Yakin never settles for the easy, last-minute moralising and macho posturing that has afflicted much of the otherwise intriguing new black cinema; here, story and character take priority, helped no end by Nelson's quiet, riveting central performance.

Toward the end of the film, a few hard-hitting cuts between young and old brings the title's meaning home: These children have an inescapable life of drudgery before them, and there's little likelihood it will change anytime soon.

There’ll be moans from horrorheads that it’s not scary throughout, but in deepening his exploration of family life in the ‘burbs, Cregger sharpens his twisted scares to a dagger point. And the frights, when they come, really land.

The concept is a doozy, ripe with comedic juice and packed with visual thrills.

Blue Valentine has a quiet, resigned wisdom to it.

It’s a quiet tragedy that’s rendered close to uplifting by its gentle grace and compassion.

In her amazingly assured debut, Clare Denis draws out the implications of the action with great subtlety. She makes the most of the exotic location, and elicits strong performances from all her cast.

Masterson's images of small-town America are imbued with a luminous and melancholy nostalgia, but otherwise the film is not mounted with any special imagination, and its fusty, old-fashioned (not to say reactionary) lauding of homespun values sticks in the craw.

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.

The movie isn’t quite suitable for the extremely young, but its apocalyptic tint may be catnip for smart preteens. They’ll breathe in the chilly air of a mysterious forest--the way forests should be.

A lost-artist comedy in the vein of Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories, but more deeply, a referendum on the dead-end choices Rock himself might be feeling.

Godland is every bit as striking and otherworldly as you would expect a story inspired by a collection of long-lost wet plate photographs to be. It’s tailor-made for those who enjoy sitting by the window and watching the snow fall, but less so for those who can’t wait for the grit van to come and melt it all away.

For once, a genuinely psychological thriller.

The ingenious narrative, told from differing perspectives and incorporating tales within tales and teasing elisions between film and reality, is actually informative about the nuts and bolts of shooting a movie, and not only as a catalogue of technical disasters - through the shamefully under-rated Keener, we get a real insight into screen acting and the way fatigue, memory, stress and surroundings can take their toll. Hers, however, is merely the finest of a whole host of spot-on performances. A treat.

Being dead has never looked as fun as it does in Pixar’s latest adventure, bursting with skeletons, magical spells and Mexico’s annual Day of the Dead.

The film's sociopolitical critique is as dull as a sledgehammer - and maybe on the money - but the truth is far more entertaining.

The welter of meticulously researched, perfectly chosen interview material cements Richard’s status as chat show gold – he initiated the term ‘Shut up!’ and could have probably made ‘fetch’ happen too – an endlessly engaging raconteur.

Gifts of civility small and large mark Steven Spielberg's latest film, a deeply satisfying Cold War spy thriller that feels more subdued than usual for the director—even more so than 2012's philosophical Lincoln—but one that shapes up expertly into a John Le Carré–style nail-biter.

Allegedly based on the career of Clara Bow (who, like Lola, had a parasitic family and a duplicitous private secretary), Bombshell is a prime example of Jean Harlow at her comic best.

Comedy horror that really does give Vincent Price a chance to do his stuff, with deliciously absurd results.

What starts as an intriguing reverie ends as a hollow allegory.

Once Miller lays all his cards on the table, however, you realize you haven’t been watching people struggling with the very real temptations of unchecked privilege, so much as fumbling blindly in a glib, gloomy satire of American exceptionalism.

A movie with an unflinchingly tough heart.

Writer-director Jane Campion approaches the tale with an artiste’s respectful solemnity, but it too often comes off like "Twilight" transplanted across oceans and centuries.

No simplistic status parable. It’s more a psychological snapshot of a person forever doomed to remain a voyeur to her own life

Jackie pummels you with grandeur, with its epic visions of the funeral and that terrible moment in the convertible (all of it rendered in pitch-perfect detail and a subtle 16-millimeter shudder). Yet the film's lasting impact is dazzlingly intellectual: Just as JFK himself turned politics into image-making, his wife continued his work when no one else could.

Weekend settles into an intentionally minor-key groove, caught somewhere between bracingly direct honesty and cringingly mumbly pretense.

It may be time to stop calling Nicolas Roeg's sexed-up sci-fi film that vaguely demeaning term - a cult classic - and start addressing it as what it is: the most intellectually provocative genre film of the 1970s.

Excruciatingly funny and streaked with coal-black humor.

Inherent Vice, Anderson's sexy, swirling latest (based on Thomas Pynchon's exquisite stoner mystery set at the dawn of the '70s), is a wondrously fragrant movie, emanating sweat, the stink of pot clouds and the press of hairy bodies. It's a film you sink into, like a haze on the road, even as it jerks you along with spikes of humor.

What’s interesting about Revenge is that it’s told from a female perspective – and by a female filmmaker.

With top performances and real heart, American Fiction is a film that diagnoses the problem and presents a cure.

The first and only piece of advice needed on one’s way to the fishing pond is this: Bring your patience. Not surprisingly, the same could be said to a viewer of this slow-building but riveting experimental collage.

