Sadly, In Secret's script is so loaded with dud lines that any of the more successful elements are quickly erased from memory.

It's been some time since a drama has tackled the moral complexities of revenge quite so brutally - and so well - with each character offering a different perspective on China's crippling corruption and ethical decay that's depressingly common, yet rarely reported.

The film feels like yet another product of the recent studio appropriation of mumblecore as a commodity, ultimately removing any semblance of individualism and feeling like just another product off the factory conveyor belt.

Amini has proven his narrative acumen before and will undoubtedly do so again, but his inaugural stint behind the camera offers only fleeting glimpses of Highsmith's seductive, satirical prose that old hands such as Clément, Hitchcock and Minghella have so notably put to good use.

Though not without merit, Cold In July finds Mickle happily stalled in front of the drive-in cinema screens of his youth. Let's just hope he can find the exit.

Shock and awe are both present - as is Escalante's intense style - but Heli lacks the ideas or formal dexterity to constitute a state of the nation address in any but the most cursory of ways.

The Punk Singer is a rewarding and positive experience. Anderson delivers a fascinating account of the grunge era and an influential story of a role model who has the guts and spunk to hopefully inspire a whole new generation of Riot Grrls and Boys.

Although a couple of narrative twists late on threaten to drum us into melodrama, Chazelle never misses a beat and the film builds to a cathartic crescendo.

By interchanging bawdy gaiety and a ponderous attitude to emphasise the film's spiritual message, Calvary feels extremely disjointed, struggling to balance its dualistic tone on top of its oversized ensemble cast.

Impressive for the most part without being awe-inspiring, the film's two timelines converge in a much more satisfying and thrilling ways towards the end, where the emotional stakes are considerably upped.

An uneven blend of melodrama and the horrors of civil war, it should be anchored by strong leads but instead remains listless and adrift.

The human drama isn't always as compelling as it wants to be, but at its best Godzilla is a hugely entertaining blockbuster that starts strongly and finishes with a mighty roar. The king of the monsters has returned, and it appears he's here to stay.

The fraternity versus parents premise is a decidedly simple one, but the surprising amount of depth to the characters helps mine it for all its worth.

The comedy is never hearty enough to be truly enjoyable, only managing a chain reaction of titters at best.

Even Lavant's brief cameo as a roving theologist towards the finale can't spark the disappointingly bland Michael Kohlhaas into life - surely the most damning indictment of all.

A nefarious misadventure that's technical prowess and heartbreaking lead performance belies its economical pedigree, Saulnier's farcical tale is punctuated with irregular scenes of dark, bumbling humour whilst a wanton disregard for the bellicose testosterone of similar tales successfully constructs a tense and naturally opaque mood that broods with the clammy tension of an impending storm.

It's essentially a collection of shoddily edited action sequences, underpinned by a monotonous narrative that has no purpose, let alone moral heart to reward viewers' waning attention.

Throughout, each of Ilo Ilo's performers give wonderfully naturalistic turns, providing the entire film with a heartening authenticity.

Featuring two outstanding lead performances from bright young talents Lika Babluani and Mariam Bokeria, Ekvtimishvili and Groß immerse their audience in the detritus of a country in tatters, whilst at the same time delicately nurturing two intertwining female maturation tales - with all that entails.

Paths of Glory undoubtedly succeeds in both foreshadowing the bravura auteurism that was to come as well as lampooning the abhorrent bureaucracy that destroyed the lives of so many brave young men in Europe's trenches.

Pompeii make tick all the necessary movie checkboxes, but its execution is unoriginal and uninspired.

Binoche's potent performance [cuts] to the quick of the struggle to balance a passion for work with a commitment to family.

It soon becomes difficult to dismiss the suspicion that Goldthwait had set out to make a comic horror but forgot to insert any laughs.

A rollercoaster ride of tongue-in-cheek cliché, there's plenty of fun to be had with this cheekily reverential horror; yet, a dependence on the sexualisation of the female form anchors the film firmly within 'knowing' horror misogyny.

