Black Coal, Thin Ice is a majestic neo-noir.

If there is any real complaint to be levelled at Color Out of Space, it’s that it has more ideas than it knows what to do with.

It’s refreshing to see a character with Down Syndrome treated with depth and intelligence, in control of their own story and not being patronised. Gottsagen is truly a shining light, bringing a strong, wonderfully rich performance -and brilliant comic timing- as Zak to the film.

Adapting Melanie Joosten's novel, Shaun Grant has been unable to recapture the grimey darkness of everyday evil of his previous script Snowtown. Instead, we get a sojourn in place of trauma.

As the family resolves problems of the film's own making, the satisfaction gleaned is relatively minor. The threatened and/or promised explosions fizzle out frustratingly, leaving behind the lurking impression of Louder Than Bombs as a well-crafted, well-played, slickly-written misfire.

While Sicilian Ghost Story doesn’t entirely fulfil its promise as a richly themed gothic romance, the visual craft on display throughout is more than enough to recommend.

Once beyond the babble of the Mindfulness merchants, the latter half of the documentary, however, is far more interesting and compelling as Shen has his experts round on the noise pollution that so disrupts our lives.

The Defiant Ones combines Stanley Kramer’s trademark liberal politics with a picaresque adventure that is deftly entertaining, tense and heartfelt.

Aside from the film’s more immediate pleasures, what is perhaps most intriguing about Why Don’t You Just Die! is Sokolov’s almost visible attempt to find his own voice: among this melange of film-school influences, it’s undoubtedly there, though perhaps it hasn’t quite formed yet.

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

A film that wields its simple premise with devastating impact.

Only the Animals remains a highly satisfying and gripping thriller that, like the best of them, finds the time to properly contemplate the depths of its dominoes as they are arranged before the capricious hand of chance gleefully knocks them down, one by one.

An ambitious, clever, and inventive psychogenic fugue, Censor is rough around the edges and shot on a shoestring, sure, however Bailey-Bond has compelling and vital comments to make on art, media consumption, politics, and society.

If for no other reason than its place in comedy history, Here Comes Mr. Jordan is interesting, if dispensable viewing.

Its lasting resonance and wider humanitarian message is diluted by a second half that drags it down.

Traversing the curiosities that we all yield at an adolescent age where discovering and understanding our bodies is a paramount experience, one cannot help applauding the director in depicting the taboo subject in such a pure fashion.

Tracing ambivalent pasts and ambiguous futures, Monsoon grows into a brooding portrait of immigrant displacement – one marked by a ceaseless yearning.

The ingredients of a quality film are all here. It just could have done with being a bit shorter and a bit snappier.

A funny and touching coming-of-age story that occasionally loses its way, just like its protagonist.

Nathan Grossman charts her rise in this perfectly enjoyable but ultimately unpersuasive and shallow documentary.

Even with admirable acting, and such a crowd-pleasing, inspirational story, Green Book essentially feels like civil-rights lip-service for a white audience, and given the background to the script, it’s a disappointing portrayal of historical systemic racism, whilst ignoring its continuation in modern-day America.

The fear of old age’s erosion of our faculties, our agency and our relevance is a potent, almost paralysing one: the way we perceive and treat our elders invariably reveals something about ourselves. In her charming and off-kilter documentary The Mole Agent, Chilean director Maite Alberdi confronts that fear literally through the eyes of her subject.

The Oscar-nominated Hedges is, as one would expect, superb in the title role, but performances across the board are excellent.

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.

The In-Laws, while not quite a classic is a terrifically inventive and consistently funny comedy, with an oft-imitated but rarely matched star chemistry.

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.

Bad 25 is primarily a film about an album and not about a life; a tribute to the master craftsman and musical talent that was Jackson and not a penetrative investigation of the man who made the music.

An unnecessarily loud ending is an unwelcome jolt that will likely divide audiences down the middle, but Chronic is an otherwise unique character study of endearing depth.