The ever-reliable Hanks sympathetically personifies all in America that is worth fighting for, while his British colleague’s surprisingly comic version of Rudolf Abel portrays the Russian spy as a man quietly steadfast in his loyalty to a different cause.

This delightful stop-motion animated romp features no dialogue, which is as it should be – the beauty of animals is in their actions, not words, after all.

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

The movie's main attraction isn't hard to find. It's essentially a character study, but one where the nature of the study is as unique as the stature of the character.

The triumph of Foxcatcher is not in the subject but in its art. The clear-eyed compassion and moral intelligence of Miller’s film brings sense to the senseless, and finds the human pulse behind the tabloid shock. It’s not a movie to make you feel good, but, at moments, it reminds you what goodness is.

Ultimately, the result is identical to Mills's debut effort in "Thumbsucker." Once again, clever insight vies with misty-eyed sentimentality, honesty with artifice, real humour with bogus gravity, the genuinely affecting with the merely quirky. But "Thumbsucker" was at least a promising start; Beginners is just a frustrating continuation.

Gomes believes we should all take responsibility for one another and sees austerity as a government abrogation of social duty that ultimately turns citizen against citizen.

Mainly, though, it's the exquisite restraint - both of Cornish's performance and Campion's direction - that gives the film its power.

White Lie is a wildly entertaining ride.

To watch Portman’s every move is to not only watch history being recreated, but to also witness history being made. No one will ever be able to touch this role again. Or, at least, no one should.

It's not the subject matter itself that's offensive -- pedophilia is as worthy a topic of investigation as any other. Instead, it's the subject's non-treatment -- we don't learn a thing that rings true.

A deceptively simple and concise narrative structure allows Ford to parse her subject and characters with a graceful internal complexity that shows rather than tells.

It’s shocking and troubling, but it doesn’t add much to the reality we already know cruelly exists.

Once the euphoria passes, director Tim Wardle takes his audience on an engrossing, heartbreaking journey into the lives of three innocents whose lives became experiments for scientists on a quest to unravel how identity is shaped. Sadly, in their zeal to figure out if nurture or nature wins, they forgot the human beings in the middle of the mix.

From beginning to brutal end, this is Fargeat’s uncompromising creation, but Lutz is at the centre of the terror, and acquits herself well as a person never to be dismissed, or crossed, again.

Despite strong performances across the board – most notably Wright, who has never before been able to flex such leading-man magnetism – there is an overriding flatness to Monk’s personal life.

Fortunately, there's always the fascination of watching actor Toni Servillo, who does a brilliant job of playing Andreotti (known as Beelzebub) as a kind of devil with a clown's exterior.

A half-century ago, "kitchen sink realism" began its harsh existence on the British stage and then migrated to the screen where, over the years, the genre has taken up permanent residence, maturing into a gritty art...Now add Andrea Arnold to the directors' list and Fish Tank to the kitchen. It's classic low-rent realism – you can almost smell the grease on the unwashed dishes.

In its bold aesthetic courage and rigid thematic spine, Khatami’s movie is a full-body experience that leaves you fully alive.

Take the backroom political machinations of "Lincoln," add in the showbiz sleight of hand of "Argo," and you’ll get something like No, a cunning and richly enjoyable combination of high-stakes drama and media satire.

This dandy foreign feature from Anders Thomas Jensen is only posing as a revenge film – clickbait for the violence junkies and the popcorn crowd. Yes, leading man Mads Mikkelsen plays a brooding killing machine out to avenge the loss of a loved one. But Riders of Justice, in Danish with English subtitles, is actually a pitch-black comedy about questions, coincidences and ideas that pile up faster than the body count.

Evil isn't a matter of banality in The China Syndrome; it's a barracuda in a three-piece suit. The film is thus weakened both politically and esthetically. The weakness does not stand in the way of the movie's cumulative effect, which is to weaken the knees, but as you make your way out of the theatre, knee-caps clicking like castanets, you may stop to wonder what kind of shape you'd be in if the one-eyed king's vision had been bifold.[24 March 1979]

A twofold story of heroic achievements and personal failings.

In Fabric is a beautiful, unpredictable nightmare for those drawn to giggle in the dark.

With Hot Fuzz, you'll just have to settle for semi-hilarity.

British humour at its eclectic best, a deliciously heady mix of dry wit and ribald farce.

A simultaneously realistic and absurdist examination of police work.

Tarantino's approach is so enamoured of the exploitation cinema he emulates, there is a serious risk that noble intentions get smothered in juvenile comedy and cinematic grandstanding.