Denis Côté’s eerie fantasy drama juxtaposes the mundane and the parochial with the supernatural, to sometimes disquieting effect.

Deep down this is a conventional and predictably plotted period drama about a clash between bodice-ripping passion and social mores.

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

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.

Watergate is a fascinating film that both draws disturbing parallels and offers the opposition encouragement.

If tenderness is deployed to ease Shmuel’s grieving, those are not the scenes which give To Dust its special pungency, or what make you laugh. This film is at its best when it goes for the gut.

This comic melodrama wrings every last drop of drama from the set up.

One Child Nation is an utterly compelling documentary that examines the consequences of this staunchly enforced ‘social experiment’. If it stops short of making an explicit political statement, a series of powerful testimonies leaves a harrowing micro-level impression.

While this slow-motion tragedy sometimes risks more than it can deliver, the film’s cumulative effect stuns nonetheless. Ashton Sanders heads a fine cast that forcibly articulates the everyday landmines African-Americans have to navigate in a white society that often seems intent on destroying them.

Both intimate and epic, American Factory offers a remarkably candid, fly-on-the-wall account ... It’s a deceptively lighthearted look at one of the most significant cultural and economic conflicts of our times.

I Am Mother mostly satisfies as another example of smart and slick indie sci-fi.

There’s a freshness to the characterisations, a good eye, and for a time Cronin constructs a tense guessing game as to whether it’s mental breakdown or supernatural forces at play.

Feels like a Saturday Night Live skit that’s been stretched out over 90 minutes.

If nothing else, this intimate, well-observed drama should prove to be a nice calling card for its first-time feature filmmaker.

Little Monsters doesn’t exactly reanimate the popular subgenre in novel ways, but there’s enough humorous gags, suspenseful scares, fleshy gore, and quite surprisingly, a dash of heartfelt sentiment, to make for an amusing thrill-ride.

There’s nothing more terrifying in this film than the creative talent wasted on such shockingly mediocre material.

As grimly gripping as Them That Follow is, the proceedings have a stacked-deck quality to them, which keeps this compelling tale from being truly galvanising.

This portrait of the artist as a young film-maker will certainly stand the test of time.

It’s intelligent and clever scripting, and except for a few moments where the dialogue is overly expository, as if Burns doesn’t trust his audience, The Report pulls back the curtain on America’s political machinations and one of its most appalling policy decisions and attempted cover-ups with startling clarity.

Photograph’s deliberate pace does bring some rich rewards for the patient viewer, while a lovely ending feels like a throwback to the old-fashioned big screen romances of yore.

Director Gavin Hood gives the proceedings a rousing electricity, and he’s aided by a cast which leans into the story’s urgency and continued relevance.

This is a gripping, sometimes hypnotising film in which notions of good and evil are less clear-cut than the urgent desire to stay alive.

Anchored by standout performances by Naomi Watts, Octavia Spencer and young Kelvin Harrison Jr., it’s a strong indie film about race, family and trust that should connect with fans of smart, provocative cinema.

Thompson delivers a memorable performance as the abrasive “cold witch,” as someone describes her, perhaps even outdoing Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wars Prada as a delightfully wicked woman of power.

This ambitious debut features flashes of imaginative visuals, quirky dialogue, and well-meaning messages about gentrification and disenfranchisement.

Despite committed performances from LaBeouf, Lucas Hedges and Noah Jupe, Honey Boy ends up feeling indulgent rather than searing, settling into its anguish rather than translating it into trenchant drama.

The longer The Lodge rolls along, the sheer skilfulness of the execution — the precise manipulation of the audience’s fears — becomes so impressive that one is tempted to simply succumb to its cold, cruel efficiency.

Mikhanovsky mixes different styles of comedy, but he binds them with a realist approach that grounds everything in an offhand, absurdist tone.