A multi-layered and thought-provoking work of art.

Meyers’s drama depends mostly on what it doesn’t show you, and it works.

It’s a bruisingly effective piece of entertainment carried by comedy, which hits its targets rather more successfully than the wildly strafing bullets.

What’s best about the film is how Cedar and Gere have dreamed up a character who’s equally desperate and preternaturally ingratiating.

Through both parts, and this is Bellocchio’s admirable achievement, he has life itself impetuously claiming its rights.

As a meticulously coiled study of nasty doings under one roof, Bring Her Back convincingly argues that terror starts at home.

Deep down, Nineteen is a comedy, with a profound sympathy for its confused protagonist, who is left alone to struggle with identity issues that could so easily turn into mental health issues. But the film stays limber, hopeful and affectionate.

With its impressive array of hundreds of film clips, frenetic editing and whip-smart narrators, Lynch/Oz offers an exciting prism through which to view Lynch’s oeuvre.

Often, stories with terrific narrative hooks run out of steam, but Lábrèche and Léonard keep coming up with satisfying plot twists which take the film into unexpectedly deep emotional waters.

Fallen Leaves may not set the film world on fire, but is guaranteed to cast a warm glow.

As a born writer, Annie’s commentary is a time capsule of her life half a century ago but also, by extension, of fascinating changes afoot in France itself.

Like her Lewis Carroll namesake, the protagonist of writer/director Krystin Ver Linden’s bold and enlightening feature debut hurtles down a rabbit hole — but the alternative reality in which she finds herself is certainly no fairy tale.

While the film recounts events three decades ago, it couldn’t be more relevant today.

With the consistently playful, often delightful and frequently funny God fantasy The Brand New Testament, the Belgian auteur delivers his most substantially enjoyable film since 1991’s Toto The Hero.

Gitai’s personal knowledge of his people and their deep-rooted issues lends West Of The Jordan River a powerful intimacy.

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.

It’s a film that rises above a few heavy-handed directorial touches to weave, over its admirably lean running time, a tapestry of sisterly bonds and fissures that also has plenty to say about the film’s setting, the dense, oppressive urban Palermo.

Writer-director Bogdan Mirica makes a very assured feature debut, juggling an accretion of sinister clues and slow-burn allegiances at a low-key pace kept humming thanks to attention-getting widescreen panache.

Consisting of three non-fiction segments and four narrative instalments, the film is refreshing in its understated modesty. If anything, the shorter running time seems to energise the directors, who tell miniature stories with a minimum of fuss but careful attention to the emotional fallout of life under quarantine.

All the micro-motivations and manipulations of life are present, from the desire to be loved and look after others to the urge to tear down a carefully constructed emotional wall.

Alice Winocour’s captivating fashion drama Couture is a quiet, observational picture about creative women finding solace in one another.

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.

With strong performances and an arresting tone, Black Conflux doesn’t offer anything groundbreaking in terms of its narrative, but is nevertheless a striking calling card for its talented maker.

Amy is a cautionary tale - she was the Janis Joplin of our age, and as it’s the media age, we get to see the full price of fame this time as a fragile talent self-combusts. It’s not a pretty picture.

By depicting Coppola simply as a diligent director at work, Megadoc is ennobling without being hagiographic.

It’s a terrific feature debut from British-Indian documentary filmmaker Sandhya Suri – a propulsive neo-noir that holds up a mirror to contemporary India.

As much as is possible considering all the Dark Knight films that came before, The Batman feels like its own creation, not beholden to past instalments while still honouring what remains riveting about this character’s milieu.

The film is scrupulous about giving voices to men who, as prisoners, were denied them. If there is an overlap in some of the observations and insights that the former inmates bring to the film, they tend to be points which bear repeating.