Sophie Monks Kaufman

It is ironic that Richard Linklater has chosen to homage a film carved out of spontaneous new techniques with one so mired in contrivances that it is impossible for it to breathe.

Stone and Plemons’ verbal battles of wits are worth the price of admission, even if the script co-written by Will Tracy (The Menu) is overly reliant on culture war jargon.

Is this impressive, boundary-pushing, experimental cinema or an endurance test with no internal logic where the chief pleasure is leaving the theater afterwards? Could it be both?

Hermanus gestures towards a sweeping story and in the process loses the pulse of the material that is there. As the window dressing is lavishly built up, the love story itself slips away.

There is simply no one for Lawrence to bounce off and no structure against which to craft an emotional trajectory. She is dancing on her own.

Queer may be flawed, but its naked approach to such a raw subject, coupled with a remarkable lead performance, makes it a trip worth taking.

Although he retains the sweep of the novel, Virgo struggles to replicate its observational texture and the tension is undone by an atmospheric vagueness, full of pregnant pauses that only stretch out the run-time.

The writing cannot match the poignancy of Lengronne’s performance. Her emotional immediacy is more interesting than the epic, yet comparatively muted scope of the film.

It’s not that Andrew Dominik has made an implausible film about the experience of a poor young beauty haunted by fears of madness who was chewed up by the Hollywood machine, the issue is that he has made a film inspired by Marilyn Monroe where she is monotonously characterized as a victim.

Garland has always flirted with obscurity, but in his best work this has been anchored by an enveloping depth of feeling. Now he has tumbled down a rabbit-hole here where no mortal man – not even a village of them, all played by Rory Kinnear – can follow.

Günther executes stray powerful moments, but his lack of a handle on the material leads to two hours so meandering that the story drifts away in a haze of boredom.

The marriage of abstract existential themes, immersive, tactile images and dual timelines is always impressive but only occasionally moving.

Andrea Arnold is an exciting director who knows how to create a thick patina of realism within which female protagonists stoically pursue improvement. It’s a little crushing, therefore, that American Honey feels unmoored from anything approaching real life.

The visuals are compelling but something is missing. The tone is too flat and the world-building too smooth for this film to ever come fully to life.

True Things spins such a familiar tale that its success rides on how convincingly a mood is conjured. It needs to be so raw that the predictable is rewritten anew in the specific chemistry of these characters. Instead, it is, for the most part, a mood piece drained of mood

Although there is much to admire on a technical and craft level, the absence of storytelling innovation gives Old Henry the sleepiness of a familiar lullaby or nursery rhyme.

Amid lush period costumes, the chemistry between Woodley and Turner proceeds with gratifying slowness, each step down an irreversible path measured and counted.

This documentary has value as a damning account of the film-world’s treatment of a child actor, yet as a piece of art and a personal portrait, its vagueness creates unease.