Oliver Lyttelton

This is a filmmaker in total command of every visual element — his compositions more compelling than ever, the production design almost verging on steampunk, and a special mention has to go to the extraordinary costumes — but it doesn’t feel stifling or precious either.

Most importantly of all: it’s funny. Really, really funny, consistently and constantly.

It makes a deeply human experience, and one that’s frequently both educational (the film’s main purpose: a copy will be given to every school in Britain) and moving. In fact, it’s not so much individual faces or interviews that leave the most lasting impression so much as it’s the cumulative impact of all the faces.

It’s not a terrible time at the movies, but after Coogan & Pope’s previous collaboration on “Philomena” proved to be such a genuinely satisfying example of this kind of drama, it’s hard not to feel like there’s something of a missed opportunity here, a film truly deserving of the excellent performances at its centre.

Those looking for a substantial meal or an Oscar contender are probably going to be left lacking. But so long as you’re prepared for some rousing medieval action and not all that much more, Mackenzie proves here he can work on a significant canvas with a film that must rank as one of Netflix’s more satisfying bigger-budget ventures to date.

It’s a cast full of the sort of faces that regularly pop up on ones-to-watch lists, and it’s the biggest thing that Been So Long has going for it. “Chewing Gum” fans will know how talented Coel is, but she’s particularly good here with a role that’s more adult and serious than her breakout turn (while still letting her have some fun occasionally).

Pulling off an ambitious mash-up of genres like Good Manners is no easy feat — that Dutra and Rojas pull it off so successfully suggests we’ll be hearing a lot more from them down the road.

There’s still a lot of pleasure to be had here, whether from digging your fingernails into the armrest early on, to Freeman’s sly comic performance later.

Journey’s End is about as good an adaptation as you can imagine of the material, and a film with compassion and humanity that goes far beyond its perhaps uncompromisingly prestige-y exterior.

It’s the pair’s bond that helps to make the film more interesting than just a study of wealthy murderousness (though it’s great at that too). It’s also a portrait of female friendship that, despite the dark places it goes to, proves to be oddly touching.

The film is very, very funny, consistently.

It isn’t just one of the best debut films of the year, but one of the year’s best films, period.

For the most part, the breadth of its examination of the subject is welcome, and by the end, it ends up feeling like as definitive a film on comedy and the Holocaust as you could ever want.

Lord knows the superhero genre could use some fun poked at it and we were psyched to see the film, but while there’s some fun to be had, it can’t help but feel like a missed opportunity.

It ends up feeling like going to a festival headlining date by a reunited Britpop band. It’s great to see them back together, they look pretty good for their age, and there are transcendent moments when they play the hits. But the set goes on a bit long, and the new material’s a bit forgettable, and they’re sloppier than they used to be, and in the end, you start to wonder if it had been better if you’d been left with your memories from back in the day.

It’s an engaging film in many respects, but one that exemplifies a lot of the problems that have trailed Zemeckis across his career.

Even if the film isn’t entirely to my taste, it’s a provocative and powerfully made piece of work.

The bad news, for anyone over the age of eight, is that it’s at its best disposable, and at its worst really, really annoying.

The filmmaker has a real gift for getting into the political context of her stories while never neglecting the personal, and seeing the Khamas gradually win over his people, while still battling the British establishment, is gripping, rewarding and eventually moving.

Bidegain certainly scores points for ambition with his first film, and in scenes or snippets...you can see what he was aiming for. Unfortunately, by the time it’s done, Les Cowboys feels like a missed opportunity.

Given how good the cast often are elsewhere, it doesn’t seem unfair to put this at Armstrong’s door, and the film has a very first-time-director feel to it.

At its best, the film becomes something winningly subversive.

Unfortunately, while Husson clearly has talent to burn, her film is something of a case of all talk and no trousers.

There’s very little in The Huntsman: Winter's War itself that is actively bad. Compared to some of its blockbuster rivals, it’s reasonably watchable, never offensive, and mostly coherent.

