Liam Lacey

Bad history it may be, but Elizabeth is a movie that makes you want more, as it plays to the myth of history's great actress-monarch, a character who puts today's tinselly political heros and heroines (royal and not), to shame.

Once you get past the clinical mis-en-scène and the voyeuristic surprise, the story is the usual A Star Is Born showbiz rollercoaster of big dreams, success, and disillusionment.

Even a politically naive film critic can see that An Inconvenient Truth isn't only about science or economics; it's also about ideology.

Both the most bewildering of the three movies and also the most brutally compelling.

Lady Vengeance is more than half over before we discover the object of Geum-Ja's hatred: a kindergarten teacher named Mr. Baek. He's played by Choi Min-sik, the prisoner in "Old Boy," and here he's as tepid as he was heated in that film.

It feels like one long non-sequitur -- like closing a Charles Bronson film with a disco medley -- but there's an emotional consistency to Kitano's boisterous celebration of movement.

Nicchiarelli’s film makes a case that Nico’s instability and bleakness was no pose.

Tuned in to the anarchic wisecracks and slapstick humour of traditional Warner Bros. cartoons. In contrast to the computer-generated characters and slick script of a movie like "Shrek," Lilo and Stitch still feels like a cartoon aimed at kids, not their parents.

What makes Crude worthy of the overused term “epic” is the way the case symbolizes a host of contemporary issues: the iron-fistedness of multinational corporations; environmental despoliation; the disappearance of indigenous cultures; and the power of celebrity and the media to influence justice.

After proceeding through the childhood epiphanies and observed details, Branagh’s memory journey stumbles in the last act as he attempts to elevate the material into scenes of climactic magical realism.

But it’s Rooney who commands the most attention. As she already proved in David Fincher’s "The Social Network" and "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," she has an oddly fascinating screen presence, suggesting both vulnerability and inscrutable levels of calculation. Few actors or actresses can make inexpressiveness look so smart.

Dive into a masterpiece.

Blindspotting is a first film, a busy jumble of thoughts and urgent feelings: The humour is sometimes corny, the surreal fantasies strained and the dramatization of racial privilege unsubtle. Yet the level of ambition here, the commitment to try to say so much, is fresh and exciting.

May not have the most sophisticated narrative, but it is one of the most spectacular and masterly demonstrations of animation in screen history.

At least as perplexing as it is creepy, with a time-jumping narrative, a chain of barely connected characters and an enraged shape-shifting ghost.

Captures some of the spirit of the real Che.

While there are a few credibility hurdles here (including a lot of butter-fingered gunplay) Patton’s authoritative performance keeps things honest.

There is little chance for the movie's talented stars, Day Lewis and Emily Watson (Breaking the Waves) to establish and develop their characters, beyond their set-piece declarations of love.

A formulaic thriller, treated in a style that's just shy of outright parody.

Ozon’s film evolves less as a procedural story than a character study.

The confluence of poverty, dysfunctional parenting and poor educational prospects makes the oft-idealized small-town life look like an incubator for failure, no matter how high and spectacular the Fourth of July fireworks fly.

There is much to admire and contemplate in Martin Eden, including Marinelli’s performance, the marvelous range of faces that appear onscreen, the disorienting time shifts and melancholic seascapes that form many backdrops. While the tension between Martin’s right-wing superman fantasies and working-class status is a rich field, it’s not obvious that there’s a coherent intellectual framework behind the collage of beautiful moments.

An unusually smartly written and performed American independent film.

Serves to champion human irrepressibility and unpredictability. It's the flip side to the defeatism of "Distant," but with parallels, both in the very deliberate pacing and moments of visual wit.

Their excitement is infectious and the entire endeavour both mind-bending and tremendously human: Near the end, Peter Higgs, the recent Nobel Prize-winner and one of the scientists who first predicted the particle back in 1964, is seen in Switzerland watching the data results come in, while a tear trickles down his cheek.

Everything about Mid-August Lunch is simple and unpretentious, from the black-out scene transitions to the folk-dance score, as the four isolated, elderly women, over a couple of days and meals, become a circle of companions.

Ruizpalacio’s purpose is to present the harried workplace as a microcosm of American capitalism, its obsession with abused undocumented immigrants, anger at women’s reproduction rights and devotion to the churning machinery of consumption. The message isn’t new but, in the present moment, the sheer bluntness of the critique feels liberating.

Both an homage to his dad and a backstage story rich in Hollywood lore.