There is something, for me, unrevealing about the drama, and almost sentimental about the final moments. But Hovig and Skarsgård are both very good.

About Elly confirms Farhadi's shrewd judgment of pace, dramatic technique and formal control of an ensemble cast.

It’s morally complex and sometimes uncomfortably close to the bone, but also lushly bawdy and funny, and packaged together with an astonishing degree of cinematic brio by first-time writer-director Marielle Heller.

If only modern American politics were remotely as entertaining.

Redford delivers a tour de force performance: holding the screen effortlessly with no acting support whatsoever.

There are plenty of genuine laughs in this movie, but each of them seems to dovetail into a banshee-wail of pain.

Beckinsale is a hoot to watch as a character with no redeemable qualities, except for her cunning ability to get what she wants. You can’t help but love Lady Susan because of the evident joy she takes in being so duplicitous. Her energy is infectious.

Hereditary is basically a brilliant machine for scaring us, and Collette’s operatic, hypnotic performance seals the deal every second she’s on the screen.

Director Steven Riley’s film is a fascinating collage which profoundly probes its subject’s psyche.

While it’s such an intriguing idea, an almost absurdist scrutiny of what avoidance looks like and how families choreograph their collective denial, there is something a little bit contrived in it and, though always engaged, I found myself longing for some outright passion or rage or confrontation.

Part of the film's brilliance is its stunning and unforgiving transmission of the great truth that for most of us, death is not a single, flatline moment, but a gradual, insidious process of deterioration.

The documentary vividness that Carol Reed brought to the streets of Vienna in The Third Man and London in The Fallen Idol, he here brings to Belfast in this fascinating but imperfect 1947 thriller.

With Happy as Lazzaro, Rohrwacher has crafted a magic-realist fable that doubles as an origin myth for a modern Italy subsumed by corruption and decline.

This is another deeply felt film from Jia Zhangke, with a very contemporary artistry.

It may not always land and gets lost in itself on the way there, but Jackson has crafted a beautiful experiment indicative of ambitious vision, one whose magic outweighs its weaknesses.

The film is unafraid of emotion, unafraid of plunging into basic human ideas: the need for trust, and the search for love.

It’s the kind of seemingly effortless success that makes producing a good superhero movie look easy: find a likable hero and a colorful villain, hire someone who knows how to write a punch line, and for Stan Lee’s sake, keep it fun.

There is genuine fear in its nightmarish tableaux: the breast-feeding woman holding an egg in the ruined churchyard is like a detail from Hieronymus Bosch. And that final sequence, with the eponymous Wicker Man, is inspired.

This is a movie of such style and propulsive power, wittily conveying Jack Horner’s sophisticated dilemma as a film-maker and theoretician of adult content.

The movie hits its stride immediately with a taut, athletic urgency and it contains some superb images – particularly the eerie miracle of Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane, with Malcolm’s soldiers holding tree-branches over their heads in a restricted forest path and turning themselves into a spectacular river of boughs. This is a black-and-white world of violence and pain that scorches the retina.

As visions of apocalypse go, it’s rather lovely: a world lush with nature, animals learning to get by together.

Yes, Del Toro’s latest flight of fancy sets out to liberally pastiche the postwar monster movie, doffing its cap to the incident at Roswell and all manner of related cold war paranoia. But it’s warmer and richer than the films that came before. Beneath that glossy, scaly surface is a beating heart.

Leila’s simmering rage at the contemptible mediocrity of her father and brothers, and the exhaustion of trying to save them from themselves, is the emotional energy that powers the movie, building to that climactic wedding scene. It is a great performance from Alidoosti, first among equals in a great ensemble cast.

Caché is Michael Haneke's masterpiece: a compelling politico-psychological essay about the denial and guilt mixed into the foundations of Western prosperity, composed and filmed with remarkable technique. It is one of the great films of this decade.

It's a richly conceived treat.

Its riddling quality, combined with its spectacular visual effects, may leave some audiences agnostic – and I myself wasn’t sure about the silent-movie type effects. Yet it’s a work of real artistry.

The Duke of Burgundy will have its detractors. But this is not just a filthy movie. It's a considerable work of art, and one that touches on a rarely discussed side of human sexuality completely free of judgement.

Vintage screen Dickens with a cutting edge: the French terror is vividly, hauntingly realised, all chaos and guillotine ghouls. [16 Aug 2000, p.23]