A Dog’s Journey is certainly manipulative - humans aren’t safe here either, with a significant cancer side-plot. At times, it even seems obsessed by death. Yet there’s something oddly cathartic about sobbing your way through this film, with its mash-up of Buddhism and All-American values.

This is a small, carefully crafted film that tries hard to pierce the protective armor of a recluse known to be difficult and domineering. In the end, Stokes still remains slightly unknowable, as she’d undoubtedly prefer. Yet the documentary’s deep dive into her extraordinary archives, and the grainy video treasures it unearths, make for fascinating viewing.

Come to Daddy starts out like a nasty drama, ends up as a gruesomely gory, coldly comic revenge thriller – and desperately loses its way somewhere in-between.

Tell It To The Bees can seem a little too respectable for its own good but there are moments of pain and heartbreak that rise to the surface, especially in a tense climax that puts the fates of several characters in the balance.

Tender without sentimentality, the doc by Ron Mann is as absorbing as it is understated.

A magnificent and enthralling film that fits into no easy genre bracket, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance) – to give it its full title – is a technical tour de force, a beautifully performed and smartly scripted black comedy that will leave its audience keen to head back for more.

Skin is a little pedestrian and obvious in its early stages, skirting with the feeling of a television production. It is the nature of the story and the scale of the mountain that Widner had to climb that finally makes it into something more compelling.

Not every emotional beat lands, and some action scenes merely repeat past strengths. But between Brolin’s continued excellence as Thanos, a moral monster who believes in the righteousness of his cause, and the filmmakers’ effortless popcorn-movie poetry, Endgame is a muscular send-off to this series of comic-book extravaganzas.

A perfect primer for anyone new to Le Guin, the documentary also has enough to offer dedicated fans, confirming her place as a major figure in American literature and as a spiky, rebellious and engaging personality.

The suffering, fear and humiliation that they experience is balanced by moments of warmth and an artist’s magpie eye for unexpected glimpses of beauty. It’s a remarkable achievement.

The Curse Of La Llorona is haunted by a reliance on musty horror tropes. This competent but derivative exorcism film feels like multiplex filler for undemanding audiences who will happily sample any new addition to the Conjuring cinematic universe.

Considering it’s geared towards children — although not afraid to show some of the harsher realities of the animal kingdom — Penguins is more instructional tool than scintillating nonfiction investigation. But resistance to these sweet, wobbly critters is futile.

Between the overblown poor CG, witless dialogue and pervasive, numbing violence, the new Hellboy deserves its own special circle in Dante’s inferno.

No doubt the world needs more paeans to tolerance, but movies as ineffectual as The Best Of Enemies feel profoundly inadequate to the task.

This pleasing, if perplexing, feature debut from Qiu Sheng takes an agile and experimental approach to structure, as two story strands glance off each other, and occasionally intersect.

As with all Stephen King stories, there are resonant universal themes running through Pet Sematary; guilt, grief and trauma fuel this tale of a family who move to the countryside and become embroiled with an ancient evil. Yet these are buried deep under a mudslide of horror cliches — jump scares, creepy kids, expositional newspaper headlines — that reduce this to just another run-of-the-mill horror remake.

This live-action remake of the 1941 Disney animated classic finds the eccentric, inconsistent filmmaker tapping into his career’s core emotional themes and, on occasion, Dumbo has the magic and wonder of his best work. (And that blue-eyed baby elephant is awfully cute.) But there remains a frustrating impersonality — not to mention an audience familiarity with his well-worn aesthetic — that keeps the film from soaring all that high.

A mixed bag that doesn’t quite work — it’s too jokey, and too tonally erratic — and yet there’s real sweetness, as well as a genuine attempt to not just be another comic-book movie.

Solidly competent and, for the most part, well acted the, film employs a safe, familiar approach and lacks the distinctive element which could boost its box office potential.

The cluttered structure, littered with brusque little flashbacks, repeatedly interrupts the momentum and tension of the story of Nureyev’s most daring leap.

Perhaps Us stumbles near the end while straining for an operatic, shattering finale that explains everything that preceded it but, after capturing the zeitgeist his first time out, Peele avoids the sophomore slump by methodically laying out his riveting tale.

