Xan Brooks

There’s no doubt it makes for a jubilant ride, a galvanic first blast. But it remains a film which feels deeply thought rather than deeply felt; a brilliant technical exercise as opposed to a flesh-and-blood story.

May December also comes coloured by the lurid downlight of tabloid culture. It could be a pastiche of a psychological thriller, or a playfully misdirected daytime afternoon soap.

First Reformed is a deeply felt, deeply thought picture; impressive in its seriousness and often gripping in the way it frames itself as a debate and a sermon.

Anderson’s short, sweet, neatly managed production follows the original tale pretty much to the letter.

Salles’s imperfect, hobbled film tells us that hope springs eternal and that joy is a given and that most happy families will find a way to survive.

I wish that I enjoyed The Disciple as much as I admired it. The film is a labour of love insofar as it feels overthought and overburdened, with all the rough edges planed down.

A gorgeous yet ultimately frustrating tribute to the Japanese airplane designer Jiro Horikoshi.

Full credit to Hardy and Knight for making a film such as Locke. Low-budget film-makers could learn a lot from their method. And yet – having stripped away all but the bare necessities, having reduced the components to a car and a man – they make a classic error of overcompensation.

A sweet yet suspect romantic drama.

One watches Chalamet’s performance here with a simmering unease, willing him on but wondering if he is entirely fit for the task.

All of which works terrifically well up to a point.

It’s too skimpy and self-conscious, more a series of gestures than an organic whole. But Ortega frames his action with a delicious high style, interspersing tense standoffs with formal dance sequences. He gives the impression that all his characters are locked in a bizarre hothouse romance, even when they are chasing or attempting to kill one another.

Vigas’s direction is efficient, pedestrian, entirely built for purpose. But he manages to keep the audience on-board throughout the tale’s twists and turns.

Babygirl rolls off the track looking almost as neat and anonymous as a box from Tensile’s upstate delivery warehouse.

Dumont’s secular crisis-of-faith drama has much to say about the corrosive effect of our 24-hour news culture. But it is also indecisive and compromised and plays out as a prolonged admission of defeat.

Zahler’s film is entertaining, incorrigible and borderline incoherent – it is the violent drunk at the party, liable to lash out.

Full credit to the film-makers, who manage to map their digital bear against his human co-stars and marry Bond’s antique conceit to a high-concept story.

Shinkai casts a spell in the moment, but the magic fades away.

No one would accuse it of breaking new ground, or finding fascinating new paths across its well-worn prison yard. But Sauvaire’s drama is lean and trim and unwavering in its task.

On screen, the man play-acted the qualities of courage and resilience. Off it, he came to embody them too.

The Hand of God, no surprise, is Sorrentino’s most nakedly personal film to date, almost to a fault in the way it jettisons the cool distance of The Great Beauty or Il Divo in favour of a sweaty, close-up evocation of youth. It’s a picture only Sorrentino could make. But that doesn’t necessarily make him the safest pair of hands.

It’s handsome, it’s amusing, it knows exactly where it’s going. All that is missing is that crucial fifth gear.

In keeping with the spirit of Sebald's writing, Gee's film is teasing, elegant and perhaps inevitably unresolved: an invitation as opposed to a destination.

Midway through, the plot blows a gasket and the camerawork turns altogether crazed, joggling us about in the semi-darkness while the soundtrack rings to distorted screams. Expect pitch and yaw and lots of gore.

At the risk of insulting Benedetta, it’s mostly good, clean, wholesome fun.

Mandibules is a rollicking, rambunctious tequila-dream of a movie.

It's not that Paperback Hero is a duff film, exactly. Just a little flimsy, a trifle slight, a mite schematic. The story turns dog-eared midway through. [03 Sep 1999, p.19]

It's a professional old-school espionage outing, intricate as clockwork and acted with relish by the ever-watchable Hoffman. But it remains an oddly anonymous enterprise from this talented and distinctive director.