Bercot's setting out to make both a character study of a troubled young man wasting his potential, and an examination of a system trying desperately to do right by its charges, despite the immense difficulties and occasional bureaucratic red tape that tie their hands. It's more successful at the latter than at the former.

A film as mercurial as this can be an impressive thing, but the back half is so filled with half-baked metaphysics, pseudo-Lynchian maybe-dreams, and a sour, cheap conclusion that feels nihilistically cruel to at least one of its characters, that even the pleasures of watching the actors on screen start to fade away.

Unfortunately, it proves to be as disposable as the snack it revolves around.

As well-handled as the set pieces are, the connective tissue doesn’t pull you along, and then collapses completely in a messy, unsatisfying final act.

The tale of Choi and Shin is a true stranger-than-fiction one, as good a piece of material as a filmmaker could help for. It’s just a shame that, for the most part, The Lovers And The Despot feels like it’s giving you the Cliff Notes version of the story.

For all the film’s politics, Arabian Nights can also be whimsical, swooningly romantic, inspiring, fascinating, or deeply sad.

It’s as successful as it is ambitious.

It’s dizzying stuff, and virtually everything that Gomes tries his hand to works: it’s a film that’s moving, sad, exciting, fiery, and funny.

There are elements of The Boy And The Beast that undoubtedly reinforce the promise that Hosoda holds: it’s a treat to look at, is inventive in spots, and will probably be eaten up by younger viewers. But it ultimately proves both narratively unsatisfying and emotionally lacking.

Without patronizing or condescending, it’s an examination of how fame can change us and haunt us, and of the complicated relationships that survivors of something like “Star Wars” can have with it.

In general, this feels like a film patched together out of endless hastily-drafted script rewrites rather than a cohesive vision.

Bone Tomahawk is a proper Western, a proper horror movie, and by combining the two, becomes something else entirely, and proves hugely enjoyable for it.

It’s worth the price of admission just to see Hardy’s Reggie performance, which is up among his best work. Still, the story could have perhaps used a more inspired hand at the helm.

Every time the picture opens a fascinating door, you're held back from going through by a naff filmmaking choice or a rote story move.

It's a stinker of an ending tacked on to a disappointing third act (which is at least lifted up by Bartlett's performance), and it's a shame because so much of what went on before was so good: a tender, unsentimental, unexploitative look at an existence that all too many people have, and what it is to be someone who looks after them.

Though it has a few elements of its construction that might be questionable, it's mostly a powerful, thoughtful, and visually striking picture.

Zhangke's always had a throughline regarding economic inequality and the 21st century-style Chinese capitalism in his work, but Mountains May Depart might be the director's defining statement on the way that his nation has changed over the past few decades. If only he were a touch subtler about it.

The film doesn't reinvent the wheel: it is, ultimately, a middle-class-white-boy coming-of-age tale of the kind that the cinema of France, and elsewhere, has never been lacking. But it's written, shot, cut and performed with such palpable joy, intelligence and warmth that it ends up feeling entirely fresh.

As ever, Moretti creates a rich and incredibly detailed world, one where every character has a life that stretches far beyond their on-screen scenes.

From the cloying, ever-present score to the complete lack of narrative momentum, it all adds up to a film that's easily Van Sant's worst, and is a sad black mark on McConaughey's mostly excellent recent run. Ultimately, Sea Of Trees feels like an entirely appropriate title: it makes you feel like you're drowning, and it's full of sap.

This really is Audiard operating at the top of his game, mostly dropping the contrivances of "Rust & Bone" for incisive character studies and a deeply humane, almost warm, worldview.

The book is so counter to our contemporary narrative demands that liberties would need to be taken for a movie version, and for the most part Osborne takes the right liberties, ending up with an extremely beautiful, very charming, thematically rich take that’s sure to be one of the better animated movies this year.

The humor is there on paper, but it ends up emptily quippy and gag-filled rather deriving the jokes from situations and character, and only one in three end up landing, mostly thanks to Robbins.

