Marcia Gay Harden is the picture’s treasure; watching her swell with concern at her daughter’s choices, you understand how hard it is to let go.

It’s as interesting for what it doesn’t show as for what it does.

The couple's battle to get off the bottle is harrowingly chronicled, so much so that you almost forget it's a Blake Edwards picture - his best by some margin, with a touching score by Henry Mancini.

The Law is everything that this season’s lackluster blockbusters are not: a damn good time.

It’s to the filmmakers’ credit that we also see how insecurity and proximity to fame both drove him and drove him crazy, resulting in a layered look at a man who was a jack of all trades, but a master of one: being George.

Marvellous performance from Stanwyck, all snap, crackle and pop as the brassy nightclub entertainer Sugarpuss O'Shea.

Sirk's second ostensible triangle drama with Stanwyck is, like the earlier All I Desire, a brilliant example of his mastery of lacerating irony.

It is during Melancholia's second half, after a ruinous conclusion to the wedding, that the real magic happens, with our heroine hardened into a wry, cynical Cassandra - the voice of Von Trier himself.

For a film that is primarily focused on one person at a time, speaking directly to camera, it is never remotely dull. The lean 73-minute runtime gives Smith all the time she needs to conjure a poignant and personal ode to these four women, and the experiences of Black trans women more broadly. We rarely get to see that on screen this powerfully and unapologetically.

Minor grumbles aside, few Hollywood reboots can boast this blend of nostalgia, freshness and adrenaline. You will want to high five someone on the way out.

Roeg's debut as a director is a virtuoso juggling act which manipulates its visual and verbal imagery so cunningly that the borderline between reality and fantasy is gradually eliminated.

If the movie had a lead actress more delicate or malleable than the strong-cheeked Lawrence-a Natalie Portman, say-it would tip over into sexy-girl-killer celebration; the same goes for Harrelson's salty mentor, who is never too supportive or paternal. Both performers lean into the economies of survival, certain of the savagery that lies ahead, and come up with sharp work.

Seldom have Caine's cobra eyes been used to better effect; it's a chilling tale, cleanly directed.

Wild Canaries may be modest stuff, but its madcap misadventures are loaded with honesty, and it earns the conclusion that love never feels like a cage when you fly with the right flock.

Spring Breakers is either an inspired satire of the youth movie or the most irresponsible comedy mainstream Hollywood will never make. The bros in your crowd will call it rad — and radical it is.

What separates the ensuing mayhem from a thousand generic thrillers out there is an impish streak and writing that smartly juggles big ideas, mad gun battles and guilty laughs.

Lots of elements of the story feel familiar, but they play out in unusual and unpredictable ways here. We’ve seen the heavy-with-a-heart character before, but Jarvis gives Arm real pathos, even at his most violent.

The first major motion picture to come out of Congo in decades happens to be one of the best neonoirs from anywhere in recent memory.

As light and brazenly generic as Allen's early work. As a result, it is both unusually insubstantial, and, at least in the second half, extremely funny.

From Up on Poppy Hill — cowritten by Miyazaki, and directed by his son Goro — shows a different side of the Japanese animation house, one that finds equal wonder in comparatively mundane affairs.

It’s a wonderfully rich gambit for talking about the push and pull of long-term commitment; of the fine line between complacency and wilful denial; and of the bonds of love that can remain intact regardless of your own toxicity. The

A movie that could terrify parents while charming them with its compassion.

It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s also never, as Lori grudgingly notes about Julian’s work, uninteresting. And in this cultural moment, that’s an authentic win.

This movie does exactly what a horror reboot should, taking the best bits of the original and heading in a smart, inventive new direction. There’s minimal reliance on nostalgia. It’s daft as hell and a heck of a good time.

In Saeed Roustayi’s Woman and Child, a carefully crafted and endlessly gripping drama that follows a Tehran family’s slow disintegration, it’s the supposedly joyous occasion of a marriage proposal that set the wheels of fate in motion.

Submarine may not be epic cinema, but in a modest way, it's close to perfection.

More character study than polemic, wonderfully warm and witty in its observation of two women (one black, one white) who not only crash the race barriers in their friendship but successfully go it alone in a man's world, Stahl's version of Fannie Hurst's novel makes fascinating comparison with Sirk's remake.

So much of Get on Up is uncannily perfect, from its nightmarish Georgia childhood flashbacks to delirious concert re-creations and the casting of Blues Brother Dan Aykroyd as Brown’s longtime manager.