Stylish and brutally violent, the film escapes the usual clichés of the ex-soldier fighting a war back home by virtue of Gibson's blue-eyed smile.

There is barely a second where Socrates is out of shot. A handheld style employed by cinematographer João Gabriel de Queiroz has the flavour of Cassavetes’s Faces, but makes it feel as though the character is being followed by a guerrilla news reporter, on hand to capture the next disaster.

It’s an extremely moving and deeply affecting drama about a woman’s persistence in the face of overwhelming odds.

Sembene makes his point with a humour all the more powerful for the anger it induces at the genocidal antics of the whites. A conventional film, but it succeeds in its aim, clarifying the logic of the colonial struggle through a specific example.

It is Depardieu who supplies the heart and soul of the film with a performance of towering strength and heartbreaking pathos.

This muted mobster story reminds us that the ties that bind can also gag you, garrote you and slowly deaden your soul.

Uncanny coincidental parallels with La Règle du Jeu abound, and although the film echoes Renoir's bark more than his bite, it has a superbly malicious script by Brackett and Wilder, gorgeous sets and camerawork, and a matchless cast.

All a bit too earnest, despite the seriousness of the subject, with Fonda setting her jaw and stepping into father's footsteps as Tinseltown's very own protector of humanity; but it's tightly scripted and directed, and genuinely tense in places.

Lowery wittily interprets the original text, adding a sexual dimension and a better ending, and only once strays close to Python terrain (when the ever-brilliant Barry Keoghan pops up as a lolloping scavenger). It’s close to a cinematic holy grail.

It’s a bleakly familiar message for our times.

Knight has mined her own traumatic experience to bring emotional depth to the character, and this extra layer of authenticity gives the film its impact.

And by the time Thornton has deftly flipped the script regarding the titular Biblical parable's misogyny, you'll feel as if Aussie cinema has indeed discovered its next great voice.

A complex final scene — in which everyone finally lets the tears flow — only deepens the sense that well-meaning mother love can be as poisonous as it is nourishing.

It’s a hugely impressive debut and visually arresting from first to last.

In a world of portentous blockbusters getting ever darker, it’s a joy to see one throwing on the disco lights.

It may sound frantic, but in fact the plot takes a back seat to ironic observation.

What it lacks in cohesion, City of Gold makes up for in its subject’s wit and wisdom.

With a Bully XL jawline, the scale and intricate design of a Gaudi cathedral and the rage of a grumpy old codger, the subsea icon emerges from the cracks of modern blockbuster-making to remind the world that there is a much better way to make a monster flick.

This is a life lived, perhaps not always well, but certainly to the fullest.

Sachs allowed his actors to develop situations and dialogue through improvisation, giving the film a meandering, naturalistic feel. When plot does assert itself, in the abrupt closing scenes, the effect is truly disconcerting.

Young Ahmed might not have answers, but it asks pertinent questions and makes acute observations. Its ending is hopeful, yet open. It’s a wise and sensitive contribution to a timely debate.

Girls Trip is so successful because it lets its cast of improvisers ease into a bond that feels bone-deep.

It’s a fun setup with a rousing finale that broadly compensates for a baggy middle section (at two hours, the film seems a little too long).

The result is another great showcase for the animation house’s powers of non-verbal storytelling that’s a giddy delight for kids, and just witty and knowing enough for grown-ups.

Coming after her uneven "We Need to Talk About Kevin," Ramsay’s latest — a complete return to form — reminds us of a hugely audacious and imaginative talent, one that only needs to find the right material to glitter, darkly.

Redmayne is up there with Richard Attenborough in 10 Rillington Place as a terrifyingly mundane embodiment of evil.

A meandering middle and sticky-sweet third act can be overlooked if only for the savviness with which Favreau portrays the food world.

It’s one hell of a twisted ride with a troupe of truly awful characters as our guide. It’s damn-near unmissable and, from a safe distance, addictive as all hell.

Possibly the most uplifting film ever made about a time of unending violence, Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast comes with a bruised heart and an unquenchable spirit of optimism.

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.

The Mother and the Whore is an icy comment on the New Wave, informed throughout by Eustache's striking visual intelligence.

It teases out the distinctly modern subject of celebrity profile-writing, a rare one for the movies, detouring into avenues of attraction and envy.

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.

The Whistlers has a tonne of pulpy circuit-breakers – look out for a hilarious ‘Psycho’ tribute – to remind you not to take it all too seriously. Hitchcock would have approved.

A somber romance that’s as much about the cultural confluence of city life as it is about the unlikely couple who manage to find each other in it, Maxime Giroux’s Félix and Meira captures the dislocating loneliness of "Lost in Translation" without leaving its characters’ native Montreal.

Playing superbly on the personae of his leads, Leisen creates a movie of warmth and immense style, which never quite trips over into excessive sentimentality.

Walker integrates stranger-on-the-street testimony to further her general vibe of ignorance, thus pinpointing the true target of an agitated doc--our own blithe apathy.

