Despite its setting and Korean American cast, Spa Night unfurls in a largely expected manner, with David struggling to embrace his identity because of his strict religious upbringing, while trying to make his family proud. He’s portrayed so opaquely that’s it’s difficult to connect with his dilemma.

The pleasure in watching this documentary is derived from its countless twists.

It’s a disquieting parable of iniquity.

It all escalates into an arch, knowing throwback to 80s horror-thrillers that's muddled in parts but never less than entertaining.

The Hand of God, no surprise, is Sorrentino’s most nakedly personal film to date, almost to a fault in the way it jettisons the cool distance of The Great Beauty or Il Divo in favour of a sweaty, close-up evocation of youth. It’s a picture only Sorrentino could make. But that doesn’t necessarily make him the safest pair of hands.

A delirious and oddly agreeable stopover.

I felt that we were not permitted much access to the character’s innermost thoughts, and so some of the film’s romance, and its fatalism, did not have the piercing impact as the visual masterstrokes. But there’s no doubting Diao’s style.

A plumply overripe fruit of the counterculture, dripping with the juices of spiritual rebellion, semi-comic posturing, consciousness-raising and all-around freakiness.

It’s plagued by the same problems that dragged down previous visits to the DC movie world: over-earnestness, bludgeoning special effects, and a messy, often wildly implausible plot. What promised to be a glass-ceiling-smashing blockbuster actually looks more like a future camp classic.

All this is acted with smouldering intensity and authenticity, particularly by Filipovic, although it’s possible to wonder if there is anything unexpected to come in the third act, or if we can roughly guess where it’s all heading.

Something in the Dirt is so high on its own conceptual supply that it doesn’t invest quite enough in the pair’s deteriorating relationship, and consequently starts to drag. But it wrings a mini-cosmos out of next to nothing, its delicately transcendent visuals – courtesy of Moorhead’s photography background – constantly signposting some higher truth just around the next corner.

Photographer and film-maker Anton Corbijn is the very best person to direct this very enjoyable documentary about design outfit Hipgnosis and its dynamic co-founders Aubrey “Po” Powell and Storm Thorgerson.

The performances of Jonsson and Blyth are fierce and overwhelmingly convincing.

The second version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, which Hitchcock made in 1956, is a curious film. Some of it doesn't really work.

This an enjoyably strange spectacle, perhaps best appreciated by taking it less seriously than its creators intended.

It is bewildering. I’m not sure I understood more than a fraction and of course it can be dismissed as obscurantism and mannerism. But I found The Image Book rich, disturbing and strange.

What is so distinctive about this Iñárritu picture is its unitary control and its fluency: no matter how extended, the film’s tense story is under the director’s complete control and he unspools great meandering, bravura travelling shots to tell it: not dissimilar, in some ways, to his previous picture, Birdman. The movie is as thrilling and painful as a sheet of ice held to the skin.

Lauren Greenfield’s film about the Philippines’ former first lady Imelda Marcos reveals a grotesquely self-pitying, wholly unrepentant and very rich woman.

Incredible But True has a wacky premise that Dupieux very possibly had no idea how to develop. And yet I found myself laughing quite a lot of the time. The sheer silliness and zen pointlessness is entertaining.

The focus is on his star quality and the qualities that made him a pioneer: sunniness, grit, passion for his sport, the unconditional love and support of his mother, and his unbreakable confidence to be himself. It’s undeniably heartwarming.

Erotic languour turns gradually into fear and then horror in this gripping and superbly controlled psychological thriller from 1969.

DaCosta's musical is one of the most exuberant and purely enjoyable of the lot. Much of this is down to the infectious energy of Robert Preston, reprising his stage role as smooth-talking conman. [12 Nov 2005, p.53]

The overstuffed, better-keep-up narrative suits the film’s purposes, occupying audience attentions to leave them unprepared for the nimble writing’s assorted baits and switches.

The good news is that it remains terrific: punchy, old-school stunt work, crisply uncluttered cutting, and varied, inventive baddie-splattering from the moment Aatami deploys one of those beams to take down a jet fighter.

Stronger is a film filled with warmth and humanity, but one that doesn’t sugarcoat the reality that comes with it.

This movie lodged in my mind a little more than Hong’s earlier films, perhaps because it is less contrived and it features a genuinely funny and complex opening scene.

Mario Martone’s beautifully shot and superbly composed film teeters on the edge of something special. And if it doesn’t quite achieve that, settling in the end for something more generically crime-oriented, it’s still very good.

The film moves more freely because of its willed unconcern with the historical implications of the Munich hostage massacre; modern audiences may feel the contemporary context makes it naive or obtuse. But it’s a muscular, well-made picture with the tang of cold sweat.

