For 91 minutes, the pleasure of the Guiteauxes’ company is ours. We are ultimately the richer for it.

Culkin, just as motor-mouthed and f-bombing as Succession’s Roman Roy, but here with an extra slug of despair, is the manic yin to Eisenberg’s neurotic but compassionate yang. It’s an inspired on-screen pairing that plays to both actor’s strengths and finds space for melancholy amid some deeply awkward laughs.

This is a brisk, well-oiled thriller with blistering performances and a crackling, memorable script.

Taken on its own fun-over-philosophy terms, this is an exercise in tone-shifting virtuosity.

From the sun’s surface to the deep earth, Hawaiian volcanoes to Detroit’s decay, Mettler explores the different ways that we experience and define time, using his own documentary as a mind-bending demonstration of its mutability.

Carné’s camera records rather than amplifies the emotions: you can’t help but wonder what magic a René Clair, a Max Ophüls or a Jean Renoir would have found in this material. Its clamorous closing shot – which suggests, but doesn’t show, tragedy – is one of the greatest in all cinema.

A fitting tribute to a life well lived in spite of the overwhelming odds stacked against her, it is surely a sign of a remarkable woman that we are left wanting more.

With so many firsts, a film might buckle under the avalanche of the accompanying expectations. Thankfully, Bros is so belly-achingly funny, sharply observant and wryly self-aware that it can more than withstand such a crushing weight.

‘The most dangerous thing about Pandora,’ someone muses sagely at one point, ‘is that you grow to love it too much.’ Jim Cameron disagrees. He can’t love this place enough – and it’s infectious. 

It’s refreshing to see a grown-up big-screen thriller this well crafted – and one that cares for its grounded characters and their predicaments. If it comes off the road once or twice, it’s still well worth the ride.

Cagney's energy and Wellman's gutsy direction carry the day, counteracting the moralistic sentimentality of the script and indelibly etching the star on the memory as a definitive gangster hero.

Although the film was completed too early to document Hanna’s return to music—her new band, the Julie Ruin, released an album in September and has been touring—it still offers a poignant, intimate portrait of a larger-than-life personality—one whose singular voice is still sorely needed in music, culture and, well, everywhere.

By the time you realize how stealthy the film's critique has been, you've already fallen right into its trap.

Athena’s dystopian view of our present day, showing a collapsing world with black-and-white mentalities, selfishly motivated, and with a desperate underclass left angry and adrift, feels like an urgent message. Anyone who loves their cinema to be spectacular, immersive and a rollercoaster ride will soak it up.

A cinematic Rorschach test, it’s more likely to reaffirm your views on the man than challenge them.

Every trick and technique here, from ingenious match cuts, to split screens and even comic-book cells, works to soup up the storytelling.

Olsson requires us to connect the dots to today's struggles (a missed opportunity), but his discoveries are more than sufficient.

Memoir of a Snail is not just a stop-motion animation that feels handmade from top to bottom. It tells a deeply human story about a hard-won route to happiness – with all the pain and missteps that go with it.

A Lynchian coda upends the entire film, raising several questions and resolving none. Fans of rigorous storytelling may find it to be one whimsical step too far, but others will marvel at this miraculous coup de théâtre. Jauja is a film to make you wonder.

It helps that Candyman is exquisitely shot. Right from the first frame, DaCosta is always doing something interesting with the camera. There is smart visual storytelling almost everywhere you look, from the clever use of mirrors, to edgy scene transitions, to set design that starts to mirror Candyman’s look in interesting ways. The jump scares are rare but hardly needed: all this contributes to a growing feeling of dread as the film speeds towards its bold conclusion.

A movie that gives Streep her most emotionally blocked character in years, without caricature.

Fassbender and his multifaceted allure helps counteract any thematic or conceptual shakiness, as was the case in McQueen's highly uneven debut, "Hunger." One thing's for sure: McQueen has found his De Niro, and he better keep him close.

Luna Carmoon’s debut feature about the daughter of a hoarder comes home bearing prizes, after premiering at the Venice Film Festival, announcing a young British talent capable of blending realism with surrealism to create a vivid personal language that defies simple interpretations.

Berger doesn’t make concessions for the easily teary: Robot Dreams is a film as much about separation as togetherness. But while the final reel is a low-key heartbreaker, the bubble never pops on the loveliness of what came before.

Though the characters are fictional, Polytechnique hews close to the facts regarding the 1989 incident, down to its misogynistic Marc Lépine avatar (Gaudette) separating "feminist" coeds in a classroom.

A thoroughly enjoyable affair, complete with some of his most memorable set pieces.

Tirola’s punchy timeline hits the breaks at the ’80s flameout, wobbling in its handling of self-destructive editor Doug Kenney. But until the defunct Lampoon starts magically reappearing in your mailbox, this excellently titled pic will do nicely.

Leigh does a stellar job of showing how these events seep into the unaware girl's everyday existence - almost all of the film's sequences are photographed in precisely composed, inherently surreal single shots.