Leslie Felperin

It all could be too much reality to handle if it weren’t for the fact that mercifully, the film ends on a hopeful note, with the most wicked characters punished for their sins and the good given a second chance. It’s undoubtedly something of a fairy-tale ending, but the kind we need these days.

Thanks to the director’s magisterial knack with actors (especially non-professionals such as terrific adolescent discovery Nykiya Adams, who, as the protagonist, is in nearly every frame of the film), the result is quite entrancing.

The mechanics of revealing who’s behind it all creak like under-oiled hinges.

Alas, the film is an inept, ill-made mess — or as my grandmother would call it, a mishegoss, so muddled and misbegotten it’s hard to perform an evidential postmortem, based strictly on one viewing, of where it all goes wrong.

There’s a bit of soft-core humping and salty talk to break up the tedium, a phenomenon that’s fast disappearing from most mainstream films. The ripe naffness on show makes it somehow entertaining, especially as you can tell the film knows it’s naff.

I can think of few documentaries that are more honest, self-scrutinising and revelatory about ageing, familial love and its limits, and the whole tragicomic process of dying.

While the core conceit is sort of cute, Razooli really can’t direct actors who aren’t already seasoned with prior experience.

The result is a finely observed study of modern manners and mores on a micro-budget that’s nevertheless rich in feeling, especially the cringeiness one might experience from watching other people bicker or hearing people have sex through thin walls.

Sometimes it feels like a cross between a film studies lecture and what happens when you leave YouTube to keep autoplaying while the all-powerful algorithm suggests more and more content.

Back to Black is, like its heroine, flawed and fallible but frequently very affecting.

Writer-director Goran Stolevski’s Housekeeping for Beginners (Domakinstvo za pocetnici) is a fizzy, huggable portrait of a self-made, roughly blended queer family.

Ultimately, the characters’ motivations, like their titular instinct, are weakly delineated, but viewers are well-advised not to worry their pretty little heads about any of that and just concentrate on the pantsuits.

Amusing, uplifting and about as sugary and teeth-sabotaging as caramelized popcorn, The Beautiful Game celebrates the healing power of team sports for those who might feel more pushed to society’s margins by misfortune or choice.

It’s a work suffused with emotional tones and shades, surprisingly not all of them sad even though the subject knew at the time of filming he had mere weeks left before he’d die of cancer.

The section where Lillian tumbles down a film-making rabbit hole is by far the most amusing.

All the characters are rounded, fallible and likable in equal measure, and even if the score is a bit syrupy, it’s a pleasant, engaging watch.

The film gets across the weird weight of lockdown, a time of tension and anxiety but also an opportunity for creative growth none of us saw coming.

Cabrini’s story is rather absorbing and the film offers a lushly mounted portrait of life in 1880s New York, when immigration was just as much of a contentious issue as it is today.

The rhetoric here is slippery as a Pentecostal snake bathed in holy snake oil, to the point where you almost have to admire the film-makers’ tenacity – especially when it comes to swirly-whirly visual effects showing near-abstract pearly gates and deities presenting themselves as rays of luminosity, like celestial lightbulbs.

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.

Given no one is a novelist or a poet or a filmmaker here, this represents a bit of an adventure for Hong beyond his usual milieu. That said, this is still profoundly slight stuff, thin and ineffable as mist.

Director Gonzalo López-Gallego creates a strong frame around the characters in both visual and narrative terms, while a lovely score credited to Remate, mixed with well-chosen soundtrack cuts, creates a limpid poignancy.

The stars are toothsome and have a fizzy chemistry, while the ending is surprisingly poignant for all its corniness.

It’s sort of impressive how much director Simone Scafidi allows Argento’s dark side to show through all the hype about his genius.

It’s thrilling to see the iconically ugly Transamerica Pyramid skyscraper get trashed in the finale, but otherwise the look of the film is pretty generic.

Sure, it’s entirely possible that the film will find a constituency who will love its mirthless, shouty performances, its tortured random plot twists and its appallingly shonky-looking CGI. But there is also a distinct possibility audiences will turn up their noses at this like it’s a fresh litter box deposit.

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 film’s best decision is to cast the great Ralph Ineson as an ambiguous local figure of note. With his basso profundo rumble of a voice and air of rough-hewn potency, he’s always a striking figure on stage and screen.