Simran Hans

Like Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk and Todd Haynes’s Carol, Ashe takes the form of the 50s melodrama and recentres it on characters the genre has tended to ignore. This isn’t as politically restless as those films – it’s less interested in subverting the “woman’s picture” than establishing itself as one.

Ostrochovský’s camera emphasises the constricting architecture of both church and state, with its black and white morality and a claustrophobic central courtyard, frequently portrayed via stiff, judgmental God’s-eye shots.

[A] warm, funny and enjoyably rude debut.

On relationships, July remains as perceptive as ever.

As far as the plot is concerned, almost nothing happens, and yet Andreas Fontana’s sinewy debut teems with unseen threat. He crafts an atmosphere of grubbiness despite all the polished surfaces.

The new material is fresher and considerably more fun.

The film feels more like an elbow in the ribs than a slap on the wrist, revelling in the miscommunications between Susan the Sasquatch’s literal-minded monkey brain.

Alternately hilarious and spine-tingling, it recalls David Lynch’s Twin Peaks in its serious, penetrating sense of doom.

Inviolata is Italian for “unspoiled”, and the word could apply to its people as much as their straw-gold land.

What’s so invigorating is the way she gives each principle equal weighting, discussing her formal decisions, such as Cléo’s editing or the tracking shots that move right to left in 1985’s Vagabond, with the same intensity and enthusiasm as her more existential motivations (she describes her 1965 summer bummer classic Le Bonheur as “a beautiful summer peach with a worm inside”).

Sudanese film-maker Amjad Abu Alala’s radiant drama dares to wonder if death could inspire courage rather than fear.

The film’s message is a beautiful one: to integrate our real-life vulnerabilities with the persona we project is to become all the more powerful.

The comedy doesn’t work quite as well this way around, though Fowler is extremely likable as a sweet-natured slacker, channelling the endearing guilelessness of Murphy’s original Prince Akeem. Still, there are enough in-jokes and returning characters to keep fans happy.

There is an incandescence and a buoyancy to the animation that elevates the formula.

Rarely does a half-hour TV show successfully stretch itself into a 90-minute film. It’s a nice surprise, then, that the popular BBC mockumentary works as a feature.

Rosi’s broader critique of violence is implied through footage of a play performed by patients in a psychiatric hospital, and of a children’s art therapy class. He is more interested in the reverberations of conflict than the source, focusing on those who have suffered its effects directly.

[A] sensitive, frequently harrowing observational documentary.

The fuzzy plotting is balanced by Hall’s brilliantly controlled performance as the caustic, sceptical Beth, whose grief has pushed her to the knife edge of sanity.

A more conventional director might have chosen to focus on their most famous member, Reed, but Haynes smartly structures the film as a group show, giving space to the women in the ensemble.

Though it leans on the genre beats of melodrama to occasionally clunky effect in order to mine the audience’s tears, it’s impressive how it metabolises these moments of charged emotion in order to make its wider points.

The dilemma she presents is ethical: is it fair to ask someone to traumatise (or retraumatise) themselves for the sake of art? Rather boldly, it seems as though Decker is also asking the question of herself.

Perhaps wisely, Ryan White’s slick documentary chooses not to mine the bizarre scene for comic potential. Instead, he spins the arrest of Siti Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong – economic migrants from Indonesia and Vietnam respectively – into a parable about political corruption.

The CGI critters are seamlessly integrated with the 35mm cinematography, the film stock’s grain smoothing the visual tackiness.

The momentum really builds in the third act, but the film’s quieter moments of contemplation are its most striking.

Fascinatingly, in this world there are only fascists, making the film’s looming riot police feel like a real and relevant threat.

It’s still a small, silly movie and there’s nothing particularly novel or even of the moment about its technosceptic stance on machines, but as a genre exercise, it’s a fun ride.

This Kelly is motivated by an oedipal complex and wears dresses to distract his opponents; The Babadook’s Essie Davis is equal parts fearsome and magnetic as his enterprising sex worker mother. More enjoyable still are the film’s corrupt policemen; the louche, stockinged, pipe-smoking Constable Fitzpatrick (Nicholas Hoult) and virile cartoon villain Sergeant O’Neil (Charlie Hunnam).

It might be staged, but it has a scrappy, fly-on-the-wall feel.