Trier’s sensibility for the dynamics of family, for the depiction of nebulous memory, and for the detail of life (the film’s full of beautiful, complex scenes), means that I’m already eager to take a second look and see what else there is to unpack.

An exciting, splattery, funny genre movie that somehow never once feels disposable.

In the end, all the strangeness adds up towards something genuinely significant: an atypically rich and substantial comedy that's stuffed with great scenes and performances even before you start to chew on its bigger questions.

There is genuine warmth and heart to the central relationship, and the script is occasionally funny, though it draws smiles more than laughs. But it's hard to see, beyond the gender swap, what LaBruce is saying here that Hal Ashby didn't cover more definitively four decades ago.

Lafleur maintains a bouncy, consistently funny tone that you'd describe as featherlight, were there not real weight grounding it all. It's a near-miraculous trick, and evidence of the immense talent on display here: he has a real talent for making comedy work visually, and as you might expect from a former editor, a sense not just for landing a joke, but for creating a unique and distinctive rhythm.

A sour, tedious and derivative film that doesn't just prove disappointing in its own right, it actively makes us resent the first film retroactively for inspiring it.

It's an ambitious attempt to meld the kind of social realism that made the names of Andrea Arnold and Clio Barnard with a stripped-down genre thriller, an attempt that's only moderately successful, though it suggests Wolfe is a filmmaker of real promise.

Queen & Country is hardly reinventing the wheel, but it's charming, evocative and (mostly) well-performed, and were Boorman to continue with his autobiographical cycle, we'd certainly welcome further installments.

The picture is a triumph: it's arguably Garland’s tightest and most fascinating screenplay to date, brought to life with meticulous filmmaking and sensational performances. It's the first great film of 2015.

Never, for one second, is Vikander anything less than entirely truthful.

It'll pass a couple of hours on a rainy afternoon without too much trouble. But whether as an adventure tale, a thriller, or a morality play, Black Sea never quite makes a compelling enough case for its existence when better examples of the submarine genre are already out there.

Paddington is totally delightful.

Avery can't commit to whether he's making a gritty "Animal Kingdom"-style crime picture, or a light caper film, and the final result is wonky in the extreme, particularly in the conclusion, which feels particularly muddled.

It’s a reminder of what a tremendously talented writer and director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is, and hopefully we’ll see him venturing back to the big screen sooner rather than later.

Mostly, the film's very funny, Sono displaying a sense of how to frame and time a visual gag that feels positively Zucker-ish. But there are real stakes, and bursts of real feeling too.

The film isn't bad enough to be some kind of potential cult classic: it's tedious, with even the stranger moments and plot developments failing to raise the pulse.

The filmmaking is admittedly functional rather than particularly artful, but you somewhat appreciate that Warchus is determined to distract you as little as possible from the story and characters.

Miller's documentary skills seem solid enough, but this particular story needed more objectivity, and a lot more rigor, to be worth telling in this manner.

It's a remarkably gorgeous piece of work.

It is very much a first film, albeit one of rare ambition, and there's every reason to think that Benson will nail it next time around. The film's absolutely worth watching for the performances alone... But in and of itself, the "Them" version of The Disappearance Of Eleanor Rigby doesn't quite add up to the sum of its parts.

Gunn’s careful to keep the focus on the central five, but certainly proves himself capable of the bigger canvas. The film really pops visually, with an admirably bright color palette (DP Ben Davis doing excellent work), and though there are occasionally some geography issues, the action is mostly satisfying.

Jeunet occasionally reminds you why he was once considered one of the most exciting names in world cinema. But for the most part, it’s another visually interesting, somewhat hollow misfire.

The film’s well-written, beautifully performed (not least from Huppert, who’s typically stunning as her icy, grief-stricken matriarch, and the moving Servillo, of “Il Divo” and “Gomorrah” fame), and nicely made, if a good 15 minutes overlong.

22 Jump Street might not be quite as good as "21 Jump Street," but it's remarkably close, to the point where subsequent viewings could see it elevated above its predecessor.