It's in Wasikowska's confident performance alone that it's more gratifying to acknowledge any motives. The Australian actress appears to come of age in by far her most assured role, every bit believable as a tough but introverted city girl making her way in her country's Outback

While the core concepts of Transcendence and the questions they pose are inherently interesting, the manner in which the themes are explored feels extremely superficial.

Locke never shies away from from thrusting 21st concepts of masculinity into the full glare of the high beams, exposing its morally complex protagonist at his most vulnerable before triumphantly rebuilding him from the foundations upwards. Don't miss it.

Rio 2's Amazon adventure finds its wings clipped by more tired and unnecessary subplots than you can shake a feather at.

Although it fundamentally has many of the same issues as the first film, the strengths are enhanced in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and it's certainly a step forward for the franchise. Now, let's give the web-head a villain worthy of his attention.

Though the film tries for ironic detachment – twelve chapters with a prologue and epilogue – it ultimately can’t wink away its own heartfelt compassion and sympathy, even as it refuses to provide any trite solutions.

Once again, it’s an unadulterated pleasure to watch Chan and his stunt team at work, jumping, contorting and throwing the human form around in ways that simply don’t seem possible.

Petzold struggles to keep hold of the reigns, wielding the effects of melodrama with little to no precision or psychological acuity, and leaving the essential romance at the heart of the story to be rendered almost entirely unbelievable.

A bold and colourful, but by no means superficial portrait of femininity, Daughter of Mine successfully embodies a set of ideas – and anxieties – about motherhood that eloquently reflect a contemporary need to reevaluate the traditional family unit.

This deeply felt Paraguayan drama shines a light on the nation’s fractured identity by crossing numerous generational and class divides.

Ginghină makes for a wonderfully eccentric subject, and the ardour with which he elucidates the intricacies of his project to Porumboiu is both hilarious and tragic.

No doubt many will find German’s approach pretentious and overly repetitive.

A display of dazzling and disorientating technique, this interior tale of a young girl’s mental disintegration is like falling through a hall of mirrors, with each performance reflecting and refracting a portion of Madeline’s personality as fantasy and reality become impossible to separate.

Danish singer and actress Trine Dyrholm plays the diva with verve and energy, in a portrait which is also something of a reevaluation.

Kore-eda has unquestionably added a new, intriguing angle to his meditation on family life in contemporary Japan.

Teemu Nikki's Euthanizer reveals itself to be an affecting examination of cruelty.

With Custody, Legrand has created a family drama that plays out as social realism, but it is as intense as a thriller and, with no generic get outs, far more terrifying than Kubrick's The Shining.

The key here is the perfectly-cast Wilson, constantly swimming against the current of her own harrowing memories, often telling more in a single glance than her sporadic utterances to her similarly-broken brother ever could.

Accomplished as the filmmaking is, on a certain level the directors’ good intentions fall flat, resulting in an often clever but fundamentally flimsy comedy.

Côté employs a methodical reticence that often leaves the viewer guessing as to the significance of the images we are seeing.

Mary Shelley is a film at relentless pains to tell us how poetic and ethereal its heroine is, but without remotely grasping the political and philosophical underpinnings of her work.

Hawke's performance is his most mature to date, a masterpiece of a man who cannot work himself out and yet is compelled to try.

Character and psychology aren't really the point here. Bozon's world is one of adult grotesquerie splatting against the wall of youthful hostility.

Much like young Jeanette, there is no compromise in Dumont's vision that mixes the irreverent and the austere.

With LaBeouf giving the performance of his career and a well-told story that hits all the right beats, Borg vs McEnroe may just well go down as a great tennis film.

Sadly, the intriguing set up - along with Del and Bonnie - is left behind for a too nakedly state-of-America musing, with everyone Charley happens across having some social ill to portray.

