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.

The movie is more of an anxiety dream than a full-fledged nightmare, and the more typically unsettling imagery...feel perfunctory.

With unexpected supernatural restraint, the movie approaches a religious parable; am I being unfair in wishing it had a touch more apocalyptic hysteria to it?

It’s exhilarating, even exhausting stuff, though Fiennes lightens the weight of Zizek’s dense discourse with a welcome scattering of sight gags. He’s a man to be taken seriously, but not averse to donning a nun’s habit — and for that we love him.

Outside of its cracked psychology (well conveyed by papa Bill Sage), We Are What We Are is horror leftovers, neither inedible nor piping hot.

A trifle self-indulgent - well, it is directed by Alan Parker - but never boring.

Both Reitman and his first-rate cast do their best to add depth. The real tragedy of Young Adult, however, is the story's lack of tragedy.

What started as an underground goof ended up becoming a fascinating foul-mouthed curio; though it aims for profundity, Winnebago Man seems destined to suffer the same fate.

A hesitation in dealing fully with the central relationship, coupled with an over-reliance on slow-motion photography, finds the film losing momentum almost before it leaves the starting blocks.

Is Gemini on the level of classic L.A. films like Heat or The Player? Hardly. But you sink into its mood, and that’s enough.

Writer-director Crowe suffuses the film with tender humour and affection as the characters, most of them living in the same apartment block, swap stories, ponder sexual come-ons where none exist, and remain resolute in the face of emotional horrors. Pearl Jam, Mudhoney and Soundgarden contribute to the soundtrack, and the film's tone couldn't be sweeter.

With both hostility and compassion, the damaged duo slowly come to understand themselves and their respective pain-a familiar path that's energized by subtle lead performances, a tactile sense of place and surprising insight into the way people connect as they help each other heal.

Ignore the documentary's regrettable low-rent look and that kitschy "Love, American Style" soundtrack, and just focus on how this portrait turns a work of art into a sociological flash point.

What Lost Bohemia lacks in aesthetic presentation - first-time filmmaker Astor seems to have gathered footage without much forethought - is made up for by an intimacy familiar from home movies, revealing eccentric neighbors at their most frank and endearing.

The film occasionally skews a little on the PBS-dry side, but in terms of looking back on a legacy of American skullduggery and high-level shenanigans, its access and acknowledgment of our dark past make for one intimate indictment.

A middling entry in the growing genre of tragic, never-quite-made-it rocker docs, this doesn't have a bona fide genius at its core (The Devil and Daniel Johnston), nor a compelling clash of Spinal Tap–ready egos (Anvil! The Story of Anvil).

This impassioned documentary could have the same real-world impact as Errol Morris's "The Thin Blue Line," and help to free a wrongly convicted man. The filmmaking could be better, but it's hard to argue with that kind of potential.

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.

It's precisely its pretensions which make this a surprisingly agreeable cross of angst-ridden '70s road movie with Hitchcockian thriller.

The most cinematic of film musicals and the one most given to dance, On the Town is exhilarating, brash spectacle, all rip-snorting, wisecracking attack, and maybe just a teensy bit unlikeable.

A typically larky Disney film, heavily over-directed and under-written.

All in all, it's an appealing mix, even if the shifts in tone seem to unsettle cast and director alike. First-rate performances, though, especially from Fonda, as a wide-eyed Southern belle.

Warm, self-assured and free-flowing, Pretty Red Dress is the long overdue expansion of Black masculinity that the big screen has been crying out for. It’s about daring to be different, but mostly just yearning to be understood.

From the opening moments it is clear that The Extraordinary Miss Flower is the work of two artists utterly in command of their vision, and fully trusted and embraced by their collaborators.

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.

A woolly family caper with a nostalgic flavour, The Sheep Detectives conjures flattering comparisons with Babe.

At times, the film's lyrical drift shades into incoherence, spackled with globs of free-floating voiceover and Larry Clark-like indolent moments. It's both lovely and frustrating, at least until hard times lay bare the gulf between Skye's fractured family and the boys' more stable lives.

Refn has somehow found his way to an authentic English hard-man drama, anchored in a dynamite performance, even as it celebrates thug life.