Sunflower succeeds as both a moving family drama and a microcosm of China's social history since the 1970s.

Adoring, appropriately offbeat documentary.

When a Stranger Calls manages to scare the stuffing out of the audience - the film is authentically terrifying - without pouring more than a demi-carafe of gore. [22 Oct 1979]

So is this a Western take on Africa? Yes, but Rebelle is full of such careful detail, and is carried so beautifully by Mwanza’s performance, that questions of authenticity slide away.

Watching Moon is kind of like seeing a booster rocket thrust seventies' sci-fi films deeper into orbit.

Shot before the Canadian director made the major-studio, suburban-vigilante drama "Prisoners," Enemy operates on a level of carefully calibrated unease, where the very elusiveness of motivation and logic is exploited for purposes of sustained cinematic disorientation.

Fletch Lives exists only to provide a vehicle from which Chase can crack wise, get into ridiculous situations and put on disguises. A lot of this silliness is amusing (some of it very) and not a little of it borderline tasteless.

Amadeus needs an additional 20 minutes running time like "The Magic Flute" needs a drum solo. Though the production is gussied up with more frills and decoration than a Viennese dessert trolley, Forman is generally workmanlike in his visual style and very uneven with his handling of actors.

A rarity – a political film that delivers its timely message with a cinematic punch and no undue speechifying.

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.

While the movie is narrow, it has a deep, melancholic resonance.

Well conceived, deftly comic and finely acted (particularly Evelin Hagoel as the gutsy wives’ ringleader), The Women’s Balcony overlooks nothing when it comes to addressing faith, segregation and sexism in a peppery, entertaining way.

The narrative here may be strictly nuts and bolts, but as an achievement in graphic design, Steamboy is first class.

With its comic-book hues, crime-caper score, overly serious narrator, interior monologues and surreal touches, Wild Grass proves Resnais is still having fun with cinematic language.

Yun, a veteran Korean actress, gives a splendidly layered performance.

The movie is basically a sumptuous almost two-hour long music video/musical. And as we wind down the summer – looking ahead to yet more uncertainty in the fall (Variants! Elections! Just Life In General!) – it’s delightful to indulge in a flight of fantasy.

Both the Chicks and this doc are left to deal with the aftermath as best they can. The film chooses to pad with an occasional over-reliance on cutesy filler -- a pregnant Emily having an ultra-sound, giving birth, recuperating at her beloved ranch away from it all.

Glodell never lets his creation spin out of control. Bellflower revs the engine of an exciting new maverick.

It will make you mad as hell. So angry, even, that you might wonder why no one has given this opportunity to Todd Haynes before.

Now if that isn't an inspirational story, it's hard to know what is.

The results are not monumental, but they are a variety of sober responses to the tragedy that help place the event in a global context. Some of the films may be, as has been suggested, anti-American in tone, but none come anywhere near defending the attacks.

That the plot is totally stupid is Boss Baby’s saving grace. It’s the rare cartoon that actually feels like a cartoon, propelled by its goofiness and sheer energy and rarely bogged down by boring, polemical lesson-learning.

Over all, A Field in England aims to confound. The filth-encrusted characters aren’t easy to keep apart, and the narrative is too fragmentary and freakish to grasp (the sun turns black, a character vomits rune stones).

Director Barbra Streisand does justice to the popular book until the two-thirds mark of the film, whereupon the script abruptly changes from a psychic history to a gauzy romance. A Prince of a movie, until the end. [27 Dec 1991]

So, is Yesterday a one-trick Dig a Pony or did renowned British screenwriter Richard Curtis and the great British filmmaker Danny Boyle turn a cute hook into something meaningful? The answer is that the duo tries for the latter, but doesn’t quite nail it.

If you've got six hours to invest watching superior television in a movie theatre, then spend the time wisely with The Best of Youth.

Will make you glad to be living on the same planet as Miranda July.

Surprisingly but fittingly, for a film about the life of a singer, the use of songs is generally elliptical.

The winner of this year's audience award for best documentary at Sundance has it all: heartless media, art fraud and a four-year-old painting prodigy.

Writer-director Zandvliet has crafted a handsome, affecting and questioning film about post-war revenge and forgiveness. On a tough field to navigate, he makes it to the other side, commendably.

In truth, what follows is less disturbing than intriguing – to audiences hip to the mechanics of horror flicks, it's rare fun to be fooled, and this one is pretty damned clever.

Unfortunately, the actual confrontations this project must have caused happen off camera, but the story of a determined quest is always enlivened by insights into the clawing animals, bizarre monsters and sinful humans that populate Bosch’s fantastical visions.

The film is also peppered with animation, mid-century kitsch and a touch of whimsy, making Sometimes Always Never seem more like an intimate stage production than an exercise in cinematic self-seriousness.

