The anger of the protesters that day was clear but in this documentary they were a variety of calm, smug and deluded. It was the police and politicians who were the angry ones.

Vogt-Roberts manages the neat trick of making his film feel both nostalgic and current.

It’s consistently absorbing as well as evocative to the harsh finish, with mordant plot surprises Connolly keeps smartly tucked away.

Handsomely shot and stopping just short of cloying sentiment, this is an accomplished, engaging work.

Allied, swathed in larger-than-life, luxurious imposture, is the real heart-racing deal.

The film is a whirl of pure pleasure that just keeps whirling: Sondheim doesn’t write show-stoppers but show-surgers, and from the moment the glorious opening number whips up, introducing the central players, the film cartwheels onwards until it lands at its unexpected but quite beautiful happy-ever-after.

It’s every inch a group achievement, and the film’s best scenes are its ensemble ones: prayers before bedtime, musical recitals, meals by candlelight.

Leslie Mann’s warmth and air of charming confusion have helped many a film before. But she gets some definitive moments for the clipreel here.

Wright seems determined to bring in some new blood, and his film is a thrillingly persuasive recruiting tool. For existing fans, it’s a fond and nerdily comprehensive celebration – or perhaps vindication – of the siblings’ extensive, courageously eccentric output.

As a feat of adaptation by Max Porter, from his 2023 novella Shy, it’s quite fascinating.

Great art it's not – but it's frisky, in charge of itself, and about as keenly felt a vision of this S&M power game we could realistically have expected to see.

The film needs no excess melodrama even at its bleakest, because the visual language Sharrock has constructed is inhospitable enough. It’s his concentration on these faces, in the 4:3 ratio of Nick Cooke’s gravely beautiful cinematography, that gives it all a redemptive glow.

The scenario is so familiar it could have been the same old story, but the texture of all this street life gives it rather a special shine.

If this is, indeed, the last act, the documentary packs quite a punch. Slickly produced, at times quite flashy and schmaltzy (as was, to be fair, Tina’s musical oeuvre), it nonetheless digs into one of the most shocking, painful yet ultimately triumphant stories in rock history with real zest and flourish, and a determination to face the brutal truth.

There’s bad fun to be had in the final stretch – if you go in fully aware that the production flew off the rails.

On his broadest canvas yet, Trapero mounts a saga about the role of conscience, which might seem old-fashioned if it weren’t so urgently imagined. An added fillip is Michael Nyman’s stirring score, his best in years.

The Smashing Machine is a crunchily satisfying fight movie that innovates subtly.

Merlant’s film isn’t being unladylike: rather, it’s asserting that ladylike is what all of these things really are, and it’s high time cinema admitted it.

Landing the perfect ending is a challenge for any such story; A Star is Born, for all its guts and pathos, peaked early. Wild Rose holds its horses, and lets Rose-Lynn soar only when she’s worked out who she is.

It’s a black-and-white period piece invested with a supremely eerie folkloric edge – a bleak historical chapter made timeless, and all the more troubling for it.

Rather dated now of course but absorbing none the less. [01 Jan 2011, p.31]

Junger’s film is a decent, heartfelt tribute.

Sharp, exacting, trenchant, and fascinating, it’s a shard of history which uses immense polish to make of itself a mirror.

Östlund’s film is a sleek rejoinder to Christian’s disastrous PR team, who believe cutting through the noise of modern life requires short, sharp shocks. The Square shows that slow burn, when it’s kindled just right, has a cumulative heat that makes you wilt in your seat.

Aatami is like some figure out of folk myth let loose on his persecutors, shaking off a ridiculous assortment of injuries between one set piece and the next.

The generational rewrite has been deftly done, with enough timeliness braided in to make it feel freshly relevant, but all the gags fans want to hear again left reverently intact.

This new Elvis Presley concert movie is an intimate, sweaty and explosively joyous experience that revives the King’s reputation as one of the greatest performers of all time.

Gory, hammy fun. [16 Oct 2010, p.30]