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

Wilfully provocative — and going to extremes to make its points — this psychological drama sometimes strains credibility, but its poisonous cauldron of greed and contempt proves arresting.

It can feel a little scattershot at times, but the film illuminates the considerable cost of dissent, both then and now. It’s at its best, however, when it gives Choy free-rein to speak her mind.

Demonstrating a light touch — underscored by a whimsy-leaning score and overtly comic moments, but never delving into flimsiness or farce — Yan handles her chosen topic, and the tapestry of tales it’s woven through, with care.

A raucous and outrageously (if harmlessly) crude slapstick comedy.

Seberg somehow manages to pull off a tricky combination of radical politics, inter-racial sex and Hollywood tragedy while styling Stewart in Chanel. It’s quite a balancing act, but this is a film in which the story is just about strong enough to pull that heavy cart along.

That the story doesn’t play like a soap, or indeed a Ken Loach film, is down to the director’s technical and narrative approach.

It’s a palpably ambitious piece, with a visual acuity which punches well above its weight and a fascinating central performance from Rose Williams (Sendition).

Rather than bring anything new to the genre, director Ben Younger settles for adding a distinctive bracing energy to the somewhat timeworn tropes.

&t does effectively plunge the viewer back in those choppy seas for an object lesson in how politics can rapidly inflame a situation to dangerous levels, even when both countries had agreed the best place for him was Cuba.

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.

There’s no shortage of familiar elements here, and yet one can’t deny the empathy Levinson brings to the material.

The Adults is a gift to its actors, allowing them to explore the tensed-up taciturnity of emotional repression but also to go haywire with the voices and the crazily choreographed body language.

The filmmakers switch the focus from the suspense of an uncertain outcome to the central friendship between the two women, a friendship that Diana tends to inadvertently torpedo. This allows both actresses to bring a depth and texture that sustains the picture through the extended swimming sequences.

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.

Although it could possibly be deemed a case of style over substance, Byun Sung-hyun’s The Merciless is an accomplished and well-structured South Korean noir thriller.

Both characters are endearingly freakish to look at, yet Eliot’s skill is to infuse them with such vulnerable tendencies and believable characteristics as to render them immediately human.

Wright crafts a hyper-elaborate set-up and delicate drip-feed of information which make spoilers an equal crime, but The Stranger is more of a felt experience than a traditional policier; it’s all about the hunt, not the crime.

September 5 recounts that tragic day with a combination of electricity and dread, drawing on strong performances for a meditation on the media’s responsibilities during such a volatile situation.

First-time feature director Don Cheadle has made an invigoratingly bold attempt to structure his film about Miles Davis as an extended visual and narrative equivalent of modal jazz.

Gradually, the movie becomes a compassionate but constructive commentary on the danger of nostalgia — how it seduces us into sticking with worn-out pleasures at the expense of new experiences and challenges.

Anais Volpe’s debut feature celebrates a female friendship as it runs the gamut from jubilation to lamentation.

As with a lot of first-time feature filmmakers, Smith shows a tendency to want to throw everything a her film stylistically – including, at one point, the random use of bright yellow subtitles – which makes certain sections feel unnecessarily skittish.

Babyteeth is a funny, affecting group portrait, a comedy-tinged family drama.

Origin of Evil doesn’t stretch the conventions of teen-appeal spookiness too far, but is solidly put together, mounted with a pleasant conviction and runs to several fine performances and some decent scares.

Director Travis Knight does his best to balance clattering spectacle with a modest girl-and-her-robot tale. He’s assisted mightily by Hailee Steinfeld, who infuses this uneven action film with significant soul.

More often than not, Deadpool’s bratty energy feels liberating, allowing for a sexier, dirtier, more hilarious superhero movie than the typical all-ages Marvel affair, which is so concerned with maximising profits that it risks offending no one.

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