Hits all the expected emotional beats but doesn’t take many risks or glean sufficient insights about our fascination with the double-edged sword of eternal youth.

Its relatively tranquil surface, its small amusements (many of them revolving around a tasty turn by John Turturro as a histrionically insecure American leading man), its moments of touching, almost Sirkian melodrama, above all its ability to tease resonant themes out of seemingly inconsequential scenes or lines of dialogue, make for a film that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Nguyen’s documentary certainly leaves the viewer wanting more.

Ultimately, the impression remains that Child 44 either needed to be much longer to let all the different elements breathe or much more tightly focused to let the murder manhunt dominate.

Though suitably moving in parts, Desert Dancer is more dutiful than inspired, reducing a worthy message to lukewarm sermonising.

A strangely lacklustre, unconvincing attempt to tell the story of the Heineken kidnapping.

Slouching Theron is absolutely convincing as a self-loathing haunted soul with zero ambition. As the town’s “rich slut,” Chloe Grace Moretz gives yet another pitch-perfect performance. Both actresses elevate the material, making a somewhat far-fetched story both believable and enjoyable.

The Longest Ride plays like cynical fan service to Sparks’ readers, who, it is assumed, will be content to sit back and enjoy a cheap tearjerker, no matter how mouldy its execution is.

A drearily sincere movie about faith and tolerance, Little Boy boasts plenty of good intentions but very little else.

Timoner’s often-compelling documentary, which is neither an apology nor a hagiography, is an intriguing personal take on a man who turns out to be endlessly intriguing, no matter what you think of his antics.

It’s a title to be admired, certainly, but for all its visual fireworks, Far From The Madding Crowd doesn’t truly ignite an emotional spark.

Its impact sealed by across-the-board strong performances from its all-male cast, Tangerines is a film about loss and belonging, about rootedness and departure.

It’s joyous, it’s crazy – cars skydive out of aircraft in Azerbaijan, no less - it’s exhaustively long, and, still, it’s clunkily lovable.

The Water Diviner is a heart-warming tale of family, love and sacrifice told with four-square enthusiasm and manliness by director and star Russell Crowe.

Lead performances from Jonah Hill and James Franco are plenty impressive. But at the same time, True Story is almost too polished and clever for its own good, sacrificing complexity for a surface-y examination of the issues at play.

Though perhaps lacking in a real sense of dramatic tension; veering towards the schmaltzy at times and needing a far tighter ending, Woman In Gold is still a thoroughly enjoyable story, engagingly told and with a nice line in gentle humour to balance the legal battle structure which can veer to dryness at times.

Last Knights is little more than a dutifully compiled collection of genre conventions, its tale of a group of brave knights seeking vengeance for their fallen leader so undemanding that it’s almost charmingly pedestrian.

The saga, directed by a Scot in New Zealand with no American actors, takes us back to American truths. Guns, greed and rugged nature defined the West, setting the New World apart from the old. The roots run deep.

Almereyda has created an experiment of his own: a kind of cinematic Rorschach test, prodding viewers to consider what they would do if sitting in the same seat as Milgram’s subjects.

At heart Dreamcatcher is a simple film, but it is also a rigorous and compassionate one.

While there are admittedly some jarring notes, Lost And Love is an ambitious and assured debut, and sounds a note for Peng as a name to watch.

A raunchy yet slack-feeling comedy that seems to put as much effort into playing on racial stereotypes as playing for laughs.

This is a generous, consistently pleasurable comedy.

A gentle charmer punctuated with a series of nicely judged performance and an increasing sense of magical realism.

The second installment of the Divergent series shows some symptoms of middle chapter-itis but in the end makes the most of a strong returning cast led by Shailene Woodley, slick direction from Robert Schwentke, impressive effects and a closely guarded plot twist.

Suite Francaise exudes a sense of glossy class in its design, staging and costumes and its lead actress Michelle Williams is especially fine, responding perfectly to a role that could have been tricky.

A delightfully clear-eyed adaptation of Charles Perrault’s fable of goodness triumphing over adversity, which brings psychological depth to characters like Cate Blanchett’s magnificent, believable stepmother.

While the dramatic themes echo the great crime movies of the seventies, it’s the modern flash and muscle that ultimately win out in this pacey yet less than satisfying action thriller.

What proves irritating throughout the movie is the sense that Fogelman has chosen the easiest, least interesting execution of a rich premise.

A muddled bid for political relevance has led the film-makers to drag on The Gunman’s primary mission: to entertain.

The supporting cast takes some of the comic weight off the always likeable Vaughn’s shoulders. But Wilkinson’s character is too sad-sack to be really funny and Franco’s verges on the mawkish.

Chappie is a bucket of bolts, Blomkamp’s desire to say meaningful things outdistancing his ability to say them compellingly.

In the end, Sex is a compelling exploration of ordinary men trying to figure out who they are permitted to be, how they are evolving and what their lives are all about.

Does the alternation between documentary inserts and sci-fi superstructure work? Not always – more than once it’s a wrench to be dragged back to Ghost’s basement. But Kapadia and his co-scribe Tony Grisoni seem to understand that the pummelled audience can take only so much cinematic doomscrolling.

