Peter Bradshaw

The emphasis is more largely upon discipline and commitment in the service of art, a vocational self-immolation in which the transformation of pain into beauty is the whole point.

It’s a kind of Martian’s-eye-view documentary about something that doesn’t actually exist; it is ice-cold and detached, almost without dialogue in the conventionally dramatic sense, other than the subdued exchanges which we, as audience, overhear rather than listen to. It accumulates its own kind of desolate force.

This is an elegant, chilly dream of despair.

It is highly diverting, elegantly contrived study of an unhappy family group and the cuckoo in its nest.

François Ozon’s lustrously beautiful and superbly realised monochrome version of Albert Camus’s novella L’Etranger has an almost supernaturally detailed sense of period and place. It amounts to a passionate act of ancestor worship in honour of a renowned French artwork, though by making changes that bring a contemporary perspective on the book’s themes of empire and race – changes that include a critique of the original text – this adaptation perhaps loses some of its source material’s brutal, heartless power and arguably some of the title’s meaning.

It offers us a provocation, a jeu d’ésprit of outrage, a psychological meltdown that is more astutely articulated than in many other more solemnly intended films. And it gives us what it promises in the title.

The film creates space for Hinds and Manville to give substantial, intimate, complex performances of the kind that most movies (of whatever sort) do not allow their leads, and Manville in particular is very moving.

The movie’s ironies and cruelties clatter across the screen, but Komasa also allows the audience to consider who it is Chris really wants to train.

Without Buckley, this would have been lacking; with her, it’s a very bizarre and enjoyable spectacle of married bliss.

It is quite a vision: mordant, satirical, brutal.

The film perhaps suffers from a loss of nerve about how villainous to make the villain, but it zaps along very entertainingly.

Hüller’s quiet, sinewy performance provides the film’s form and musculature.

Bronstein is brilliant at conveying mounting panic and a terrible, all-consuming sadness.

You may find yourself wondering why we are going over this ground again, but it’s an engaging film, and there is always something mesmeric in McCartney’s face: cherubic, and yet sharp and watchful.

The performances of Jonsson and Blyth are fierce and overwhelmingly convincing.

[Berg] uses Jeff’s answering machine messages and archive 90s material, including the unmistakable, moody black-and-white MTV footage, to tell a very sad story with sympathy and urgency.

There’s a terrific charm and sweetness in this debut from Iraqi film-maker Hasan Hadi.

This tender and sweet animation from film-makers Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han is an involving, poignant study of early childhood; how fragile it is, and how strong you feel yourself to be to have outlived or surpassed it.

Overall, it is a highly watchable spectacle, leaving a sizzling streak of rubber on the tarmac.

There’s a rigorous chill to this Hamlet.

This intriguing documentary from Croatian film-maker Igor Bezinović is partly a comic opera and partly a chilling message from the past.

This is an absorbing, compassionate film.

This is an exciting, forthright, energised – though very gruesome – film in which there is real human jeopardy and conflict. Non-zombies are more cinematic.

This film succeeds, not because it solves the mystery, but because it deepens it still further. It is contrived and speculative, but ingenious and impassioned at the same time.

Holding Liat is a valuable work, not least for showing us that Israel and Netanyahu are not synonymous.

This is a never-say-die story and its cheerful optimism makes it a calorific Christmas treat.

We get some tastily over-the-top acting and some huge rewind POV shifts to explain what has really been going on – and, of course, the heady whiff of gaslight as Millie can’t quite be sure she really understands anything that’s happening. Silly it may be, but Feig and his cast deliver it with terrific gusto; this is an innocent holiday treat.

The film’s poetry resides in its thoughtful inactivity, its vernacular spirituality and its gentleness.