Petzold's Phoenix is a high-concept premise executed as a heart-wrenching character piece.

One feels its subject would have admired the boldness of its conception, if perhaps not its overly slick execution.

With The Postman's White Nights, Konchalovsky offers up an intimate and moving pastoral.

Despite its manifold flaws, Jackie & Ryan is still oddly watchable.

Although there is certainly tension at moments and Driver once more proves himself an actor of great promise, Hungry Hearts falls between two baby chairs - neither satisfying as a thriller nor convincing as a drama.

When Good Kill takes aim at US foreign policy and the advances in military technology, it creates moments of chilling and powerful drama, but this is dissipated and compromised by its mirror-punching domestic drama and its bizarre need to bring about something like a happy ending.

The film is heartfelt and sincere in its concern to understand conflict and the plight of good men when they're forced to make impossible choices.

A sense of humour and nostalgia are both employed successfully to skirt the potential inertia of Paul's slowly declining career, and though de Givry's performance is quietly moving, one may have just hoped that Eden would get under its subject's skin a little bit more.

The Duke of Burgundy lingers long in the mind and cements its director's much-deserved place as one of the most exhilarating currently at work.

A well-behaved and unashamedly populist film, the kind that could be shown in schools and community centres, Akin's The Cut remains an undeniably important film regardless. What it does extremely well is to movingly illustrate a terrible moment in history which has been sadly neglected in the West and actively suppressed in other parts of the world.

An unfunny undead comedy that in harking back to the days of the classic B-movie would be flattered to be classified as an E-movie.

The sheer insanity of the premise alone is enough to make Tusk a surreal hoot.

Slaboshpitsky's The Tribe is gripping, tour de force cinema from its opening jab, and from there it continually forces you against the ropes before delivering a knockout punch with a gut-wrenching conclusion destined to leave audiences stunned.

Godard is not willing to sit back in his dotage but strives to push at the boundaries of the medium, resulting in this rich, witty and thoroughly baffling provocation. Less of a narrative or a thesis than an esoteric patchwork visual essay condemning our fallen society, it's intent on being as abrasive as possible in almost every way.

Taking Eastern watercolours as inspiration, the aesthetic is impressionistic and painterly with a fluidity that imbues the piece with an intrinsic magic.

Intermittently entertaining and laudably short, for all its best intentions Cymbeline is cursed by doing again what others have done better.

Stevens is excellent both as the cordial house guest and the brooding time- bomb ever present beneath his earnest veneer.

This undeniably silly, but raucously entertaining, off-the-wall transhumanist actioner is an absolute riot.

The result is a beautifully entertaining film. It is witty and the scenes between Gerwig and Pacino fizz alternately with flirtation, humour and occasionally rage.

Another limp, almost laugh-free comedy to add to Diaz's long list of failures, Kasdan's Sex Tape fails to ignite the obvious chemistry between her and the usually solid Segel, himself in possibly his least entertaining performance.

Schechter's latest marks its arrival with a fanfare of style and sass, but lacks the necessary bite to leave a lasting impression.

Wetlands can be an unusually intriguing, funny and entertaining visual experience.

Even if Murdoch's directorial style is at times off-putting - the dance routines oscillating wildly from charming to naff - it's hard not to be taken in by trips into Glasgow's backstreet gig venues and the type of Victorian splendour seen on screen too rarely.

The humour is scant and there's no real risk of peril (Grant George's nephew and his dastardly plans seem more psychopathic than threatening). Yet when you have a film that's colourful, easy on the eye and full of positive messages about friendship and trust, then kids will be happy.

It may be stuck in the past, with its hoary clichés about the call girl with the heart of gold and the incurable romantic, but the whole thing fizzes with such joie de vivre that the anachronisms only add to its overwhelming charm.

[Bahrani's] created a complex and thoughtful political drama with the speed and tension of a good thriller.

The style, one senses, is overcompensating for a narrative slackness that has nowhere particular to go other than anti-climax. That's not to say that Manglehorn isn't a good film - it is. It's just that Pacino's seasoned performance deserved a great film.

Oppenheimer's first film maintained a passive detachment, allowing the killers to re-enact their own atrocities and metaphorically hang themselves with their own words. The Look of Silence takes a far harder line, probing the killers more deeply and confronting them in an attempt to shake some sense of remorse out of them.

Birdman is a rich, startlingly clever and multi-layered collage, with Iñárritu creating a meta-universe of mirrors and performances upon performances.

Having constructed such a dramatically enticing set-up, it's thus disappointing to see Mackenzie fall back on familiar generic tropes with such a frustrating sense of inevitability.

Ultimately, Memphis is a bold and bewildering conjuring act, that might mean nothing at all, but the sleight of hand is worth the price of admission.

For a film that looks at a believably nightmarish future, The Congress sits out of its time; a feverish relic of a post-revolutionary cinema of the mind that attempts to transcend the confines of a bloated filmic space that appears no longer interested in discourse, and would rather parley its audience into a stupefied boredom.

Tsai's Stray Dogs is a masterpiece of social-realism, a distinctive and beguiling study of society's displaced and marginalised that plays to the beat of its own drum and refuses to conform to cinema's own commodification.