Brazilian filmmaker Júlia Murat's first narrative feature is a mesmerizing, slow-build marvel.

Its strongest card is the outrageously charismatic Schwarzenegger, but its view of musclemen and physique contests in general has a charm not unlike Rocky.

Kreutzer has her own style of revisionist feminist history, and aided by Krieps’s bold and brilliant turn, it’s riveting stuff.

Apples is less sharp-edged satire, more humanist exploration of the importance of memory.

The real strengths of the movie are John P Fulton's remarkable special effects (Rains removing his bandages to reveal nothing, footsteps appearing as if by magic in the snow), lending much-needed conviction to the blatant fantasy; and the fact that we never see the scientist without his bandages until the very end of the film.

Pure, bold cinema, the images and sound design working together to scare the bejesus out of you.

With Brown's wry, sardonic narration and a twangy, guitar-driven instrumental soundtrack by The Sandals playing over the silent footage, Mike and Rob leave their California home to visit Hawaii, Australia, South Africa and other secluded surfing spots in a search for the surfer's holy grail that Brown dubs "The Perfect Wave."

Strikes an intelligent balance between funk-scored pride and a more universal story of activism threatened by in-fighting and accidental celebrity.

While most film romances feel like a fait accompli, Enough Said’s tentative fumblings toward bliss require, and merit, fighting for; its wanderings are never less than pleasant and its final moments pack surprising emotional power.

The resulting account contains a quietly powerful political statement.

Stations of the Elevated plays like a time capsule, particularly for having no dialogue or plot. It swings to Charles Mingus’s hardest bop and evokes a long-gone city, somehow more adult and confrontational even in silence.

It’s a road movie in which the origin is more interesting than the finish line, but Lean on Pete is never less than fully felt.

Far from being just another vehicle for Mifune, this belongs in that select group of films noirs which are also comedies.

Osborne's courageous hatchet job on Fielding's 1,000 page classic novel and Finney's gutsy performance add up to produce an enjoyable piece of irreverent entertainment.

Sure, it’s a somewhat honeyed portrait that lacks voices to put the other side across. But as the flimsiness of the case against Assange is laid bare, so too is a system that tried to suffocate, torture and crush him to protect its interests.

You'll be arguing with your friends about the ethics of secrecy and defense for hours; that's what makes these exit interviews so essential. They come late to the spy game, but are welcome regardless.

It’s definitely a horror movie but a wonderfully witty one, not for gentle souls.

A chase movie becomes an outdoor courtroom drama, and Thornton wrings from this fable of rough frontier justice a statement from the heart. Australia now has its "High Noon."

David Lean’s black-and-white masterpiece may be a whirlwind tour of Dickens’ novel, but what a well-performed, economic and atmospheric tour it is, and one that manages in two hours to capture much of the chronological and emotional sweep of a 525-page novel.

Yes, he is at times hard to watch. But Fraser makes The Whale a deeply empathic and touching experience.

There is a sense of déjà vu all right, but this is an extremely attractive valediction to youth, with farcical underpinnings ably handled by Reynolds.

What makes things different is the way Blumberg strikes an assured balance between dour downward spirals and “work the program” uplift, gifting these flawed people with both a sense of hope and the knowledge that it will never be enough.

Mixing early-’80s nostalgia with mild social anthropology, the film successfully crystallises the optimism and vivacity of the early New York hip hop scene and suggests that film and TV portrayals of the Bronx as a savage and inhospitable hellhole were perhaps greatly misjudged.

More than just another franchise reset, Mutant Mayhem wrestles with its own cultural relevance (or otherwise) in interesting ways.

Although it’s impossible to fault the euphoric dance sequences and ultra-melodic tunes, the dramatic scenes linking the big numbers all fall flat and the illicit affair at the film’s core remains fatally underdeveloped until its fudged finale.

For a movie that's essentially about a piece of hardware-the legendary Neve mixing console, an imposing slab of knobs and meters - this geeked-out documentary beats with more heart than could be imagined.

The unspoken theme underlying Dickens’s prose--that the money-grubbing Ebenezer is conversing with semblances of his own self--finds near-perfect cinematic expression through Carrey’s efforts.

Diego Maradona has the football and the drugs – think Scarface with screamers – but it’s a surprisingly emotional ride too. In the spirit of all good docs, it’ll make you reappraise your feelings about the man and the myths around him.

This teen drama from Ireland is split almost perfectly down the middle: First, 40 understated minutes following a local golden boy named Richard (Jack Reynor) as he enjoys his last summer before college, trailed by 40-odd gut-wrenching minutes surveying the fallout from a single violent act he foolishly commits at a party.

The first of Corman's eight-film Poe cycle, and one of his most faithful adaptations. Price is his usual impressive self as the almost certainly incestuously inclined Roderick Usher who, having buried his sister alive when she falls into a cataleptic trance, becomes the victim of her ghostly revenge; but it is Corman's overall direction that lends the film its intelligence and power.

