Mike McCahill

Sifting six years’ worth of rubble, al-Kateab turns up beauty and one earthly miracle to set alongside the horrors, but horrors there are.

The actors are committed – Mara, generally waif-like, appears frail indeed – but there’s barely anything worth committing to.

Longinotto and editor Ollie Huddleston stitch it, with lightness and dexterity, into a wholly edifying, often stirring tapestry of survivors’ stories.

What this exceptionally lucid film-survey reveals is what has to go on at ground level, and beneath the surface, in order to power a powerhouse.

Like José Luis Guerín's brilliant 2007 curio "In the City of Sylvia," this is one of those rare films that may change the way you view the world.

An unexpected joy.

BellBottom always feels more movie than propaganda – a mission undertaken to offer audiences a good time after the longest and worst time.

McEnroe makes a fascinating focal point.

Though one very sharp montage nails the bewilderment of touring, much of As It Was resembles any other rock doc with an access-all-areas pass, and it has one of those contractual-obligation climaxes designed to dovetail with the wider promotion of new material. It benefits considerably from a subject who’s bolstered his charisma with a newfound humility, an awareness of the world beyond the Roman nose.

This thoroughly emo body-swap fantasia, a sizable hit on home turf, demonstrates that [Makoto Shinkai] inherited much of his [Hayao Miyazaki's] artistry and charm, but not yet his narrative mastery – nor, crucially, that magic that distinguishes lasting artworks from well-drawn ’toons for teens.

Eid proves a dolefully expressive lead, and Wolfgang Thaler’s ever eloquent camerawork is as fascinated by the discovery of bullet shells in the sand – a clue, and a warning – as it is by the punishingly craggy landscape.

The cast nurdle matters along to the climactic real ale awards, which becomes the scene of current cinema’s least surprising surprise result.

A social conscience movie with real cinematic bite.

Even by the standards of allowance-snatching half-term filler, this is pretty indifferent.

There is modest craft and genuine heart here, not to mention an eye-catching centrepiece: an actor growing more certain of herself, and more capable than ever of holding an entire picture together – even one as unusual, and sometimes as unlikely, as this.

Star power aside, it’s a modest, reined-in entertainment, rejecting musical numbers for a simple whistled refrain, and clocking in at just two hours.

You emerge from this brutally unsentimental education with your chest pounding and your ears ringing – its radical empathy extends to putting us in not just the same room as its subjects, but the same helpless, despairing position. Some films are made to leave you speechless; for some experiences, there can be no words.

Robertson gives himself and his actors time to ponder the board and build convincing relationships and tensions: he’s especially deft around his younger performers, allowing them to register as distinct, often defiant personalities.

The debutant director applies himself with the same quiet assurance and attention to detail he’s displayed in his acting projects.

Vengeance has powered countless movies over the years, but rarely can it have been given such a thorough – and thoroughly entertaining – showcase as it gets in Wild Tales.

It is perhaps too much the acquired taste (and smell) to appeal to everyone, but it’s distinctive, never dull and – much like its most noxious niffs – difficult to shake.

Winterbottom’s shapeshifting spontaneity has long seemed as much limitation as virtue, characteristic of a filmmaker unable or unwilling to commit to his own better ideas. Here, you feel him hedging around his subject, less out of sensitivity than a constitutional evasiveness, an inability to formulate a clear line of argument.

The film is never less than amiable, and rather more spirited and nonconformist than the Transformers movies.

Many of us have long sensed culture is making a decisive break with the analogue in favour of the (perhaps terminally) online and Fischbach’s film makes that paradigm shift not just visible but visceral; it feels not unlike spending 12 hours on Twitch with all the curtains closed.

The good news is that it remains terrific: punchy, old-school stunt work, crisply uncluttered cutting, and varied, inventive baddie-splattering from the moment Aatami deploys one of those beams to take down a jet fighter.

The movie’s a great night out, but you sense it’ll also become a priceless resource.

It sometimes strays off the beaten track into shapelessness, but Oreck lends individual segments a quiet fascination.

The film’s insidious crawl away from comedy into sweaty waking nightmare is arresting indeed. As is, finally, its insistence that some elements of American life remain too serious to joke about.