Some viewers will decide that Benny & Joon strays too far from the brink; they will find its sentimentality cloying. Other viewers will applaud the classic silent film humour and will emerge with a glow they'll want to show off to their friends. Both camps can agree, however, that Mary Stuart Masterson, Aidan Quinn and Johnny Depp are quite good. [16 Apr 1993]

Despite all these challenges, the performances that Mantello wrings make the 2020 effort worth everyone’s trouble.

The cheery result is enough to renew one's faith in Uncle Walt and the boys - a family picture that transcends the cliche, a light-bright romp where the sentiment isn't cheap and where the action isn't childish. Now there's a novelty item for you. [27 June 1989]

Bourne fans will find much to enjoy about The Bourne Legacy, even if they are forced to do without the title character.

Rarely, though, has cinema been so devoted to idealizing the importance of journalism than in Collective.

Calvary is an unsettling concoction, abstract and brutal, morally serious and too ghastly in its flippancy to be simply comedy. When you stop gasping at the shocks and jokes, there’s a profundity here, in the struggle to find the balance between outrage and forgiveness.

The confluence of poverty, dysfunctional parenting and poor educational prospects makes the oft-idealized small-town life look like an incubator for failure, no matter how high and spectacular the Fourth of July fireworks fly.

It's a film of vigorous performances and provocative modern resonances, though it sometimes struggles to grapple with a grim, politically ambiguous, 400-year-old play.

Rodriguez, is a hack in the best sense of the term, often serving as producer, director, writer, shooter and composer – all of which come into play for Shorts .

The reason Diane (the film) exists is not to propose and then solve a mystery, but to engage with Diane (the person).

It is messy, it is incendiary, and it is frustrating. It may not be what you wanted or were promised by the slick and smooth marketing materials provided by Netflix, the streaming giant that is partnering with Lee here for the first time. But Da 5 Bloods is what you need.

The plot is threadbare, but cutely disarming in its own way.

We’re watching Buckley electrify the screen today. May her voice rattle in your head for the rest of the year.

Solitary Man makes too good on its title – it’s a fascinating character study isolated within a mediocre film.

As much as Occupied City’s observational eye is rooted in a humanistic and cumulative approach to history, it will, no doubt, leave those in search of a less austere approach wanting.

The impact of modern vice upon the Wayuu is a captivating tale never told before, and the final few minutes are brutal in the best possible way

The bulk of Fire and Ash feels distressingly derivative of what came before, down to ultra-specific plot beats

Though the progress of Atim's increasing empathy is predictable, the film understates its points effectively, without simplification.

Instead of the typical John Grisham-style connect-the-dots legal thriller, we get a film that's idiosyncratic, with a time-shifting structure, a surfeit of subplots and characters.

If CJ7 feels like the love child of Charles Dickens, Mao Zedong and Steven Spielberg, it's because that's exactly what this PG-rated, Chinese-made fantasy is.

The political buck-passing from all entertains and creates the film’s time-sensitive tension.

Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color is a deliberate exercise in swooning obscurity. You either go with its considerable sensory powers or you scratch a groove on your head.

If this doc is sometimes elegiac in tone, there is nothing mournful about it. Dorfman is too much the odd-ball optimist, telling funny anecdotes – a lifelong friendship with poet Allen Ginsberg began when she was a young publishing-house secretary and he asked for some mysterious thing called “the can” – and tossing off provocative insights into the nature of photography and life.

Just as it seems that Noé will tip over into the truly extreme, he backs off. If this is the dawn of a new, slightly restrained Noé, we might need five more stages to process the pivot.

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.

A skilfully executed thriller that is narrowly aimed at one demographic – audiences over 50 who like a little violence with their late-life dramas – but succeeds at entertaining just about anyone who comes across its dusty, blood-soaked path.

Elena is at once a portrait, an autobiography and a history of family trauma.

You can practically taste the grit and grime of the mean streets of this North of England setting. [17 Aug 1996, p.11]