It really is very very long; watching it like going to an all-night movie show where the only film is Fight Club. Yet it’s tremendously directed and performed with brio.

Love Life is an inexpressibly tragic and painful human drama about complicated lives, a movie that interleaves the utter desolation with a dry understated comedy and a sense of emotional tangle and chaos, a film that moreover blindsides its leading female character – and us, the audience – with an entirely unexpected coda section.

As stylishly made as these films might be, there’s still not enough of a distinctive identity away from its inspirations and not enough away from the (very loud) sound and fury to give us hope that this is a story worth retelling time and time again.

Lost Girls is sorely lacking and, ironically, one wonders what a Garbus docuseries could have found instead.

In some ways, this works better without the metaphorical reading – as just a far-fetched, but quite ingenious entertainment, with some bold climactic touches.

The film-makers’ enthusiasm for his clarity of purpose is all well and good, but it does leave the film prone to hyperbole, and perhaps a more measured, sideways look at the weird dropout culture around climbing would have been more interesting.

Barbershop: The Next Cut is hardly subtle, but it is more nuanced than you might expect.

For the most part it manages an adept balance between satire, sincerity and sheer silliness that’s ultimately winning.

It is genuinely mind-boggling, and yet this unsatisfying, naive and fundamentally uncritical documentary, despite careful modern-day interviews with the participants, doesn’t get to grips either with the story’s implications or with the story itself.

For all the competence and strength of Trapero's direction, the film is not as powerful as it might have been.

Though there are moments of real joy and liberation during the games, everything outside of the matches is cloaked in a mood of lost dreams and stunted futures.

A good-natured love story, doomed to flower and fade in the space of a single holiday, leaving behind the traditional coming-of-age realisation that friends and family are what’s important right now.

The performances are exhaustingly unsubtle and undirected and the film’s failure to hit the comic note early on has the added disadvantage of undermining the avowedly serious moments of solidarity and body-positivity at the end.

Branagh and Weitz stick lovingly to the legend throughout; and while it might have been nice to see the new-model Cinderella follow Frozen’s progressive, quasi-feminist lead, the film’s naff, preserved-in-amber romanticism is its very charm.

It is an elegant if slight piece of work, touching and intriguing by turns, but hampered structurally in that it relies on two separate flashback sections.

It’s all so human and messy and it’s refreshing to see a director that doesn’t shy away from such complexity with Colangelo crafting a film that’s every bit as nuanced as the subject at hand.

Although many of the stories told here are deeply harrowing and the film sometimes seems to be trying to bite off too much, at least there’s a happy ending of sorts.

Altogether, it’s a richer devil’s brew than you would expect, crisply edited and moodily shot – even if the last act doesn’t quite hit the spot.

Kazan brings to the role a sweet and dignified vulnerability, keeping rigorously to plausible human behaviour.

It's all a bit absurd, but Legrand handles the absurdity with some style, and there is something clever in making an apparently minor character responsible for a major narrative flourish. An enjoyable spectacle.

None of these characters quite flares passionately into life but all are persuasively portrayed, and it’s a vehement reminder of what doesn’t get taught in British schools.

Kendrick and Lively have never been funnier, snapping one-liners at each other like elastic bands; the script is hyper-alert to the undercurrent of competitiveness between stay-at-home and working mums.

Howe’s film is drenched in empathy, where violent actions aren’t exactly excused, but at least framed with understanding.

It’s about misogyny and abuse and memory and materialism and gender performance and many other things that would be a spoiler to mention. It’s therefore less of a plate and more of a buffet, and while it might be beautifully served, it’s a film about excess that suffers from it too, a case of too much leaving us with too little.

This is a visually sumptuous kids’ film that will also charm adults.

Sono retains his go-for-the-throat approach, but the violence here somehow connects with the brutal economic conditions, and he fosters very tender, affecting performances from Shôta Sometani and Fumi Nikaidô as his crushed young lovers.

McAvoy is the most compelling reason to see this one. The original may be darker, but it didn’t have McAvoy.

It is a film with all the depth of a fridge magnet.

The result is an unpredictable film, a difficult approximation of a biopic. But it delivers a Jimi Hendrix experience somehow the richer for sidelining the man and subverting his music.

Perhaps we are near to cliche here. Yet the film never really tips over into bathos and predictability. Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy are the students, each giving the sort of performance that heralds considerable talent. The film will undoubtedly speak to those at whom it is aimed, and I hope others too. It isn't that wonderful. But it's much, much better than usual.[16 June 1985, p.20]

LA 92’s reliance on news and eyewitness footage leaves it vulnerable to the same limitations as that footage – namely the prioritising of sensationalism over insight.

