The winning performances and Haapasalo’s careful attention to them help to compensate for the sometimes frustratingly fragmented nature of the storytelling.

It may play a little flatly, but its sincerity of purpose remains affecting throughout.

A solidly engrossing political drama, anchored by a commanding central performance from Liam Neeson.

The film crackles with energy every time Erradi opens her mouth to sing.

When Sichel attempted to write his memoirs, the CIA returned the manuscript with endless suggested redactions. They argued that if a journalist had written the book it would have been considered mere speculation, but with his name attached it would have become confirmation. The Last Spy affords him the privilege of having the final word.

While the picture doesn’t quite maintain its vigorous energy through to the very end, it is still a satisfyingly knotty exploration of the bi-cultural experience.

Its running time may make it more digestible than some of Weerasethakul’s more ambitious pieces, although it straddles the line between full-feature and his short films and experimental work quite beautifully.

As a film concerned with the power of perception, The Goldfinger largely succeeds as a style exercise.

Weisz shows her Oscar-winning talents by hitting precisely the right notes throughout My Cousin Rachel: from warmth to guile to chilly practicality.

While it nearly wears out its welcome with a repetitive cycle of encounter, flashback, reflection and fight, its mix of vibrant visuals, melodrama and low-key comedy kick the story into gear in the final hour.

A well-executed, unusual and historically-tinged horror [film] ... drenched in the atmosphere of Second World War colonial dread.

If you’re looking for more than laughs, this comedy aspiring to drama takes you only so far.

It’s Eva Green who steals the elaborate show, making villainy seem like the best possible career choice for a beautiful woman, circa the 1620s.

The film’s randomly generated structure manages to cohere enough to make the experiment mostly a success.

Deliberately scattershot and naïve, this engaging, absurdist collage, shot entirely on VHS tape, smuggles a serious message beneath its 80s poodle-permed public access television pastiche.

Those in the ‘for’ camp are likely to find Garrel’s The Salt of Tears one of the most finely tuned and richly achieved of his recent works .

There’s plenty of Lynch-light in dark interiors and empty staircases as Katz’s portrait of hipster La La Land winds through familiar territory. Gemini may not show too much that’s novel about that noir world, but we see new strengths in its lead actress.

Lovingly shot in warm natural light, and accompanied by a gentle, lilting soundtrack, Holy Cow is shot through with compassion for its rascally yet vulnerable protagonist.

A New Generation offers no earthshattering conclusions. There is no pretense of covering everything, just a chance to swim in Cousins erudite passion for film and answer his call to keep the faith.

The violence is never stylized, Córdova showing its subtle, corrosive force in these people’s lives.

Slow, deliberate and often unexpectedly funny, Michael Tully’s (Ping Pong Summer) contribution to the ever-growing Irish horror catalogue is refreshingly original even if it lacks the jump scare pay off to its heavily-signposted creepiness.

Although the film sometimes dips into muddled melodrama, those occasional setbacks can’t derail a story filled with warm, resonant characters trying to fathom their own hearts.

In the end, this is a film that is more emotionally than sexually voyeuristic.

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.

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.

Access is all in Rosi’s documentaries, and the access he achieves, winning the confidence of his subjects so that it’s as if he isn’t there while filming their most intimate moments, is astonishing. But access has its limits. While our hearts open up to these traumatised kids, being there with them in the room at this delicate moment doesn’t feel quite right.

Jackson’s film is best enjoyed for the quality of the performances and the typical richness of Hare’s screenplay.

What it lacks in novelty, subtlety or character, it partially makes up in sheer abandon. This is a big, loud, violent, gleefully gory sledgehammer of a film with, crucially, a careful tongue in cheek.