Leslie Felperin

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.