The film that made Jackie Chan an international star, Police Story fully embodies the martial artist’s spirit of entertainment – equal parts endearing, goofy and packed with eye-popping kung fu action.

The film can't be faulted for its attempt to argue for some kind of humane kinship and reconciliation, even if this attempt ends up dissolving the enmity in a sentimentality that, given what has come before, strains credibility.

Youth is as sentimental as it is accomplished, but Xiaogang's mastery both of broad sweep and intimate detail proves an impressive feat.

Foxtrot is a bold and imaginative portrait of the confines of family.

Tom of Finland is imbued with playfulness but not the cutting edge, and bravery, of its eponymous leading man.

Brawl in Cell Block 99 is a midnight movie to relish.

It's a muted affair all in all; the script thin and relatively drama-free, which proves irritating considering the assured performances and flashes of brilliance that do flair up.

The measured narrative and anti-climactic finale do mean that Mystery Road doesn’t pander to all tastes, and it never conforms to thriller conventions, but Sen has undoubtedly succeeded in fashioning a thoroughly engrossing journey into a modern Australian wilderness that’s well worth seeking out.

Elliot explores the film’s central themes of loneliness, mental illness, love and friendship, all with a deft balance of humour, sadness and subtlety.

So many thematic and tonal elements of Weerasethakul's later, more celebrated films, are evident in Mysterious Object at Noon that it would be easy to consider as a formative exercise alone, but even as he began to explore these fertile soils, he was creating a work of captivating and arresting beauty.

Perhaps given the ostensibly bookish subject matter, Waking Life has seldom been acknowledged as a legitimate innovator of the medium.

A profound meditation on time and mortality, this is probably the most celebrated of the filmmaker’s work and a hypnotically executed piece of cinema.

Despite being exquisitely shot and flowing with an inescapably graceful stride that seems in accordance with the film's titular dance, The Tango Lesson works far better as a deconstruction of the creative process than it does as a satire on the industry.

Underground is bravura filmmaking at its most entrancing and its labyrinthine political context only serves to heighten its fascinating appeal.

Rape scene aside, Nowhere is stunningly beautiful to watch. There’s not one frame that hasn’t been intricately stylised. Araki brings his trilogy to a head in a bundle of celluloid confusion that encapsulates nihilistic teenage mentality and delivers an expressionistic banquet for your eyes to devour (and your brain to decipher). It’s a wild, enjoyable teenage riot.

A lovingly crafted and well observed story about adolescent self discovery – and to this day remains one of the most remarkable films produced by Studio Ghibli.

Three Colours: Red is the trilogy’s anti-romance, depicting an unconventional love story blossoming against the insurmountable obstacle of age – perhaps the most adventurous and personal of the trilogy,

Heavenly Creatures is a rare film that can be watched and re-watched, revealing more and more layers of subtext and meaning with each viewing. This is no simple tale of murder – this is a tale of obsession, friendship, imagination, gender politics, family and much, much more, and is almost certainly Jackson’s finest film to date.

It’s the film’s humanity which is at the core of its genius.

While Tarantino's recent output combines a strong craftsmanship and a deep reverence to their genre forefathers, it's Pulp Fiction which still wields that adrenalised needle of originality straight into the heart.

The Lion King remains one of the strongest Disney efforts of the 1990s, and arguably its last great, traditionally animated feature.

Three Colours: White brings Kieślowski back to his Polish roots and explores issues of equality through nationality and the fragile dynamic of marriage.

While it is a triumph on an aesthetic level – Chen’s camera glides euphorically through temples and city streets, while the costumes and sets are meticulously authentic – it falls short because it struggles to combine the observational, detached style of its first half with the dramatic tribulations of the second.

An unsure narrative hampers Age of Innocence’s ability to stand with the director’s more assured work, yet Scorsese’s period drama is a deeply cinematic experience, at once beautiful, oppressive and rich.