As a drama, Pass Over is a masterful tragedy. As a reflection of the world, it is all too real and utterly woeful.

Julian Schnabel has made a heartfelt if straightforwardly reverent film about the last years in the life of Vincent van Gogh – acted by with all the integrity and unselfconscious ease that you would expect from this great actor.

The sheer tactlessness of its racial confrontation has a forthright quality and a not entirely intentional documentary realism, especially in the scenes shot on location in Sparta, Illinois (standing in for a fictional Mississippi town).

Intriguingly, but finally a bit frustratingly, Perry is running four ideas at once, a kind of cine-quadriptych with the plurality signalled by the title.

A glorious jumping bean comedy that moves from the profane to the poignant in the blink of an eye.

It's a likable film played with gusto and heart — though fundamentally a little sentimental and predictable.

Every second of this noir masterpiece is gripping, and the chemistry between Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor is utterly thrilling.

The movie’s a great night out, but you sense it’ll also become a priceless resource.

A Woman of Paris is a remarkable film, an historic film, a film to see and consider. But, it is wintry, and not everyone will find it to his liking.

I’m not sure how much, if anything, Coppola’s re-edit does for the third Godfather film, but it’s worth a watch.

Enjoyable and well-crafted as it is, this movie can’t quite decide what to do with the tougher, darker side of Richard Williams.

This film finally flinches from its own menacing implications and dark suspenseful power with a rather feeble ending of empowerment and solidarity. A very 21st-century loss of nerve.

As horror it is ridiculous, as comedy it is startling and hilarious, and as a machine for freaking you out it is a thing of wonder.

[An] attractive and sympathetically acted movie in a classic New Wave style.

There’s something exciting about a film that immerses you in the life of a creative artist, and so it proves with this documentary about Howard Ashman.

All three actors are tremendous, and director Dan Trachtenberg, making his feature debut, must be commended for keeping things tightly focused.

Buxton gains confidence as the film heads into the murky final stretch, neatly gliding around the, ahem, sharp corners that would have seen others crashing into the darkness. He leads his story to a knockout ending that’s both hauntingly downbeat yet crushingly inevitable without going to new, unnecessary extremes.

It is a dizzying, headspinning film, replete with violence, alienation and tech-porn. I confess I find it too opaque to make the kind of investment that would qualify me as a real fan. But it should be seen.

It is a film that does not proceed in the narrative style and the title seems to suggest that we should think of it as a different art form entirely: a constellation of themes, ideas, tropes, moods in which the personae relate to each other as concepts rather than characters.

Mud is an engaging and good-looking picture with two bright leading performances from Sheridan and Lofland.

From a subdued start Nightcrawler unfurls into a ghoulish and wickedly funny satire on journalism, the job market and self-help culture.

This is a big, bold picture with the vivid presences of Davis, Lynch, Atim and Mbedu giving it some real voltage.

There is something winning in this calm, walking-pace drama – and the landscape is amazing.

Batiste is a cheerful and inspiring presence but there’s a guardedness to him that keeps us at a respectful distance. His relentless optimism, so integral when he’s trying to keep everyone’s spirits up, can also function as a shield.

Best of all, though, the film is a reminder of how deliriously odd Les Demoiselles was, with its MGM-style dance routines, kitschy pastels, and Gene Kelly as honoured guest hoofer. [21 May 1993, p.4]

The movie rattles cleverly and exhilaratingly along, adroitly absorbing the implications of pathos and loneliness without allowing itself to slow down. It is tempting to consider this savant blankness as some kind of symptom, but I really don’t think so: it is the expression of style. And what style it is.

Here, the pipeline destroyers are the good guys; an interesting genre twist though one which arguably defangs the film, just a little, removing the addictive flavour of cruelty and chaos, yet not making it any the less gripping and ingenious.

What lets the movie down is its heart, or lack thereof. The reprise of the Games introduces new adversaries (and some allies) but has exactly the same dynamic as in the first movie.

One of the best movies in the American Film Theatre Collection. [22 Aug 2004, p.12]

None of this, arguably, is inaccurate. But it’s all very smooth: a slick Steadicam ride through a historic, tumultuous moment.

This is a hothouse flower of pure orchidaceous strangeness, enclosed in the studio’s artificial universe, fusing cinema, opera and ballet.

Into the Inferno is an intriguing, unnerving documentary.

It’s handsome, it’s amusing, it knows exactly where it’s going. All that is missing is that crucial fifth gear.

The film itself is terrifically accomplished and horribly gripping, with golden-age movie pastiche and dashes of Psycho and The Wizard of Oz.

I’m not sure that Les Olympiades says anything too profound about any of its cast of characters, but Audiard achieves something very watchable and entertaining in anthologising them. This is a connoisseur date movie.

