The film delivers a dark coming-of-age tale through the young lead’s uncertain perception, tinged with uneasy implications and poetic flights of fancy.

Brainwashed doesn’t deliver the opposing views you might like to see aired in a film like this - it’s not a debate for her, even though some film professionals still think it is - and Menkes shows possibly too many clips from her own films (as illustrations of the right sort of take), particularly as this lucid documentary draws to a close. Yet still it’s vigorous, often brash, and full of information.

[Boden and Fleck] marry splashes of dry humour to gallons of blood, and feature every musical genre from punk to hip-hop while connecting the stories to a strange green glow in the sky. If the end result never quite achieves the style and bite of the likes of Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, it is still a lot of fun.

For all that it bounces off a lot of contentious issues about children and the internet, where Carrie-style bullying has moved into the unsupervised zone of cyberspace, Nerve frustratingly stops short before eventually falling in on itself in the third act.

Unfortunately, much like the light at the end of the tunnel, the thinness of this situational comedy, which continues to hit the same jokes with diminishing returns, becomes glaringly obvious.

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.

The sliver of a plot sees An American Pickle stumble in its attempt to be a timely commentary, although its emotional underpinnings give the film a modest charm to relish.

Neighbors: Sorority Rising turns out to be an uneasy watch, awash with unconvincing performances, unfunny stereotypes, and dubious gross-out gags.

Ultimately, it works as both a character study and welcome example of an LGBTQ film in which none of the characters are defined by their sexuality or gender, but by their individual choices — both good, and bad.

The narrative intricacy is daunting but, for viewers willing to keep track, the pleasure lies in the way that Kitano tracks the moves as they advance to an inexorably logical climax.

In Bed with Victoria (Victoria) has its moments but too often falls short of the “oomph” that renders a comedy special.

As with his award-winning debut, the French filmmaker sometimes risks heavy-handedness to make his points, but his argument’s brute force is amply persuasive.

Between the highs-and-lows of razzle-dazzle couture there a substantial film here, and a frank portrait of a damaged, evasive man trying to come to terms with what he has done.

While this defiantly unflashy film may similarly feel out of step, long on mawkishness and short on dynamic, arresting moments, the purity of its gently mournful tone stays with you.

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

Denzel Washington gives a terrifically off-kilter performance in Roman J. Israel, Esq., a fascinating and flawed character study that frustratingly can’t meld all its ambitions into a coherent and satisfying whole.

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

It’s not simply that Uncle Frank becomes just another road-trip comedy — it’s that Ball resorts to clichéd or contrived narrative devices to keep the story going.

Examining a post-apocalypse through the eyes of a few souls left to carry on the human race, The Midnight Sky is an uneven but ultimately thoughtful and moving survival story.

The entire film is a game of cat and mouse in the emotional equivalent of slow-motion, made watchable by elegant compositions and De Laâge’s natural beauty.

The circle of life and death may be warped and buckled in Hounds, but nobody can stop it turning.

When writers find it necessary to beef up a screenplay with that tiredest of factory-farmed animated trope, the comedy dance off, one wonders whether a more organic approach to script husbandry might have been preferable.

Jojo Rabbit doesn’t lack for ambition or sincerity of purpose — which only makes it more disappointing that the film proves to be so meagre. ... Rather than being bracing or dangerous, this comedy ends up feeling a little too safe, a little too scattered, and a little too inconsequential.

It’s a bold, gothic, compelling study of the cult of fame, the creative impulse, the fragile threads that bind. Every aspect of the film is carefully crafted and calibrated in service of Lowery’s distinctive vision, and, while it may prove divisive, it casts a hallucinatory spell.

By no means a conventional horror film, yet several degrees more twisted and gruesome than the average indie relationships drama, this is likely to appeal to more adventurous cult film fans.

Despite how personally the filmmaker connects with this ambitious riff on the Cervantes novel, the long-time passion project succumbs to the same indulgences and weaknesses that have plagued his recent movies.

From the film’s first moments, the audience can guess exactly how the story will pan out, and the pleasure is watching Eastwood gracefully negotiate every well-worn twist and turn.

Whether or not there’s a factual basis to the story, it’s undeniably an absolute blast.