Neil Smith

Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh create their own sizzle as Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara in a lavish four-hour epic that juxtaposes scenes of jaw-dropping majesty – that aerial shot of the Confederates’ wounded, for example – with moments of elegant intimacy and playful verbal jousting.

Breathlessly tense, thrillingly orchestrated and intellectually complex, this damn fine piece of rigorous, meticulous filmmaking enhances Kathryn Bigelow's status as one of her generation's most accomplished directors.

One great British artist pays tribute to another in a lengthy but rewarding homage that boasts a titanic turn at its centre. Rarely has watching paint dry been so fascinating.

Driver and Johansson face off to stunning effect in Baumbach’s finest feature to date. So good it hurts.

With Huston spending most of the shoot big-game hunting, it’s probably cameraman Jack Cardiff who deserves kudos for turning this odd-couple romance into such a colourful escapade through east Africa.

A spiky, pithy, and unconventional delight.

The H2O theme fits in with the main feature, its tale of a clownfish searching for his son constituting Pixar’s most effective amalgam of comedy, artistry and emotional pull.

A feel good sequel only marmalade haters could resist.

Do not throw away your shot at watching Hamilton’s original cast both make and recreate history. ‘Satisfied’? You will be.

A superlative slice of ’70s social realism.

Will Richard E Grant ever get a better role than bitter thespian Withnail? Has anyone devised a more iconic comic notion than the Camberwell Carrot? Has any screenplay combined so many quotable lines with such tear-jerking pathos or blatant homophobia?

With it comes admission into a stunning world of majesty and savagery; shame about the overbearing Philip Glass score.

A prize-winning page-turner becomes a moving, harrowing and redemptive drama about the ties that bind a mother to her child. Be warned: one box of tissues may not be enough.

Reichardt and Williams reunite to muted effect to create a portrait of an artist that feels a little unfinished.

There’s no questioning Skarsgård’s commitment to his character’s descent into depravity, while the gifted Goth is fearlessly uninhibited. But just because Infinity Pool looks good on the surface, that doesn’t mean it has hidden depths.

One of [Hawks'] finest pictures: a swoony saga of fatalistic flyboys and the women who try to keep their feet on the ground.

A master filmmaker mines cinema’s glamorous past in a nostalgic neo-noir you don’t so much watch as surrender to.

Chastain and Sarsgaard make a riveting duo in a film that – like Franco’s Tim Roth double Chronic and Sundown before it – is in no great hurry to elucidate its mysteries.

A stop-motion charmer.

Charming, poignant and often very funny, Baumbach and Gerwig’s latest collaboration is a joyous portrait of an unformed personality that should strike chords of recognition in all who watch it.

It might be too heady a brew for some, especially those whose appreciation of tennis is limited to strawberries and cream. On the acting front, though, it’s a virtual grand slam, Zendaya, Faist, and particularly O’Connor fine-tuning their characters’ 13-year romantic imbroglio into a lusty love match for the ages.

Squeezing every drop of tension from wet-ink recent history, Phillips only falters when making its protagonists mouthpieces in a broader geopolitical debate. Otherwise, it’s full steam ahead to the Oscars.

Guileless performances, understated direction and bucolic Belgian scenery combine to create a quiet gem of a film.

Portman’s Oscar-worthy work crowns an unconventional study of an icon, while Mica Levi’s score is sublime.

The results – achieved through small cameras clipped to nets, masts and the crew – will hook some and induce seasickness in others.

“We have to find a product that’s appealing to people!” says Garcia Bernal at one point. And that’s just what Larraín’s created with this Latin spin on "Mad Men."

The Daniel Craig era comes of age with a ballsy Bond that takes brave chances and bold risks. Guess what? Turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks.

An all-too-familiar story is told with empathy and vigour in a film arguing for tolerance, activism and change.

Devastating and uplifting in equal measure, this emotionally draining film makes good on Shults’ early promise.

It's perfectly possible to like the title character of Lauren Greenfield's documentary – Jackie Siegel – while detesting everything she represents: grotesque financial inequality, jaw-dropping ignorance and appalling bad taste.

A feel-good charmer with an important message, Pride will have you clutching your sides, wiping your eyes and punching the air in triumph.

Part war story, part endurance test, this harrowing portrait of a young boy’s loss of innocence is gripping, gruelling, grown-up fare. That said, some judicious trimming wouldn’t have hurt.

Denzel Washington and Viola Davis excel in a well-crafted drama that’s sure to bring the late August Wilson’s words to a much wider audience.

