Though the baseball scenes themselves are secondary and none too convincing, De Niro nails the sentimental tearjerker stuff.

Most impressive for its frantic pace and its suggestion that in times of Depression almost everyone is corruptible, it's also a perverse elegy to a decade of upheaval.

In Frankenheimer's hands, the whole paraphernalia of trains, tracks and shunting yards acquires an almost hypnotic fascination as the screen becomes a giant chessboard on which huge metallic pawns are manoeuvred, probing for some fatal weakness but seemingly engaged in some deadly primeval struggle.

By far the best part of the film is its first hour, fast, furious and funny as Cagney sets out to convince his nervous backers that his idea for live prologues to accompany talkies can be made to work.

It wins you over with its scrappy underdog antics and then, later, bowls you over with its heavyweight insights.

With Slate, his co-creator, co-writer and ex-partner, director Dean Fleischer Camp charts a world in which a semi-orphaned talking shell not only makes perfect sense, but becomes a perfect vessel to share painful, relatable truths about life. Dementia, loneliness and heartbreak are all writ large in Marcel’s world.

About as deep as a kiddie pool, which isn't to say it's an unpleasant frolic.

Pattinson is great in what is surely his best post-Twilight performance to date.

It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s also never, as Lori grudgingly notes about Julian’s work, uninteresting. And in this cultural moment, that’s an authentic win.

It's hardly the first movie to deal with thimble-size protagonists, but it's one of few animated fairy tales to genuinely transport the audience into their world and, in the process, let us see our own with fresh awe and respect.

An ingenious script, excellent special effects and photography, and superior acting (with the exception of Francis), make it an endearing winner.

Unfolding at the American filmmaker’s measured tempo, it’s more droll than LOL-funny, though there are some big laughs along the way.

It’s a strange mix: the posturing of the younger boys is funny, but behind their literal dick measuring is the threat of violence.

An astonishing in-depth portrait of the interlocking worlds of police and hoodlum results, with no punches pulled and no easy solutions.

Beautiful acted by Japanese veteran Yakusho, it’s a character study with real depth. Maybe not top tier Wenders, but still one to linger over.

Having insured Fred's legs for the equivalent of £200,000, RKO producer Pandro S Berman launched the Astaire-Rogers musicals with this extensive revamp of Cole Porter's famous stage show.

Like a kind of cinematic Lego set, Ben Hania takes the building blocks of filmmaking and constructs from them something cathartic, affecting and original.

Right down to a final shot that’s scored joyously by a brass band, Sachs delivers an achingly beautiful film that’s sexy, sad and so very French.

Director Lauren Greenfield has a catty eye, but she's not after simple schadenfreude as the Siegels' time-share hotels are foreclosed, the kids have to fly coach [gasp], and poops go unscooped by a phalanx of laid-off servants.

A staggering political drama that could put you in mind of the intimate sweep of Bernardo Bertolucci, Incendies feels like a mighty movie in our midst.

The film has no easy answers, but it does strenuously challenge all sides of the argument. Which is exactly what you want from a great documentary.

At a time when movie screens are clogged with indistinguishable superheroes in obnoxious crossover events, Incredibles 2 kicks it old school and rises above the noise with its defiantly humane soul.

The jokes and details are delightful, yet there's real anger behind them, and it bursts spectacularly into view in the concluding frames.

Branagh and Thompson, as Beatrice and Benedick, seem on the whole happier with the romance than the comedy - but do a fair job with some of the best verbal jousting in the language.

Olsson requires us to connect the dots to today's struggles (a missed opportunity), but his discoveries are more than sufficient.

While it would be interesting to see a film about a woman trying to break kabuki’s glass ceiling, part of Kokuho’s charm is that it celebrates the art form as it is, not as it might be. It’s a wonderful demystification of a mysterious art form.

As philosophically complex as it is starkly photographed, Delmer Daves's '50s frontier thriller questions heroism---mocks it and subverts it, really---before unveiling courage without celebration.

It’s often thrilling, occasionally improbable, sometimes confounding, but like its director, Ad Astra is never bound by the gravitational pull of the ordinary. Strap in.

Despite a loss of temperature through the flashbacks which let in some female interest, this is one of Dassin's best films

Wilson, a pop savant, was chasing some kind of dragon, and as the movie toggles years forward to the scared, overmedicated Wilson of the 1980s (John Cusack, absorbingly strange in the tougher part), you sense that the dragon bit back.

Characteristically, Kiarostami's Palme d'Or winner is low on narrative drive, slowly but steadily revealing more and more information, visual and verbal, until we are totally caught up in his protagonist's psychological and ethical dilemma.

With a sparklingly witty script (James Toback), classy direction and terrific performances all round, Beatty's return to the fray is his best movie since McCabe and Mrs Miller.

To make a Western now is in itself a subversive act. Improving, embellishing and reclaiming an old-fashioned oater from the vintage studio-cheese bin with such humor and vigor seems truly, truly ballsy.

