Tara Brady

Whispered myths about periods and cleanliness coalesce into a perfect accidental riposte to Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

Her words are clear, unsentimental and so evocative that you can almost smell the weed.

Scorsese’s rhapsodical memories match the romance of Powell and Pressburger’s transportive storytelling and indelible images; his account of first seeing the rhododendrons in Black Narcissus on a nitrate print is as magical as the image.

Aisha is a portrait of unassailable dignity in the face of cruel happenstance.

Working from a novel by the Georgian author Tamta Melashvili, Naveriani and her writer, Nikoloz Mdivani, have crafted a warm, witty and wise film.

Nobody (surely) was expecting The Godfather from the director of Atomic Blonde and the writer of Hotel Artemis. Nobody (equally) could have anticipated such a dreary mess.

Elegant drone shots add indelible images to an otherwise forgettable action film.

Barrera is a reliable and veteran Final Girl, but even she can’t save the film from collapsing under the weight of its own silliness. Fun for a while.

The script carefully draws details from the gospels as it journeys towards an ending that is miraculous in every sense.

The script, by Erice and Michel Gaztambide, tarries for singsongs, dinners and poignant conversations about cinema and the self.

The script, by Johannes Duncker and director Ilker Çatak, grabs the viewer from the get-go. Judith Kaufmann’s urgent, claustrophobic cinematography tightens the vice-like grip.

Working from a script composed of real-life testimonies and dramatised with youthful verve and extravagant flights of fancy, the director’s follow-up to the exquisite Pinocchio is a true adventure.

The compassionate directors of The Mission wisely let the young women do the talking. Seven credited cinematographers are there to capture every compelling moment.

Themes of imperialism and exploitation add background textures to three muscular performances and a mysterious cinematic adventure.

The balance between humour and heart that defined the carefully calibrated earlier films is slightly off.

The quietly convincing leads Elías and Bigliardi occupy very different points on the deadpan spectrum. The denouement isn’t entirely satisfactory, but with a journey this epic, who cares about the destination?

Late Night with the Devil is at its best when it colours within the lines of the found-footage genre.

Every beautiful frame casts a spell.

Cartoonishly colourful cinematography brings emerald-tinted sparkle to Killruddery House, Lough Tay, the Cliffs of Moher and other tourist traps. What else? It’s professionally assembled? Everyone has nice hair?

Mostly, this is a film of intriguing, maddening loose ends.

For a film with a challenging runtime, scratchy aesthetic and confrontational swagger, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World finds a pleasing rhythm and mines much absurd comedy. Welcome to the sixth stage of despair: hilarity.

The final scenes, even for those familiar with the real-world outcome, are haunting.

Sandler’s performance, Jan Houllevigue’s post-Soviet production designs and Max Richter’s soaring score enliven a handsome if dreary drama. The pacing, alas, is painfully slow, and every character save the spider is underwritten.

Yves Cape’s unfussy, still camerawork never distracts. Chastain and Sarsgaard subtly work every acting muscle. (The latter deservedly took home the Volpi Cup from Venice last September.) Franco is kinder to these characters than he has been to many of his creations, leaving the viewer to parse the moral murk.

This handsome Nordic demi-western, inspired by real events and adapted from Ida Jessen’s 2020 novel, The Captain and Ann Barbara, is powered along by Mikkelsen’s rugged charisma and various rustic and maggoty scene partners, including the married runaway serfs Ann Barbara (Amanda Collin, quietly expressive) and Johannes (Morten Hee Andersen), and the self-possessed Romani orphan Anmai Mus (Hagberg Melina).

A perennially sun-dappled kitchen. Cast-iron pans. Belle-époque bustles. Gastroporn doesn’t come more XXX-rated than this insanely pretty, airily vacant livre de recettes.

The writer-director and his cinematographer, Simone D’Arcangelo, evoke spaghetti westerns with wide-angle vistas of forbidding horizons. Odd moments of Quentin Tarantino-style playfulness add to the unease. The perverse, atonal effect is as discombobulating as Harry Allouche’s plucked, appositely bleak score.

With its 1980s neon fonts, strangely sanitised storytelling, expositionary dialogue, wrongly aged cast and terrible wigs, The Iron Claw looks and feels like a prestreaming TV movie – and not just any old TV movie but a strangely entertaining, darkly tragic, completely gripping TV movie.