Simran Hans

It’d be easy to mistake the director’s deadpan observation for mocking, but the space he holds for the darker aspects of his characters’ individual stories helps to puncture any cultivated cutesyness.

Writer-director Jeremy Hersh tackles the intersection of race, sexuality, class and disability with rare nuance in this wry indie drama, which observes sharply the trappings of millennial entitlement and liberal hypocrisy.

Hadjithomas and Joreige thoughtfully explore trauma while remaining joyful, animating Maia’s photos, which fizz, crackle and dance to life on screen.

Poehler, herself a gifted comedian, doesn’t include her own voice in the film, though we still get a sense of her feminist perspective.

Basholli understands that healing is possible, even if closure isn’t.

Laxe has a masterly command of rhythm and pacing. The action feels unhurried, despite the film’s tight running time, and there is a spaciousness to the world-building; attentive sound design and 16mm photography capture Galicia’s damp, green allure.

Ruffalo optioned the rights to Nathaniel Rich’s original article and has an executive producer credit on the film; clearly, he has a stake in the material. The actor is excellent as reluctant hero Bilott, muting his natural charisma to create a character who is both taciturn and generous, determined but socially ill at ease.

It’s a bouncy, grin-inducing romp through Caribbean takeaways, designer boutiques stacked with Moschino streetwear and one ill-advised trip south of the river.

The film is a meticulously, perhaps even cynically crafted crowd-pleaser. Even those alive to its tactics might find themselves wiping away a tear or two.

I can’t shake the inkling that it would’ve worked better as straight documentary.

There’s a note of truth in Bell’s finely tuned performance as a character whose insecurities have calcified over the years, hardening her to genuine goodwill, which she frequently misreads as pity.

Genuine jump scares are bolstered by the film’s spooky sound design, as well as terrific performances from Dirisu and Mosaku, whose terror is palpable.

High-class sex work is presented as a financial quick fix and a route to female empowerment, but the film’s sex-positive politics gloss over any of the job’s potential pitfalls.

My Rembrandt is at its most interesting when struggling to reconcile the slow, careful work of art restoration with the crass, instant gratification on acquiring such rarefied objects.

The tone veers haphazardly from tense, high-stakes cat-and-mouse chase to ill-judged satire.

The overall tone is one of wry knowingness, which is DaCosta’s achilles heel.

The film works better as a comedy than a horror, skewering its ignorant US tourists, and better still as a spiteful relationship drama.

Subverting the original text’s point of view allows Whannell to privilege his female protagonist while continuing to explore the novel’s theme of untrammelled power.

Zoë Kravitz is a highlight as cocktail waitress turned cat burglar Selina Kyle.

The film doesn’t understand what mode it wants to operate in; serious thriller with emotional stakes or contrived, cynical satire (a set piece around a Twitter hashtag seems to suggest the latter).

Malaysian-born writer-director Yen Tan shoots stylishly in black and white 16mm, each frame a tasteful photograph. What’s most skilful, though, is the way he succeeds in complicating archetypes.

To suggest Krasinski is only interested in surface thrills feels at odds with the seriousness of his craft. Judicious pacing, clever cross-cutting and visceral sound design build tension, but there’s an absence of soul, and no satisfying sense of what the monsters might be a metaphor for.

This immersive, slow-burning documentary about a Congolese charcoal maker finds poetry in the punishing, monotonous graft of one man’s trade.

It is gleefully dorky, hopelessly earnest, sincere, quite possibly to a fault. It unfolds as a series of Springsteen-soundtracked set pieces, each shamelessly engineered to maximise catharsis, cheering and possibly weeping from the audience.

There’s a sense of Stranger Things camaraderie among Billy and his foster siblings, who are actually fun to spend time with, and the film’s message of found family is a sweet one. Still, its overblown finale overstays its welcome, teeing up the team as mainstays in the inevitable sequel.

Documentaries should be more than a vehicle for information. Here, the message is hard to argue with, but the medium – an excess of music video-style cutting, contemporary pop culture montages and literal music cues – does the material no favours.

The film’s abrupt tonal shifts are jarring.

The use of the notoriously media-shy Margiela’s warm, serious spoken voice helps to create intimacy, even though we never see his face.