In the end, whether the performances are driven by real-life trauma or by acting doesn’t matter. Life might be imitating art or vice versa, who knows? One thing is certain: The Peanut Butter Falcon is a wonderful piece of art.

When this brisk, disquieting doc debuted at Sundance, these censorship farms were largely secret, but Facebook has started to bow to public pressure and open up some of the process. The troubling questions remain.

Rallies in the last reel.

George W. Bush is hammered for doubling the debt load with his high-spending, low-taxing ways.

However you feel about commercial dog sledding, Fern Levitt’s Sled Dogs is bound to rankle – either because of the material itself or the filmmaker’s take.

All the magnificent little elements add up to a whole lot of not-enough this time around, resulting in a creaky and exhausting pastiche of Andersonia rather than the real deal.

This is the reliable raunch-plus-sweetness comic formula that goes back through the Farrelly brothers, Adam Sandler's comedies, "Revenge of the Nerds," "Porky's" and "Animal House."

Évocateur is never less than watchable. At the same time, you have to wonder who’s going to watch it. In an era when fame seems measured in increments even shorter than Warhol’s 15 minutes, a 91-minute documentary about a bug-eyed, chain-smoking sociopath who soared high and fell fast so long ago smacks of folly and misdirected energy, like trying to make a biography out of a footnote.

As nice as it is to see New York play itself or watch Ahmed and Worthington run circles around each other, the entire caper is rendered unsolvable by one big, meatheaded twist that undermines everything that came before.

The dead-seriousness with which Sims-Fewer and Mancinelli approach their subject is admirable, as is the former’s unsettling lead performance. And you won’t find another film this year that subverts the male gaze in such a brutally naked manner.

Of course, entire books have been written, and perused by disappointed women, about the male reluctance to put away their fantasized Biancas. In that sense, Lars and the Real Girl is real indeed. In every other, it's a sweet, bordering on saccharine, bagatelle.

So no one would argue that Thumbsucker sucks. But the thing does seem just so indie-movie familiar.

As the young hero at the centre of the tale, Guillory displays astonishing depth and heart. To summarize: Run, don’t walk.

Let's start with this certainty: No one but Quentin Tarantino could possibly have made Inglourious Basterds . Now add another: No one but his most ardent fans will be entirely glad that Quentin Tarantino did make Inglourious Basterds .

Based on a book by his widow, it's an entertaining film that shows a few warts in portraying Lee's complexity but is, overall, reverential (in the best biopic tradition). [7 May 1993]

What we see is admirable, but what we feel is minimal.

In short, Batman is terrific - funny, smart and sensitive too, the perfect cinematic date.

Though Babel lacks any tragic sense of inevitability, it almost compensates with a handful of vibrant performances and the palpable physical texture of the settings.

Surprisingly funny yarn about a drug-addled cop in the Big Easy.

Though inspired by a real incident, the movie is an opportunistic political allegory about an economy that's out of control and industries that are weakened by layoffs, under-staffing and corporate callousness.

Brave feels like a merely good-enough children's movie.

An unlikely Irish-Cuban co-production, Viva is, like its central subject, beautiful to look at but ultimately lacking depth.

Undercover Brother is very much a hero of our time. After all, the character began not in the 1970s, but three years ago as a cartoon on a Web site.

Strange and beautiful and transfixing and confusing, it's quite the sight - martial-arts fans may find themselves disappointed, but Wong Kar-wai addicts will be delighted.

It’s a fine yarn spiced up with moments of hip hop, animation and pop culture references, all packaged nicely in something like the hot-pink doughnut boxes that the cruller maestro Ngoy supposedly invented.

Some might find the characters written with heavy cynicism. I’d rather see their desperate pursuits as poignant and comically human, even if the film’s tone is dark. These are lonely people seeking love. It’s not that complicated.

Though Revolutionary Road is a less stringent work than Yates's book, it also feels like a more tolerant and humane one.

