Selected readings from novels and short stories are imaginatively visualised, and the final sequences are profoundly moving. Vonnegut would have been proud of the finished film, although he did not live to see it.

Stearns saddles himself with a touch more plot than he needs, and some of the film’s late-game twists are more satisfying than others, but Faults never loses sight of the one thing Ansel can’t see: Free will may come cheap, but most people still can’t afford it.

The film’s tendency to wax sentimental occasionally undermines its authority, but you won’t find better behind-the-scenes looks at the era’s mouse-eared power struggles or at the making of modern Disney classics.

Much is unemphatic, but all of it carries the moving weight of conviction. And it ends on a healing grace-note which passeth all understanding.

It takes a lot for a movie to out-bonkers Cage on this kind of form. Color out of Space manages it in style.

The film lurches through narrative incidents: Battle scenes, political intrigue and a ticking-time-bomb love triangle are all pitched at the level of mundane competence and rarely get the blood racing.

Keshishian's record of the 'Blonde Ambition' tour is memorable not so much for the live footage (electrifying, but brief), nor for the few risqué moments contrived to provide hype, but for its study of the loneliness of stardom and the ties of family.

Song has, undeniably, done a beautiful job composing this visually absorbing film.

The film's triumph is Mitchum's definitive Marlowe, which captures perfectly the character's down-at-heel integrity and erratic emotional involvement with his cases.

Never hysterically funny but scattered with pleasingly OTT moments and throwaway lines, it looks as if Cassavetes merely wanted a) to prove he could make a blandly stylish commercial piece, and b) the cash.

Every scene is shot in Pine Ridge, and the cast is entirely comprised of first-time actors from that community – and it’s these factors that really give the film a raw authenticity rarely found in film depictions of reservation life.

Watching this Anderson extravaganza is like assembling a meticulously detailed puzzle: at times frustrating, but deeply rewarding when the full picture comes together.

The movie just ping-pongs between empathetic chuckles at Helms's charming social awkwardness and putting him through a raunchfest ringer.

These ragtag rebels exude an infectious determination, and while director Dan Stone fails in the adrenaline department, he succeeds in bringing home a memorable portrait of resilience.

There’s a fine line between modesty and inconsequence, and this low-key, primarily improvised feature from mumblecore staple Joe Swanberg mostly blurs the divide.

The Mouth’s dubious legacy and his many off-camera complications are examined with a coarse affection of which he himself would surely approve.

Relay is an old-school thriller with a drum-tight script and real style.

Boy needn't be pop-culturally fluent to be relatable; believable human characterizations would have sufficed.

The suspense of the manhunt in the swamps never really overcomes the dead weight of Kramer's 'message', but pleasures are to be found in the supporting roles of McGraw and Chaney.

Spelling may not be Quentin Tarantino’s forte, but his grasp of language (both verbal and visual) is peerless.

Unlike most film star biopics, this is especially strong on the films themselves, with skilful re-creations from Fists of Fury and Enter the Dragon. Less successful is the subplot in which Lee faces up to his inner demons, depicted as a fantastical giant samurai figure.

The stylistic conceit of keeping us entirely with the clones (so that we are as ill-informed as they are and never get to meet their powerful oppressors) only reveals what an empty-headed abstraction this tale was from both page and frame one

No exchanges flare into true weirdness; rather, the mood is lingering and tentative. Undoubtedly, this is the movie's intent, but it's a fairly banal comment on foreign estrangement (or love) that could have used some roughing up.

A rare delight that’s laced with melancholy and a suffocating sense of menace from its first scene straight through its shocking finale, Man From Reno is made special by the collisions between its characters.

Cage is not quite Aguirre or Fitzcarraldo in the Big Easy. But his performance hits all the right mythopoetic beats, rising above the thin script and late-night-cable aesthetic.

Tony Scott almost wins us over with this fun thrill ride.

This isn't the NASCAR-fellating cash grab that is the Cars franchise, but it's still Pixar on preachy autopilot.

The effort is commendable and the complicated emotions of the piece (for a place and a people) come through loud and clear. To paraphrase the great Ms. Russell, the movie has the power to make you laugh and the power to break your heart in half.

Family traumas and terrible lies permeate co-directors Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer’s drama, which is given a bedrock of emotional authenticity by screenwriter Shane Crowley and is exceptionally acted.

Inspired by true events, it’s a story of fruitless obsession ​that Werner Herzog must be kicking himself for not discovering first.

A strong contender for both the artiest drug movie and the druggiest art movie ever made, Gaspar Noé's tour de force of forced perspectives and free-form grief is, in every sense of the word, a trip.

What unites the interlocking stories are their flashes of love and longing – often painfully, tragically unreturned. The film’s emotional side is well-handled, helped by strong performances across the board. But it’s the storytelling puzzle – the pile-up of different perspectives and gradual reveal of the facts – that makes it most worthwhile.

Censor wears its genre influences on its sleeve – The Shining, Cronenberg, Carrie and Peter Strickland’s similarly themed Berberian Sound Studio – but it’s very much its own thing.