Like delving into a cold cave of human emotion, Three Colours: Blue is the jewel in the crown of Kieślowski’s trilogy – a fascinating examination of freedom, sorrow and identity, and perhaps one of the most necessary films of contemporary French cinema.

Swinton's intoxicating lead turn and Potter's aesthetic eye make up for the majority of the film's failings and flaws.

Stands out as a prime example of what not to do when trying to construct a watertight feature-length narrative on the foundations of a simplistic platform game.

This magical piece of family-friendly escapism could well be the perfect antidote to the influx of big budget commercialism which will inevitably saturate the local multiplexes during the festive season.

Though it may not be one of Craven’s very best efforts, it does create a sense of tension seldom felt in horror cinema.

Double Impact is a perfectly fine film, and is easily one of the best to come out of Van Damme’s back catalogue. If you want a film to have whilst drinking some ‘manly’ beers with ‘manly’ friends, then you could do much worse than .

The rage that fuels Singleton's film is harnessed to great effect, he shows the reality, and while it builds to a melodramatic conclusion, it depicts life at its most raw.

This is a largely uninspired rehash which fails to improve upon the superior original, stuttering along until the demented, anything goes finale.

Whilst King of New York isn’t, as many have claimed, Ferrara’s masterpiece, and while it may seem muddled and even unspectacular when viewed as part of the genre, it leaves a vinegary taste in one’s mouth that is both brilliant and unpleasant.

Although Goodfellas doesn’t aspire to the grandeur of Coppola’s mob, Scorsese’s New Yorkers have their own vitality, even if – or perhaps because – the threat of violence is never far away.

Exceedingly odd, but still pretty awful.

The problem with The Guardian is that though all the ingredients are there, they fail to come together in the final mix.

A major contributor to the reverential narrative of wistful cinema, Giuseppe Tornatore’s magnum opus Cinema Paradiso is an elegant distillation of the form’s escapist qualities and the garland of an industry that understands global audiences’ enduring appetite for wild nostalgia.

It’s a sweet, small story that deals comfortably in big emotions when required, whilst also taking time to speculate on the nature of art and the difficulties of navigating adolescence. One of the greatest triumphs of Miyazaki’s movie, however, is how well-defined each of its characters truly are.

There’s an ironic detachment that permeates the dark fairy-tale atmosphere, and the performances are pitched to that heightened David Lynch-like caricature.

In the way it seamlessly flits between events separated by large stretches of time, Davies seems to have miraculously captured the essence of memory itself in its elliptical, dreamlike quality.

Maniac Cop deserves to be re-evaluated as a quintessential 80s B-movie – low on brains but high on charm – and lucky viewers should keep an eye out for cameos from The Evil Dead (1981) director Sam Raimi and the Raging Bull himself, Mr. Jake LaMotta.

The two kids are effortlessly real and emotionally complex, but profoundly simple, and Miyazaki’s unique masterpiece embraces that childlike existence.

William Faulkner once made the sage point that “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Louis Malle’s Golden Lion winner Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987) is a Second World War-set film very much guided in spirit by the US novelist’s musing on the febrile relationship between memory, time and individual and collective histories.

Behind the visuals rests an absorbing performance from James Wilby as the titular character.

A garishly macabre vision of a Britain exiting the war years and trying to come of age, it presents a time when society was ridding itself of the shackles of its Best-Of-British conventions, and forging a new path. Sadly though, with any coming of age tale there are those who are unable to grow at the same rate. Withnail is one of those, too happy to take all the pleasures, and never wake up to reality.

Through a series of vignettes hung together by the widow of a noodle chef, this ramen-western explores how the pleasure and meaning we derive from food are vital and enriching components in the human experience.

Sid and Nancy rages with a vitriolic fury which eventually becomes tiresome.

Betty Blue, in either of its forms – whether it be the 121-minute theatrical version or the 185-minute director’s cut – takes a bad situation and makes it true-blue and beautiful.