A winning, if whimsical, account of an ordinary woman achieving the extraordinary.

A film which doesn’t sugar-coat the ache of bereavement, the futility of war or the manifold failures of mankind, but which manages to balance the darkness with sparks of hope, humour and humanity.

Hamstrung by lumbering plotting and variable special effects, this first part is an unimaginative hodgepodge which leaves its well-assembled cast stranded across time and space.

A chaotic, unpredictable portrait of a chaotic, unpredictable individual, The Worst Person In The World is a spirited and thrillingly uninhibited piece of filmmaking from Joachim Trier.

Silent Night works best as a grim chamber piece that subverts the season’s usual good cheer — or, depending on one’s temperament, serves as a tart distillation of the nagging gloom those who hate the holidays often feel.

The striking feature film debut from Andreas Fontana brings a prickly thriller sensibility to the closed world of high finance and a piquancy to the phrase ‘dirty money’.

The story is told entirely on a computer screen, through skype, social media and editing programs. And despite the restrictions of this device, the film crackles with tension.

This story of a homesick college freshman, played affectingly by Raiff himself, doesn’t break any new ground - it doesn’t even try - but his film is still an appealing charmer.

A refreshingly offbeat noir, one that spices its murder-mystery thrills with a good bit of feminist empowerment.

The film also has plenty of faults. One of the main problems is that Ophelia is still under-written.

Grass demonstrates a fresh type of playfulness from the prolific filmmaker. It’s a movie filled with his usual intimacy, but it’s also one that’s purposefully more concerned with the bigger picture than the individual details.

[A] clearly well-intentioned, attractive, wistful-to-the-point-of-inertia film.

Chen winds up with little more than an elaborate shaggy cat story, although one that is not without its fair share of incidental pleasures

Like all of his work, the writer/director’s fourth film in Berlinale competition is elegantly made, ingenious and intellectually challenging. Yet it’s also too much like hard work to be entirely satisfying and, dramatically, it suffers from the same condition as its protagonists: inertia.

Bispuri and her actresses offer a striking study in contrasts.

There is much to admire for those who chime with the languid rhythms and language of loaded sidelong glances.

The film does praiseworthy work when it comes to challenging accepted assumptions about what constitutes beauty and sexuality. It does so, however, through a degree of physical and emotional oversharing which some audiences will find deeply off-putting.

The later stretches, which are forced to become oblique and symbolic in the absence of any hard evidence about what really happened to the sailor, showcase some of Firth’s best screen work.

It does cross your mind that this might all be some jolly wheeze of a mockumentary with Ginghină as a David Brent figure but apparently it is all to be taken seriously.

As the story of the mysterious Cordona plays out, the persuasive personalities of the three women both then and now strike a chord.

This slow-burning, pensively drifting evocation of the times of Sergei Dovlatov is not a conventional portrait, still less a biopic, but an imaginatively realistic recreation of a bygone era of Russian culture.

As a director, Dano prefers static camera setups and uncluttered frames, emphasising the mundane nature of the drama, which only allows the increasing darkness of this tale to become more upsetting.

Deliberately off-putting, Hosking’s latest tests the audience’s patience with frustratingly unfunny scenarios and an array of nasty, angry characters doing unpleasant things.

With a terse 85-minute running time, The Guilty illustrates Möller’s confidence with the craft of film-making.

Writer-director Sara Colangelo’s intimate, slender drama withholds much about its main character, which allows Gyllenhaal to sketch the outline of a fractured soul.

Wilde’s mighty struggle with himself, with his heavenly talent and earthly lusts, and the meaning of it all resonates so strongly with the direction and performance that The Happy Prince is easily elevated past period Victoriana (and that wallpaper) to move and engage in equal parts.

The awkwardly executed English-language Loving Pablo is a brash but ultimately anonymous, sub-Scorsesean number from Spain’s Fernando Leon de Aranoa.

With strong performances, smart directorial choices and an unexpected story structure, Monsters and Men transcends its run-of-the-mill Law & Order-like premise.

Although director Wash Westmoreland tackles several serious subjects — sexual liberation, the repression of women’s voices, the power of art to change society — the movie has such a playful spirit that the talking points go down smoothly.

The Children Act is a cerebral piece, for sure, and a disturbing one by the end, but Thompson’s performance brings life to the complex moral questions it attempts to examine.

Lizzie is, at best, a powerful showcase for the two actors. At its worst, it’s a tiresome and unappealing exercise in the inevitability of a family’s mutually assured destruction.

The filmmakers’ handling of the surprises has a narrative deftness and visual cleverness that is legitimately unbalancing. It also adds a blast of dark comedy to the proceedings.

In terms of execution and panache, Museum has the mark of a true original – at least, of a film-maker discovering his own voice through fearlessly trying whatever works, sometimes tipping his hat to tradition, sometimes following his own path with brio.

The movie’s arresting visual conceit has enough flexibility to sustain interest, even if the story’s twists and turns sometimes feel excessively fiendish.