A grimy kitchen-sink melodrama with an Ajax cleanser script: The muck is all surface, the turmoil cleanly shallow and contrived, though never less than gripping.

Sweetie confirms Campion as a highly original movie talent.

The essential thrust here is both knowing and undeniable: No is pitched at the pivot point when the image makers were brazen enough to push ideology to the side. Considering how high the stakes were, it’s amazing they almost didn’t get the gig.

What separates the ensuing mayhem from a thousand generic thrillers out there is an impish streak and writing that smartly juggles big ideas, mad gun battles and guilty laughs.

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.

Lewin brings off the near-impossible task of positing a transcendent love in a sceptical age, succeeding through his own conviction, and indeed because Gardner, in the role of a lifetime, seems as much screen goddess as mere mortal – an apotheosis rendered by cameraman Jack Cardiff in Technicolor so heady it’s the stuff of legend.

Enveloping you in its vintage folds, Peter Strickland's hypnotic horror film turns fashion into a death sentence.

Shockingly dull.

Robert Greene's documentary captures so many wonderfully delicate, private moments in Kati's life that it seems churlish to wish the film said more about what it's actually like to be a young woman today.

Meier is clearly carving out a path all her own; the next one should be a gem.

Vibrating with the geekery of a filmmaker off the chain, the movie plays like no other this year. Tarantino, steeped in even the smallest Leonean gesture (what's with the weird terrain shifts?), knows how to satisfy fans of scuzzy Italian horse operas and badass superviolence in equal measure.

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.

The plot’s tired blood is jumped up considerably by style; all in all, it's an intoxicating blend of eerie horror and ’80s pop, made by an artist to keep an eye on.

Us is too confidently made, too expert in its scene-to-scene command, to call it an example of sophomore slump. Still, after the film reveals itself to be the home-invasion thriller it is (and then the lesser Invasion of the Body Snatchers it becomes), you feel a slight letdown.

Never patronising his characters, Ang Lee combines comedy, both subtle and raucous, with acute social asides.

When a Hollywood comedy turns the crime of the century into a lark, you know a huge gamble has been chanced and won.

The journey is often challenging, but the rewards—heady, emotional, provocative and invigorating—are endless.

Along with the film’s hippy-ish musings on the relationship between humans and the elements, it gives the film a moving, supernatural touch.

These two trash-talkin’ Picassos may or may not end up getting their due, but Leon and his two extraordinary actors (especially Washington) have already put us squarely on the side of the beautiful losers regardless.

Even at this short running time, there's a looseness to the kaleidoscopic adventure that becomes slightly wearying.

For 91 minutes, the pleasure of the Guiteauxes’ company is ours. We are ultimately the richer for it.

Skyfall has the feel of both a ceremonial commemoration and a franchise-rebooting celebration, especially in the ways it attempts to too cutely sync up the '60s-era Bond mythos (casual misogyny and all) with the more complicatedly "Bourne"-inflected recent episodes.

Amid its celebrations of black power, ambitious Afros and fly female trombonists, the film serves as a rousing testament to the singular blessings of music education, since there's nothing inherent or automatic about kids learning how to groove.

A genuine labor of love and fictional self-loathing, Sullivan's animation style is undeniably compelling, whether he's channeling Grant Wood's paintings or Robert Crumb's monochromatic sketches. But the interweaving stories of commercialized religion, rancid Americana and alcoholic wretches start wearing thin around the movie's midpoint; by the end, the whole morose endeavor risks becoming downright threadbare.

Memoir of a Snail is not just a stop-motion animation that feels handmade from top to bottom. It tells a deeply human story about a hard-won route to happiness – with all the pain and missteps that go with it.

A gripping, chastening study in what it’s like to spend your entire life behind enemy lines, A Fantastic Woman offers uplift, too – as well as the odd surreal touch.

The movie's poetic-realist design meshes detailed, patient observation and delectable, poignant travelling shots; it grounds us in the quotidian duties of service and dissects contemporary Vietnamese social hierarchies, yet adds up to something much more subtle and enticing: a lyrical portrait of the human spirit in work and in love. Exquisitely controlled.

It is during Melancholia's second half, after a ruinous conclusion to the wedding, that the real magic happens, with our heroine hardened into a wry, cynical Cassandra - the voice of Von Trier himself.

The ideologies underlying Andersson’s oft-astonishing succession of extreme wide-angle, vanishing-point tableaux are a decidedly acquired taste.

No one is going to explain any of this for you — and the slightly snobby implication of Upstream Color is that explanations are for suckers.

With an imaginative use of locations, carefully controlled atmosphere, and superb performances all round, it's an often impressive, always watchable modern noir thriller, based on credible human motivations.

Watching the formerly spry Harris struggle to maintain a normal life (he's frequently glassy-eyed and jacked on painkillers) emphasizes the underappreciated sacrifices our men and women in uniform make in the name of vaguely defined ideals.

Kinji Fukasaku's slick, sick nightmare is best left to the quasi-banned realm where it exists as a perfect satire; when brought into reality, it's a touch awkward.