In the moments at his disposal, Smith almost steals the flick. He's so wittily government-phobic that I found myself hoping for a climax that would blow Bruce Willis away and promote Kevin Smith to saviour-of-the-free-world. Now that might be a sequel worth rooting for.

The filmmaker assumes that aping the cheap aesthetics of the era are enough to establish style, and that making Enid a mystery amounts to layered characterization. It all leads to a climax that is nasty for all the wrong reasons.

The Dead Zone, from the book by Stephen King, a horror novelist whose prolific output is the scariest thing about him, is academic filmmaking all the way, a crafty Establishment tour de force. [21 Oct 1983]

You'll laugh, though you might hate yourself in the morning.

Well-spoken but humorously self-deprecating, Berg admits that, between the hours spent writing, rehearsing and performing, she spends more of her life as Molly than she does as herself.

The trouble with Body Double is not that it sets "new lows" in the treatment of women or anything else, but that a stunningly original talent has willingly hitched itself to a derivative vision. The person De Palma really degrades is himself. [26 Oct 1984]

Time After Time is jolly good escapism. [01 Oct 1979]

First-time Australian director Garth Davis offers sweeping cinematic shots, with a soundtrack that is pleasingly epic, but the second act is a bit skimpy, script-wise.

For all its ballyhoo'd full access to Vogue's inner workings, the movie's cinéma-vérité approach feels perilously close to advertorial.

With the notable exception of Martin Scorsese's opus, most boxing flicks suffer form a certain amount of raw-boned sentimentality, the sort of easy melodrama that pits naive underdogs against corrupt overlords, or age against youth, or purity against prejudice. Even the recent "Million Dollar Baby" succumbed in the final act. But this one, where "Rocky" meets "The Waltons," has us reeling under its saccharine weight.

I Went Down is also a showcase for the directorial talents of Breadnach, who frames the actors and the action with polish and assurance against an unpretty Irish landscape rarely seen in the movies. If you liked Trainspotting and are looking for a quick and dirty cinematic romp, this is just the ticket. [24 July 1998, p.C5]

Writers Cecilia Frugiuele (who also produced) and Desiree Akhavan (who also directed), working from Emily Danforth’s source novel, capture the fugue state that is teenagehood, then refract it through the extra-weirdness of the camp.

Rocketman is Broadway razzle-dazzle of the best kind.

It's a comedy, it's a romance, it's a gangster flick. The Cooler is all of that and much, much less. This is a movie without a compass, switching pace and direction as haphazardly as a caffeinated SUV driver on a cellphone.

By turns raw, naturalistic and indebted to John Cassavetes, both stylistically and thematically.

Eating Raoul is often very funny, but it guns down its targets (hot tubs, taco stands) without revealing anything new about them - it's broader than parody, less pointed than satire - and it crudely manipulates the audience into congratulating itself on its own hipness. [15 Oct 1982]

Finally, there's a sports movie for people who are caught between admiration and fear of athleticism. Neither a triumphant underdog like "Rudy" nor a total weepie like "The Pride of the Yankees," Head Games also deals with the illnesses and premature deaths of talented players.

En route, despite some clumsy exposition and the reduction of heavyweights like Mary McCarthy and William Shawn to fifth-business caricatures, the film does manage one impressive intellectual achievement of its own: rescuing that “banality of evil” phrase from the banal cliché it’s become and, by providing the full and daring context, giving it real meaning again.

No matter how obvious the set-up – what if men and women of the cloth were … rude and sexy??? – the cast gives every scene just enough of a deadpan spin to sell it, at least for the first hour. After the final 30 minutes come and go, including a frantic detour into witchcraft, you may seek out a convent of your own.

Filmed in Nova Scotia and featuring both English and Mi’kmaw, Wildhood beautifully captures the beauty of the landscape and its community as well as moments of humour, even as it treads some bleak spaces.

So this is a light/bright movie that actually illuminates our dull grey lives, reminding us that intrigue can be, well, intriguing. And damn sexy too.

The whole affair seems curiously bloodless and often more torpid than torrid.

