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.

For anyone who values diverse storytelling, Peoples’ portrait of a hardworking woman on the up is a tale of hopefulness – and a reason to hope in itself.

A strange, funny, mysterious and rather beautiful film about an activity that’s recherché to say the least.

It’s a really valuable work, beautifully edited and shot, with a wonderful performance by the veteran actor Lance Henriksen: a sombre, clear-eyed look at the bitter endgame of dementia.

The result is a film that’s people-pleasing in inverse proportion to its grouchy heroine.

Fundamental to Relic’s psychological oomph are three excellent performances, perfectly complementing that sticky-icky ambience.

This bizarre and sometimes scary film from Iceland has a way of keeping you off balance and on the edge of your seat.

The faces are the most intriguing thing. Loznitsa gives us a montage of inscrutability and repressed anxiety.

There’s a strong basis of originality here, and the warmth and good nature of the movie carries it along.

More than just an Aussie horse opera, this film employs stunning scenery, technical flair and Kirk Douglas in two roles in its pursuit of an uplifting conclusion.

What an extraordinary story of sexism, violence, diplomatic bad faith and dishonesty on an international scale.

David Lowery’s complex, visually sumptuous and uncommercial tale of Arthurian legend revels in upending expectations.

It’s a difficult, often quite brutal, viewing experience, as it needs to be given the subject matter, not only because of the fractured storytelling but because of the devastating lead performance from Hopkins.

It's set on the suitably exotic locale of a Spanish fishing village – shortly before its obliteration by hotel development, you have to assume – and although everyone moves and speaks at about half normal pace, it all works wonderfully well: Gardner, especially, just glows on the screen.

It functions elegantly as both a victory lap for longtime fans and a belated introduction to the Belchers, a family of lovable misfits and cranks that’s as genuinely close as any on television.

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.

The action of After Yang, bizarre and exotic as it is, meditates on what it is to be human and how that may in the future be modified, but it also addresses loss in the present day: our anguished and futile human instinct that death must surely be fixable.

With his new film, Charlie Kaufman again proves that if you want something to make you feel trapped in a terrifying claustrophobic nightmare for ever and ever ... well, he’s your guy.

Some may think it precious, but it's the haunting, poetic product of an original imagination.

An elegant midsummer, end-century night’s dream of a film, with an elusive, gossamer lightness.

Why Don’t You Just Die! is an accomplished film that makes the very most of its limited sets, without seeming constricted or stagey.

While some of the in-your-face attempts to combine YouTube videos with animation are jarring at best and annoying at worst, the cautionary stabs about unregulated big tech that come alongside are no bad thing, nestled within the framework of a brightly coloured kids movie. It’s also genuinely funny, a credit not only to the hit-a-minute script but also to a finely picked cast of comic actors

This is not animation which is there to exalt, or soothe, or celebrate human loveliness: it is animation which takes a fiercely miserable satirical stab at the world and itself, a language which is unreconciled, unaccommodated.

Watching this film means recalibrating your expectations so you can gauge the subtleties and absorb the sotto voce implications about relationships and sexual politics. Pretty much all the way through, nothing very sensational seems to be happening. And yet the movie’s sensational meaning is hiding in plain sight: in the title.

The film’s freakiness and wooziness might have been a bit grating were it not for the glacial authority that Ferrara brings to every scene and shot – centred, of course, in the craggy gravitas of Dafoe himself.

It isn't as haunting as Angel, nor as imaginative as The Company of Wolves. But it is tighter and better constructed than either, and the performances flourish as they haven't before in his films. [14 Sept 1986, p.19]

No one is a bad guy here, while all of them are also flawed, and the movie keeps the viewer wondering right up to the end what Jess will finally decide.

There’s a brutal efficiency to the storytelling, swiftly, heartlessly propelling us up and down the building, forcing us to bear witness to a great many horrors.