Monster Hunter is all sorts of super-dumb fun. And though its middle section lags – there are only so many training montages audiences can handle – Anderson and his wife Jovovich prove that their long-running Resident Evil franchise was no fluke: this is a couple who know how to take the flimsiest of video games and turn them into self-knowing slices of cinematic ridiculousness.

Dull moments, so much the rule in most genre comedies, are the exception in Forgetting Sarah Marshall -- it does run long, but it mainly rollicks.

Though not as memorable as the series on which it is based, it does the job as big-screen entertainment.

Yet the most startling scene in the film is when he returns home after confinement. He politely tells the journalists waiting outside his home studio that he is on bail and can not talk. He smiles and repeatedly declines to comment. It is utterly contrary to his true character.

Paprika is a creatively dizzying and visually dazzling allegory about alternative realities.

A Man Called Ove hits all of the genre’s sweet spots, without ever tipping into the saccharine. Most of the credit can be thrown Rolf Lassgard’s way, as the actor gives Ove a humanity, and humility, that is expertly crafted and genuine.

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don’t address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that’s to fit in or to preserve our self-image. It’s not what we’re not saying, but how we’re not saying it.

Arguably, Lost in Translation is the American answer to Wong Kar-wai's masterpiece, "In the Mood for Love," though less about history, more about infatuation.

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

The film is too slapdash and self-serving to take seriously (it’s release is timed to the precede thesame-named album’s release next month), but it’s a casually entertaining trip, aimed at fans of the charismatic rapper and his recreational substance of choice.

One Night In Miami is an accomplishment relative to the standards of its industry, but for filmgoers seeking new and exciting work that exists outside of that orbit, King’s film is one that you’ve seen before.

The colourful film of course is allegorical: Peace is tough and tedious; war is an easy solution. And while the kids’ enthusiasm for battle wanes, pint-sized audiences will likely remain engaged.

Rising above its flaws, Internal Affairs converts a genre flick into a generic study, an examination of the mean streets that even the healthiest mind travels, those dark alleys where our force is sometimes overworked and always understaffed, the places where we, too, must police ourselves. [13 Jan 1990]

Two parts pain, one part pleasure, a masochist's life with cystic fibrosis results in a weirdly tender documentary. [14 Nov 1997, p.D4]

It doesn’t take a lot of wit or imagination to use Richard Nixon as a bad guy, but it’s still satisfying to watch a climatic showdown between two supervillains – one brought back from out of the past and the other from off the comic-book page – and wait to see who blinks first. Seems like we’ll always have Nixon to kick around, after all.

Physically ripped, constantly engaged and possessing a quite possibly insane desire to do each and every one of his own stunts, Cruise is the platonic ideal of an action star. And thank god for that.

Superintelligence arrives this week as a comedy with actual charm, wit and, yes, laughs.

The first comedy about that war, Good Morning, Vietnam manages to be uproariously funny without ignoring or trivializing the tragedy. It's awkwardly contrived here and there, especially during its recon patrols into Vietnamese life, but for the most part Mitch Markowitz's skeletal script is smart enough to dig in, hunker down and stay out of Robin Williams' line of fire. [22 Dec 1987]

Director Amma Asante (Belle) is carving a niche for herself, making gorgeous-looking cinema from untold histories. Her best asset here is Oyelowo.

The film walks the fine line between exploitation and empathy to cast a chilly, memorable spell.

The phrase in the title "wanted and desired" is offered by a producer friend of Polanski's who describes him as "wanted" in the United States, but "desired" in Europe, where sexual behaviour is treated more honestly and artists' dark sides are celebrated.

Not surprisingly, prison must be the perfect incubator of sadness and anger, because every one of the “performances” is astonishingly vivid. At the extremes of the emotional spectrum, at least, these guys are brilliant.

Young and bold and bristling with talent, Argentine director Lucrecia Martel has continued right where she left off in her feature debut.

Vegans and animal lovers might have a tough time stomaching parts of the film.

At first startling, even disengaging, that strange style eventually dovetails with the awful substance.

As a captivating bauble, a tribute to a romantic legend, Don Juan DeMarco shines. But as an exercise in performing artistry, a gift from a living legend and an heir apparent, it positively glitters.

Climate of the Hunter is less concerned with story than mood. A sensuous, trippy mood that successfully seduces – at least for those who can easily settle into these kinds of campy experiments. (Guilty!)

Argo is a movie of many parts, the sum of which can probably be best described as enjoyable Hollywood hokum.

Kindergarten Cop is fast, loud and obvious, but there are unexpectedly delicate touches. [21 Dec 1990, p.C10]

Like the comic stars of the silent era, Mr. Bean's character transcends language barriers.

The resulting tale is a wicked, gory and even occasionally funny take on George A. Romero.

The movie's title proves to be not entirely a case of bait-and-switch. The film really is a homage to vintage Hollywood comedy.

