Key to the success of the film is the editing, a pinballing assault of free association, claymation and gleeful profanity, which goes some way towards recreating what it must have been like to spend time inside Zappa’s head.

While not as showy as Sam Mendes’s sweeping, single-shot takes in 1917, this is remarkable, if harrowing, film-making. Moments of striking beauty – sunlight carved into exultant rays by skeletal winter trees – are almost as shocking and disquieting as the scenes of suffering.

A long, marvellously vulgar tribute to the circus world, the penultimate movie by the septuagenarian veteran, that brought him a sentimental 'best picture' Oscar after 40 years in the business. [05 Feb 2006, p.2]

On screen, the man play-acted the qualities of courage and resilience. Off it, he came to embody them too.

This is a film that examines both the past and the present day; that plots a path on the common ground between them.

The volcanically sweary dialogue doesn’t quite disguise the naivety of the feelgood trajectory, and the ending feels clunky, but this is a boisterous and disorderly charmer of a picture nonetheless.

Gibney struggles to psychologically penetrate his cold antihero.

The drama may be down to earth, but that doesn’t stop the film – or indeed its protagonist – from dreaming big, and daring to look beyond the horizon.

The film runs out of momentum, finding itself ensnared in a needlessly complicated web of intrigue and administrative shenanigans.

Mikhail Kalatozov's The Cranes Are Flying has superb lyrical photography and a heartbreaking performance by Tatyana Samojlova as a hospital worker who makes a bad marriage after hearing that her fiance has been killed in action. [28 Jan 2007, p.20]

While Kahn offers no overt criticism, it’s hard not to question the sustainability of an art market that has evolved into a kind of prestige car park for vast quantities of money.

It's performed by a non-professional cast, who all seem a little tense, and the rebellious Rita is an unsympathetic, inadequately characterised figure, though not unconvincing. [30 Dec 2001, p.12]

What makes this particular adaptation, co-written by Bravo and Jeremy O Harris, sing is the fact that, while it winks at Twitter with a smattering of emojis, it’s the legitimacy of Zola’s voice, rather than the means of its dissemination, which is prioritised.

For all the genre nods, this remains very much its own movie – a film that isn’t afraid to talk to its core audience, even while giving them the heebie-jeebies.

Feels closer in approach to his early gallery installation work than it does to his narrative film-making.

The film does not serve up its ideas in easily digestible bites. The audience needs to work with a dislocated string of scenes that sometimes highlight absurdity, sometimes violence and frequently say very little at all.

Half-witted British comedy about a dim-witted gang's attempt at a big kidnapping. But it's worth seeing for a gifted cast, headed by Terry- Thomas (the victim's rich, shifty husband), that includes George Cole, Sid James, Bernard Bresslaw and John Le Mesurier. [25 Aug 2002, p.8]

The atmosphere, of sun and celebration, rings as hollow as the Europop that Ante blasts to drown out arguments; sonar-stabs of cello on the score sound a warning

Control director Anton Corbijn’s first documentary, Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis), is a fascinating and suitably maverick snapshot of a richly creative moment in music history, told through a couple of disreputable hippies who designed some of the most iconic album covers of all time.

Playing out over three excruciating days at Sandringham – from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day – and carried shoulder high by a note-perfect Kristen Stewart, Spencer (the very title of which seems to present a challenge to the House of Windsor) dances between ethereal ghost story, arch social satire and no-holds-barred psychodrama, while remaining at heart a paean to motherhood.

More than 70 civil and criminal charges have been lodged against the family. Marcos flaunted her wealth while her country’s living standards plummeted, and Greenfield’s portrait is damning.

This is a giddily entertaining and celebratory drama that hints at the emotional bruises under the sparkly lurex leotard and false lashes.

Robert Preston unforgettably reprises his greatest stage role in this old-fashioned musical that challenged West Side Story on Broadway and proved quite as popular. [13 Nov 2005, p.87]

Meandering but richly detailed drama.

It’s terrific: nail-chewing, edge-of-the-seat stuff.

But for all the feverish visual invention, there’s a sluggishness to the storytelling that seems at odds with the frenzied creativity of the film’s subject.

Both the film and its cast of charismatic, dreadlocked old-timers are loaded with an easy charm that is as heady as anything that gets smoked during the course of the recording sessions.

Everything about Nil By Mouth rings true. [12 Oct 1997, p.10]