Trevor Johnston

A film of haunting unease, but not perhaps the complete package.

This is a magnificent, career-capping achievement from one of the great storytellers of our era.

Inspired by They Live by Night and the original Gun Crazy, this is a love-on-the-run yarn, with the incendiary Barrymore immensely sympathetic as the promiscuous, sexually mistreated teen who goes on the lam with former prison pen-pal LeGross. Although it doesn't seek to excuse their wrongdoing, the film stands out for its convincing depiction of the up-against-it white-trash mentality and the overriding demands of youthful desire.

Half of a Yellow Sun bravely takes on too broad a canvas with too narrow a budget, but it’s a relevant saga that’s worth telling.

Classic opening gunfight and first-rate performances from Garner, and from Robards as the tubercular, laconically resigned Doc Holliday. A determinedly old-style Western, made two years before Peckinpah shook things up with The Wild Bunch.

As a study in human greed this is shocking, but as this thorough, convincing, if slightly stodgy film makes clear, it’s also a moment to mobilise public opinion and shape change.

The film showcases Lea Van Acken’s remarkable central performance and director Dietrich Brüggemann’s adept control of a deliberately rigorous aesthetic.

Pretty bland, but you have to admit co-producer Belafonte had an eye for talent, spotlighting HipHop legends-in-the-making Afrika Bambaata and the Soul Sonic Force, the Rock Steady Crew, and Grand Master Melle Mel and The Furious Five.

It’s hugely entertaining.

You can appreciate the effort, but this falls just short of doing justice to the emotional stakes and claustrophobic terror of the traumatic events themselves.

Chases on foot and four wheels keep the thing moving, but apart from a thematic wrinkle where Besson’s clearly siding with the hood rather than the lawmakers, it’s all pretty predictable.

It’s impressive but not dazzling.

The result isn’t as powerful as it should be. But it’s still cheering to see a film whose moral journey has little to do with the usual Hollywood chestnut of white middle-class consciousness-raising.

A pleasure and an education.

A no-frills propaganda piece put together by professionals.

The material inspires affection, given its knowing pastiche of everything from Universal horrors to '50s grade-Z sci-fi, and a shamelessly hedonistic, fiercely independent sensibility that must have seemed a welcome relief from the mainstream bombast of other '70s musicals.

Ellis’s twisty plotting gets too clever-clever for its own good. But it’s pacy, engrossing, and Jake Macapagal’s turn as the plucky schmuck protagonist is stellar.

While Monsters University can’t claim outright originality, this is a far richer movie than most were expecting.

All in all, ‘Madame Bovary’ is quite something, gradually building to a jawdropping final scene. Anyone with an interest in Chinese arthouse cinema really needs to see this.

It’s refreshing to see a first feature which isn’t just a calling card, but driven by an authentic need to find a fresh angle on representing an undervalued cultural heritage.

A detailed, smartly observed chronicle about growing up, even if the girls' friendship crosses ethnic and class boundaries a little too easily, and the improv framework sometimes makes the plot a bit sticky.

Futuro Beach is realised with such undeniable visual panache that the sheer beauty of the coastal landscapes or the moody images of urban isolation cast their own spell. But without much emotional connection to the central couple, it’s all a bit academic. Exquisitely lovely, confoundingly dreary.

It’s all rather charming, though, since leading man Schilling remains affable while never underselling this kindly yet feckless dropout’s sheer spinelessness.

From Visconti and Pasolini through to I Am Love, Italian cinema has a proud tradition of dramatising class tensions, but this feels more like a TV soap lost on the big screen. The dividends are disappointing.

Nighy gives another suave masterclass, and the whole thing positively burns with passionate advocacy for the artists, free-thinkers and social outsiders who’ve been the making of modern London.

If you believe cinema’s job is to ask the questions rather than offer the answers, then this will usefully challenge you. A dirty fingernail stuck right into the open wound of our unspoken social anxieties.

Black Sea runs a few fathoms short of classic status. But its blend of old-fashioned storytelling values and zeitgeisty relevance make it a worthy addition to sub-aquatic cinema’s nerve-juddering legacy.

Never less than professional, rarely more than functional.