This is another film about a white European mixed up in a Middle Eastern war they barely seem to understand, but on its own terms it’s a story well told.

For all its fantastical vein, this movie has an interesting grasp of what high school is really like – not a Hollywood narrative, neither funny nor tragic, and certainly nothing like that most unreal of genres, the coming-of-age drama. Rather it’s messy, downbeat and inconclusive, without teachable moments – like everything else in real life.

With his reedy voice and fractionally mis-set eyes, Segan exploits his unsettling qualities in a deadpan performance that he lifts, as director, with pleasingly snappy, almost comic-book-like direction.

There’s an amazing lineup of collaborators and stars, and it’s good to see Candy’s uniquely likable and buoyant screen personality, but the tone borders on the stultifyingly reverential.

The Dead of Winter has an old-school barnstorming brashness, some edge-of-the-seat tension, a mile-wide streak of sentimentality, a dash of broad humour and a horrible flourish of the macabre.

Loach and Laverty fervently argue that through solidarity and a recognition of real interests, British people can naturally show empathy to immigrants and refugees.

It’s a melancholy, dreamy study.

Rounding out the pervasive sense of fear and ecstasy is a mesmerizing, sometimes mind-altering, depiction of the ocean’s depths. When one beholds Zecchini’s figure undulating to the sound of nothing, it’s all too clear that thrill-seeking is only part of the story.

The question of whether this is a ghost story or if Laura is experiencing a kind of psychological breakdown twists and turns in ways that lost me by the end. Still, it’s is a very accomplished debut from Gregg, and acted with subtlety and sensitivity by Riseborough.

A handful of jokes in this minipop Ragnarok, like the crack at Gene Hackman’s role in the 1978 Superman, land at the exact sweet spot where fond fanboy scholarship meets sublime goofiness.

Martha is, after all, the star – a fascinating narrator of her own life, sometimes direct, sometimes curiously opaque or self-contradictory, always evincing a glowing, undaunted ambition. As the OG influencer, she lived the rule: whatever happens, just keep pushing forward. The people will keep watching.

It’s in the scenes from the late 80s, which slowly start to take centre stage, that the film finds more original footing, exploring with nuance the realities of living with the weight of doing so much yet thinking of it as so little.

It’s a great piece of Hollywood confectionery, and you might well find yourself choking up a little at the end.

Moore never quite settles on a single, compelling riposte to Trump, never really hones his arguments to a piercing arrowhead of counterattack. Instead, he rambles over almost everything … entertainingly, but confusingly, ending on an image of Parkland School shooting survivor Emma González.

Happiest Season exists within well-worn framework but still feels fresh, a sprightly and substantial comedy that will be an immediate addition to the Christmas movie rotation for many, including myself.

Boyz in the Wood isn’t perfect (there isn’t really a wood in it as such and the title is a bit strained), but there’s likable wackiness and weirdness, one or two sizable laughs and a very bizarre deus ex machina moment.

Yoon executes all the classic double-agent set pieces with finesse, and those enamoured of the genre will appreciate a change of setting.

There's some great Pinteresque dialogue, and the murky gloom is illuminated with flashes of genius. [07 May 2004, p.15]

This is a film that doesn’t set out to push your emotional buttons all that hard, or even at all. But it covers a surprising amount of narrative ground and there is always something engaging and tender to it.

If Atkinson isn’t quite the Coen inheritor he aspires to be, this hectic flurry of schemers, snatchers and low-lifes puts him three-quarters of the way to inventing a new genre: Texan noir farce.

It’s an entertaining, fairly overwrought piece, a little tightly buttoned.

At a young age, Raiff still remains an exciting up-and-coming film-maker of note and even in his sophomoric slump, there’s enough, coupled with his standout debut, to suggest that better things will come. Hopefully better titles too.

An adrenaline-pumping action fest that is ironic in many respects, Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash swerves towards the mystical and the spiritual in the latter half, becoming a earnest and potent critique on the trappings of masculinity.

Our Souls at Night is your classic Hollywood weepie, so immaculately played that it confounds crass preconceptions.

Marianne Ihlen emerges as someone of enormous gentleness and dignity.

The film is as intelligent and committed as you would expect from Greengrass, but basically pretty conventional, like a very classy TV movie.

It’s a strange film; it rattles fiercely along, but its relentless cynicism and nihilism leaves a sour taste and opinion may divide as to exactly how funny it is. Podalydès gives an entertainingly blase performance as the worldly image consultant, trying to seduce Alexandre over lunch.

Is this outrageous comedy sexy or revolting? Elliott proves – though this feels like the least of his achievements – that a film can be both.

There are a couple of not-quite holes exactly, but slightly threadbare patches. More importantly, the narrative isn’t really the point; this is first and foremost a tense portrait of a toxic relationship, and a brutally compelling one at that.

This Carry-On really could have leaned in more to the classic trappings.

Sightseers is funny and well made, but Wheatley could be suffering from difficult third album syndrome: this is not as mysterious and interesting as Kill List.