Larson navigates through a cute story’s clear limitations to deliver a film that’s often quite funny, even if it sometimes flirts with being cringe-worthy.

Wilde delivers a confident feature directorial debut, mixing humour, embarrassment and poignancy to crowd-pleasing effect.

The humour is low key, repeatedly mining the juxtaposition of the supernatural and the banal; a likeable performance from Maeve Higgins is the picture’s driving force.

A smoothly executed but decidedly drab crime drama. Checking all the necessary narrative boxes for its target audience and asking little of stars Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson other than to bring their well-established onscreen personas to the characters, the latest from director John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, Saving Mr. Banks) dabbles in familiar dramatic ironies and rather obvious observations about violence, celebrity and ageing. The Highwaymen never puts a foot wrong, but it fails to elicit much passion or fascination.

Fisherman’s Friends is a somewhat tone-deaf comedy drama. With its by-the-numbers storyline of a jaded London music industry exec (Daniel Mays) who finds romance and true meaning in his life in addition to an acapella group, plus a subplot about a village pub under threat from an out of town property developer, the film is wearisomely predictable and parochial in its outlook.

A weaponised comedy which concludes with real poignancy. ... The film shares with [Veep] a similarly tart and unvarnished view of the savage, sweary machinations of power and the expendable status of the powerless.

While one can’t argue with the Oscar-winner’s commitment, there’s far more mannerisms than inspiration — a criticism that also applies to this self-indulgent, infrequently transfixing stoner comedy.

Brie Larson gives Carol the right mixture of sweetness, humour and swagger, underlining the film’s message of self-empowerment with a light touch.

Soapy in style and luridly exploitative in its approach to violence, Smaller And Smaller Circles is perhaps not sophisticated enough to appeal to fans of the crime genre outside of the domestic market.

Though hardly radical, Giant Little Ones’ advocacy for empathy is warmly argued — perhaps encouraging you, in kind, to forgive this slight film’s shortcomings.

If the village’s utter isolation feels unlikely, that’s because The Sower is in one sense a dream, the enactment of a myth that goes back to Ancient Greece and beyond.

There’s a sense of genuinely creative mischief in some of the group’s satanic stunts, as well as a deft understanding of the workings of state legislature.

Unrelenting as its tone may be, the feature proves a delicately layered, deftly shot work that makes an incisive statement about the prevalence of apathy, arrogance and egotism in contemporary China and beyond.

The Aftermath works best when looking at the bewildered people who have been left behind, literally, to pick up the pieces. The savage loss of family members still reverberates through empty rooms and ruined landscapes.

A challenging narrative structure - withholding key information and skipping between several time frames - makes this film a daunting watch overall. But Wang’s ambition and seriousness, aided by strong ensemble performances, ensure it is a formidable and, for the most part, involving work of novelistic scope.

The strength of Slick Woods’ performance lies in the way she finds the plaintive grace notes beneath the brash, sassy confidence of that exterior. She brings out the vulnerability in this seemingly tireless spirit, transforming Goldie’s story into a poignant coming of age.

Jayro Bustamante offers a thoughtful, emotionally-charged exploration of a devoutly religious family man torn apart by the revelation of his love for another man.

Like much of her digital work in the twentieth century, Varda’s approach here is a kind of expansive introspection; it’s a film which looks both inwards and outwards at the same time. And like Varda herself, it pulls off the combination of a trundling, amiable pace with a biting intellectual acuity.

The result is mixed: buoyantly energetic at times, manically unamusing at others and decidedly overstretched.

Piranhas feels a bit like a teen movie that just happens to have a Cammora backdrop, rather than a serious, nuanced drama about the paranza system – essentially, the grooming of underage kids as drug runners and Mafia footsoldiers.

Strikingly photographed, sensitively acted but torpid in its pacing, this is filmmaking which will require a degree of patience from its audience.

Diane Kruger is compelling in the central role in this pacy procedural thriller which is persuasive in its depiction of contemporary spycraft but less convincing in mounting a case for why she would work for Mossad in the first place.

