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.

Immensely inventive and entertaining, the film may not have the enigmatic elegance or emotional resonance of Barton Fink or Fargo, but it's still a prime example of the Coens' effortless brand of stylistic and storytelling brilliance.

There are few traces of irony, intended fun, or Casanova-style exoticism here: the director may intened a feminist Visconti, but he ends up with a Zalman King Red Shoe Diary crossed with a Dick Lester Dumas adaptation.

This isn't a sequel, it's a remake. Some ingredients have been substituted, but it's the same recipe of R & B and comic overkill. As before, the best thing is the music: Aretha Franklin, Sam Moore, James Brown. The rest is stale, cynical and hamfisted.

Excellent support from Davidtz, Goodman, and Joy, as Hobbes' brother, though as the plot twists take precedence over character, much of the film's nuance trickles away and, along with it, the tension.

Sadly, it collapses dizzily amid a baroque shower of bejewelled costumes, Kenneth Anger style colour overload, mock fairytale purple prose, and pixillated anti-naturalistic performances. Finally pretty tedious.

Bluth has rediscovered the ingredients of quality mainstream animation: depth and movement are more in evidence, and the action sequences are expertly staged, notably a harrowing train crash.

This documentary, shocking and enlightening, succeeds in contextualising, and thus humanising, misunderstood sexual deviancy.

Despite a vaguely interesting premise - something like a chaos theory of police karma, the two partners precipitating their own downfall via a series of triggered repercussions - this never rises above the functional.

The movie's on stronger ground with the rudiments of survivalism, in particular the long central battle with the bear, so exciting it makes everything afterwards seem anti-climactic. Hopkins keeps his hamminess in check, and Baldwin finds layers of insidious charm, frailty and menace.

There are odd, rather contrived fantasy scenes here which sit uneasily with the generally downbeat naturalism of the rest of the film; and since the script seems determined to tease rather than inform, it's a little hard in the end to fathom exactly what director and co-writer Denis is really getting at. The performances, however, are good, and the music appealing.

Part satire and part confessional memoir, the film is stronger on period flavour and Sonny's inner demons than on the humanity of some of the other characters.

Harry Dean Stanton provides some much needed humour, but the film's celebratory attitude towards a dangerously wild love that defies logic and convention lacks depth and genuine insights.

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.

Jackson bears the weight of the film in a constrained, introverted role (terrorised, pertinacious, innocent passion squandered), but a grand resolution and some melodramatic twists and set-pieces undercut the hard-nosed tone.

Few people can be so big-hearted as to tolerate Ed's agonising brand of pedantic humour.

Lee's tough decision to include photos of the victims' smashed-up bodies was probably correct, but adding 'soulful' music to some of the interviews was more questionable.

Played as broad, noisy black farce, the film is about the deception of politics and heroism, dog-eat-dog morals and the propensity for violence, but one can't help thinking that behind the sometimes sensational apocalyptic imagery, there's less here than meets the eye.

Besides the implausibilities, the direction has two fatal flaws: it's both tediously slow and hugely narcissistic as the camera focuses repeatedly on Depp's bandana'd head and rippling torso.

Writers Ganz and Mandell (Parenthood, City Slickers) go pleasingly light on the syrup and sentimentality.

Teen nihilism of the cheapest kind, it's as pretentious as Jean-Luc Godard, as tacky as one of those Z grade turkeys by Ted V Miklas, and at least twice as boring as that sounds.

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

This is rubbish: an incoherent James Bond-ish yarn distinguished only by its formal decadence and the presence of basketball's Dennis Rodman.

Made on a shoestring by a bunch of film school graduates (director and co-writer Croghan was 23 at the time), this sweet, brisk campus comedy has a refreshingly current feel. For once, you believe the actors are the age they're playing. The romantic musical chairs are routine, but Croghan has a light touch, and a shrewd eye for the rules of attraction. It's too unassuming to be brattily obnoxious.

The script seems to lose interest in its latter stages and Witcher never evinces a depth of insight such that you sit up and take notice.

Mottola's dysfunctional family comedy is a bit arch, but sometimes sharp. Indie cinema and Neil Simon intersect on the corner of pathos and farce.

This talky would-be satire can find neither an appropriate tone nor a realised human drama to communicate the ideas. But there are some sharp lines and good scenes.

There aren't many films which tackle the generation gap between middle-aged kids and their old folks with such unsentimental comic acuity - and Reynolds essays her best role in three decades with delectable good grace and charm.