Every shot, every scene, every exchange from The Harder They Fall is combat-ready and garishly tensed for violence – and Samuel certainly brings the freaky mayhem, with gruesome relish and high energy. My feeling, though, is that there is a diminishing return on it, and the big reveal at the end is slightly silly and somehow retrospectively discloses that we haven’t really found out enough about Rufus Buck’s backstory.

This new movie could arguably have given Elba more to do, earlier in the picture, but it is the inter-relationship of the Enterprise’s crew which is the real source of drama. An entertaining adventure.

The recurring dependence on sexual violence as a shock tactic is, however, a desensitising misstep. Nevertheless the assured command of style situates Jabbaz as an impressive new voice in horror cinema.

Without a doubt this is easy entertainment, never dull, and it has some shrewd things to say about class and money – though the satire might have been sharper and the running time shorter by a good 20 minutes.

Equity takes us inside modern Wall Street in a unique and gripping manner.

The Hunger Games is that rarest of beasts: a Hollywood action blockbuster that is smart, taut and knotty. Ably filleted from the Suzanne Collins bestseller, it's a compelling, lightly satirical tale.

There are times when the passive, elusive quality of It Must Be Heaven, as with other Suleiman films, eluded me and felt mannered and superficial, but they are stylishly made with a distinctive signature.

What’s so funny about the film is that it shows how very little divides your early-twentysomething self from your mid-thirtysomething self – you’re never too old to be humiliated.

In the work of someone so exhaustively appreciated as Hitchcock, you wouldn't expect to find forgotten masterpieces but I Confess is one. It might never catch fire, but it smoulders gloriously.

A strange, faintly frustrating but diverting film.

Akira’s strangeness is very startling and sometimes bewildering. But there is a thanatonic rapture to its vision of a whole world ending and being reborn as something else.

Keshishian, as in Truth or Dare, works in moments which complicates Gomez’s angelic image: being short with a too-glib interviewer, refusing to listen to a friend, reacting poorly to genuine concern. My Mind & Me is strongest, and bravest, in moments like this, illustrating Gomez’s humanity through universal capacities we don’t want recorded.

When all hell breaks loose, Berg stages the action horribly well, capturing the panic and gruesome mayhem without the film ever feeling exploitative. It’s spectacularly constructed, yet it doesn’t forget about the loss of life, ensuring that, despite thin characterisation, the impact is felt.

The ending of Limbo is a disappointment, but this is a film which lingers in the mind long after the final credits.

Comedy and irony are not allowed to encroach on the film’s upbeat message, and the drama doesn’t reach out beyond a wrestling fanbase.

Mr Jones is a bold and heartfelt movie with a real Lean-ian sweep.

Despite the violence and procedural detail, this is about as gritty as Dixon of Dock Green.

This film offers something that is never in sufficiently plentiful supply: fun.

It’s perhaps less fun than you might have hoped for, though Shatner is undoubtedly charismatic, and a pretty decent raconteur. He’s often entertaining, if not always necessarily in the way he intended.

The movie is a shard of comic and cosmic spite, and the image of the malign smile carries force.

The routine is more familiar and the semi-staged stunts – which faintly undermine the credibility of all but the most spectacular moments – are more conspicuous. But there are still some real laughs and pointed political moments on the subject of antisemitism and online Holocaust denial (though I was disappointed to see the film go along with a dodgy “Karen” gag).

Chopper is a great film.

The ultimate reason why so much of this works is down to Sarandon herself. She sells the comic side as well as hitting all of the emotional beats.

One of the most fascinating, if inscrutable films of the year.

It is possibly a little bit derivative and sometimes seems to be treading water in narrative terms, but only after making us submit to a very woozy and hallucinatory experience.

It’s commendable that Perkins seems wholly uninterested in the tropes of the genre: there’s only one jump scare, hardly any gore and no final girl. The elusiveness of the narrative, however, grows weary fast.

There is some top-quality entertainment value on offer here from a movie which can only intensify the world’s K-obsession.

Aguzarova is quietly phenomenal, never more so than in the sex scene where, holding her curled-up hands away from Tamik’s body, she manages to be coy, conflicted, detached, expectant and amused all at once.

Steel brings a very distinctive kind of control and restraint to his film, both in terms of its subdued colour palette and an emotional language which despite explicit scenes of both sex and homophobic tension and paranoia, has something opaque and elliptical about it.

Tommy Lee Jones shows some true storytelling grit in this superbly watchable frontier western; he has a muscular and confident command of narrative, driving the plot onward with a real whip-crack, and easily handles the tonal swings between brutal shock, black comedy and sentimentality.

The physicality of this picture is exciting.

Another type of drama would put the issue-led handwringing at the centre of things. Not this film. It is just the hinge on which the family drama turns, and the performances from Dussollier and Marceau are quietly outstanding.

Thunderbolts can be messy, sure. Pugh is the kind of star who can thrive in such mess.

It’s not as focused as its predecessor, but its best sequences rehydrate the mind.

It’s impossible not to laugh at the inspired silliness and charm of Park’s universe. Early Man is a family film that doesn’t just provide gags for adults and gags for children: it locates the adult’s inner child and the child’s inner adult. It’s a treat.