With a cast impressively headed by James Norton, and cinematography that captures the bleakness of winter and deprivation to grimly palatable effect, Holland’s drama comes across in part as a meticulously mounted, sometimes solemn history lesson.

A superb performance by Affleck, who constructs a touching and believable rapport with his 11 year-old co-star, grounds his low-key directorial and feature-writing debut.

It’s a big-hearted picture, certainly, but one that doggedly labours its message.

What’s both intriguing and enraging about the film is the fact that it so defiantly rejects the language of cinematic storytelling; this is a film which is intended to upend audience expectations.

Singh busts rhymes with the best of them in this energetic, entertaining film that smuggles some urgent social themes in under the cover of a hoary old fable about a handsome pauper who gets the stardom and the girl.

Perhaps the question is not whether the film needed to be so relentlessly grim, but rather whether it needed to be made at all.

Petrunya is careful to maintain the ideal balance, parodying the ridiculous response to its protagonist but never downplaying its realism.

Denis Côté’s eerie fantasy drama juxtaposes the mundane and the parochial with the supernatural, to sometimes disquieting effect.

Deep down this is a conventional and predictably plotted period drama about a clash between bodice-ripping passion and social mores.

With authentic spaces like this around them, Ahn’s actors relax into the realism.

Superbly acted and highly controlled, the film doesn’t afford easy entertainment, its slow pace and weighty sense of narrative responsibility making for heavy viewing during stretches of its extended running time.

Watergate is a fascinating film that both draws disturbing parallels and offers the opposition encouragement.

If tenderness is deployed to ease Shmuel’s grieving, those are not the scenes which give To Dust its special pungency, or what make you laugh. This film is at its best when it goes for the gut.

This comic melodrama wrings every last drop of drama from the set up.

One Child Nation is an utterly compelling documentary that examines the consequences of this staunchly enforced ‘social experiment’. If it stops short of making an explicit political statement, a series of powerful testimonies leaves a harrowing micro-level impression.

While this slow-motion tragedy sometimes risks more than it can deliver, the film’s cumulative effect stuns nonetheless. Ashton Sanders heads a fine cast that forcibly articulates the everyday landmines African-Americans have to navigate in a white society that often seems intent on destroying them.

Both intimate and epic, American Factory offers a remarkably candid, fly-on-the-wall account ... It’s a deceptively lighthearted look at one of the most significant cultural and economic conflicts of our times.

I Am Mother mostly satisfies as another example of smart and slick indie sci-fi.

There’s a freshness to the characterisations, a good eye, and for a time Cronin constructs a tense guessing game as to whether it’s mental breakdown or supernatural forces at play.

Feels like a Saturday Night Live skit that’s been stretched out over 90 minutes.

If nothing else, this intimate, well-observed drama should prove to be a nice calling card for its first-time feature filmmaker.

Little Monsters doesn’t exactly reanimate the popular subgenre in novel ways, but there’s enough humorous gags, suspenseful scares, fleshy gore, and quite surprisingly, a dash of heartfelt sentiment, to make for an amusing thrill-ride.

There’s nothing more terrifying in this film than the creative talent wasted on such shockingly mediocre material.

As grimly gripping as Them That Follow is, the proceedings have a stacked-deck quality to them, which keeps this compelling tale from being truly galvanising.

This portrait of the artist as a young film-maker will certainly stand the test of time.

It’s intelligent and clever scripting, and except for a few moments where the dialogue is overly expository, as if Burns doesn’t trust his audience, The Report pulls back the curtain on America’s political machinations and one of its most appalling policy decisions and attempted cover-ups with startling clarity.

Photograph’s deliberate pace does bring some rich rewards for the patient viewer, while a lovely ending feels like a throwback to the old-fashioned big screen romances of yore.

Director Gavin Hood gives the proceedings a rousing electricity, and he’s aided by a cast which leans into the story’s urgency and continued relevance.

This is a gripping, sometimes hypnotising film in which notions of good and evil are less clear-cut than the urgent desire to stay alive.

Anchored by standout performances by Naomi Watts, Octavia Spencer and young Kelvin Harrison Jr., it’s a strong indie film about race, family and trust that should connect with fans of smart, provocative cinema.