The ending chorus of conclusions wraps up a bit too neatly, though that doesn’t invalidate the enjoyably deranged ride before.

There's the frustrating sense of ideas bubbling too low beneath the surface, of mordant jokes serving as an end rather than a means.

Caine's star-quality and absolute ease in front of the camera are fully formed.

Ben Wheatley’s Happy New Year, Colin Burstead is a hothouse flower of misery, sprouting dozens of resentment-buds under artificially controlled conditions.

The movie culminates in a tense, protracted standoff that keeps the audience on edge for way longer than is comfortable. I mean that as a compliment.

This goofy horror comedy, based on an online game of the same name, just goes to prove that if you have a great cast, smart direction and witty script you can just about get away with murder.

It’s all operatically mad, and the city-destroying final confrontation is becoming a bit familiar, but Whedon carries it off with such joy and even a kind of evangelism.

The movie cleverly spins a meta-fictional "origin" myth for Captain America: explaining that he was in fact a propagandist comic-book superhero before becoming a real one. The final scene of the film, and Captain America's very last line, are rather brilliant – though admittedly less brilliant if their sole purpose is to set up sequels.

Like the emotional equivalent of a massage with a sandpaper loofah, the film leaves you feeling raw and tender, thanks particularly to the knockout performances from the small cast, especially Collette.

The casefile remains open, but this considered investigation matches the Panthers' bravura with an organisational flair of its own.

It’ll annoy many with its refusal to take a stance beyond the absurdity of it all, but that lack of easy outrage makes it a true original. An important documentary for our times too, taking us deep into the heart of a bubble far from our own.

It isn’t easy to develop a sketch-length idea into a feature film and not easy to pivot from ironic comedy into dark Straw Dogs-style menace, and then into a sweet-natured happy ending. But Earl, Hayward and Archer have managed it. It’s the bromance of the year.

Harrowing, low-key dramatisation of the serial killer's reign of terror in Boston in the early 1960s. [07 Aug 2004, p.53]

A worthwhile, engaged film.

Sighs at incongruously dumb behaviour and groans at the family soap are eventually drowned out by audible gasps at some of the wild twists, the kind that might not make much sense on reflection but do deliver cattle-prod shocks along the way.

Thoman coolly creates an oppressive atmospheric charge, as well as a deadpan satiric view of a certain kind of chillingly affectless conceptual art. A disquieting and mysterious mirage of a film.

Seth Rogen’s naughty food cartoon Sausage Party is, like much of his best work, deceptive packaging.

The Imaginary may not be a standout in the rich and wide-ranging oeuvre of its makers, but it is a moving and charming testament to the delights of dreaming.

A remorselessly rousing attempt to do for the Scottish pub rock twins what Mamma Mia! did for Abba or Tommy for The Who.

The film is a bit stagey sometimes, but ambitious and insightful. Tovey is excellent as he shows someone progressing from innocence to fear and then to loneliness.

It's a smart, cynical look at space travel, treating it as a blue-collar job and not a divine calling as Kubrick and others would have you believe.

Loren still has an imperious address to the camera. I spent much of this film wishing she were allowed to let rip with something more spirited, but it’s a heartfelt performance. Loren has an undiminished screen presence and it’s great to see her with a substantial role.

Mike Leigh brings an overwhelming simplicity and severity to this historical epic, which begins with rhetoric and ends in violence. There is force, grit and, above all, a sense of purpose; a sense that the story he has to tell is important and real, and that it needs to be heard right now.

Perhaps this film doesn’t entirely work all the way through, but it is a shard of malevolence that jabs into your skin.

It's a film full of tenderness, resting on a tremendous, sad performance from Knoller.

The genius of Alpha Papa, then, is in remaining faithful to Partridge's small-screen soul while also managing the demands of a big-screen Alan.

Training its crosshair on the ingrained prejudice of the military and the question of how well-meaning white allies can best support its undoing, the film compensates for relatively middling action set pieces with a stolid maturity.

There is little in the film's pitch-black interior that wasn't tackled better – with more bite, wit and abandon – in "Happiness," "Welcome to the Dollhouse," or "Storytelling."

Film-maker James Ashcroft has created a scary and intimately upsetting psychological horror based on a story by New Zealand author Owen Marshall set in a care home, a film whose coolly maintained claustrophobic mood and bravura performances make up for the slight narrative blurring towards the end.

There’s a delicate intimacy between the characters that feels raw and authentic and like Coogler, Caple Jr’s indie beginnings seem to steer him toward filling a big film with small moments.

There are good intentions and good performances here, but they’re squandered in a movie that isn’t quite sure what it should be and how far it should go.

