As in his much-lauded "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," the latest feature from Palme d’Or–winning filmmaker Cristian Mungiu takes a rigorous approach to the material. But where the previous film — about two women seeking a back-alley abortion — was a reductively dour slog, Beyond the Hills feels more caustically all-encompassing.

Expressively (Berger knows his grammar), a white communion dress is dipped in black dye as her custodial grandmother passes away and an evil castle beckons.

Cregger plays brilliantly with your expectations throughout. The characters constantly make the wrong choices – peeking round dark corners, going back to check out a noise – but those choices don’t go in the usual directions. Cregger isn’t smug or sly about that. He isn’t winking at the audience. He’s using your horror knowledge against you by rarely giving you what the genre has conditioned you to anticipate.

It never feels as if we're watching a brand-name cash-grab, but instead as if we're participating in an endlessly imaginative afternoon of play.

As Amy, Anna Paquin proves again what an expressive, soulful actress she is, and Daniels' madcap dad is a winning study in hippy ingenuity and indefatigability.

Empathetic rather than judgy, Coppola’s relationship drama hands agency back to its young heroine.

Whiplash scrapes the far edge of crazy passion. It never apologizes.

A routine story perhaps, but McCarey transforms it , through his customary affection for his characters and taut pacing, into delightfully effective entertainment.

Room 237 asks that you bring your own noodles; as docs go, it leaves you with questions, some worry and rib-sticking satiation.

Marlene's best movie away from Sternberg, it's relaxed, funny and charming.

This is simultaneously the nastiest and most soulful of the franchise to date – and the most probing.

The twist at the end is devastating, forcing you to view the film as a character study rather than a thriller, which places it in the Detective Story and The Offence bag...Gripping, though.

An absolute eye-opener, this unusually rich sports portrait should be seen on the biggest screen you can find.

Ridden with flashbacks and with a punchy orchestral score, it’s a thoroughly improbable story of her internal redemption. And it’s largely pretty great.

It’s truly something to see these children come into their own, and to bear witness to the undeniable sea change Ganguly has set in motion.

There has to be room for this kind of plea, especially a work that, obliquely, captures so many largely unreported details: the night raids rounding up children, the torn-up olive trees and kids' soccer games in the battle zone.

Every monster-movie archetype is here, from nerdy scientists (Charlie Day and Burn Gorman) to hard-stare leaders (Idris Elba) with a penchant for 11th-hour inspirational speeches. (Watching the former Stringer Bell bellow about “canceling the apocalypse!” is one of those great, giddy pleasures you didn’t know you needed.)

Fans of The West Wing will really dig it. Director Dror Moreh rarely lets the news headlines intrude on the backstage bartering.

Overlong towards the end but beautiful to look at, the pastel tones on the new material blending with black-and-white archive still and movie footage, which instead of distancing the music even further places it vivdly in its period.

Fine biopic which showcases a brilliant performance by Busey as Holly, and conveys a real, raw feeling for the music.

It’s wonderful to think that a movie is, for a change, ahead of you.

This is an exquisite portrait of a family navigating the wreckage imparted to them by one of their own.

While it can’t deliver the revelatory ‘wow’ factor of its predecessor, Part II successfully expands on its world and themes, while enriching its satisfyingly drawn characters.

Parenting relies on stamina as much as compassion, and Donzelli has, against all odds, crafted a genuinely moving ode to both the tenacity of filial love under extreme circumstances and the toll it extracts. Consider this a coup.

As a macro- to micro-exploration of guilt—over giving in to sexual deviancy, its use as a psychological crutch or as something that keeps grief from transforming into closure — The Silence speaks volumes.

Inventively composed, beautifully photographed and boasting lakes of blood, shoe fetish action, mystical iconography and dwarf pantomime – often in the same scene – it’s by turns mesmerising, grotesque, surreal, satirical, rousing and impenetrable.

More surprisingly, the production work is by and large excellent. Nelson Riddle's musical cues are fun, and the design still looks sleek today - I'd choose Adam West's Batmobile over Michael Keaton's any day.

Splendidly shot by Sven Nykvist and with excellent performances, it's an agreeable puzzle which doesn't, thank heaven, come up with a solution to the meaning of life.