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]

It’s comedy-drama that is not funny enough to count as a comedy and not plausible enough to count as a drama. You’re going to need a very sweet tooth for it – sweeter than the one I have.

What is interesting about Sauvage is that it shows how savagely boring Leo’s life is, quite a lot of the time.

Albert Serra’s bizarre epic is a cheese-dream of French imperial tristesse, political paranoia and an apocalyptic despair. It is a nightmare that moves as slowly and confidently as a somnambulist, and its pace, length, and Serra’s beautiful widescreen panoramic framings – in which conventional drama is almost camouflaged or lost – may divide opinion. I can only say I was captivated by the film and its stealthy evocation of pure evil.

The folk singer and counterculture veteran Joan Baez is the subject of this intimate and painful documentary, which brings us to the brink of a terribly traumatic revelation that it can’t quite bear to spell out.

Having watched this documentary, I now think the project could also be seen as a gigantic adventure in conceptual art, and this is not to denigrate it in any way.

These are brilliant impersonations, the kind that can only be achieved by exceptionally intelligent actors; the superb technique of both is matched by their obvious love for the originals.

It is possible to come away from the film less than convinced, but very impressed by the sheer force of Petzold’s film-making talent (recently so stunning in his drama Transit) but which has been here deployed for something which is a bit flimsy and silly.

Sigurðsson is no misanthrope and his humane message – that everyone is muddling along as best they can – makes all the feuding and bile easier to stomach. Some may prefer a little more bite.

However partial, though, and however little new material it has to offer, even for the amateur fan like me, the film remains a heady treat. Because it is about Elizabeth Taylor. They don’t make them like they used to – and they probably never will again.

The pay-off is a fast-moving, good-looking gallop of Mission: Impossible-style mask play, languorous conniving in courtyards and occasional outbreaks of derring-do that chews up three hours without pausing for quail sandwiches.

The Wolf of Wall Street, for all its abundant appeal, is no Greek tragedy. It lacks the wildness of Taxi Driver, the jeopardy of GoodFellas and the anguish of Raging Bull. Far better to view this as a stylistic homage, a remastered greatest hits compilation, an amiable bit of self-infringement.

It is a thoroughly absorbing and moving film, especially when Hull has a dream about recovering his sight and seeing his children. The tone is sober, unflashy, and Hull’s reflections on God are presented without any hectoring or special pleading. Affecting and profoundly intelligent.

Managing to get access to some of the biggest names in the industry, including De Beers CEO Stephen Lussier (who perhaps not coincidentally retired this month), Kohn opens up a bijou microcosm of capitalism in the age of quantum reproduction.

Overall this is a frustrating and rather precious piece of work.

Well, point-by-point, clip-by-clip, this film remains brilliant. As ever, there is real evangelism in Cousins’s work and in My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock there is so much to learn and enjoy. You come away from it with your senses fine-tuned.

With its sheer warmth and likability, this good-natured documentary won my heart.

The movie, shot in CinemaScope and colour, is punctuated by shocking moments, but is more notable for its claustrophobic, doom-laden, necrophilic atmosphere and elegant camerawork than the kind of fashionable, in-your-face horror that was launched in the same year by Psycho.

An enjoyable double-act – but not an infallible one.

A stubborn charmer whose life was a magnet for tragedy, Hall is the emotional centre not only of the Muscle Shoals sound but of this film.

A still wonderfully penetrating, wise and exact meditation on race relations at the end of the 1960s.

It isn’t that Rosi has removed the context, it is more that he has supplied a new context, a more universalised, humanistic context of the spirit – with some artistic licence. But I felt that his earlier films give us a more intimate access to people’s lives than Notturno does, for all its intelligence, empathy and stoicism.

Reiner’s film, the perfect 90-minuter, is sometimes a little stretched at 107 minutes. Nevertheless it maintains its tension well, plays enough tricks on us so that we don’t ever treat anything quite seriously and Goldman’s script has enough good lines and situations to keep one interested in exactly what is coming next.

The film’s particular innovation is to privilege Black women’s perspectives on the history of American racism, and with the exception of Kendi himself, every expert commentator here is a Black woman.

The Portuguese Nun (2009) was a gem of gentle comedy, and his new drama, The Son of Joseph, has the same droll innocence and lovability. With its carefully controlled, decelerated dialogue, it is weirdly moving in just the same way.

Fyre allows you to marvel, and to feel – how spectacular the hubris, how gross the unfairness – while reminding that whether you bought a ticket or not, you were the audience the whole time.