Wiseman's film is the most nourishing example of cinematic brain food you'll have all year.

Rarely competent, unintentionally hilarious and borderline reprehensible in both its politics and its take on gender roles.

Given the talent assembled, the emptiness at its center only makes it feel like more of a waste. But it does look great, it does sound great (the score, by "Drive" soundtrack contributor Johnny Jewel, is one of the film's best elements), and can be fitfully interesting.

There are moments of beauty and charm, but also ones that felt rather broad, like an extract from a live-action Disney movie or something. It is fitfully interesting, but nearly broke our twee detectors.

One can’t fault Hazanavicius’ motivations too much, especially given the lack of attention given to the events in Chechnya over the past fifteen years... It’s just a shame that he does it such a banal and trite way.

While it’s an awkward, uneven picture, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a fascinating one.

It's crisply and cleanly shot throughout, and the filmmaker shows a rare feel for how to not only make comedy land, but also to make it actually feel cinematic too.

The film is a sickly enjoyable wallow in the scandalous, fucked-up side of showbusiness, and a real return to form for the filmmaker.

Mr Turner, though not without flaws, is something of a twilight culmination of Leigh's work, and very much one in which the filmmaker turns his lens on himself, as is so often the case when directors make movies about artists.

If there was ever any doubt as to Zvyagintsev's position as one of world cinema's foremost auteurs, it's put to rest here. His filmmaking has always been superb, but he's never taken on the state of his nation in the way he does here. And that makes "Leviathan" not just masterful but also hugely important.

Godard's full length take on 3D is bold, brilliant and exactly what the format needed — a iconoclast taking it and making his own, and almost every time he frames a shot in three dimensions, from opening credits to the final moments, there's something attention-grabbing going on.

Though there's an admirable sense of messiness to the scenes of family life, the screenplay itself is rather neat: one has a fairly solid sense of how things are going to play out from the early stages, and for the most part that's how it goes, ticking off a checklist of rather familiar beats along the way.

After meandering for a while, the story kicks into gear in the third act, with a couple of legitimately shocking and well-executed developments that do pack a punch missing elsewhere in the film.

The film, like the original, feels very haphazardly structured, a hotchpotch collection of scenes rather than a unified whole. There's also no tonal consistency, with Webb lurching awkwardly from quippy comedy to brooding drama to high tragedy in short spaces of time, undercutting all three modes as a result.

Leconte’s never been the edgiest of filmmakers, but A Promise is so free of anything close to an edge that it’s like watching a beige sphere for ninety-odd minutes—and it feels much longer.

It's certainly his best film.

The Winter Soldier is probably in the upper tier of Marvel pictures in terms of quality, but ultimately proves too muddled and frantic to match the heights of "The Avengers."

As a portrait of a legitimately fascinating unlikely superstar, the film really works.

There are enough rough edges and interesting kinks across the two-hour running time that you come out forgiving it for the more generic elements, though we'll acknowledge that the flaws might stick out more on a second viewing, when you're not just pleasantly surprised that the whole thing isn't a stinking mess.

It’s a strong and eye-catching debut, but one that doesn’t quite mark its ground as the next big thing in Israeli cinema.

The tension really is beautifully ramped up in these early scenes and gets an audience well prepped to watch carnage unfold around people you've truly come to care about. Then, when the thing goes off, it's not with a bang but with something more like a a whimper.

The film’s undoubtedly a gorgeous look at the Australian outback, but those looking for deeper nourishment will be left a touch disappointed.

A visionary, thrilling work.

A film that is enjoyable in spots, but haphazard and ultimately unsatisfying.

Even if it doesn't quite stick the landing, there's a lot to like here; it's a fundamentally decent, very well-acted and cannily written film.

It's a state-of-the-nation masterwork, a vitally important piece of work, and should be seen by as many people as possible.

From a procedural perspective, the film is an insightful look into the life of a Secretary Of Defense, but as an exploration into how the war in Iraq was allowed to happen, it’s much, much less satisfying