One reason The Outside Story works is that it doesn’t follow an established template. Nozkowski pre-empts speculation by divulging Young’s backstory at a steady pace. And while the script is laudable for its gentle laughs, it is Henry’s portrayal of Young that holds our attention.

From its haunting opening in Derry's gently flooded streets to its nightmarish finale in the forsaken sewers underneath, this new version of It stands as a solid execution of King's modus operandi.

Trading Places, which is wildly funny at times, is Murphy's film. [10 Jun 1983]

Cold Souls begins to lose its comic focus, however, when Giamatti comes to realize that he needs his soul back.

The nerd’s coming-of-age is a well-established genre, as is humiliation comedy, yet Coky Giedroyc’s How to Build a Girl is different enough to stand out.

A Shock to the System is a beautiful, subtle satire of corporate America, providing a fresh slant on the visceral nastiness hovering beneath the glossy surface. The tension in the film is superb, swelling and receding with just the right degrees of intensity and the plot has enough unanticipated twists to provide thrills right until the end. [13 Oct 1990]

So much of its script is frustratingly trite, its perspective on grief never rising above grade-school emotions, with thin characters forced to carry its surface-level themes.

In writer-director Keith Thomas’s bid to add a layer of thematic novelty to a familiar genre, he has come up with a mish-mash that will satisfy only those with extremely acquired tastes.

Todd Solondz isn't for everyone, maybe not even most people...he's a comic filmmaker whose idea of entertainment is shredding chum into a shark tank.

He’s a fox who’s used to being hounded by journalists, and as such he’s a very elusive subject for a documentary – even one by a filmmaker who’s renowned for getting his subjects to talk.

The longer I Am Greta goes on, the more clear it becomes that Grossman is content to just tag along for the ride, adding little cinematic depth or insight to the environmentalist’s trajectory.

Educating young audiences as it entertains just about anyone, Penguins features the droll narration of Ed Helms and some great Antarctic cinematography.

For those looking for a brash new entry in the cinematic landscape, Operation Avalanche is an almost otherworldly gift. The best part of all: No one had to die. I think.

It's clear the director's proximity to the family stopped her from going into uncomfortable territory. We never learn much about Vreeland's husband or how his wife's high profile and dedication to work affected their relationship.

With a plethora of archival material and strong interviews, this documentary argues that the exuberant Julia Child was a protofeminist who invented the profession of TV chef as she introduced the notion that food should taste good to the land of the Jell-O salad.

All you needed was to accept your imperfection and reach out to others who'd done the same. Surely the man who said that must be perfect.

For all its loud signalling of raunch ahead, Blockers is funnier that you might expect: It’s a reliable laugh machine that features enough jabs at contemporary mores, alongside a discreet social conscience and some successfully female-centric comedy, that it rises above the inevitable chug-and-vomit jokes.

Farrelly’s film is worth witnessing, especially given how it is now all but destined to dominate the awards conversation. But do yourself a favour: Each time your fellow moviegoers burst into applause, ask just who it is they’re clapping for.

Call the film sensitive or tender all you want, but one thing it doesn’t have is nuance

Alps, in spite of its title, is a very flat film, from the shallow focus photography, to the actors' monotone delivery.

In the end, it’s the songs that provide the most eloquent and lasting testimony.

Edgerton, who also plays the tightly wound chief of the conversion-therapy organization here, wrings devastating performances from his cast, including Lucas Hedges as Garrard, and Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman as his parents.

A film where the cast neatly dovetails with the script which perfectly meshes with the direction. In short, a film that works. [5 Aug 1987]

Expected too is the result: a kind of sterile opulence or, if you prefer, a magnificent emptiness.

This hip morality tale is by no means perfect - it's not the masterpiece "Miller's Crossing" was - but it is stylish, intelligent, witty and more than slightly creepy.

Beirut is as solid a film as Hamm is a performer. The movie is not a flashy affair, but it does hit in unexpected ways and uses its pretty faces (Hamm, but also Gone Girl’s Rosamund Pike, another performer who should be ruling the world) to deliver something you will likely expect, but nonetheless appreciate.