In a performance that should earn him the Oscar nomination he has long deserved, Penn uncovers every slimy instinct that motivated Lee, but he never loses the audience's sympathy. Despite Hutton and Schlesinger, The Falcon and the Snowman does tell a terrific story, and the tale is sufficient to hold interest right up to the mishandled ending. [25 Jan 1985]

The embodiment of the very message it so modestly conveys -- it's the accomplished little guy we fervently root for.

The preposterousness of this plot marks Fading Gigolo as a vanity project, but it’s hard to take Turturro too much to task when he hits so many other grace notes in between blowing his own horn.

A simple film only designed to charm.

However Buster Scruggs came to be, it highlights the best of the Coens' mordant minds, but not without tripping over a few unintended obstacles. Which probably suits the pair, always in awe of things never going right, just fine.

In the end, cast and audience are having such fun that it seems almost mingy to complain when the church, lacking a foundation, collapses under the weight of its own cleverness.

This Paddington, so sweetly voiced by Ben Whishaw, is just ursine enough on the one hand and just teddy enough on the other to reproduce the charm of the original.

The overall results are unusually wholesome – and satisfyingly funny. Game Night is the kind of harmless comedy you rarely see these days, as happily entertaining as a good game of Pictionary.

Here's something you don't see every day: a high-school comedy for old poops.

This is one of the director's small, experimental, semi-improvised provocations, and if it doesn't push too deep, it's pointed enough to leave a mark.

A kind of stealth political film that confronts issues of ethnic tension and American xenophobia.

A movie deeply immersed in movie lore, and the more seasoned the swimmer the richer the experience.

Designed to please all generations of irreverent humour-lovers, The Pirates! Band of Misfits may not be heart-warming (it is about nasty, scurvy pirates!) but it's breezy rollicking fun.

Solondz has finally made a movie that isn't just offensive -- it also happens to be good. He's still shouting, still violating our politically correct sensibilities, but the shocks now have thematic purpose. They don't just titillate, they resonate.

As returns go, Return To Paradise falls short of heavenly, but it does get to the stars -- at least three of them.

For all the undeniable merits, it somehow feels manufactured, and thus, to a degree, calculated - the product not of a collective imagination taking esthetic chances, but of an imaginative collective putting the rivets into a well-wrought plan that can't go awry.

A surprisingly large portion of the picture is given over to a gritty and unexpectedly moving examination of a senseless but understandable feud between two wrongheaded, sincere people making all the wrong moves. [21 Oct 1983]

Even with new information provided in the film, however, his personality remains not so much elusive as cantankerous, particularly in contrast with the expansiveness of his songs. That gap gives I'm Not There something of a hollow centre.

Zama is a disjointed watch that is both challenging and mesmerizing.

A chilling film best experienced bundled up in a sweater and scarf.

This engaging documentary is an excursion into the immense "art" form of hip-hop.

Shannon, who has a great face and a criminally underused talent, gives it all she’s got. You’ll be Googling the Dickinson canon and rethinking all your literature courses the minute it ends.

You can’t feel for anyone when nothing feels real. Memo to Christopher Nolan for future outings: Kill the dream, tell a story.

This concoction, so bizarre to the adult mind, is actually a charming triumph where its intended under-12 audience is concerned.

Without Kristin Scott Thomas, I've Loved You So Long would be a watchable but hardly a memorable movie. With her, it's both - she so fully inhabits the character that everyone and everything around her are simply enhanced.

Through a richly layered lens of myth-building and melodrama, Ainouz manages to capture the heartbreak, solitude and resilience of women on the verge.

I meant what I said And I said what I meant A flick pretty faithful 'Bout 80 per cent.

A worthy docudrama that is solid if not sublime. But, sometimes, a merely good film can brush up against greatness, and this one does so twice – in Sean Penn's magnetic performance and in the cautionary tale's contemporary resonance.

This movie might make you cry, but it is not explicitly designed to do so.

At times, Warriors sacrifices dramatic nuance for scale, but even its most rousing passages are tempered by a sense of loss. Rather than simply enshrining its underdog heroes' efforts, it considers their cost.

Alan Parker has directed the film as if he were a sniper: you never know when you're going to get hit next, but from the first moments you know you're being aimed at. The opening, with Hayes taping hash to his chest only to be apprehended at the airport, must have looked like standard stuff in Oliver Stone's script, but on screen it's unadulterated adrenalin, filmed with fast cuts timed in counterpoint to the sound of Hayes' pounding heart. [25 Oct 1978]

With razor-sharp precision, Dumont interweaves scenes of battle with the unravelling of a young woman back home, involved with two of the soldiers. But this is not bleakness just for the sake of it. When it arrives, the ray of hope rings perfectly true for being so devoid of artifice.

This is Sweeney’s show, and when she’s not framed in its dead centre, the movie’s blood cannot help but drip down the drain. The star deserves whatever awards might be coming her way. Don’t make her put up a fight.