It’s a winning combo of satire and sleuthing – Succession with police tape – and a perfect slice of high-calorie escapism.

This is prime Woody Allen - insightful, philosophical and very funny.

Tom Cruise’s latest IMF outing is so relentlessly exhilarating, you’ll need a lie down afterwards.

A benediction is a prayer for divine help. For any lover of beautifully crafted cinema with real emotional charge, Davies’s latest will feel a lot like an answer.

Nighy has never been better than in this richly rewarding ’50s-set drama about a repressed and terminally ill man who discovers life just as it comes to an end.

Director Radu Muntean has pulled off the near-impossible, turning each scene (captured in capacious long takes) into arias of generosity for his actors.

The beauty of this movie, both a nostalgic romp and a futuristic scream, is its stubborn insistence on getting all the trapped-in-amber details right.

Flawless performances, pacy direction and a snappy script place it head and shoulders above virtually any other spoof oater.

Perhaps it isn’t such a terrible thing to remind us that this is, essentially, just a dark exercise in genre: a romcom gone horribly, upsettingly wrong. In this sense – and we suspect Barker would take this as a huge compliment – Obsession is the worst date movie imaginable.

The plot is a touch obvious, but Menashe still plays like a more culturally specific Kramer vs. Kramer, setting up a testy, fascinating dynamic between micromanaging rabbis and a naturally warm dad with wisdom of his own.

In the final count, nothing is satisfactorily resolved because tensions remain unexplored, while the atmospherically beautiful images merely entice and divert. The result is little more than a discreetly artistic horror film.

Ai is a great subject for a documentary, and his charismatic certitude helps to offset Klayman's unfortunate inexperience behind the camera.

Never has the thrum of distant lawnmowers taken on such inherent menace as their wasp-like buzzing in director Justin Kurzel’s latest Australian nightmare, Nitram.

Thanks to its pointed message about violence against women and injustice, this is a thriller with even sharper edges. Somewhere beneath its enthralling depiction of obsessive police work is a cry from the heart against a broken system.

Friedkin plays it as brutal and cynical as he ever did with The French Connection; and this time the car chase takes place on a six-lane freeway at the height of the rush hour, going against the traffic.

The first half of Right Now, Wrong Then fits the usual mold, but the real joke begins when the movie abruptly starts over and our hero — seemingly aware of his Groundhog Day do-over — makes subtly different (and smarter) choices the second time around in a rich and playful revision.

Damon and Bale are unfailingly enjoyable company to be among, steering the psychology away from alpha-male dominance to something more complex and occasionally mystical.

As in her Oscar-nominated documentary The Four Daughters, Ben Hania refuses to let the audience look away.

Yet it's impossible to shake the sense that what felt thrillingly, cohesively alive in the director's earlier movies plays here with more laurel-resting creakiness than go-for-broke verve. Russell's once-mercurial assets have become a formula.

Novelistic is a term that gets thrown around a lot these days, but Diaz’s film more than earns the adjective, and you’d have to go back to Edward Yang’s "Yi Yi" to find another movie that approaches a marathon-length running time yet still makes you wish it were twice as long.

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

The plentiful pop-doc touches ensure that this wake-up call won't put you to sleep, even if the ratio of spoonfuls of sugar to medicine occasionally seems skewed.

Artist-turned-filmmaker Richard Billingham soaks his terrific debut in bleak authenticity and some gorgeous cinematography.

Through its powerful exploration of what defines familial ties and the tenacity of marginalised communities in one of America's toughest cities, A Thousand and One resonates deeply.

This is simultaneously the nastiest and most soulful of the franchise to date – and the most probing.

Even on its own limited, rigorous aesthetic grounds, there are far superior movies (including all of Tarr's own work). It's a sad way for the 56-year-old to go out, almost a caricature of his funereal mood and of art cinema in general.

Waves shudders with ambition and nervy style; it never quite relaxes out of its harrowing first hour but the longer it stretches out, the more humane it feels.

Bringing optimism, nerd-itude and a touch of crazy to his character's solo ordeal—at one point, scraggly Watney calls himself a “space pirate”—Damon is the key to the movie’s exuberance.

As with the previous Knives Outs, the satire is applied in broad but enjoyable brushstrokes.

Rather deliberately paced, and mired in archaic and abstruse puns, the film is perhaps more interesting than enjoyable. Still, Leconte's customary zest and mordant humour are there, lurking behind the claustrophobic production design and free-spirited camerawork.

Winner of the Best Screenplay prize at Cannes, Young Mothers brings nothing new to the Dardennes’ canon, but there’s comfort in the familiarity of their methodology. They’ve always had a knack for coaxing tremendous performances from even the youngest of actors, and the cast here is uniformly excellent.

A cradle-to-grave portrait of Ann Lee, the founder of the Christian sect known as the Shakers, the film is, at turns, completely stunning and utterly baffling. At its most successful, though, it doesn’t just depict ecclesiastical fervor – it sweeps you up in it.