Nigel M Smith

Director Steven Riley’s film is a fascinating collage which profoundly probes its subject’s psyche.

Sachs’ approach is so humane, and his characters so fully rendered, that an agenda never announces itself; instead, Sachs’ worldview seeps into you. He’s that skilled a film-maker.

If the lads were insufferable misogynistic pricks, Everybody Wants Some!! would make for horrible viewing. Thankfully they’re all intensely lovable.

Like Reichardt’s directorial hand, the performances are understated across the board, but deeply felt.

As Jonathan Demme’s concert documentary Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids indisputably shows, Timberlake is only truly in his element when on stage being a showman.

It’s a singular vision from an uncompromising director that happens to be about one of the most famous women in American history. Jackie is not Oscar bait – it’s great cinema.

McKay’s attempt to cover so much ground is admirable; and the outrage that courses throughout is deeply felt. But his busy execution...feels labored.

As the proceedings grow increasingly more far-fetched, the story starts to feel thinner, any semblance of reality increasingly abandoned. What keeps Hunt for the Wilderpeople afloat are the full-blooded characters that populate it.

Dunning recounts spellbinding tales that led to the gradual downfall of his expansive Mile Hill Farm, and the destruction of his two marriages.

Unfortunately, on the whole, Schamus’ debut feels too self-serious to fully engage.

Despite the strong performances, it’s Schipper’s single-shot conceit - and the fact that he and his team pulled it off with aplomb - that makes Victoria such a bracing triumph. While the entire enterprise is inarguably a stunt, Victoria manages to overwhelm in ways that few films do.

It’s unpredictable and a bit of a mess. And that’s what makes Maggie’s Plan such a delight.

Ultimately, it tries a little too hard to wring those tears.

At its core, it’s really just a workplace love story that grows increasingly uninterested in its plucky heroine’s journey in favour of hitting familiar rom-com notes – and to give audiences another reason to love Bill Nighy.

Despite its setting and Korean American cast, Spa Night unfurls in a largely expected manner, with David struggling to embrace his identity because of his strict religious upbringing, while trying to make his family proud. He’s portrayed so opaquely that’s it’s difficult to connect with his dilemma.

The pleasure in watching this documentary is derived from its countless twists.

It forces viewers to take long looks at his most controversial imagery, proving that he still has the power to provoke, seduce and enrage.

Keough and Malone convey a palpable sense of yearning for one another during these sequences, but Kim and Bradley Rust Gray’s barebones script doesn’t match their efforts.

Hanks delivers an internal and sympathetic performance. Eastwood doesn’t burrow too deeply into his protagonist’s psyche, other than to visibly demonstrate that he’s haunted by the landing. Still, Hanks, who’s uncommonly, well, sullen, for much of the film, goes a long way to convey Sullenberger’s conflicted anguish.

It’s lazy on every level.

Gage’s remarkably intimate portrait of female youth on the verge leaves you with a largely hopeful feeling that this particular group of women will make good on that advice.

Ozon is often at his best when working with women, and he has a fabulous talent in Paula Beer to bring his protagonist, Anna, to vivid life. She’s stunning in the role.

In Hall, [Campos] has the perfect actor to convey Chubbuck’s internal struggle in a manner that’s devastating.

Author is less a run-through of one of the biggest controversies to plague the literary world in the past century, than an illuminating study of the enigmatic and driven woman behind the phenomenon.

Like its distraught protagonist, Amber Tamblyn’s Paint It Black is unforgiving, flawed and ferocious.

The story The Walk tells is, admittedly, an unbelievable one, so it’s understandable Zemeckis should choose to leave subtlety at the door. Sadly, such an approach strips the film of tension, especially at the crucial moment.

It’s commendable that Perkins seems wholly uninterested in the tropes of the genre: there’s only one jump scare, hardly any gore and no final girl. The elusiveness of the narrative, however, grows weary fast.

Falardeau draws exceptional character work from his cast.