Of Stallone’s surprisingly tender performance — a definitive late-career triumph — enough can’t be said

It's a credit to both the actors and Franco-Algerian filmmaker Rachid Bouchareb (Days of Glory) that the film never dives headfirst into mawkishness.

It all loses a bit of its circadian rhythm with a tacked-on sci-fi storyline involving social media ‘dreamfluencers’. But as a giddy showcase for a bang-on-form Cage, with some needle-sharp observations about fame in the 21st century, this Ari Aster-produced dark comedy is the best kind of cheese dream.

Stearns saddles himself with a touch more plot than he needs, and some of the film’s late-game twists are more satisfying than others, but Faults never loses sight of the one thing Ansel can’t see: Free will may come cheap, but most people still can’t afford it.

The film’s languorous, tangential flow isn’t for everyone, but you’ll be surprised by how easily you can roll with it, especially if you tune into Zama’s cringe-funny frequency.

Ahmed is at his best in Zed’s darkest hour, as he struggles to hold it together in a hospital cubicle. It’s blistering stuff.

Winocour does brilliant work at enlarging the minute details that define the way the wind is blowing in this relationship.

Finally, someone has returned to The Damned United’s cunning formula for a good football movie: don’t show any football.

Ballour’s presence makes Fayyad’s film inspiring, even as we cringe for her safety with every overhead explosion.

Cuarón, a magician who brought personality to the Harry Potter series, is after pure, near-experimental spectacle.

Amy Berg’s deeply sympathetic documentary on Janis Joplin — a singer whose shredded wail tapped reservoirs of pain — gets so much right, it feels like a major act of cultural excavation.

None of this is pushed into comic relief—the filmmaker lets his drama play out with gentleness — and you smile at the many evolutions.

Full of stunning visuals, the ideas in the film more than compensate for the awkward scene-setting of the beginning.

Monsters University aces a two-part test—first, appealing to kids with gorgeous, hyperrealistic animation that teases out every pink hair on a beastly art student; then luring in parents with several knowing jokes about strumming your guitar on the quad or playing beer pong.

The film reeks of the authentic stuff of jazz, smoky with atmosphere and all as blue as a Gauloise packet.

The flood images are stark, conveying all the terror and pity that modern disaster footage imparts. But Morrison and Frisell infuse the film with warmth and, where appropriate, a touch of wit, causing its subject to breathe anew.

The Beguiled has its jolts and its laughs, but mostly this glides along like a mildly saucy yet poetically made parable, well-dressed, well-designed and well-performed.

Positively glowing, it just might be one of the sweetest gay films to come out of England since Beautiful Thing.

Shot entirely on location with its child actors recruited from the streets, Salaam Bombay! enters into its subjects' lives with rare authority and absolute compassion, the material generated largely from workshops that Nair and her team ran for a period of months prior to filming. A revelation for audiences of any background.

This may not quite be the biopic of two women whose achievements decidedly merit one, but it’s an extraordinary story about a man who endured danger, ridicule and desperation to create the circumstances for them to thrive.

Rumours is a strange brew, but there’s a lot of fun to be had if you like its flavour.

The movie works beautifully by bringing forward the delicate subject of guilt via passivity.

It's far from a definitive statement-why does ACT UP, a seminal presence in SF, get such short shrift? - but this oral history provides a righteous cri de coeur for those who perished in the precocktail era.

At times, you'll find yourself wanting more of the perspective of the Cheyenne, but Cooper still does right by his story of historical reconciliation, charting Blocker’s moral transformation plausibly. Hostiles‘ disarming finale packs an earned, radiantly optimistic punch.

The stars here are not the moms, but the kids-and they are truly amazing.

Witty, warm, but never sentimental, it also benefits from being set in the fading glories of the resort town of the title: grand seaside facades behind which lie more mundane realities, surrounded by decay and demolition.

With tinkling thriller music and dramatic voiceover narration, this modest but engrossing first-person documentary comes on like a true crime caper.

For the most part this is a pleasing, polished affair, honest enough to steer a compassionate middle course without succumbing to caricature or conservative sentimentality.