The truths that spill forth from this unlikely platonic love story are touching and deeply relatable.

Making use of locals instead of professional actors lends authenticity to this impressive look at a group of otherwise innocuous teenage lads in a boring northern French town (Bailleul in Flanders), driven to violence by a mixture of boredom, jealousy, macho pride and ingrained racism.

The unveiling is unnerving, and suggests that some dangers are now permanently beyond our control.

Fate intervenes at an indecent rate, serving up plenty of misunderstandings, but the mise-en-scène is stunning. Go with the floe.

This has the warm, cosy sense of a film that, even with its few flaws, could very easily become regarded as a festive classic.

Almost as an afterthought to the ringingly true performances--and Marco Bellocchio’s unusually approachable direction--comes a deft analysis of fascism, likened to lovesickness, insanity and a gust of orchestral strings. It’s all of that and more, not to mention a lousy matchmaker.

Sean Connery took a break from Bond to give a sterling performance in this awesomely intense drama set in a North African British army camp, where the favourite punishment for prisoners is to send them clambering up and down a man-made hill in the full heat of the day.

This isn't the kind of doc to explain everything (or anything, really)-it does honor its subject, though, and that's plenty.

Director Thomas (once Sgt Lucy Bates of Hill Street Blues) has recreated '70s sitcom-land with the kind of unerring attention to detail Merchant-Ivory lavish on a society ball, and she's drawn hilariously synthetic performances from a shrewdly cloned cast.

Wilkerson’s book offers a new way to look at age-old concepts. DuVernay’s film gives us a new way to process them.

The thematic approach no longer works (if it ever did); the title cards are stiffly Victorian and sometimes laughably pedantic; but the visual poetry is overwhelming, especially in the massed crowd scenes.

The results do justice to a complex genius whose impact can scarcely be overstated.

If the ending is signposted, Youri’s earthbound journey to the stars offers a stirring escape from an unjust reality. Like his Russian sorta-namesake, he’s a hero we can all get behind.

It’s impossible entirely to recreate the effect of being in the room with this play, but this ear for eye is still essential for the art and power and relevance of tucker green’s unique wordplay.

Close Your Eyes builds up slowly, deliberately, allowing ample breathing room to supporting characters who were, once at least, elemental in Miguel or Julio’s lives so we can paint a picture of who they are as artists and as people.

With superbly handled action sequences, excellent cinematography, and a Morricone score worthy of his Man With No Name efforts, it's a film to be seen.

It’s another fascinating entry in the director’s ongoing exploration of the sadistic and masochistic facets of human behavior.

Kravitz expertly flits between tension, horror, black comedy and social satire, sometimes delivering all four simultaneously. It’s a film about the abuses of power, the dangers of being a woman in a man’s world and the importance of female solidarity, but is never didactic, just gripping.

Robustly entertaining.

Nikou’s film is brimming of humour and excellent ideas, but is mostly a rebuke to anyone who thinks algorithms and technology are the answer to human problems.

Return is almost too underdramatized to seem like a piece of today's zoomy entertainment, but its anxieties-the bare cupboards, the vague sense of purposelessness-are at the heart of the American experience for many. It's what indie filmmaking ought to be.

It’s a gut-wrenching yet redemptive tale of fathers, sons and the horrors of war, which Marder allows to unfold with minimal intrusion or manipulation.

A mockumentary as sparky, big-hearted and entertaining as its cast of bright-eyed kids and the wannabe thesps who coach them in the ways of ‘turning cardboard into gold’. The affection for musical theatre is so sincere, it’ll win over even the most Sondheim-averse.

Brace yourself and go see it.

Roadrunner was a chance to talk about the role that drugs play in the life of an artist – which is exactly what Bourdain was: an artist dealing in foods and words and travels in ways that few can match.

You will see the man toiling and revising - killing off half-good ideas, struggling for clarity - and it's a routine well worth demystifying.

Director Christian Carion (Merry Christmas) establishes a low-key yet threatening atmosphere right from the start, and gets terrific performances from Kusturica and Canet.

It's an equally insightful and excruciating journey, with our quip-ready protagonist perpetually caught between two modes: eager-to-please caffeinated and near-breakdown frustrated.

Despite such sleazy subject matter, the cast is outstanding, dominated by a fierce Shelley Winters, and Corman pulls no punches, delivering a searing Jacobean tragedy of a gangster movie.

In outline, this is the stuff of soap opera - rags to celebrity plane crash via grievous bodily harm - but of a superior kind. The two main performances are excellent: Lange plays the singer without a hint of condescension to her dreams of 'a big house with yellow roses', while Harris is persuasively menacing, with an inventively foul mouth.

There's savvy in Schwarzenegger's understanding of his appeal. Always foreign yet weirdly Americanized in our dreams, the big guy is a craggy monument in need of a countryside. He's back in the place that deserves him.