The East – a sleek thriller clogged by its noble message – heads south. It becomes sanctimonious, makes you contrary. I left craving a Big Mac.

From a horror fan’s point of view, this is an absolutely fascinating experiment with form.

Scott Cooper’s Black Mass is a big, brash, horribly watchable gangster picture taken from an extraordinary true story and conceived on familiar generic lines.

Even though The Wave is fiction, there comes a point where it ceases to be nail-biting fun and just an exercise in voyeuristic cruelty.

Director Hugh Hartford does not patronise his stars, although perhaps there is something too gently celebratory and obviously feelgood about the film. These dynamic table-tennis stars put the rest of us to shame.

As the indignation rises, the outcome of this battle cannot entirely be guessed, although one closing credit appears to address Big Pharma directly: "Help prevent a sequel."

Tarantino has created another breathtakingly stylish and clever film, a Jacobean western, intimate yet somehow weirdly colossal, once again releasing his own kind of unwholesome crazy-funny-violent nitrous oxide into the cinema auditorium for us all to inhale.

The frozen landscapes are undeniably gorgeous and the empty school halls are chilling. There are crafty moments here and there, glimpses of the midnight movie that could have been. February’s big villain is precisely what the film is lacking: a devilish spirit.

Once you settle into your bewilderment, however, Barbara an oddly alluring film that does a double backflip on hokey showbiz-bio convention: not an informative introduction to the singer by any means, but a suitably eccentric evocation of her creative essence.

Monge has created a satisfying drama of doomed obsession, the gambler’s thrill that staves off, for a few moments, a weariness with life. It’s a film with, as they say, something of the night about it.

McKellen occasionally slips into the part of twinkly super-cool gay uncle that he tends to play in interviews these days. But mostly he’s thoughtful and self-reflective (and not at all gossipy about his theatrical chums, disappointingly).

The richness and strangeness of the comedy is somehow simply down to Dujardin’s frowningly serious and haughty face.

Sometimes a seemingly unprepossessing genre film comes along that has finer qualities than you would expect. Such is the case here.

With less gripping subject matter, this might have been a so-so bit of club memorabilia. As it is, it can’t help but be gripping.

An interesting feature, almost a B-side to The Graduate in its way, without the predatory older characters.

New Life makes the most of Jessica’s fraught interactions on the road, with spasmodic bursts of bubo-popping horror.

Here is a toothless, aimless dramedy from Canada, a lo-fi excursion into nothing very interesting; it’s what would happen if Harry met Sally and maybe they weren’t meant to be lovers or even friends and were both a bit bland.

Like an unusually designed coat featuring quirky details and an interesting fabric choice from a young designer’s first collection, Swedish writer-director Mika Gustafson’s feature debut has raw edges and some sloppy stitching in places, but the whole is fresh, directional and beautifully cut.

The ploddingly unvaried pace and undirected, underpowered performances make this an exasperating experience: a directionless, shallow movie which seems bafflingly unconvincing and inauthentic at every turn.

Here is a frustrating film that tries to tell two stories at once, and succeeds with neither.

Ten years on, it’s moving to hear Visconti, his lifelong friend and collaborator, talking about recording in secret what they all knew would be his last project. It would be wrong to call it going out on a high, under the circumstances, but it’s heartening that Bowie could craft such a poignant, defiant, dignified exit.

It’s a gripping story – though perhaps those involved have told it so many times over the years, they’ve lost their sense of excitement; this may well be for aviation fans only.

Where some might praise an Eric Rohmer-style lightness of touch, others might see a certain slightness. And at barely 70 minutes, this is a fleeting affair in every sense. Perhaps that’s the point.

Queen and Country is an entertaining and sympathetic guide to a lost world: a rite of passage that Britain was to find it could do without.

True Things is not a bad film, exactly. The actors play it like they mean it, while the drama itself carries a natural dry charge. But it’s unambitious, sometimes clunky and doesn’t wrong-foot us once.

As well as showcasing the blandest and most tasteful three-way sex scene in history, this movie spreads an odd pall of sentimentality and period-glow nostalgia over a fascinating real-life story.

Falardeau draws exceptional character work from his cast.

Premiering as one of the more proudly mainstream offerings at this year’s Toronto film festival, David Oyelowo’s sweet-natured family adventure The Water Man gives us our first look at a commercial conductor in training, aiming to excite and thrill with adventure while making an unashamed appeal to our emotions shortly after, a Spielbergian combination that many have tried and failed to perfect.

Hauser is the star and he keeps the film on track: poignant, lonely and vulnerable – maintaining the tricky balance of laugh-at and laugh-with.

There are enough crafty surprises buried within The Night House to just about outweigh the elements that don’t work quite as well, mainly because it’s all delivered with such fiery conviction by Hall. The house might be built on shaky foundations but its inhabitant is utterly unshakable.

I was utterly absorbed in this teeth-clenchingly exciting story and the “heist” sequence itself stands up really well – as well as anything I’ve seen.

Undeniably uplifting, even if the string-laden score strains too hard to tweak the tear ducts, this US-made documentary tracks a running group of recovering addicts and paroled convicts who train for marathons together.