On Chesil Beach makes us consider the lives of the Florence and Edward as outside observers, but rarely takes us inside the complicated mix of desire and fear this pair is trying to untangle.

The film looks heavenly, often bathed in light, as if Qu wants nothing more than to assuage these women of their suffering by suggesting paradise. But the brightness is just a veneer. Beneath the surface, “Angels Wear White” is as bleak as they come.

The elegance of Disobedience, which in the wrong hands could be sensational and one-dimensional, cannot be overstated.

Denis and Binoche have made a film that’s both smart and sexy, imbuing new excitement and wonder into the emotional connections that define us all.

The formal control is remarkable, but sometimes almost stultifying, as though Martel had spent every moment of this intervening decade plotting how to pack each scene more densely, to the point it feels like Zama” could maybe stop a bullet. It will certainly deter the less persistent viewer.

Just as many sports movies before have done, and many more will after, Borg/McEnroe shines a light on the sacrifices necessary to achieve greatness. It’s just a shame that the movie itself doesn’t have the same ambition

It’s saved from all-out depressiveness by Haigh’s compassion, which cradles the characters within their often desperate situations.

The Death Of Stalin is a grim reminder that we are never too far away from history turning back on progress. It’s not an easy lesson to reconcile, but Iannucci at least has us laughing for a good while before delivering his devastating blow.

While Bening is incredible playing a fading Hollywood starlet in Paul McGuigan’s Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool, it’s her co-star, Jamie Bell, who might be the film’s real secret weapon.

Bale and Pike are superb. Despite some melodramatic tendencies and strange choices in Cooper’s script they make you have sympathy and compassion for each of their characters.

Despite the darker edges, I, Tonya embraces the surreality of the story and winningly plays it mostly for comedy, with dips into drama, while crucially never mocking the central players.

It’s a film that can swing between absurdist humor and brutal gut-punch sadness in a way that’s rare and, at times, truly profound.

While often hamstrung by genre conventions, particularly in the picture’s first half, Tom of Finland is a passable entry into the LGBT film canon and largely successful in selling the subcultural relevance of the eponymous artist’s beefcake drawings.

It’s Vaughn’s caged-beast charisma (that bounces off the screen long before he is actually caged) and way with a wink or a pithy putdown that keeps us riveted through the substantial sections of the film where heads remain, for the time being, unstomped.

The Villainess confounds its audience on two levels: firstly, how the filmmakers pulled off the elaborate set pieces and secondly, leaving them to wonder what the hell is going on in the plot.

It shows a concern for spatial discrepancies, between characters, between action and intention, between life and death. It’s one of many reasons why The Hurt Locker is one of the most exciting movies you’ll see this year.

Filled with imagery both moving and mordant... 12:08 East Of Bucharest doesn't pretend to have a position on the fallout of the Romanian Revolution. Instead it contends that different questions need to be asked and considered about post-Communist life, about the blame about the current state of the country, and where the future lies for Romania's youth.

Days is the first in a loose trilogy including In the Mood for Love and 2046, but here, amidst all the exquisitely deliberate, drippingly sensual imagery that would become Wong’s trademark, there is still the grit and grain of real life, and it makes this perfectly enigmatic film feel somehow thrilling.

Is it a somewhat middling ’90s dad-core thriller? You bet, but it’s also a totally underrated skeleton key for understanding the careers of its two leads: Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin.

The great, unifying success across all ten shorts is Kieślowski’s representation of Poland, which is political, social, and personal all at once. Each movie is its own experiential encounter.

An acutely defined, starkly realized and profoundly unsettling debut if ever there was one.

Crimes of the Future sounds a whole lot more fascinating than it actually is: it’s a more interesting film to read/write about than to watch, which just goes to show how Cronenberg at this early stage was still closer to a kind of literary, idea-based storytelling, and had not yet mastered the filmmaking side of the equation.

It’s a movie that can feel like several you’ve seen before, yet never distorted in quite this style, beat, or fashion. When the messy trajectory seems as though it might be on its way to the point of reflection, dissension re-ignites, and counter-cultural discord combusts through expressive punctuation, once again.

Elegantly constructed, wittily executed, delightfully ruthless, and scary as hell.

They All Laughed is certainly not a perfect film, but its homespun quality, palpable camaraderie, and playfully loose performances make for a movie that’s easy to harbor deep affection for nonetheless.

Ultimately, Ms. 45 is far more interesting and genuinely enjoyable (versus ironically enjoyable, as many of this vintage grindhouse flicks wind up being) than it has any right to be.

It’s pretty banal, but in the anything-but-banal catalogue of Cronenberg films, that gives it its own weird, sincere charm.

Ted Kotcheff’s film is essentially a workplace comedy, but the employees are braindead and wealthy, and the benefits are glory and groupies in equal amounts.