[A] crass and manipulative warsploitation picture.

It’s about overcoming trauma; it confronts and interrogates the role of some African peoples – the Dahomey included – in the enslavement of others. It’s also a thunderously cinematic good time: see it on the biggest screen you can find.

Demoustier dangles doubts, but also raises questions about the difference between judgment and justice. The score acts as our guide through the story: neat, self-possessed string arrangements occasionally fray into something jagged, raw-edged and nervy.

The problem is that Wilde leans too heavily on surface and style, as a distraction from the fact that the story itself is riddled with inconsistencies and barely holds together.

Whis is a teen comedy with a refreshingly forthright approach to everything from puberty to the status of 13th-century women as chattels to be bartered.

I’m not convinced that the picture carries quite the philosophical weight that it thinks it does. Still, it’s an undeniably gorgeous place to lose yourself for a while.

At its heart this is a gothic melodrama, a fever dream of childhood trauma haunting adult life, replete with skin-crawlingly cruel visions of inquisitorial torture, brutal ordeals and hellish infernos – more Nightmare on Elm Street than My Week With Marilyn.

In Front of Your Face is a gentle pleasure and, as such, may not be a picture that will win new fans to the films of director Hong Sang-soo. But admirers of his distinctive style – long takes, zooms, social awkwardness, vast quantities of strong alcohol – will be beguiled by this bittersweet series of encounters.

What Moonage Daydream does manage to do is to share some of the adventurous spirit of its subject – a chameleon who wasn’t afraid of falling flat on his face while reaching for the stars. If Bowie’s career teaches us anything, it’s that no one can laugh at you if you’ve already laughed at yourself. Certainly his capacity for balancing seriousness with self-deprecation (“No shit, Sherlock!”) remained one of Bowie’s most endearing traits.

Funny Pages spins a hilarious tale from the fringes of the underground comics scene, powered by a wonderfully sour performance by Daniel Zolghadri as Robert, a teenage cartoonist who strikes out on his own.

Bergholm gives us precision-tooled jump scares and creeping, clammy atmospherics; a malevolent mother and an insurrectionist child.

Clooney and Roberts try their best but they’re finally not much more than decoration themselves, the filmic equivalent of plastic figurines on a cake.

It’s a fine, if mild, escapist hoot.

By the end, I was fond of every single brat, dead or alive.

Electro-folk song interludes (written by Flynn) offer images about rivers and such that might better suit another film – one that doesn’t feel as if it’s waiting for darkness so that it can finally become a noir.

Mortensen and Seydoux play it deliciously straight, jumping through the well-rehearsed philosophical and physical hoops with elegant ease, conjuring a sense of yearning humanity that saves the production from descending into silliness… just about.

Denis’s usual panache with mood and imagery doesn’t mitigate that awkwardness, nor does it alter the feeling that, although both leads individually portray impassioned suffering brilliantly, there’s little chemistry between them.

It’s heartwarming, inspirational stuff.

Lorne Balfe’s sparsely used music leaves plenty of open spaces for the drama to breathe, as if inviting the audience to fill in the blanks with an internal accompaniment (tragic? Comedic? Ironic?) of their own choosing.

While the pace falters a little – there are only so many ways you can almost fall off a tower, after all – the tension is unrelenting.

A must watch.

The always impressive Spall elevates this low-key mood piece a little, but even his skill as an actor can’t save the stultifying pacing.

It’s striking, certainly, but teasingly elusive when it comes to story resolution.

There’s something rather sterile and bloodless in the film’s approach, with its synthetic and soul-sappingly clean-looking CGI. Plus there’s the palpable lack of chemistry between the leads: a kind of brisk civility rather than the ache of eternal longing the title promises.

The 0-60 acceleration of disaster and melodrama is a little disconcerting, as is the tendency to self-sabotage demonstrated by Ava and her mother. But there’s a jagged emotional authenticity scored into the film like initials carved into a desk.

The approach of director Matthew Dyas, who gives the archive material the appearance of found footage, adds to the mythic romance of Fiennes’s life story.

[An] impressive drama.

Mostly, it’s the fact that Kormákur makes some genuinely interesting choices. Rather than relying on staccato editing to build tension, he opts for long, fluid single shots.