Like a lot of well-staged parties, though, the affair peaks shortly after the introductions, and then devolves into intrigues, fights and mayhem.

The characters are entertainingly contradictory, though in a somewhat predictable way: Nice people aren’t honest, and honest people aren’t nice.

In David Lynch's film, the Elephant Man has become a drooling Latex monster. There is nothing wrong with Hurt's performance - it is quite moving - but there is a great deal wrong with a movie that adds insult to injury by unconscionably holding back the revelation of the make-up. [04 Oct 1980]

Rather than another oppressive film about poverty, it's a revealing experiment in perspective.

Not nearly that bad, hardly that good - just an amiable, good-natured, fun-loving flick with moments of low comedy that will be remembered for . . . well, hours, maybe. [20 July 1990]

Clocking in at a severely bloated 165 minutes, Chapter 4 is both a thrill and a slog, an all-you-can-eat buffet that insists on stuffing your guts before it spills them.

What's wrong with The Color Purple - and nothing that's wrong with it keeps it from being a joy to watch - is what you'd expect of Spielberg: he chews on Alice Walker's hard edges until they're gummy. [21 Dec 1985]

The film is simply operating at a speed constantly one click ahead of expectations, never satisfied that any one viewer could know where it might all be heading.

The thrill Soderbergh and his co-conspirators are enjoying is contagious.

The writer’s adage that the specific is universal comes fully alive in this family drama, written and directed by Stephen Karam, based on his Tony-winning play.

There is an urgency to these stylistic choices which ask us how we might best realize, through image and sound, both the memory and feeling of violence, of hope, of salvation for the damned. As in life, the grotesque and the beautiful exist concurrently and are each given fair weight.

Both a moving first-person essay and an artful exercise in political advocacy, 5 Broken Cameras is about the experience of West Bank protests from the inside.

By its third act, Okwe has found his solution and Dirty Pretty Things comes across as both clever but a little pat, another British drama about the misfits who pool their resources to defy the oppressive system, though it does not precisely leave a warm glow.

The value of Amandla! is that the film helps the rest of the world understand, both with our ears and minds, where South Africans have come from.

No film this year has offered quite the cerebral tickle, weird invention and slaphappy gusto.

Wong Kar-Wai makes gifted use of a hand-held camera in Chungking Express; little seems to have been shot with anything else. That, linked with a clear taste for chiaroscuro imagery, makes for a fast-paced film that combines visual flair with story lines that are subtle enough to leave the most important things unspoken. [15 Mar 1996]

In a better entertainment world, Owe would have won a special Buster Keaton Great Stoneface award at last year's Academy Awards.

Rob Reiner's not up to it: when the movie is meant to be romantic, the tone is frequently mushy and sexless, and when it's meant to be anachronistic and satiric, it's vaudeville-vulgar.

While the #MeToo movement is doing much to expose systemic sexism and harassment against women, In Between highlights how difficult it will be to make substantive change in the world's most patriarchal societies.

The film is tragic, but not piteous. Stewart, by way of Yuknavitch, understands that memory and cinema are both instruments of time, able to chronologize a life that lurches on – a work that is made and unmade with each breath, each cut.

Like no other war movie you've ever seen.

This is a miniature classic, a pulp tragedy. [29 Sep 1990]

Ultimately this political film’s sentimentality and transparency detract from its power.

A conventional mixture of thriller and moral drama, the film is unsettling in both intentional and unintentional ways.

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.

At two hours, After the Wedding stretches out family flux too thinly and waits too long to reveal the final, devastating secret that we already know.

It's not only packed with high-toned classical and contemporary cultural allusions, but manages to wear its popcorn inspirations on its sleeve.

Slipping in references to everyone from Kubrick to Fellini, Gray creates a truly intoxicating experience, overwhelming in the best possible way. It is this close to being an all-time classic, if only Charlie Hunnam’s central performance as Fawcett didn’t slip out of Gray’s period trappings every now and then (you can’t help but wonder what Gray’s long-time collaborator, Joaquin Phoenix, would have done with the role).