Lilting looks set to linger on in the memory of those who seek it out for weeks, months and perhaps even years to come.

As much as the sequel aches to remind audiences of what they liked first time round, it struggles to establish itself as its own unique entity.

For the most part, Dinosaur 13 is highly absorbing - some of the decisions that come against Larson are truly shocking - but it does lack in places as a piece of documentary journalism.

Hughes' sequel fails because it makes no attempts whatsoever to rise above its predicable formula, even with the new cast additions and a promising director.

If there's a positive to be taken away from Hector and the Search for Happiness, it's that British cinema doesn't get much worse than this.

Ultimately, Benson's Eleanor Rigby disappears into the gap between its rom-com and drama stools.

Slattery does at times struggle to bring anything new to the impoverished blue-collar, working-class trope. Relying heavily on several top-drawer character actors to lift his occasionally flat, even nihilistic story of love and death amidst urban decay, it's Hoffman and Jenkins that deserve the largest proportion of praise, while other characters quickly fall to the wayside of our interest.

Ferrara's Welcome to New York is a savage work that's easily one of the best films of the year. [Unrated Version]

Guardians of the Galaxy is undoubtedly a flashy space opera, but if you are on board with that, it's a resounding success that takes a seat at Marvel's top table and suggests there could still be life after The Avengers.

An otherwise intelligent piece that favours deftness of touch over bombastic thrills, A Most Wanted Man is an efficient espionage drama that, whilst in no way revelatory, is attuned to its source material's non-heroic and morally ambiguous approach to a well-worn genre.

A satisfying balance of family drama, political intrigue and all-out action (an ape cavalry charge has to be seen to be believed) do, in truth, only constitute half of the story, as Reeves' sci-fi sequel is as much a technical triumph as a narrative one.

Does Michael Bay fit the criteria of an auteur? He certainly has his own line of distinctive tropes: the migraine-inducing noise, the fetishistic gloss, the playground-bully characters elevated to hero status and a fervently male gaze.

Fortunately, Boyhood concludes on a note of such unbridled optimism, Linklater is defying you to leave the auditorium without a grin on your face. Indeed, few will after experiencing this astonishing cinematic treasure.

Salvo ends up feeling like a very bright start for its creators but never quite finds a narrative or thematic drive to match its artistic verve.

Archipelago is a sharply observed and excruciatingly honest exploration of family relationships and the mess that we call life. Hogg has proven herself here to be one of Britain's most important film-makers.

Postman Pat: The Movie is a disappointment; a modern-day reinvention of a traditional, much-loved classic that differs so far from its comfort zone that it'll have a difficult time winning audiences, let alone maintaining there attention.

It remains remarkable that, at the grand old age of 73, Bertolucci is still making films of intelligence and guile, let alone features about teenage angst and sexual maturation.

Despite being one of his most ostentatious films to date, the setting, plot, performances and authorial tone on display marry together seamlessly to simultaneously heighten and smooth his trademark style.

With Yves Saint Laurent, Lespert has played it safe but stylish, and pulls it off thanks to some canny casting choices and a refreshing focus on mainstream appeal.

Snowpiercer evolves steadily, growing richer with every step and slowly feeding us morsels of information - enriching this ludicrous premise with enough magic and wonder to suspend our disbelief entirely.

T.S. Spivet is a dreamlike fairytale, which swims in the romanticism of childhood and the decay of the American Dream.

A lacklustre, frustratingly inconsistent work of music history sugar-coating.

While it is serious, Hogg also manages to insert some oddball humour and a little hopeful levity into the proceedings. The fractures provide the absolutely riveting subject matter, but Exhibition shows the potential for healing and confirms its director's place at the forefront of intriguing British filmmakers.

Bearing in mind the dramatic nature of the real life-and-death story at Dormant Beauty's core, this is an unacceptable and irresponsible piece of filmmaking for all of its good intentions.

The acting throughout is supremely naturalistic, and the social milieu of both family life and the theatre are carefully observed and lightly rendered.

Cheap Thrills is a commendably flawed experiment in imbuing social anxiety with genre shocks.

It's Coogler's confrontational depiction of police brutality and his attempts to represent the society he aims to inspire and inform that makes Fruitvale Station such essential viewing.

The found footage format has been milked to death of late... but here it's used to fully immerse the viewer, ensuring that the characters speak directly to the audience and, with the removal of the third wall, throws them straight into the lion's den to create maximum discomfort.

When I Saw You too closely resembles a Children Film Foundation treatise on a subject that deserves (and needs and demands) better treatment; something that will focus people's gaze on the horror and displacement of exile and all that entails.

Unfortunately, despite its good central idea, Lapeyre and Wilson's execution is disappointingly poor.

22 Jump Street is hugely successful in retaining - and in many instances, improving upon - the qualities of it predecessor and pitching some jokes that will still have people chuckling for days afterwards.

At its very best his Venus in Fur is a clever and often comical two-hander, with Amalric and Seigner both giving tour de force performances.

This is political cinema at its best; intelligent, thought-provoking and utterly absorbing. Bakri is a star in the making and delivers an electrifying performance.