Fortunately Coppola’s sensitivity is always evident, especially in the open-hearted performances she gets from Roberts and Kilmer (whose father, Val, has a funny, pot-addled cameo).

Mostly it remains enjoyable for its colour and visual flair. Danilo Donati's costumes are, as usual, breathtaking.

Lovely supporting performances from Rains, Horton (the anxiously over-zealous heavenly messenger who made the mistake in the first place) and Gleason (a hopelessly bemused fight manager); but the comedy of errors as Montgomery casts around for a new body in which to pursue his championship ambitions is rather uncomfortably tinged with the fey archness which so often came over Hollywood when envisaging an afterlife.

It's a bookish joke which comes unstuck: after nearly two hours the tension has evaporated, and all that's left is a curdle of jokes and brutality.

The doc’s breakout star is Vogue creative director Grace Coddington, a former model whose plain appearance (the end result of a horrible car accident) and frumpy clothing belie her genius for fashion. She counters her boss every chance she can get and provides the film with a much-needed emotional center.

Ultimately, Jenkins teases out a fascinating theme of black identity shaped and altered by sales and evolving tastes.

One thing’s certain: This is no swoony love story. It intoxicates all the same.

Overflowing with super-slow motion, color filters and the clunkiest of flashbacks, The Last Lions frequently amplifies the melodrama to borderline-excessive proportions.

If there’s one thing Rocketman does have in common with Bohemian Rhapsody, it’s a commanding central performance.

The most delicious blackly comic collision of sex, food and murder, Bartel's film arrives as a delightful surprise from the former court jester of Roger Corman's exploitation stable.

The results are, cinematically speaking, a little diffuse, but any parent who's contemplating whether they should sign their kids up for Pop Warner this fall may want to watch this first.

A movie of one billion cigarettes, Hannah Arendt is about moral reason, not personality. It could do worse than lead you straight to the woman’s books.

Worth noting that the film was regarded as piquant rather than as offensive; it's still worth watching, despite too many scenes of Krüger lurching across muddy fields and frozen rivers.

Evil Dead Rise is not for the faint-hearted but for long-time fans and horror nuts, just sit back and let the blood wash over you.

Even though our clown-busting heroes predate the sweet kids on Stranger Things, they feel more generic. No performance here captures the adolescent longing that this story—essentially a coming-of-age tale—requires; only Sophia Lillis, playing the “Molly Ringwald” in an all-boys club of self-described losers, comes close to developing a distinct psychology.

Unlike satires that coast on winking self-satisfaction, Anusha Rizvi's debut is both a heartfelt and a genuinely funny skewering of India's convoluted caste-consciousness.

The film may fail to probe many of the issues thrown up following a working-class girl trying to break into a privileged world, but it only goes to show that cinema could certainly benefit from the presence of more plus-sized, funny, working-class, feminist girls like Johanna.

Seldom have Caine's cobra eyes been used to better effect; it's a chilling tale, cleanly directed.

Tuesday is not a film about dying, but about the choices the living make when confronted with profound loss. It doesn't break your heart as much as help put it back together.

For a study of human connection at its most honest and affecting, with two remarkable lead performances, Dragonfly is a powerfully striking experience.

Burton is too old for the part, and Richardson's turgidly literal approach is none too involving.

Breillat, as always, goes her own way, but her impressionistic scenes barely cohere, even at this brief running time.

Life During Wartime slices deeply into its characters' weaknesses.

Movies about children fending for themselves are predicated on pushing prepubescent despair into viewers' faces, which only makes this Swedish film's graceful mixture of terror and transcendental girl power that much more impressive.

The result may occasionally be more of a journalistic scrapbook than a Wisemanian all-points portrait, but the impact of seeing such unvarnished public activism in the raw can't be overestimated.

Morris's new subject looks relaxed and comfortable as ever lobbing out the same old evasions. He probably loves the attention from the Oscar-winning director.

An uneasy mixture of European art movie (the Resnais-like flashbacks that punctuate the narrative) and American ciné-vérité (it was shot on the streets of New York), The Pawnbroker never achieves the intensity its subject matter threatens.

Anna Wintour? Feh! There never was, and never will be, a style icon quite like Diana Vreeland.

There's a boldness, confident stylisation, and genuine weirdness to the movie that totally escaped other post-spaghetti American Westerns, with a real sense of exorcism running both through and beyond it.

Bana’s taut lead performance is an apt match for the film’s haunted spirit. Forbidding visuals like vast, weather-worn boulders split in two by mighty gum trees grant this dark tale just enough Australian gothic to conjure up the ghost of Picnic at Hanging Rock.

A wonderfully crude film (we're talking "Superbad" levels of raunchiness), but one in which the overall vibe is sweet: kids patiently waiting for their parents to grow up already.

Sorrentino explores these heavyweight themes with his usual wit and high style – as well as a standout soundtrack of haunting classic cues and Eurodance bangers. Surreal, comedic touches also prick the pomposity of La Grazia’s cloistered world.

Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali are masterful in this rousing period piece, alternating belly laughs with an unflinching view of a nation at war with itself.

Everything is tainted by a sneering sense of superiority. It’s like washing down Christmas dinner with rancid eggnog.

For all that it may come out of Africa, the film's final destination is not many miles from Disneyland.

Puzzling and provocative, Alps has a lingering power and an effect that is thrillingly difficult to define.

Whether this love letter is more preaching to the converted than a corrective is arguable.

Gay conversion therapy gets the indictment it deserves, from an insightful script based on a you-are-there tell-all, and an outstanding cast.

Between Lecce's illicit courtship and Reimers' consternation, there are some hearty laughs of a juvenile nature.

Thin even by Presley standards.

The action scenes-blissfully easy to follow-are where Whedon makes the giant leap into the big leagues.

A former stand-up comic, Miller lends a sense of puckish mischief to his tenderhearted, troubled Cupid, yet everything else about this drama - even the cultural and spirit-of-'68 historical touches - feels like Nesher is simply mashing several stock elements together and gracelessly parading them around.

Like :Carnage,: it’s a bit of a minor lark until a deliciously grotesque finale pushes it into the realm of such kinkily profound Polanski films as: Cul-de-sac: (1966) and "The Tenant" (1976). By that point, you can’t help but submit to the perversity.

The finest of three screen versions of PC Wren's tale of heroism in the French Foreign Legion (the others were made in 1926 and 1966, the latter a travesty). Pictorially ravishing, it features a memorable opening with a fort garrisoned by corpses, and the high adventure tone carries on from there.

Falk's unflappable whimsicality is put to excellent use, Arkin commands sundry shades of blind panic, and if the car chases sustain the widely held belief that Arthur Hiller could not direct traffic, the script's out-of-nowhere zingers are wonderful.

This is little more than an episode of VH1's Classic Albums writ large. You'll learn everything you ever wanted to know about the making of this chart-topping behemoth - except for insights about the man in the mirror who created it.

The future of the murder-mystery looks bright with movies as bold and boundary-breaking as this.

The Piano Lesson strikes a perfect balance, showing us that the past isn’t just about trauma but is laced with moments of jubilance. It’s cathartic and moving – a reminder that strength and survival go hand in hand.

What elevates the film is a pervasive, palpable sense of loss — between lover and beloved, young and old, stage and screen.

Though it holds your attention all the way through to an enigmatic, spiritually tinged climax, the movie leaves you wanting more than the Vega Vidals' secondhand artistry is able to provide.

Jolly juvenile adventure in which Jason (the rather stolid Armstrong) is aided - or hindered - by assorted whimsical gods on Olympus as he quests for the Golden Fleece, and the film itself is given an enormous boost by Ray Harryhausen's special effects.

Rumours is a strange brew, but there’s a lot of fun to be had if you like its flavour.

The question posed by the title of Matthew Cooke’s documentary seems to have a simple answer: Sell drugs. Lots of them. But this dope dealers’ DIY manifesto isn’t quite the illustrated instruction manual it sardonically promises to be, as Cooke talks to many a former pusher, from legendary kingpin “Freeway” Rick Ross to small-timer 50 Cent.

First-time director Josh Trank, working from a taut script by Max "Son of John" Landis, indulges in some wild, witty spectacle, but he's equally adept with the tale's grimmer elements, especially when the introverted Andrew unleashes his inner Magneto and uses the city of Seattle as his tear-it-apart emotional playground.

It would be a Christmas miracle save for one lump of coal: an ear-shattering Justin Bieber song over the end credits. Gotta sell something to the kids at Yuletide.

The film isn't blinded by Candy's beauty and celebrity; it digs critically, if still empathetically, beneath.

Draws on archival footage and firsthand accounts from both players and outside observers to reveal the complex interaction of politics and athletics that colored the Euro-on-Euro competition.

Doctor Zhivago has the most irritating soundtrack in the history of cinema and yes, it’s old-fashioned and sappy. But it’s impossible not to swoon. This is a love story to sink your teeth into.

After Carpenter and De Palma, it may seem a little dated; yet Edwards' classical feel for pure cinema remains unalloyed.

There’s still enough of merit here (particularly a movingly low-key finale that strikes just the right note of reconciliation and regret) to suggest that Porterfield has the chops to eventually hone his talents to a fine point.

By keeping the camera in the vehicle, hauntingly lit with the blur of passing houses and the glow of the mobile phone, Hallow Road invites you to fill the scene at the other end of the line with a shadowy menace that the final stretch really delivers on.

There's almost enough in-joke ingenuity to justify the total absence of plot.

Common wisdom suggests bakers are sour because they reserve the sweetness for their work. But these competitors' kindness in the face of adversity-at one point, a well-established chef breaks down in tears while his colleagues comfort him-is what sticks with you the most.

There's just enough uncut truth and soul in Fishbone's story to keep die-hard Boneheads skankin' to the beat, even if it's just for nostalgia's sake.