Wiener-Dog doesn’t find Solondz going light to deliver an inspirational medley. Instead, he’s created arguably his most caustic film since Happiness.

Gentle, friendly, faintly bleary – and sans makeup – Pamela Anderson is an authentically likable screen presence in this intimate, if somehow elusive, documentary portrait from Ryan White; it is about her life and times and the super-strength misogyny she has faced from liberals and satirists in the long endgame of her celebrity career.

The Founder is an absorbing and unexpectedly subtle movie about the genesis of the McDonald’s burger empire.

Gitai has chosen stylistic cinema over propaganda, and he is a director who regularly gets bogged down a bit in form.

Charlatan is a film that does not quite satisfy the curiosity it arouses.

Pearlman shows that Capaldi has become even more of a celebrity cliche, the star who’s been on a journey and come out the other side – but you imagine Capaldi, with his indefatigable wryness, is all too aware of that.

An entertaining if straightforwardly glossy action-adventure from the Disney workshop.

Ken Loach's latest collaboration with screenwriter Paul Laverty is warm, funny and good-natured. It's a freewheeling social-realist caper – unworldly and at times almost childlike.

It’s a brazen celebration of Jackson, which unlike Lee’s other documentary work doesn’t look under the hood to tell the whole story and examine some of the more uncomfortable inner workings.

Miller is at the heart of the film; her natural and believable performance touches so many emotions, and makes them all look so real.

The commentary on gender and age feels easy and unspecific and the world of the Vegas showgirl created from too great of a distance to really ring true.

For all its absurdity and the family friendly bloodlessness (despite the copious violence), it spins along very smoothly and efficiently.

Scintillating partnership of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, here still in supporting roles (to Irene Dunne), gives substance to otherwise flimsy fashion-set musical. [04 Oct 1990]

It is entirely gripping and a witty and unnerving way of representing the mysterious silence of animals and a future world in which human beings can no longer exist.

This is a very entertaining account of an actor who appeared to ascend, singly, to a higher plane than all others of the Hollywood golden age.

There is much that is valuable and interesting in this movie, although it is a little predictable in what it has to say and how it says it, though Campagne and Macchia give committed performances as secret lovers in the shadow of war.

There are scenes of complete brilliance, Walken is better than he's been in years, cute plot loops and grace notes.

While Knight and team duck origin-story slavishness that has dogged so much recent franchise work, they succeed in reviving the playful Saturday-morning-serial spirit of the original 80s Transformers.

Abbasi undoubtedly conveys the brutal attitudes which create victimhood.

Cowboys is a film that relaxes into its ideas and themes, and the performances from Knight, Zahn and Bell – with Ann Dowd as the cop on Troy’s trail – are all tremendous.

The final notes of irony and repudiation may be laboured and obvious, but this is an intriguingly intuitive and atmospheric movie.

If it all feels too anomalous to seal its case against today's big legal and corporate predators, it never lacks for diverting turns and quirks.

The Report is a cool, dry look at the facts.

Everything about this film means well and it is acted with professionalism and commitment. But there is something too easy about it.

It may not stick around in your memory with the persistence demonstrated by the entity towards its victims, but it passes the time chillingly enough.

I’m not sure that this documentary completely nails the movie’s attraction, and it can’t quite bring itself fully to condemn the misogyny or the rape scene, in which a woman of colour is assaulted (so that the white heroine can get her revenge) and is then forgotten. But there are plenty of insights.

After Love is intelligent, compassionate, challenging film-making.

The pick-and-mix approach is limiting, but there's no denying these are gorgeous amuse-bouches, likely to be devoured by older, more discerning children and dyed-in-the-wool stoners alike.

It is a very good idea for a two-hander, and Frot and Deneuve give it their considerable all.

Guillermo del Toro’s gothic fantasy-romance Crimson Peak is outrageously sumptuous, gruesomely violent and designed to within an inch of its life.

Dinklage always holds the screen with his natural charisma.

There are many attractive parts to this thriller – handsome leads, a meaty Patricia Highsmith plot, Mediterranean sunlight on cream linen suits – but it's no greater than the sum of them.

A pleasing, high-minded film; also something of a palate-cleanser.

It seems pointless to say that the big friendly giant is the star of The BFG. But casting has never been more crucial. A typically distinctive, eccentric and seductive star performance from Mark Rylance absolutely makes this movie what it is.

None of the young stars shine as John Boyega did in ATB, but this movie is sentimental in all the right places, and impossible to dislike.

The fascinating story of Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos scandal is frustratingly underexplored in Alex Gibney’s disappointing new film.