This movie is a time-capsule of Europe’s recent tragic past.

The movie sweeps ambitiously across Europe and the Middle East and shows us a complex world of pain.

Mistress America eventually travels down roads of broken trust and acceptance of reality, but please don’t let those heavy themes suggest this movie is anything other than pure delight. The primacy of the joke rules the day.

It’s nice to see the old tension between selling out and staying pure never goes away in any corner of the film-making world.

In keeping with the spirit of Sebald's writing, Gee's film is teasing, elegant and perhaps inevitably unresolved: an invitation as opposed to a destination.

It sometimes strays off the beaten track into shapelessness, but Oreck lends individual segments a quiet fascination.

The brilliance of Quillévéré's direction is in the performances she coaxes from her cast, and the clear-eyed, non-judgmental way she presents them.

Ford has a knack for making us sweat without relying on an over-egged score or over-stacked stakes. It’s a genre movie with its feet firmly on the ground, small in scale and tight in focus.

For a film that champions talent that takes risks, Frank can sometimes feel a little too conventional. The real Sidebottom's wayward genius would be a hard fit for any story arc, but Frank does a good job of dipping into surrealism and pop in equal measure.

Gyllenhaal is terrific as a teacher and wannabe poet who exploits a child prodigy in this gripping psychological drama.

A calm and interesting introduction to an important dissident author.

There is no reason for this new Naked Gun to exist other than the reason for the old ones: it’s a laugh, disposable, forgettable, enjoyable.

It’s not so much the running time of 156 minutes that will tire you out as the incredible sonic, visual and emotional overload generated by the work itself; perhaps this is ideally seen first in a cinema for maximum impact and then again in small, digestible chunks at home.

Clearly there is entertainment value in this documentary, but it’s very much of a “behind the music” calibre.

It's an authentically bilious look at the world and its morals as Tyrone Power, taking decisive strides from the standard romantic hero roles he had been typecast in, rises from a travelling carnival mind-reading act to a high society shown to be even more corrupt.

What distinguishes North Circular is the overwhelming importance of music: there’s a musical tradition here that is not simply commemorative and static, but vital and evolving, and given a fresh burst of creativity by the emerging status of women in Ireland.

The polar opposite of a date movie, Possession is incredibly well directed and acted (great soundtrack and camerawork too). Neill and Adjani are both at the height of their powers here, free of ego and fearless. She, in particular, has one relentless freakout scene that you'll never forget. We're still no closer to finding a category for it, but it doesn't need one. [27 July 2013, p.23]

It’s a fierce, thoughtful drama.

Down By Law is effortlessly laidback, superbly elegant. Jarmusch made it look easy.

A difficult, depressing watch.

The fight against fascism is a serious business, now more than ever, and it is right that Kurzel treats it seriously, but this means his movie feels constrained tonally and the finale is weirdly protracted and even anticlimactic. Yet The Order maintains a drumbeat of tension to the last.

It’s a simplistic film in some ways, with a naive ending – but there is energy and vigour, too.

A gritty and restrained account of men at war. [04 Oct 2008, p.53]

It’s comedy-drama that is not funny enough to count as a comedy and not plausible enough to count as a drama. You’re going to need a very sweet tooth for it – sweeter than the one I have.

What is interesting about Sauvage is that it shows how savagely boring Leo’s life is, quite a lot of the time.

Albert Serra’s bizarre epic is a cheese-dream of French imperial tristesse, political paranoia and an apocalyptic despair. It is a nightmare that moves as slowly and confidently as a somnambulist, and its pace, length, and Serra’s beautiful widescreen panoramic framings – in which conventional drama is almost camouflaged or lost – may divide opinion. I can only say I was captivated by the film and its stealthy evocation of pure evil.

The folk singer and counterculture veteran Joan Baez is the subject of this intimate and painful documentary, which brings us to the brink of a terribly traumatic revelation that it can’t quite bear to spell out.

Having watched this documentary, I now think the project could also be seen as a gigantic adventure in conceptual art, and this is not to denigrate it in any way.