Neil Young

A luminous central performance from Golshifteh Farahani distinguishes an ambitious if somewhat monotonously wordy adaptation of a prize-winning best-seller.

[A] claustrophobically discomfiting but quizzically comic study of social unease and embarrassment.

A bit of community spirit and camaraderie, it seems, can go a very long way, and sequences of spectacularly dystopian-apocalyptic, third-world bleakness are leavened by moments of incongruous beauty, even grace.

Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case is a professional, straightforward example of the behind-the-headlines sub-genre, executed in slick high-toned digital video and eschewing the soundtrack music so ubiquitous in documentaries nowadays.

Punctuated with moments of illumination, humor and even occasional visual flair —the opening shot executes a stately 360-degree cityscape pan from a high crane — Present. Perfect manages to retain interest despite a certain repetitiveness and some patience-taxing longueurs.

Accessible, informative and wryly humorous, the film uses Srbijanka's tastefully decorated residence as a prism through which to view the woman, her turbulent times and the complicated history of the former Yugoslavia.

If nothing else, the period picture represents an impressive change of pace from Ostrochovsky’s hard-knock feature directorial debut.

A solid example of low-key, well-observed, humanistically sympathetic ethnography.

Thierry is utterly convincing and compelling from first to last, in a deglamorized but sensual performance of tautly controlled severity and uncompromising rigor.

The smartest touch of Burman's bouncy, unobtrusively informative screenplay is to make Usher such a dominant offscreen presence before he finally shows up in the closing minutes.

An upbeat chronicle of very hard rock in a very hard place, Death Metal Angola is one of the livelier and more enticingly exotic additions to the ever-burgeoning music-documentary sub-genre.

A confident and quietly promising feature debut from director/co-writer Fellipe Barbosa.

Paradise is predictably problematic for the protagonists of Jet Trash, a flashily seductive and darkly comic crime-thriller that sidewinds between grimy London and the sun-kissed coasts of Goa.

The genial, relentlessly curious Sharif proves an excellent guide as the security situation spirals from instability into nightmare and the so-called Islamic State (aka ISIS or Daesh) advances inexorably advances towards Jalawla.

A conventionally mounted tribute to a genial, decidedly British form of eccentricity.

A pleasant, if in the end slightly inconsequential picture, perhaps primarily of interest to those currently experiencing Mullins-style sibling frictions and joys, those who have fresh memories of the same and ethnographers/anthropologists keen to see how some of the world's most economically fortunate minors currently make the ever-rocky transition from youth to adulthood.

While there is no doubting the filmmakers’ admirably humanistic and progressive intentions, however, the picture itself somehow ends up less than the sum of its often-impressive parts.

Santoalla isn't without its longueurs, even at 83 minutes, and can veer into the repetitive at times. But it scores in its judicious combination of archival materials (some of it shot by camcorder-fan Verfondern himself) with the directors' own interview-based footage, taking that most ancient of squabbles — a feud between farmers — and turning it into a poignant elegy for tragically lost opportunities.

This quietly impassioned indictment of child-labor takes its time to get going but then builds steadily to a surprisingly strong finale.

Crucially, Jung and Boileau manage to convey the bonds of affection and love that hold this unusual family together, in a manner that will ring a moving chord with many who have experienced similar circumstances.

While very much a film of two unequal halves, there's more than enough cinematic chutzpah on display here, especially in the early sections, to confirm the Floridian writer-director as a name to watch.

The first hour is the strongest, graced as it is by Estiano's nuanced performance as a conventional-seeming young woman who gradually and very sympathetically reveals her inner self after welcoming Clara into her life.

Sometimes all a documentary needs is one strong, charismatic personality to keep things watchable: Garnet's Gold boasts two in the form of the middle-aged eponymous protagonist and his feisty octogenarian mother.

Using simple means, Kang and his team take banal situations and settings — much of the action unfolds in a city-centre apartment building — and render them just eerie enough to be unsettling.

[Devor] displays a relentless curiosity in tandem with an evidently sympathetic eye to human foibles and peccadillos, yielding numerous fleeting insights without ever really aiming to find a grand overall conclusion.

An unassuming and suitably gentle-paced charmer.

[A] likeably modest study of veteran, well-traveled American musicologist Louis Sarno.

It takes a little while to adjust to the film’s strong and deliberately oppressive stylistic approach, but Hinterland successfully avoids being swallowed up by its own aesthetic via the narrative’s propulsive momentum and the magnetic central performance by Muslu.