Neil Young

A work of old-school humanism that hovers between pro-Revolutionary fervor and a more objective documentary stance, Cuba and the Cameraman is sustained by the strong bonds of trust which the gregarious Alpert has evidently been able to maintain with Cubans from various echelons of this theoretically classless society.

Belly-laughs are duly reaped courtesy of the game ensemble, who throw themselves into proceedings with suitable brio — egged on by Shunsuke Kida's infectious, percussively jaunty-jazzy score — while Shiota's screenplay is good for intermittent belly-laughs before dribbling away somewhat post-climax.

Even after 90-odd minutes, Mansfield remains something of an enigma. There's the nagging sense that Ebersole and Hughes are tossing myriad darts at a skittish moving target, trying out numerous techniques (including a couple of fifties-style animations) without ever settling into a proper rhythm.

Strong performances and outstanding cinematography aren't enough to rescue an unfocused and episodic screenplay, which will leave many stranded in a purgatorial cinematic-halfway house between bliss and despair.

Neatly divided into seven discrete chapters plus prologue and epilogue, it's a necessarily repetitive but engrossing and ultimately optimistic glimpse into a troubled situation entering belated turnaround.

It takes skill to successfully handle heavy issues with a light touch, but that's what German-born, Argentina-based writer-director Nele Wohlatz pulls off with her delightfully original documentary/fiction hybrid.

Mark Gill's feature debut England Is Mine struggles to evoke the atmosphere of its setting — Manchester, 1976-1982 — and to bring its tantalizingly enigmatic subject into satisfying focus.

Showing levels of controlled concentration and unfussy flair far beyond what may be expected from a "student film," Machines powerfully evokes the sights and sounds — and almost even the smells — of a sprawling, stygian textiles plant south of India's eighth-largest (but very seldom filmed) city, Surat.

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.

Mainly of interest for the latest impressive turn from British national treasure Timothy Spall — snorting and blustering his way through the plum role of Protestant uber-firebrand Ian Paisley — deficiencies in script and direction render the vehicle less than road-worthy.

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.

It's chiefly notable for Cara Seymour's nuanced supporting turn as Anna's sometime best friend, Kate.

A professionally mounted but bluntly misanthropic character-study, the director's second solo outing wallows in the worst of human nature with little reward at the end of a mechanically inexorable downward spiral.

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

Skilfully manipulating romantic and social frictions which in lesser hands might have come across as soapily melodramatic, Rauniyar and Barker construct a parable-like tale whose allegorical aspects are there for those who wish to find them. But their priority is the creation of believable characters in a pungently atmospheric setting.

Strikingly shot, edited and scored, with convincing and vivid performances from a youthful cast, the picture loses its footing in the final stretch but should still take high rank among U.S. debuts of its ilk this year

A missed opportunity on multiple levels, T2 is stylistically an overwrought rehash which relies heavily on over-caffeinated camerawork and flashy effects (cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle's trademark gritty flair is overwhelmed by a flurry of Dutch angles and freeze-frames) to distract us from its essential paucity of raison d'etre.

A very loose and extremely limp adaptation of Don DeLillo's 2001 novella The Body Artist, it palpably aspires to be a classily highbrow kind of romantic ghost story with psychological thriller undertones, but falls laughably short of its goals.

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.

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.

With all farces, timing and rhythms are absolutely crucial and Zulawski — working with editor Julia Gregory — maintains a disarming brio from the very first seconds.

Most effective in its quiet dialogue-heavy scenes, the picture stumbles when anything more dramatic is required.

A textbook example of how not to turn real-life headlines into big-screen drama, Jeppe Ronde's Bridgend is a toxic combination of the laughable and the reprehensible.

While the casting of Thompson, just two years Carlyle's senior is a gamble that could easily have seemed gimmicky, the half-Scottish Oscar-winner is a riot as the grotesque Cemolina, a raucously broad-accented, chain-smoking schemer resplendent in faux-ocelot

Much like the legendary glam-metal band whose grindingly arduous rise to fame it lovingly chronicles, shock-rock-doc We Are Twisted F—ing Sister! is superficially "controversial" (profanity in the title!), essentially conventional, but very, very, very entertaining.

It's clear that Weerasethakul is even less concerned with conventional narrative considerations here than he was in the free-rangingly imaginative Uncle Boonmee.

Pairing another Firth (no relation) with crackerjack newcomer Taron Edgerton, Kingsman's fizzingly droll chutzpah can't help but make Spooks: The Greater Good, for all Peter Firth's ballast, seem dowdily old-school in comparison.