Breillat’s movie rolls along capably enough while the affair is in progress, but it’s tested to destruction when things go wrong. She is not good at delivering the iciness crucial to the story’s third act, happier as she is with the sunny, languorous sexiness of the amour fou.

It is an uncompromising and exasperating 70-minute cine-collage placed before us on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, composed of fragments of ideas, shards of disillusionment.

It might not be at the very zenith of what he can achieve but for sheer moment-by-moment pleasure, and for laughs, this is a treat.

This is a heart-stoppingly suspenseful story. Conroy is a superb commentator on war and all its cruelties and absurdities.

It’s a documentary that should be shown in all film schools.

Black's performance is a revelation: foregoing his usual repertoire of jiggling, tics and head-waggling craziness, Black ensures Tiede is a satirical creation of considerable substance. Really impressive.

Timeless entertainment. [24 Dec 2005]

The whole thing is a bit bonkers but very beautiful too.

Verhoeven just presents us with the raunchiness, using the religiosity as set dressing.

It’s almost too perfectly contoured as a Hollywood narrative.

The Invisible Woman shies from propaganda just as Nelly shies from impropriety. Fiennes has done the right and proper thing here. He has, at 50, made a mature movie, prudent in the best possible sense.

Much but not all of this movie’s good work is undone by its silly and unconvincing ending.

The anarchic spirit of agitprop pulses from this scrappy, smart, subversive film.

The material is sobering and the mountain of evidence needs unpicking. The film-maker handles his brief with the cold, hard precision of an expert state prosecutor.

Pleasure doesn’t take a doomily disapproving line on porn, and real pornstars and agents are given cameos. Yet neither is it necessarily celebratory or porn-positive. The people in charge are overwhelmingly male and Thyberg shows how the power relations in the business are really the same as they ever were.

Gary Oldman is terrific as Churchill, conveying the babyishness of his oddly unlined face in repose, the slyness and manipulative good humour, and a weird deadness when he is overtaken with depression.

It’s intense but not unwatchably painful, and so much more than an issue film or portrait of a victim. I really hope Knight finds a place in the film industry; with her terrific performance here she’s earned it.

Nimona is likable and engaging entertainment that finds its way through self-created chaos to some humane life-lessons.

The effect of this movie by the Australian director Warwick Thornton is cumulative, subtle, almost stealthy.

The three leads draw you in. The pace gives these actors time to breathe, show nuance and make their characters human.

The film is quiet, understated and gentle, allowing the audience to take pleasure in teasing out its narrative subtleties, and presented with wonderful freshness and clarity.

It forces viewers to take long looks at his most controversial imagery, proving that he still has the power to provoke, seduce and enrage.

Wacky, bouncy Disney comedy.

Their faces are vivid and Pennetta’s film somehow returns you to the simple, fundamental fact: these are real people whose lives carry on outside the movie screen’s perimeter.

Writer-director Sandhya Suri has made a tense, violent and politically savvy crime procedural set in India: a film about sexism, caste bigotry and Islamophobia that doubles as a study in the complex relationship between two female cops, a cynical veteran and a wide-eyed rookie.

What Pagnol wrote about his book was much more affecting than anything in this cliche-ridden film, full of cardboard characters and pretty views.

An intriguing, bittersweet family study.

Spy confirms Feig’s and McCarthy’s instinct for both the zeitgeist and the funnybone, and is sure to ramp up anticipation for Ghostbusters even higher – as well as being a delight in its own right.

As Chiara, Rotolo’s face dominates the screen in closeup for much of the film, and she manages to look very young and yet very worldly wise at the same time. Another very impressive achievement from Carpignano.

This director, in the past, has shown herself to be an ace with the teasing, hanging ending and Night Moves saves the best for last.

An impressively faithful and highly effective film, aside from the misjudged [spoiler omitted] ending.

Tanna has a warm, shimmering vitality. Like the trees and the birds, the frame feels alive.

A superlative performance from Gemma Arterton is at the centre of this almost unbearably painful and sad film from writer-director Dominic Savage.

It’s a time-honoured and perfectly enjoyable setup, and the first act, when the new reality dawns on clueless Bradley, is watchable. But the plot twists are derivative and the action then becomes dependent on weird stabs of grisliness that are not convincing or consistent with the characterisation.

Love letters to the past are always addressed to an illusion, yet this is such a seductive piece of myth-making from Branagh.

Claire Ferguson’s documentary is a powerful, valuable addition to the Holocaust testimony genre.

It’s a strange, violent dream of disorder, drained of ideological meaning.

The film’s insidious crawl away from comedy into sweaty waking nightmare is arresting indeed. As is, finally, its insistence that some elements of American life remain too serious to joke about.