actors.

It does serve as a handy summary for those who want a cinematic introduction to Bell’s sprawling, singular story.

The most affecting moments in the film are in more intimate settings.

Although not as strikingly original as Bujalski’s earlier work, there’s something endearing about the characters, the film’s laconic, stoner rhythms and quirky plotting. In the end, it has something wise and kind to say about loneliness and the cult of personal improvement.

The cast commit enthusiastically to the material, walking that fine line between comic exaggeration and an almost earnest dramatic sincerity.

Not a word is spoken throughout, which harkens back to an older era of cinematic storytelling. At the same time, the extreme frame-to-frame fluidity of the computer-assisted animation style, composed entirely of fields of subtly modulated colour, no outlines and minimal modelling, looks completely 21st century.

It’s all a lot, as they say, but those with a taste for maximalism will swoon over the goods on offer here.

Youth (the parenthetical subtitle Spring heralds a projected series of films) is consistently engaging, even if it’s not always easy to see what the whole package is trying to say that couldn’t be said with more brevity.

The camera’s gaze isn’t pitiless but there isn’t a scrap of sentimentality – just an unflinching willingness to look at all of life straight on, without blinking.

Wim Wenders’ latest documentary Anselm offers a mesmerizing, cinematic catalogue of German painter-sculptor Anselm Kiefer’s deeply tactile, maximalist oeuvre.

By the end it’s nearly impossible not to shed a tear after the touching finesse and shape of this story.

This is not a cuddly version of Godzilla. He is rageful and entirely incomprehensible, seemingly not even motivated by hunger, desire or revenge. Like a god, he just is, an entity that has become death, the destroyer of worlds, as ineluctable as history itself.

Packaged as a standalone film, this fascinating and sensitively handled accounting shines a light on the abuse scandal that was exposed by the Indianapolis Star's investigative reporting into USA Gymnastics (USAG).

There is a fair number of gags and wisecracks that will go over the head of many viewers not steeped in the local lore, argot and history. But the film’s infectious energy, use of in-camera effects, animation and all manner of jiggery pokery is as mesmerizing and giddy as it was when Danny Boyle used many of the same tricks for Trainspotting.

The Nest lingers long after the final credits. It may not have the same surprising newness that juiced the debut of Martha Marcy, but it casts an ineffable spell nevertheless.

It brings into focus not just the painful losses of loved ones and homes, but the sheer daunting scale of logistical planning, fundraising and negotiation with bureaucracies needed to rebuild the community.