At its best, writer/director Clint Bentley and co-writer Greg Kwedar have crafted a gorgeous and poignant film of quiet, bruised life in a fragile place, anchored by a magnificently sensitive and restrained performance from the still-underrated Edgerton.

In just under two hours with a plate filled a little too high, not everything here quite works as well as Byrne, but Bronstein clearly hasn’t made something to be liked, she’s made something to be experienced. I can’t say I’ll forget that experience easily.

Perhaps some of the narrative tension flags between their arrival in Turkey and then the all-important border, but this is a well-acted, spirited piece.

It’s an altogether promising debut for Webley and should-be breakout for the young Wright, who makes you believe that though this film may ultimately fail to distinguish itself from the many tight, slight dramas at Sundance, Ella will always be remembered.

It is another highly sympathetic performance from O’Connor, who converts the British reticence of his earlier roles into Dusty’s strength and quiet vulnerability.

Blichfeldt has made an elegant debut.

It is a deconstruction of genre and a meta story of failure from which the director salvages a teaspoonful of success.

What seems to be most therapeutic is their contact with the dogs. As one teacher puts it: “You are more than good enough for that dog just the way you are.”

There’s something refreshingly blunt about what Together is trying to say about the dangers of codependency, a film too busy having fun to waste time writing a self-satisfied dissertation.

The script steadily goes about its mission of freeing its characters from all forms of oppression – but it’s generous and unpatronising too.

It’s all a bit too sanctified and safe – lacking in rock’n’roll edge perhaps – but Fortune-Lloyd’s core performance is deeply empathic and buoys the film up as it races through the stations of Epstein’s short, sharp shock of a life.

It is perhaps too much the acquired taste (and smell) to appeal to everyone, but it’s distinctive, never dull and – much like its most noxious niffs – difficult to shake.

It’s ingenious and watchable stuff, with cheeky twists, although the final escalation to full-on action mayhem is maybe a step too far towards pure absurdity. The film is also a bit lenient on AI: “Human or AI – we all make mistakes.” Uh … yeah. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Raven and Judge Maddox revive their human-digital chemistry for a sequel.

Where Bloodlines excels is in the clever and often diabolical storytelling craft and visuals. There’s a decadence in the film-making that isn’t at odds with the campy nature of Final Destination but instead realizing its full potential.

This is a workmanlike iteration somewhat ploddingly true to its genre, from the style of lighting used for the interviews, to the sweeping, keening strings-led soundtrack, to the almost shocking moments of humour and honesty.

It is neither suspenseful nor thrilling, but something else: a movie so confidently ridiculous, so stylishly absurd and so self-aware of its mandate for fun that you can’t help but enjoy it, reasonable wariness – and all reason, really – be damned.

If the film is frustratingly nebulous as its layers of reality intermingle, it is a neonatal nightmare that undoubtedly envelops you in its feelbad embrace.

One might be tempted to describe West as rocking her huge natural hairdo, but rocking doesn’t do justice to its glorious volume; it is practically a supporting character in its own right, and one that calls to black heroines of yore, such as Pam Grier’s Foxy Brown and Tamara Dobson’s Cleopatra Jones back in the 1970s. Furthermore West has a nice way with a quip and has presence to spare, so while the script doesn’t exactly stretch her acting range, she holds the screen.

The fierce sinew of Shaw’s performance gives the film some shape and keeps it grounded. Mackey and Krieps, both formidable performers, give the film their presence and force.

How To Get Ahead In Advertising is often an uneasy mixture of satire and parody that plunges past anarchy into the most foursquare polemic imaginable. But at least it has the courage of every one of its convictions and Grant's doughty performance at its centre almost persuades one that he was not a little miscast. [27 Jul 1989]

It’s perfectly adequate for little kids but with little character of its own and a straight-to-download-style blandness.

The Blue Trail is a generic mashup: it partly has the bittersweet tone of many films about defiant old people, and partly it has something far more subversive and disquieting. The mix of tones is interesting, like chewing cake and cheese at the same time.

Much of it consists of Plankton talking to his frenemies about his marriage. As such, it often feels more like a three-episodes-and-change filibuster than a real movie.

Over-the-top it may be, but Love’s film-making has an attacking force that some of the more respectable Brit films are lacking.

The unreality of the film never quite equates to dishonesty about what exactly happens when two people not in the first flush of youth decide to be in love, but it takes an effort of will to suspend disbelief and submit to a well-intentioned fantasy.

Even at a brief 73 minutes, Good Boy can feel stretched, a film that never quite convinces you that a short wouldn’t have worked better. Even though Indy is a remarkably expressive dog, there are only so many variations on dialogue-free scenes of him checking out a weird noise in the dark and the cycle soon gets repetitive, exposing a script that’s a bit on the thin side.

In a genre plagued by a lack of effort, I’ll take a solid try.

It is efficiently executed, though its relentless cursor-nudging will probably make older viewers want to unplug and retreat into an 18th-century novel.