It’s heartening to find Fox so fearlessly unhumbled by his condition and the mobility problems that come with it. One of the star’s stipulations before consenting to this film was that it would have "no violins". By its end you’ll be happy to give him the whole flipping orchestra.

The performances keep us engaged.

Zootropolis is a witty, creative and entertaining romp with literally endless sequel potential and the biggest collection of four-legged critters this side of Noah.

Wildly inventive, unpredictable, and unhinged, Riley’s genre-bender stands out from the comedy pack.

For all its attempts to expand the original’s ensemble and embellish its themes, Dory is cod in batter beside Nemo’s smoked salmon. But still tasty.

The horrors, like Cage himself, are largely kept off-screen for much of the movie’s duration. Yet with its eerie soundscape and sepulchral visuals, Longlegs nevertheless succeeds as a deeply disconcerting experience, one that burrows into the brain as insidiously as the innocuous means its villain employs to disseminate his evil.

Breakfast At Tiffany's still exerts an enduring charm, not least because of the poise and waif-like beauty of the bewitching Hepburn. [Review of re-release]

In Suzume, though, Shinkai goes full Ghibli, peppering his story of a teenage girl (voiced by Nanoka Hara) on a mission with oddball elements that would feel off-puttingly bizarre were they not incorporated so seamlessly within its epic grand design.

As terrific as Colman is, however, the film around her has a schematic and engineered quality not too dissimilar from Jones’ prized projectors.

Clearly no stranger to John Hughes movies, writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig brings a spiky wit and a warm-hearted, nerd-friendly finale to a comedy that wants for nothing but a little substance.

Though stronger in its more straightforward first half than in its experimental and hallucinatory second, 28 Years… still provides enough terror, splatter and suspense to satisfy.

Overlords has its share of clunky moments yet nonetheless proves, like Monsters before it, what can be achieved when you’re short of cash but rich in imagination.

Madame Bovary meets Thérèse Raquin with a splash of Lady Chatterley in a pared-down drama that packs a real punch.

Marvel’s man with the mallet does all that’s required of him in a breakneck sequel that’s never dark for long. Next time, though, we’ll have more Loki and fewer elves.

Taken as speculative fantasy, however, Civil War is never less than vividly, chillingly authentic.

An entertaining, if frenetic, vehicle for Arnett’s Bale-inspired Bats that packs plenty of laughs.

Best of all...is the mini-animation fashioned out of Suskind’s Walt-inspired scribblings.

What could be better than watching Doris Day reprise her signature role, whip-cracking away in buckskin as the deadwood stage comes a-rolling in over the hills?

Triumph and tragedy form an inseparable tag team in writer/director Sean Durkin’s (Martha Marcy May Marlene) emotional chronicle of the Von Erich clan, a close-knit family of sibling wrestlers whose rise to prominence in 1980s Texas was accompanied by a remorseless, almost Shakespearean succession of setbacks.

Domont is too smart to go full Fatal Attraction, largely restricting the violence in the piece to the emotional and the verbal.

As much as Nicholas Jarecki’s debut feature simmers, it never quite boils.

Cooper’s performance grounds a solid, authentic drama – Eastwood’s best since Letters From Iwo Jima – that is less about one single field of combat than the price of war itself.

Though we'd love to see how Aardman handle Defoe's followup, An Adventure With Communists, this amiable but overstretched diversion is unlikely to spawn a Caribbean franchise.

It has an unpredictability that keeps you on your toes and a bitter pathos that gives every laugh (of which there are many) a note of tragic despair.

Green fashions a slow-burn charmer that’s a million miles from Pineapple Express in tone, pace and content. But just like that film, the odd couple interplay is beautifully judged.

A few damp squibs aside, Bird’s sensibilities make for the most animated Mission to date. Don’t see in IMAX if you’re a vertigo sufferer, though.

For all his noble intentions, though, Crocodile Gennadiy sure loves the limelight, forcing us to speculate whether he works for God’s glory or his own.

A serviceable translation of a theatrical success whose weaker elements are found wherever it veers too widely from its source.

Soderbergh lets his hair down with a frank, funny dramedy that bulges with humour, heart and smarts as McConaughey gives it everything he's got, in a potentially gong-grabbing turn.

A road movie with heart, humour and a lead prepared to give his youthful co-stars their share of the limelight.

That every jibe lands woefully wide is no surprise, though we’ll give leading lady Ashley Tisdale credit for giving her all to a film that mercifully won’t be around long enough to do any lasting damage to her post-High School Musical career.

Jillian Bell goes the distance in an inspirational comedy that’s funny, fresh and feelgood.

Precision-built to make you chortle, M3GAN is a l0t of 4un. On the fr1ghts front, however, it’s basically a Furby.

