Shot on actual locations in just nine days by Levin, a former documentarist, and improvised within a detailed scene-by-scene outline, this is a perplexing mix of truth and falsity, spontaneity and cliché.

Less deadpan spoof than loving act of possession, Black Dynamite near-fully channels the look and feel of its blaxploitation ancestors, warts and all.

Cassavetes adopts a grammar that occasionally slides into parody but mostly comes across as committed style. Kiss of the Damned contributes little new to the genre save a taste for alluringly tactile sex scenes and an avoidance of gore.

Though overly dependent on a roundelay of talking heads, the film escalates into an ace legal thriller, spinning a web of shame that snags everything from the Austrian government to America's most beloved not-for-profits.

A little more in-depth insight into a person who both produced that song ("Be My Baby") and pulled a trigger might have been nice.

Though the dialogue rings too chirpy ("Gee whiz!") and faintly anachronistic ("Get over it, man!"), the acting is wonderfully subtle, especially John Mahoney's turn as Bryce's grimly clear-eyed grandfather.

Despite its thorough classiness and pristine presentation, it is not a film you can really warm to – much like its characters.

Albou’s film conjures an irresistibly evocative atmosphere of stifling limitations, as well as a frank view of the female body that vacillates between carnal, sacrificial and beatific. Its caustic beauty is hard to shake.

Young Aprile is a real find, investing what might have been a symbolic part with a visible sense of craft and patience (this isn’t merely cute-kid cinema), but it would be a shame not to mention the risks taken by Moore and Coogan, pushing difficult parts into daring registers of irresponsibility.

Calling Road to Nowhere a noir is like referring to Hellman's cult classic "Two-Lane Blacktop" (1971) as a road movie: Technically correct genre assignations hardly do justice to either work's existential ennui and elliptical, Euro-jagged style.

Beineix's determination to tell the full story results in a bum-numbing and often downright dull three hours.

For this rites-of-passage drama, screenwriter Jenny Wingfield draws on personal recollections; but while she brings intelligence to the depiction of teen angst, her attempt to follow formula means that the heart-warming tone steadily becomes overheated.

While Nightbitch accurately depicts the mundanity of motherhood, you can’t help but wish it dug a little deeper into the devaluation of women once they become parents, rather than just holding a mirror.

Early on, the film bristles with endorphins and oddness.

The film is at its best when it’s sitting just with them, not doing much, not trying too hard to be eccentric; just shooting the breeze and being cheerfully weird.

The story is an autobiographical one from screenwriter Will Reiser's own ordeal; you smile with the thought that he had such women in his life, tough yet supportive, giving him the license to be funny again.

Still, better than most of its kind.

you sense that "The Hangover" loomed large over this production. Still, Eve has a true flair for zingers, and the movie’s heart survives intact.

None of it makes any sense, except within the high-octane logic of blowing stuff up onscreen. And, in case you’re wondering, sometimes that can be entertainment enough: Slack-jawed euphoria shoots like nitro through the film. (Please be careful in the parking lot afterward.)

Generation "Home Alone", now grown up and maybe with children of its own, will be amused in the moment, but the film’s heart isn’t as subversive as it wants us to believe.

As history, I’d take this account with a pinch of salt – it feels too enamoured by certain elements of its antihero’s story and blinkered to others – but as an exercise in capturing the man’s self-engineered legend, it’s energetic and engrossing.

If you want American gothic with a side of pancakes, you’ve come to the right place.

Hardcore genre fans will appreciate visual shout-outs to shriekers like The Exorcist III and City of the Living Dead, while Conjuring devotees will enjoy the “aha” moment of a concluding callback that brings the saga full circle.

Savage directs with a light hand, and sometimes you wish for a little more shape to the baggier scenes.

There are things to enjoy - committed performances, Conrad Hall's elegant camerawork, a script that becomes pleasurably tortuous towards the end - but the film finally offers far less than meets the eye.

Even if you remove the questionable quasi-religious touches, Flight doesn't quite soar past its narrative limitations. There's plenty of virtuosity to go around here - just precious little transcendence.

Deadly Blessing isn't a very good movie, but it holds out distinct promise that Craven will soon be in the front rank of horror film-makers.

Making her radiant Hollywood debut in a part she had played in Sweden, Bergman almost makes you believe the tosh, but Howard (dubbed on violin by Jascha Heifetz) comes on like a smarmy elocution teacher, enunciating atrocious dialogue full of arch emptinesses.