Steven Rea

Structured in three beautifully paced, keenly observed acts, Living in Oblivion is that rare picture that leaves you gasping in disappointment at the end - gasping, that is, because it's over and you don't want it to be. [04 Aug 1995, p.05]

Kore-eda, deploying a Western pop score by the Japanese indie-rock band Quruli, just lets these kids be kids.

Admission works in stops and starts.

Using a screenplay polished and honed by the Coen Brothers, Spielberg dips into John le Carré territory (you can't help but think of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold when Donovan looks onto the newly erected Berlin Wall, in the searchlights, in the snow).

While White Material is very much the story of this one woman, it is also a story of postcolonial Africa, a place where Europeans staked their claim, and where disorder and destruction upended everything. A mournful, frightening, powerful film.

It's the old cliche, but (like most cliches) it's true: It's impossible to imagine this picture without this actor.

Foxcatcher is a story of wealth and the lack of it, of family connection and disconnection. But more than anything, it is a story of a mind unraveling. The result is devastating drama for those of us looking on.

Never mind Hollywood's big-star, big-budget hand-wringing about Africa - Bamako is the real thing.

With deft and subtle performances and an uncomplicated but savvy script, Autumn Tale gets to the inner lives of its characters.

It is a fever dream of a movie, tracking its subject as she tries to maintain control, maintain her composure and her sanity, and as she tries — shellshocked, quaking with grief, but also fiercely determined — to shape and secure her husband’s legacy.

A smart, sharp, stirring adaptation of the H.G. Bissinger best-seller.

It's not just the grainy stock and bad sound - technically, we've come a long way. It's the cheesy sex, the awkward edits, the hammy symbolism, the mix of art-house aesthetics and exploitation cliché. Strange creature, this is.

Ultimately, 44 Inch Chest has very little on its mind.

Tonally askew (Altman-esque one minute, Austin Powers-esque the next), Inherent Vice is a sun-glared, neon-limned muddle of noir plotline and potheaded jokery that not only doesn't make sense, but actually seems to try hard not to.

It's oppressive and claustrophobic, confused and scary in there. But it's also compellingly real.

A political drama, a personal drama, a sharp-eyed study of how the media manipulate us from all sides, No reels and ricochets with emotional force.

It's bloody carnage - or it's ketchup, or bolognese sauce, at the very least.

This cunning and provocative Romanian film requires patience, but its rewards are many: It's hard to imagine how a scene in which a police captain barks an order to bring him a dictionary can be loaded with suspense, but, really, it is.

Is Django Unchained about race and power and the ugly side of history? Only as much as "Inglourious Basterds" was about race and power and the ugly side of history. It's a live-action, heads-exploding, shoot-'em-up cartoon. Sometimes it crackles, and sometimes it merely cracks.

Pacific Rim shares much with the Mexican filmmaker's "Hellboy" franchise - jokey and comic book-y, full of muscular tableaus with huge squads of people coming and going (and running for their lives).

Haunting and sad. And absolutely worth seeing.