Backdraft clichés notwithstanding, this is a stirring fact-based tribute to public servants putting it on the line.

The doltish, messy and frequently incoherent result bears all the hallmarks of a botched and compromised endeavour.

Task Force X has the X factor in James Gunn’s lively, funny, and very bloody improvement on a DC disappointment.

Given the short from whence it came ran a mere 12 minutes, there is a definite sense of material being extended beyond its elasticity. Yet it’s a decent vehicle for Ridley that, like last year’s The Marsh King’s Daughter, shows she doesn’t need a galaxy far, far away to demonstrate her star (Wars) power.

Marvel’s Phase Four makes up for lost time with an origin story that richly entertains when it’s not pushing boundaries.

Those with fond memories of a gentler era of boy-and-his-insert-critter-here heartwarmers are bound to welcome Dragon’s old-fashioned vibe. But it still feels almost perverse to place all of Weta’s hi-tech wizardry at the disposal of a film so stubbornly, studiously lo-fi.

Though delightful in places, the third entry in Sony’s third Spider-Man cycle feels both overstocked and underwhelming.

Nods to "Hostel" and "Glengarry Glen Ross" make for a cine-literate affair further buffered by a smart cameo from erstwhile Brat Packer Andrew McCarthy.

We’ve seen Stiller do ‘exasperated malcontent’ before, but this remains a perceptive portrait of fortysomething angst.

One of the decade’s most accomplished fantasy sagas signs off with a finale that’s exciting, moving and fabulous to look at.

An expertly calibrated drama confirming Marsh’s status as one of Britain’s most formidable filmmakers.

Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum’s elegant mix of voiceover, archive footage and talking heads lets “the female Lawrence of Arabia” largely speak for herself, illuminating the pivotal role she played in shaping today’s Middle East.

While the style seems familiar, the material feels fresh: a testament not only to how Nichols lovingly crafts a fictional story around the photos Danny Lyon took for his seminal 1968 book The Bikeriders, but also to the flesh his actors put on the bones of the archetypes who populate it.

A rib-tickling homage to the gumshoe shows of yesteryear, with an endearingly daffy mindset.

Atlantic cod and oyster beds provide a pungent backdrop for this effective fillet of atmospheric psychological drama.

A little more anger would not have gone amiss in this well-acted but strangely remote slice of Oscar bait

As crude as the oil it revolves around, Deepwater provides combustible entertainment without leaving the shallows.

Forceful and arresting, Ayer's follow-up to "Harsh Times" and "Street Kings" sees him confidently playing to his strengths.

A primitive concept (cavemen play football) generates unsophisticated laughs in an animated caper that’s fun but rather second division by Aardman standards.

An outlandish high concept is a recipe for hope and humour in a film that bears viewing more than once.

Such is the in-built disposability of this sort of lightweight streaming fodder that those who watch it will probably have forgotten it inside of five minutes.

The leads make sweet music in an affecting four-piece that, if not note perfect, plays well to their individual strengths. A marked improvement overall on this year’s other Quartet.

The shadow of subsequent events looms oppressively large, but Greg Barker’s film still speaks eloquently for diplomacy and selfless public service.

It’s a straightforward morality story at heart, reminiscent at times of A Bronx Tale and with a sagacious neighbourhood DJ (played, rather fabulously, by ex-footballer Ian Wright) cut from the same cloth as Do the Right Thing’s Mister Señor Love Daddy. Yet it is such a stunningly and meticulously designed film that it continually captivates.

Though more forgiving than previous Solondz films, Dark Horse is too slight to herald a wholesale change of direction. Yet it's still worth catching, if only for Walken's terrible toupee.

Like the inscription on her daddy’s sword, the new Mulan is loyal, brave and true… but not quite as funny or dramatic as it might have been.

An intense and gripping dramatization that, a few liberties apart, does justice to a disturbing true story.

“You did well!” Bening tells Driver. Writer/director Burns deserves the same praise, and more besides.

Jordan’s apparent resolve to make an anti-Twilight unfortunately results in a movie that, if not for a fistful of moments of shock, style and excess, would be as drained of colour and tension as Ronan’s victims are of hemoglobin.

Entertaining enough but inessential, Kingdom offers spectacle and thrills but lacks the ambition, smarts, and gravity of its immediate predecessors.

Tapping into the same rich vein of British folk horror the likes of 2015’s The Witch and 2022’s Enys Men mined so productively, Starve Acre roots its dread in a gloomy past that is mundane, real and tangible.

A lot of thrilling, dazzling, sometimes frightening fun.