Thompson delivers a memorable performance as the abrasive “cold witch,” as someone describes her, perhaps even outdoing Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wars Prada as a delightfully wicked woman of power.

This ambitious debut features flashes of imaginative visuals, quirky dialogue, and well-meaning messages about gentrification and disenfranchisement.

Despite committed performances from LaBeouf, Lucas Hedges and Noah Jupe, Honey Boy ends up feeling indulgent rather than searing, settling into its anguish rather than translating it into trenchant drama.

The longer The Lodge rolls along, the sheer skilfulness of the execution — the precise manipulation of the audience’s fears — becomes so impressive that one is tempted to simply succumb to its cold, cruel efficiency.

Mikhanovsky mixes different styles of comedy, but he binds them with a realist approach that grounds everything in an offhand, absurdist tone.

The Farewell is so fixated on its principle problem that it doesn’t allow its story or its characters to veer from it, or find further complexities in it. There’s only so many scenes a story can take of family members trying to keep the truth from grandma before it become less compelling.

Zac Efron projects the right amount of edgy, empty handsomeness, but the movie’s conceit doesn’t pay enough dividends — especially when trying to reconcile Bundy’s distortions of reality with the actual terror he caused in the 1970s.

Mascaro’s striking aesthetics give the film a texture and atmosphere that aligns the audience firmly with its protagonist; she’s seeking transcendence, and the movie she’s in approximates it one lustrous frame at a time.

However sceptical you feel about Brügger’s approach, and his findings, this is an arresting, troubling work – and, for all the horror, an intensely entertaining one too.

Cutting-edge performance-capture technology gives us a remarkably lifelike Alita, but although Robert Rodriguez clearly loves this pulpy genre material, that affection rarely translates into anything more than an impressive display of technical might.

A bullet-riddled tale of unlikely female empowerment, Miss Bala toys with exploitation and social commentary but doesn’t have the ingenuity or nerve to successfully pull off either.

Animals is a smoothly-made, beguiling tale of female friendship, which, like its protagonist Laura (Holliday Grainger), sometimes feels a little lost, in need of a home.

This earnest tale succeeds thanks to its potent themes — including the tension between old traditions and new ways of thinking — and Ejiofor locates the story’s emotional underpinnings without succumbing to cheap manipulation or mawkishness.

While this flimsy coming-of-age drama over-relies on the Boss’s greatest hits for its emotional high points, this remains a likeable and touching story about finding your own voice.

This meticulously conceived documentary is both a definitive account of the voyage as well as a creative, cinematic you-are-there unfolding of the events that transpired.

Despite a stellar cast led by Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams, After The Wedding never cuts very deeply, staying on the surface of a tale that ought to tear into the viewer’s soul the way it does these tormented characters.

The film benefits from Pugh’s charismatic performance and writer-director Stephen Merchant’s cheery mixture of crowd-pleasing sentiment, wry laughs and genuine sweetness.

It’s ultimately a forgettable lark, amounting to little more than a spiteful attack on the vapidity of the commercial art-world. There’s nothing lampooned here that we haven’t already seen before, whether it be a pretentious art critic or avaricious art dealers.

This English-language remake of In Order Of Disappearance by its Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland doesn’t particularly succeed as a thriller, but the film’s gleeful perversity at refusing to satisfying genre conventions gives it a scruffy integrity all the same.

Although compelling ideas float through High Flying Bird, the film is neither well crafted or intellectually rigorous enough to compensate for a generally lacklustre presentation.

The fun pop-culture riffing remains, but The Second Part lacks the density of ingenuity, humour and whiz-bang action that marked the first film. Rather than bursting with imagination and wit, the sequel feels busy, overstuffed, a little routine.

Offering little in terms of exposition and even less when it comes to dialogue, Fischer’s sophomore effort develops character and, eventually, unsettling moral questions entirely through action, playing as a more consciously political companion piece to J.C. Chandor’s similarly taciturn All is Lost.

The Breaker Upperers might suffer from a too-neat third act, but it wins hearts and hearty guffaws along the way.

[An] earnest, entertaining and imaginative old-meets-new adventure.

Nia DaCosta’s heartland tale, rough around some edges, is a promising feature debut.