In a better work, the filmmaker would talk to hardcore punks about their parents, affairs, regrets, dreams and day jobs in an effort to explore the fledgling movement. Here, however, we get little more than a marathon MTV rap session, as Rachman drives about North America, yakking with aging punk heroes about the good ol' bad ol' days.

In The In-Laws, there is nothing to keep Alan Arkin and Peter Falk from becoming one of the most enchanting comedy teams in movies - nothing except direction, script and cinematography. [20 Jun 1979]

There are several scenes in There's Something About Mary that are so absurdly original and outrageous they will leave audiences talking about them for weeks.

The rugged emotional territory (and the Yorkshire accents) prove heavy-going in an uncompromising film that elicits a lot more admiration than enjoyment.

An energetic, cockeyed, bloody, and sometimes delightfully vicious skewering of Millennial culture – or, more accurately, what Instagram-less tsk-tsk’ers imagine millennial culture to be – director Halina Reijn’s new film exists not only to meet late-summer slasher expectations, but to ever so slightly subvert them.

Creepy, cool and loaded with style.

An experiment in prestige quirk, Maddin and the Johnsons’ film isn’t as interested in satirizing the complex and frustrating nature of geopolitics as they are in using the material to unload a heaping load of gags ranging from the scatological to the philosophical.

Mozhdah empathetically charts Nisha’s despairing acquiescence and fitful rebellions, but it’s Adil Hussain’s work making her father not entirely unsympathetic that really stands out.

As it turns out, making money selling drugs is pretty win-win as far as it goes, but keeping it is another matter. So the title isn’t so much a joke as a bleak comment on a desperately cynical economy: In the drug trade, as well as the dubious “war” declared against it, everybody ultimately loses.

Watching it all unfold in my sweatpants while shoving frozen pizza into my gullet, I found it deeply, unshakably depressing.

Director Barbosa's love letter to his late friend is emotionally satisfying and cinematically splendid, with social commentary shoe-horned in for better or worse.

It's odd, how these high-concept films, knowing that the central gimmick has a way of wearing out its welcome, are all so short – a mere 84 minutes in this case. Why odd? Because short always ends up feeling so damn long. This is no exception. Quick to start and painfully slow to finish, Chronicle is the same old chronicle.

For the kids, the action is always lively and, for the rest of us, the dialogue has a witty and even caustic edge.

Despite an inspired central section involving Robin Williams as the King of the Moon and Valentina Cortese as his Queen, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a near-disaster of Ishtarish proportions. [11 Mar 1989, p.C3]

What is celebrated is the art of storytelling and the bedazzling attraction of a killer cast, uninhibited acting, giddy escapism, attractive visuals and an extroverted score.

An excellent cast (including Michael Shannon and Hillary Swank) hit the right notes in an evenly wrought family drama that rings true.

The script is loose; the acting is natural and nuanced. Over the credits plays an acoustic song about lives in the how-did-we-get-here stage. If you do not leave this Netflix movie asking questions about your own paths, the failing is yours, not Duplass’s.

Charming, ingenious and absurd tale of friendship.

A superior sequel to an amusing original. A new batch of slapstick and satire. [16 Jun 1990]

Eyes Wide Shut still towers above most of the movies out there, immersing the viewer in a web of emotional complexity, at once raw and personal and, at times, theatrically overcooked.

The Company of Wolves is a trifle long, but the sequences of bona fide scariness and beauty compensate for the occasional longueurs, and it's great to be a kid again, as the artists behind the film know; they also know it can scare the hell out of you. Always cry wolf. [20 Apr 1985]

Tenet is not so much a decipherable thriller as it is an extreme exercise in reverse-engineered narrative incomprehensibility – the cinematic equivalent of a half-baked pretzel, its goopy symmetrical loops superficial yet delicious all the same.

These are valid ideas, but they don't always arise organically out of the script, and can seem clumsily expressed.