Rose Byrne is appealing as a sympathetic, patient person finally sensing she deserves more from her life. But for a film that critiques men’s inability to let go of childish things, this cutesy adaptation of the Nick Hornby novel feels a bit like a fantasy version of how adulthood really is.

Cole, best known for a supporting role in the TV series Peaky Blinders, gives everything to this role. It’s a physical transformation in which he convincingly plays a beaten, battered-to-a-pulp boxer who learns the rules of Muay Thai, but also a deep internal reach to deliver a complex, defiantly self-sabotaging character with depth of understanding.

It’s a distinctive world that Decker and her team have created. Among this year’s coming-of-age films, it’s got to be one of the most original. But it’s also one of the more perplexing.

Miseducation has a funny, breezy surface — even though tragedy predictably intervenes at one point — but Cameron’s wry sense of humour doesn’t diminish how warping these conversion centres are, slowly instilling in people the sense that they’re faulty.

Nicchiarelli brings broader contemplations that help lift the film beyond the usual run-through of sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll, regrets, righting past wrongs, carving out meaningful relationships with those previously neglected along the way, and facing the future on one’s own terms.

Kore-Eda, writer, director and editor, an auteur in the full sense of the word, tunes his approach to the genre, but only up to a certain point.

As led by Daveed Diggs’ impassioned, tormented performance, Blindspotting is hard to shake, despite its on-the-nose plot points and melodramatic flourishes.

While Eighth Grade may look, on its surface, like a typical adolescent comedy, with its underdog protagonist pitted against popular girls and boy crushes, it is more a piquant series of vignettes that form a singular and focused portrait of youthful angst.

Even those with only passing knowledge of Williams’ challenges—with drugs, alcohol, and self-esteem—aren’t likely to find any new revelations about the comic genius.

Riley so wants to make strong criticisms about everything from racial stereotyping to corporate greed that he forgets the need for a real person to root for at the story’s core.

An almost unbearably-tense, no-holds-barred drive through the nightmare of domestic terrorism, Custody is a can’t-look-away hybrid of gruelling reality and heightened cinematic technique. The mix is jarring, as intended, and this wrenching, heart-stopping film illustrates domestic violence and obsession in a way that makes the fear real.

Where some see coincidence, Wardle finds a true-life conspiracy, and pursues it all the way to conclusion after gripping conclusion.

It’s a film that never overwhelms but it lingers, leaving its mark on the viewer.

Dark River is distinguished by superior film-making and admirable command of tone and pacing. Once again, Barnard delivers an intimate take on a difficult subject, raising anticipation for her future work should she decide to scale up.

Throwing darts at genre conventions while honouring what is eternally mythic about the milieu, this comedy-drama draws off-kilter performances from Robert Pattinson and Mia Wasikowska that subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) reframe archetypes and consistently set us back on our heels.

Grief, guilt and family dysfunction prove to be overwhelming forces in Hereditary, a supremely elegant and tonally assured horror movie that trusts its audience will acquiesce to its measured, absorbing storytelling style.

Choe has taken a slim scenario and used to touch on universal themes and thoughts of escape and second chances in life.

American Animals requires many cuts and perspectives which are second-nature to an accomplished documentarian, yet the drama here also seems effortless and seamlessly integrated.

Brilliantly constructed and heartrendingly performed, The Tale feels as cathartic and cleansing as a primal scream.

Mary Shelley is ultimately the story of a woman finding her own voice and asserting her independence and that will be the heart of its appeal.

Thoughtful, moving, overreaching and uncompromising, First Reformed is a tremendously tormented work from writer-director Paul Schrader.

Even with author Ian McEwan adapting his own novel for the screen, this somewhat stilted picture struggles to convey the deft emotional complexity of the source material.

Younger fans of the modern actioner may find Manhunt a little old-school, especially in its unabashed romantic heart and flag-waving for the square-jawed good guys. But it’s breezy, handsomely mounted fun that shows that Woo has lost neither his mojo nor his sense of poetry.

It’s an excoriating story told with gentle sympathy; a lashing tale about the abuse and marginalisation of women at the hands of a dark establishment in a sun-filled resort.

Leilo’s unassuming style serves the story and provides a great showcase for both performers.

It’s confusing and heavy and bears down hard until a third-act swerve throws in colours and movement and spins the viewer out of the theatre in wonder. It won’t be forgotten.

A love-all crowd-pleaser for the most part, more Borg than McEnroe thanks to an arresting performance from lookalike Sverrir Gudnason.

There’s a wistful quality to the storytelling which softens some of the sharper edges of tragedy and hardship in this undeniably affecting picture.

The novelty of his volcanically vulgar, deeply cynical tone may have worn off some, but Iannucci has nonetheless crafted another poisonous cocktail of naked ambition and blustery bravado with a decidedly bitter aftertaste.

The film lets Nicolas Cage’s gonzo performance be its guide, mixing mocking self-parody and giddy enthusiasm for an utterly disposable, demented genre diversion.