Liam Lacey

The subject may be glum but there is something consistently pleasurable about Mouthpiece, a film that is both audacious in execution and relatable, even for those of us who don't live in women's bodies.

This witty, star-packed and visually splendid kids' movie provides a small-is-beautiful message served on a parodoxically epic scale.

Hanks and young German actress Helena Zengel (Shock System) play off each other faultlessly, with minimal dialogue, relying on gaze, gesture, and tone and we can easily understand how the twice-orphaned Johanna can look into Kidd’s warm, melancholy gaze and recognize a fellow misfit and survivor, accepting him as her protector.

Rude, lewd and occasionally in the nude, The Hangover brings a collection of fresh faces to the familiar raucous male-bonding comedy.

A lazy and mediocre movie, a sort of tepid parody blend of "The Breakfast Club" and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

Slam is a film about rap poetry, romance and gangster culture that blends melodrama, visceral excitement -- and a lot of preaching. [23 Oct 1998, p.D3]

The movie rolls on, with more clever but increasingly repetitive action sequences that entertain, but drain the film of any credible sense of jeopardy.

A love letter to performers who put their egos and bodies on the line.

Ray rambles on for two hours and 40 minutes, mining repetitive episodes like a TV miniseries.

The movie is pretty damned funny in its insubstantial, gratuitously violent, gratuitously everything way.

Though Three Monkeys feels conventional compared with Ceylan's other work, it maintains its auteurist imprint, especially the rich colour palette and suggestive HD camerawork that helped Ceylan take the best-director honours at Cannes this year.

For all its incident, A Royal Affair is slow and picturesquely framed – more of a languorously animated coffee-table book than a gripping drama.

With the words, the coffee-table monochrome images of the aged troubadours hard at joyful labour, and the moody drone shots of the snow-covered New Jersey woods, Letter To You is an opportunity to listen to the new album at a bargain.

While Dark Waters is something of a let-down for a Haynes film, it’s otherwise sturdy enough. One can admire the commitment of Ruffalo, who plays the role of the modest, decent, semi-accidental hero without vanity or trite psychology.

This is B-movie material all the way, yet it's not only watchable, it's engrossing. That's because the material is in the hands of an A-talent director, who knows, as few of his contemporaries do, how to manipulate the plastic qualities of a film: the lighting, editing, composition, camera movement and production values.

Ronan, youthfully elegant as always, tries hard, but the material defeats her.

A kind of stealth political film that confronts issues of ethnic tension and American xenophobia.