Diehl and Pachner are both terrific, mastering Malick’s improvisational style and bringing earthy authenticity to its playful family moments.

A hallucinatory, claustrophobic examination of the secret potency of film itself, it enters the disorienting world of a young film-maker who discovers his camera has a feature he'd never imagined. Taking one right back to those great '70s mood-movies, it's a singular treat. [05 Nov 2003, p.97]

Shots of the kids and their friends running around unfamiliar environments have the fantastical qualities of Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are," minus the forced whimsy.

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.

A beautifully crafted love story, End of the Century has two understated, thoughtful performances at its heart. It explores its existential themes – of the passing of time and of roads not taken – with delicacy and deftness. It’s a road worth travelling.

The story is simple but the imagery more than compensates: from the tragic-beautiful opening – Yuki’s mother dies in childbirth (and in prison) as white flakes drift peacefully by the barred windows – through a series of shocking, angry flashbacks, to the striking, unexpectedly emotive final shot, this is beautifully controlled, almost sedate action cinema.

Apfel is constantly chatting to “Albert” off camera, not to us, and the affection adds an unusual meta level to Iris, a conversation between two old-timers who have gone from making history to becoming it.

The rollicking, space-opera spirit of George Lucas’s original trilogy (you can safely forget the second trio of cynical, tricked-up prequels) emanates from every frame of J.J. Abrams' euphoric sequel. It’s also got an infusion of modern-day humor that sometimes steers the movie this close to self-parody—but never sarcastically, nor at the expense of a terrific time.

My Favourite Cake is radical and heartwarming. Above all, it’s a reminder that in a world where everyone is scrutinised and judged, pure love remains timeless.

For a group with property assets in the billions, it’s a major piece of the puzzle, revealing a critical failing: For a religion with so much to give, why do they do so little for so few?

Never saccharine, My Dog Tulip does justice to the rare experience of heartfelt, mutual love in any form

Tod Browning's heartbreaking, empathetic story of circus life is one of the most striking, unforgettable movies ever made.

Cagney's energy and Wellman's gutsy direction carry the day, counteracting the moralistic sentimentality of the script and indelibly etching the star on the memory as a definitive gangster hero.

Majewski's film is a dazzling master class in visual composition.

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.

Although the story isn’t autobiographical, there’s a tang of lived experience here – of very personal feelings and important questions being channelled through these characters – that keeps its sunlit landscapes and island interactions ground with relatability.

this is a wonderfully fun watch that somehow manages to simultaneously celebrate and satirise the Barbie brand, its feminism and girliness pairing like gorpcore sandals with a floaty pink skirt. It’s Barbie’s world, and it’s a thrill to live in it, at least for an hour or two.

Buckley, so good in serial-killer thriller ‘Beast’, is sensational here.

Readable equally as a bleak, brutal exploitation movie and as a horrified, humanist cry from a disturbed soul, Alfredo Garcia is a worthy rediscovery.

Although the script runs out of steam by the end, the sharp use of location, the meticulous detailing of black culture, the uniformly excellent performances and stimulating soundtrack command attention.

Room 237 asks that you bring your own noodles; as docs go, it leaves you with questions, some worry and rib-sticking satiation.

Even by the writer-director’s standards of naturalistic, middle-class restraint, it’s a ruminative experience that borders on slow-going. But The Eternal Daughter is also an ode to mothers and daughters that will leave a few teary messes in the stalls, and it’s beautifully acted by Tilda Swinton in not one, but two roles.

Bertrand Bonello’s sci-fi epic-cum-period-romance-cum-stalker-thriller is absolutely teeming with ideas. That they don’t all come together in an entirely convincing way doesn’t spoil the overall effect of something thought-provoking, very handsomely made, and appealingly weird.

The film doesn’t know how innocent it wants to be. Establishing shots of Manhattan’s 1998 skyline arrive in the cutesy form of a colorful diorama, just like Mr. Rogers’s show, but that gesture feels utopian and unearned, not to mention a little boring.

Take Out is a sweet-and-sour look at the immigrant experience.

The performances, the writing and the direction all conspire to make it feel fresh and specific, and as bleak as the settings may be, it has a delicious black comic streak and shares the buzz of personal re-awakening without ever feeling obvious or cheap. It turns out to be a beacon of warmth amid a frozen wasteland.

Actor turned director John Carroll Lynch gets out of the way of his star and lets him cast his spell one final time.

Yu, an assistant director on Bong Joon-ho’s Okja, shows a similar taste in dark comedy as the Korean master – personal anxieties externalised in instances that can turn from horrific to funny in their absurdity.

If the pay-off aims for the gut and misses, the journey to that point provides a searing microcosm of a corrupt and degrading system.

A delightfully nonchalant movie, complete with some nice satirical barbs aimed at contemporary French film culture, and fine performances throughout.

It’s hard to imagine a figure more courageous than activist David Kato: an out gay man—Uganda’s first, he says — who lives in constant peril from both private citizens and a government that wants to make homosexuality punishable by hanging.