The life of Orry-Kelly is a story that needed to be told, and Armstrong stocks up a lovingly rendered homage-cum-investigation with oodles of verve and panache.

Rather like its central relationship, the film is messy and flawed yet painfully familiar.

Nothing Compares is simply more about the Sinéad you already know. But a critic’s original sin is to review the movie you want to see, not the movie that exists. To that end, with expectations managed, Nothing Compares is a quite engaging document.

It is an amusing and gruesome premise, which writer-director Damian McCarthy stretches out into a convoluted, bizarre extended narrative.

Explicitly, his film shows how a hundred shades of grey combine to make a darkness. Implicitly, it warns that it could well happen again.

The effect is tender, sympathetic, diverting and often very elegant and indirect. But it withholds from us the full, real pain of damaged love.

Many a first-time film-maker thinks they are too good to follow any sort of rules, and blends genres by writing from a purely instinctual level. More often than not, the result is unpalatable. The Mend, somewhat miraculously, is here to buck the trend. Let’s just hope that not too many people decide to follow its lead.

Her story is obviously astounding in itself, but what makes The Fire Inside, once called Flint Strong, such an upper-tier sports movie is that Morrison and the Oscar-winning screenwriter Barry Jenkins don’t rely solely on the facts of her life to compel.

Roland Joffé's 1984 masterwork is a solid piece of historical film-making, capturing factual detail without sacrificing fine storytelling.

There are some nice moments and sweet showtunes, but Encanto feels like it is aspiring to exactly that sort of bland frictionless perfection that the film itselfis solemnly preaching against, with a contrived storyline which wants to have its metaphorical cake and eat it.

Refreshingly, Msangi’s empathy extends in every direction.

Gere’s commitment to the role almost makes up for the film’s flaws.

This movie is a time-capsule of Europe’s recent tragic past.

The movie sweeps ambitiously across Europe and the Middle East and shows us a complex world of pain.

Mistress America eventually travels down roads of broken trust and acceptance of reality, but please don’t let those heavy themes suggest this movie is anything other than pure delight. The primacy of the joke rules the day.

It’s nice to see the old tension between selling out and staying pure never goes away in any corner of the film-making world.

In keeping with the spirit of Sebald's writing, Gee's film is teasing, elegant and perhaps inevitably unresolved: an invitation as opposed to a destination.

It sometimes strays off the beaten track into shapelessness, but Oreck lends individual segments a quiet fascination.

The brilliance of Quillévéré's direction is in the performances she coaxes from her cast, and the clear-eyed, non-judgmental way she presents them.

Ford has a knack for making us sweat without relying on an over-egged score or over-stacked stakes. It’s a genre movie with its feet firmly on the ground, small in scale and tight in focus.

For a film that champions talent that takes risks, Frank can sometimes feel a little too conventional. The real Sidebottom's wayward genius would be a hard fit for any story arc, but Frank does a good job of dipping into surrealism and pop in equal measure.

Gyllenhaal is terrific as a teacher and wannabe poet who exploits a child prodigy in this gripping psychological drama.

A calm and interesting introduction to an important dissident author.

There is no reason for this new Naked Gun to exist other than the reason for the old ones: it’s a laugh, disposable, forgettable, enjoyable.

It’s not so much the running time of 156 minutes that will tire you out as the incredible sonic, visual and emotional overload generated by the work itself; perhaps this is ideally seen first in a cinema for maximum impact and then again in small, digestible chunks at home.

Clearly there is entertainment value in this documentary, but it’s very much of a “behind the music” calibre.

It's an authentically bilious look at the world and its morals as Tyrone Power, taking decisive strides from the standard romantic hero roles he had been typecast in, rises from a travelling carnival mind-reading act to a high society shown to be even more corrupt.

What distinguishes North Circular is the overwhelming importance of music: there’s a musical tradition here that is not simply commemorative and static, but vital and evolving, and given a fresh burst of creativity by the emerging status of women in Ireland.

The polar opposite of a date movie, Possession is incredibly well directed and acted (great soundtrack and camerawork too). Neill and Adjani are both at the height of their powers here, free of ego and fearless. She, in particular, has one relentless freakout scene that you'll never forget. We're still no closer to finding a category for it, but it doesn't need one. [27 July 2013, p.23]

It’s a fierce, thoughtful drama.

Down By Law is effortlessly laidback, superbly elegant. Jarmusch made it look easy.

A difficult, depressing watch.

The fight against fascism is a serious business, now more than ever, and it is right that Kurzel treats it seriously, but this means his movie feels constrained tonally and the finale is weirdly protracted and even anticlimactic. Yet The Order maintains a drumbeat of tension to the last.

It’s a simplistic film in some ways, with a naive ending – but there is energy and vigour, too.

A gritty and restrained account of men at war. [04 Oct 2008, p.53]