Vitalina Varela stars as herself in Pedro Costa’s bleak but beautiful film about a woman discovering the hidden life of her late husband.

The drama mimics Anne’s own sense of denial, her own refusal to remember or imagine the catastrophe. What we get instead are clinical inspections functioning as chilling parodies or inversions of that sexual intimacy that has upended her life.

It bends a few facts, and occasionally slips towards satire. But, for the most part, this is a remarkably enjoyable - and commendably fair - biopic of an unforgettable character. They don't make many films, or indeed generals, like this any more.

What is great about Colman’s performance is that it is always teetering on the brink of some new revelation about Leda: her face is subtly trembling with … what? Tears? Laughter? A scowl of scorn?

There's a degree of puffery in the writing, however, that makes this drama untrustworthy.

The themes may be contentious, but the handling is perfect. If there were ever a movie to cause the lame to walk and the blind to see, The Master may just be it.

The Wild Pear Tree is a gentle, humane, beautifully made and magnificently acted movie.

Its austere beauty, artistry and wrenching sadness are undimmed after 30 years, and there is nothing distant or still about it.

It’s a baggy comedy, sentimental in ways that are not entirely intentional, but there is value, too.

It’s tender and sometimes beautifully made, but also contrived and occasionally features some too-good-to-be-true caring characters. Frankly, it’s rather precious.

This trio of stories is elegant and amusing, with a delicacy of touch and real imaginative warmth.

The film is about more than simply personal loss and Heineman’s admiration of journalist activists. It’s a guide to the media war being fought between Isis’s video team and RBSS.

It is a beautifully acted, exquisitely considered chamber drama of subtlety and nuance: spellbindingly tender and utterly involving

A poignant, funny male-bonding tale, adapted by Robert Towne from Darryl Ponicsan's novel. [21 Dec 2013, p.54]

It would be too simplistic to call it brave. Ford excels, and shows us why we should be angry at America’s indifference to dead black men. The documentary won’t bring William Ford back, and it may give Yance Ford some catharsis, but more importantly it could and should lead to greater justice and empowerment.

There are toe-curling culture clash moments.

It is an eccentric and entertaining movie soap-opera.

First Reformed is a deeply felt, deeply thought picture; impressive in its seriousness and often gripping in the way it frames itself as a debate and a sermon.

[An] outrageously enjoyable petrolhead heist caper.

Hollywood here looks diabolically seductive.

The first 20 minutes of Hogir Hirori’s extraordinary documentary has the beat of a gripping thriller, full of hushed voices, car chases, and the terrifying sounds of gunfight.

Beasts of the Southern Wild is a vividly poetic and maybe even therapeutic response to one of the most painful and mortifying episodes in modern American history, second only to 9/11.

It’s as involving as it is necessary, a rare ray of sunshine on yet another cloudy day.

Persona is a film to make you shiver with fascination, or incomprehension, or desire.

For all its tendency to soap opera, it has a lovely happy-sad sweetness.

The elusiveness of the film is precisely the point: it is as beautiful and mysterious as a poem and its formal elegance and conviction are unarguable. What makes it a must-see, however, is the generous, unselfconscious passion of Jacob's performance as a young woman - two young women - in love.

Korean director Park Chan-wook’s new film brings his usual effortlessly fluent, steely confidence and a type of storytelling momentum that can accommodate all kinds of digressions, set-pieces and the occasional trance-like submission to mysterious visions.

It’s a transparently personal project and a coming-of-age film in its (traumatised) way, a moving account of how, just for one day, two young boys glimpse the real life and real history of their father who has been mostly absent for much of their lives – and how they come to love and understand him just at the moment when they come to see his flaws and his weaknesses.