Their relationship is both a genuinely touching love story and a clever gloss on the barriers and extensions of language. It also contains a truly didactic other-dimension which points out some very salutary things about our often unintentional slights towards the deaf, without being either a simple sob or an issue story.

The creepiness builds with symphonic precision until reality truly is indistinguishable from fantasy.

Something of a mess, both in terms of the wayward plot which rambles all over the place, and in terms of the rather muddled juggling of audience sympathies.

It’s wonderful to think that a movie is, for a change, ahead of you.

Zlotowski smartly articulates the complex choices modern women are faced when it comes to motherhood, step-parenting and relationships.

A haunting, nightmarish vision.

It’s a sexy concept that will thrill Assayas neophytes, but the director’s longtime fans will find its pleasures virtually pornographic.

It must be noted that Wrona, a director of uncommon promise, committed suicide at a festival where this film was playing. It’s impossible to know his private pain, but it seems like he got a lot of it up onscreen.

A characteristically elegant, eloquent and idiosyncratic meditation on the relationships between personal and political histories, and between life and art.

With enjoyable characters and smart dialogue, French-Canadian director Monia Chokri makes her dilemma a very entertaining ride.

Brava, Mia! The exceedingly talented Ms. Hansen-Løve (the writer-director of Father of My Children) is sure to win many more fans with her latest feature, an incisive, exhilaratingly frank examination of l'amour lost.

As subcultural anthropology, it’s unassailable. Yet the often ugly-looking DV aesthetic dilutes the cumulative effect.

The Old Man & the Gun plays like a long-winded joke with a sneaky punchline that warms you belatedly, like a shot of bourbon.

The director races far too quickly to get to his ashes-to-ashes, dust-to-dust punch line. This is the film of a pretender, not a believer.

Lanzmann’s feisty exchanges with Murmelstein, a brilliant talker, become an emotional symbol for the pursuit of slippery truth, while the filmmaker’s recently shot footage of Yom Kippur services show a way of life in robust continuation.

There’s nothing cloying or corny about the way Arnold depicts these beasts. What she gives us is a straightforward slice of a cow’s relentless life of muck, milk, breeding and feeding.

Berlinger and Sinofksy merely suggested Hobbs might be responsible for the crime; Berg goes in for the kill, inconclusive evidence and docu-ethics be damned. The queasy certainty with which the filmmaker jumps to her conclusions, however, is all too reminiscent of the original prosecutors' zeal. It's hard to imagine how someone could study this case for so long and yet miss its most critical lesson.

The running time may make you blanch, but Connie Field’s seven-part documentary about the history and eventual dissolution of South African apartheid is well worth the commitment.

It’s uncomfortable in all the right ways.

It registers as a pretty hokey entertainment. But Peter Ellenshaw and Eustace Wallace's effects are put together with the studio's customary care.

Refusing ever to dwell, it cuts sharp rather than deep, but sharp enough.

This is a great piece of history, about people who took huge risks every day and every night just to be allowed to be themselves.

Tasty ingredients (Sihung Lung's Mr Chu and Chien-Lien Wu's Jia-Chien are especially good), but the food metaphor never carries weight, and the characterisations are too shallow to lend the film emotional punch.

A film which never really manages to confront us with the enormity of its subject, nor with any kind of analysis as to why rape occurs.

The tone couldn't be further from the self-congratulation of an exercise like The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.

Phenomenally sad yet exhilarating.

Ambitious, profoundly articulate, and despite its avoidance of sentimentality and sermonising, very compassionate.

It's unfailingly lively entertainment that doesn't stint on (earned) feeling. Ideas about fear of the unknown, industrial corruption, and the splendours of polymorphity are all taken in stride. The balance tilts towards action and gags, and does them gloriously.

As in his much-lauded "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," the latest feature from Palme d’Or–winning filmmaker Cristian Mungiu takes a rigorous approach to the material. But where the previous film — about two women seeking a back-alley abortion — was a reductively dour slog, Beyond the Hills feels more caustically all-encompassing.

The taut action, sparse dialogue, and faultless technique keep things moving so fast that there's no time to reflect upon the morality of war or the miraculous way in which Flynn and his men survive against such overwhelming odds.

The real heat of The Sessions comes from its pitch-perfect sense of place, the free-spirited Berkeley of the 1980s.

The arguments over whether Citizen Kane is the greatest film ever made will rage on forever. But the greatest film about Citizen Kane – and just about any other movie – has definitely arrived. David Fincher’s eleventh film is a lavish love letter to old Hollywood in all its glory, cynicism and wild extravagance.

Garland’s creeping pace lulls you on an almost molecular level; he’s made something akin to an end-of-the-world film, but one in which the changes afoot might not be wholly bad, title be damned.

Establishing character, conflict and environment with astounding economy in the film's first ten minutes, Rees demonstrates the sort of filmmaking chops and personal storytelling (the director claims she drew on her own coming-out experience) that suggests the low-key epiphanies of Amerindie cinema at its best.