Xan Brooks

Satrapi's disreputable little creepshow finally doesn't amount to a hill of beans. Maybe that's fine. The Voices provides an enjoyably trashy antidote to the traditional Sundance fare of soulful drama and crusading documentary.

God Help the Girl comes loose and easy, verging on the slipshod. It's warm and generous, verging on the sentimental; a film that crystallises the best and worst of Belle and Sebastian's songwriting skills.

What a peculiarly dodgy, conservative film this is – a lazy salute to a good queen and her faithful Indian servant. It’s a film about the Raj era that looks as if it was made back then, too.

If Rise of the Guardians is finally never more than the sum of its parts, the parts themselves have real appeal.

The film’s prize asset ... is Meryl Streep.

While Benson treats his characters with care and respect, his depiction of grief can feel studied and not felt.

Class and racial tensions come to the boil in this potent tale of disaffected youth in smalltown France.

Perhaps this tells us nothing new about life on the inside in the US (there are rapes, riots and suicides), but it at least handles its brief with pace and precision.

It has been converted into a proficient, machine-tooled horror flick, stuffed full of shocks and buttressed with back-story. Mama got so flabby the second time around.

The pungent, ponderous final chapter of Sono's "Hate" trilogy (following Love Exposure and Cold Fish) bows out with lots of bangs and plenty of whimper.

Pacino's Manglehorn is a subtle master class in neutral shading, with none of the garish flashes that sometimes bedevil his work.

The film is glossy, illuminating and frequently exciting. What it lacks is an emotional charge and a fine-grained texture. We need to invest in these people in order to understand their decisions – and care about the consequences of these.

It tells us that Seberg was wronged and that she looked really great in a bra – and not necessarily in that order.

Sattler's film leans on its actors too heavily. It heaps too many implausibilities upon their trembling shoulders. After an hour in Camp X-Ray, the strain starts to show.

Webb's film is bold and bright and possesses charm in abundance. It swings into the future and carries the audience with it.

Your standard vampire film would have put Cage centre stage. Renfield, God help it, elects to bury the lede and drive a stake through his heart.

I’m not convinced it amounts to any more than the sum of its parts, but the parts are intriguing – and some are possessed of real power.

The film is listing, overladen with cheap trinkets. Dogged, heartfelt acting works hard to prop it up.

The plot is wildly silly and shot full of holes, maundering endlessly on its slow trawl towards the climax. But the cast at least play it like they mean it, and keep it honest for a spell.

What can’t be faulted is Noce’s sheer boldness and ambition. If Padrenostro winds up as a bit of a mess, it’s a beautiful mess, a glorious mess.

One could class The Walker as a thriller, in that it features a murder, a political scandal and a fraught chase that ends with a car crash. But these elements all seem a little rote and rudimentary. Instead, the film's real focus is on the character of Page and his perilous relationship with the world he inhabits.

Little White Lies unspools as glossy, high-grade tosh, a sun-dappled Big Chill, without the rigour or insight required to make you care about these people and wonder which bed they will eventually wind up in.

The film has a ragged charm, a Tiggerish bounce, and a certain sweet melancholy that bubbles up near the end.

What an extravagantly muddled, borderline incontinent film this is. You might call it genre-hopping, except that this would imply some degree of intent and control.

Clooney and Roberts try their best but they’re finally not much more than decoration themselves, the filmic equivalent of plastic figurines on a cake.

Child of God is a shocking tale of backwoods lunacy and one man's descent into hell. Perhaps the most shocking thing about it is that it's really rather good.

Even Stallone's rumbling voiceover possesses the drooping tone of a lullaby – like 45rpm vinyl played at 33. And if you think that reference is retro, you should see the actual movie.

Watching it is akin to be being waylaid by an expert raconteur. There is the curious sense that it has told this tale before; that every joke has been honed and rehearsed; every anecdote lovingly polished in advance.