Patrick Peters

Has its moments of spectacle and danger, but offers too few genuine insights or rite-of-passage epiphanies.

A gripping and unheralded story that doesn't quite get the telling it deserves.

While the Norman vistas are glorious, the storytelling lacks wit and charm.

A decent cast gives it more credibility than it deserves.

May be contrived and overlong, but it is also technically distinctive and utterly compelling in its analysis of Swedish attitudes towards race.

As passionate and wide-ranging as you'd hope, but disappointingly mistrusting of its audience's interest in the finer points of the case.

Beautiful to look at but lacking a strong point.

Hogg stages some scenes with a sure sense of composition and dramatic tension but too often the film feels self-conscious and ponderous.

A satisfaction conclusion to the trilogy.

The premise is slightly bizarre but there's enough wink-and-a-nod charm in the performances to earn it a pass.

A frustratingly ungraspable movie collage compiled with real visual flair.

Indigestible Christmas stodge.

It features more weed than a pot-warming party at Bill & Ben's but offers little more than spliff-glazed promotion for Snoop's reggae reincarnation.

A hit in Berlin, the Taviani siblings' documentary has plenty of wit and punch, although compared to the best of the medium - "Man On Wire," for instance - it sometimes comes off as guileless and clunky.

Unsparing in its portrayal of the seedier side of French society, only Polisse's loose focus keeps it from matching The Class for emotional punch. It's still a worthy companion piece to TV police procedurals like Spiral.

A compelling story told with Morris's usually flair. Still, hard not to think of it as a disappointment by the director's exalted standards and a missed opportunity to explore society's dysfunctional relationship with its media.

An eerie and unsettling adaptation of Judy Pascoe's novel that impresses more for its atmospherics than its narrative.

Josh Fox puts a fresh spin on a well-drilled - if continually relevant - story.

Claire Denis' drama is an overly fastidious but insight-filled look at post-colonial Africa.

A beautifully designed but overly formal biopic that can't match the greatness of the artists it depicts.

Both women are impeccably played by Maria Bonnevie.

A decent snapshot of pre-Beatle Britain, this is much more a fact-based gay melodrama than a trenchant portrait of Joe Orton's life, loves and art.

The structure similarly misses the flashbacking subtlety of the original. Even the characterisation lacks depth.

This plays very much like a standard biopic, lacking the dangerous spirit of the movie that inspired it.

This is a gentle, camp but nonetheless revealing satire on how a nation circumvented the social strictures imposed upon it by Franco's fading fascist regime.

The action meanders occasionally, but the performances are consistently disarming and Luciano Zito and Diego del Piano’s black-and-white photography complements the mood of ironic melancholy.

Shot over three years, this is one of the more considered and insightful Iraqi documentaries - although some may find its stylistic contrasts a little self-conscious and distracting.

Rip Torn and Darren Burrows respectively over- and underplay their hands in this archly restrained Memphis melodrama.

Shifting between bourgeois soap, tabloid parable and tale of the unexpected, this three-storied study of salvation in extremis makes for unsettling but compelling viewing.

Abrasive but affecting.

Disappointing third act to this brave drama about love and sex in our later years.

A slyly subversive insight into the role of women in the Israeli military, this is a surprisingly compassionate satire that makes its political points without resorting to caricature.

Sadly, though, all this arthouse exploitation fails to reveal as much about contemporary Korea as, say, "Texas Chainsaw" did about the States.

A fond and always accessible portrait, but the lack of objectivity and drooling images of Gehry's work deprives this documentary of any objectivity.

Castellitto deserves great credit for toning down the melodrama in wife Margaret Mazzantini's novel and producing a very human story about chance, choice and consequence.

Despite the odd moment of visual bravura, this mockumentary is too aware of its own satirical daring. Consequently, it's never as dark, dangerous or amusing as it thinks - and the soundtrack is diabolical.

Keeping it surreal has never been so nauseating and, at times, hilarious.

A splendid performance by Naomi Watts holds together this smart and astutely restrained lampoon of life in the Hollywood basement.

Strong performances and meticulous direction make this consistently disconcerting, but the subplot distracts from the moving human drama.

The cast are terrific, but byt he end, the film is struggling to stay together as much as the family it depicts.