What a clever, haunting way to show art’s power to articulate the hurt we find hard to express.

By the time the beast spreads his wings to full span, soaring skyward toward a vaguely Spielbergian moon, you’re in the kind of breathless awe that so few current cinematic superproductions are able to provide.

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.

By the end, you feel curiously closer to the performer and her process without having any clue how you got there. It's exhilarating.

When Kriegman is heard at a Weiner low point asking, “Why did you let me film this?” you’re glad the question is asked. But there’s no answer: The narcissism is all up there onscreen, but shame will have to wait for the sequel.

You can tell Ryoo loves Hong Kong action cinema. His camerawork is nimble and elastic, and his starchy diplomats are unexpectedly great at martial arts. But the character scenes are well-handled too, and there’s a smart critique here on a divided country that can’t even be truly unified in a shared crisis.

Allegedly based on the career of Clara Bow (who, like Lola, had a parasitic family and a duplicitous private secretary), Bombshell is a prime example of Jean Harlow at her comic best.

Subject acknowledges sensitivities are shifting but also pointedly makes clear, for the damaged souls here, they didn’t change quick enough.

It’s unblinking in a Dardenne-ish way and often hard to watch, with the emotional toll playing on its characters’ faces. The ending is a floorer too.

The most harrowing revelation of all comes during two of Macdonald’s many interviews with friends, family and associates. It’s a piece of digging that adds investigative weight to the film and a hard-hitting coda to his exploration of the fragile psychology of stardom.

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]

Director Radu Muntean has pulled off the near-impossible, turning each scene (captured in capacious long takes) into arias of generosity for his actors.

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.

There are some genuinely frightening dream sequences - and some throwaway black humour...it's all good scary fun."

It’s uncomfortable in all the right ways.

Whereas Spheeris' The Wild Side was weakened by sentimentalising its disaffected punk heroes, her second feature presents a tougher and more balanced view of teen violence; while we're allowed a glimmer of understanding into the murderers' feelings, we never indulge them with misplaced sympathies: these boys are monsters.

Ironically, the very slickness of the film and the attention grabbing 'sensitivity' of Hans Zimmer's score at times become intrusive. Essential viewing, none the less.

Like Talk To Her, it doesn’t completely satisfy when it comes time to resolve its intrigue. But, as with their debut, the Philippou brothers show a real skill for creating believable teen characters, Barratt and Wong create a tender, affecting chemistry that make the chills all the more affecting.

The Bling Ring, Sofia Coppola’s deceptively shallow but ultimately fascinating latest, is animated by that spirit of we-don’t-give-a-f**k playfulness.

An intelligent film with a cohesive plot and an amusing script, this is one of the better Disney attempts to hop on the sci-fi bandwagon.

McQueen isn’t questioning the courage or endurance of the city and its people through these brutal days. But he is probing our relationship with this over-lionised period of our history, though, and finding it hopelessly romanticised. Maybe it’s time, his flawed but hard-hitting film suggests, to lift the curfew on looking it afresh.

As an exploration of what motivates people at work – and what doesn’t – it’s smartly and subtly observed.

Bogdanovich invests the story with warmth, generosity and considerable power.

Its world is weirdly familiar and yet alien. It’s also darn scary.

It's the stuff of melodrama, heightened by Davies's pitch-perfect use of pop songs, like a sad "You Belong to Me," slurred by a misty crowd in a bar.

It’s wonderfully creepy and unnervingly familiar, like Alan Partridge by way of The Exorcist. If that doesn’t automatically enter it into the pantheon of classic midnight movies, I don’t know what does.

The sisterhood who have made this an art form mostly remain unsung heroes, as it were, of the hit parade. Their collective bow is long overdue.

Though the finale feels a bit anticlimactic, the lysergic atmosphere, synth-heavy score and logic-resistant story line more than earn Beyond the Black Rainbow's concluding quote, borrowed from another classic midnight movie: "No matter where you go…there you are." See the late show.