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 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