So much is thrown at the wall that some of it's got to stick - comedy for comedy's sake, if you will - and while that doesn't make for a great film necessarily, it certainly doesn't make for a bad one.

Despite its pitfalls, Maleficent entertains because of Jolie, who holds the wavering threads of Stromberg's spinning wheel together with aplomb.

In his signature style, without talking heads, narration or explanatory context, Wiseman takes us straight into the London gallery itself and the inhabitants inside - both human and paint-form.

Party Girl may tread familiar ground but Theis-Litzemburger is utterly convincing as the self-absorbed, beguilingly unaware lead.

As you'd expect from an actor-director of Amalric's pedigree, the performances are brilliant throughout and Mathieu himself has a wonderful eye for the telling tick and/or the revealing gesture.

The ultimate message may be a little fuzzy, but Mundruczó has crafted a incredibly cinematic canine parable that remains gripping and inventive from its nose to its tail.

The film isn't just bad - it's awful - ineptly directed (Olivier Dahan), terribly written (Arash Amel) and bafflingly acted by an assortment of miscast faces.

This is the kind of oddball midnight movie that could easily gain a cult following and there are delights to be had in the midst.

Sissako's film is at turns funny, poetic and deeply moving.

A fluid, dreamlike tone poem of mothers and fathers, death and continuance.

There's no doubting Hazanavicius' sincerity in trying to bring the Chechen conflict, the war crimes committed against the civilian community and the indifference of the international community to light, but it's this righteousness that gets in the way of The Search working as a film first and foremost.

The characters of Jimmy's Hall aren't really characters as much as archetypes: the saintly mother, the sweetheart, the hero, the villain. This is the kind of film where people don't argue - they debate - speaking in lines from manifestos and creating an incongruity.

With The Homesman, Jones has produced an original and cantankerously offbeat western which becomes increasingly beguiling as the road stretches on.

Both actresses are excellent, with Binoche given more to do and she flips between attempting to get into the skin of her character and back to her normal self. Stewart, on the other hand, has an easy naturalism as she moves from devotion to rebellion without ever being able to fully express herself.

The trajectory of success and excess followed by last act redemption is familiar to the point of parody, and the ploys with time come over as gimmicky attempt to inject an element of surprise into the otherwise predictable narrative.

As we pass from one story to another the relentless savagery does get a bit grinding. In addition, at two hours in length, Szifron's film is perhaps one skit too long. Regardless, Wild Tales is an inventive, occasionally hysterical ride.

Two Days, One Night is well made, and Cotillard and the rest of the cast give assured performances, but its optimism is desperate. By no means the Dardennes' best work, one wonders if they shouldn't perhaps stray outside of their comfort zone.

Not exciting enough to be taken as straightforward thriller and not engaging enough for a dramatic character piece, Egoyan's The Captive is held back by its own lame script and a distinct lack of necessity.

A brutal, crackling and savage Hollywood satire Maps to the Stars knows exactly where it's going, carefully breaking every rule in the book. After carefully constructing his crystal kingdom, Cronenberg launches his stones with dark, mischievous joy.

In arguably a career-topping performance, Timothy Spall plays the cantankerous painter as a complex, grunting, snarling and utterly single-minded creature.

Zvyagintsev's pessimism is leavened both by his comedy and his sense of beauty. Mikhail Krichman's cinematography captures the sublime grandeur of the landscape against which the nasty, brutish and short lives are played out.

Dolan is a director who thinks hard about the possibilities of cinema and explores them with verve and ingenuity, but it is in his latest film that everything has come together.

The Wonders is a complex and nuanced illustration of a family trying to live by their own standards - whilst only partly failing. Rohrwacher's vision is tactful and restrained, with so much we don't ever know. The characters' histories are there to be guessed rather than spelled out.

With a richness of characterisation usually reserved for hefty novels, each shot in Winter Sleep glows like a symbol, whilst each digression is almost a short story in itself.

Nothing quite competes with the blistering opening scene, but The Salvation's cast of characters mean it's never less than a fun watch.

For most post-apocalyptic films, the nightmare is really a disguised fantasy. In Michôd's excellent The Rover, the nightmare is real.

Carell, in a rare but not unique departure into drama, proves himself as accomplished at tragedy as he is at comedy.

Despite a liberal dose of full frontal nudity, The Canyons fails to fully revel in its sleaze, struggling to even work as a deadpan satire on the kind of vacuous and deadened Hollywood types Easton Ellis brought to life in the pages of his debut novel, Less Than Zero.

With Frank, Abrahamson cultivates a mystical hour of prog-based shenanigans before he - and his film - begin to lose their collective heads in a muddled final third.

Tender, charming and made with substantial care, Next Goal Wins celebrates the cliché that it's not about winning, but the taking part.

Arnie completists will enjoy seeing the Austrian Oak in good form, but as a whodunit thriller Sabotage is found severely wanting.

Unlike many of Miyazaki's previous works, The Wind Rises is a film rooted far more firmly in realism. Although it does have its fair share of fantastical dream sequences and magical flying machines.