Once upon a time, raw talent was enough to get your name in lights; as this look at the underside of showbiz reminds us, you also need to know how to sell it.

It’s defiantly cheesy and very hard to resist.

What elevates The Sky Turns beyond a lovely little elegy and into the realm of greatness is Álvarez's refusal to shape the film as a tragedy.

The film is often sentimental, sometimes brilliant as well as horrifying, and it is intriguing to speculate on what Buñuel, whom Trumbo originally wanted to direct, would have made of it.

The Big Picture is really Duris's picture; the actor toggles effortlessly between arrogant, feral, remorseful and ruthless as the plot throws one curveball after the next.

To be fair, the full impact probably depends on some prior Pasolini knowledge, but even those coming in fresh will appreciate a haunting portrait of an artist destroyed by the anticommunist prejudices he fought to tear down.

Some moments are so deliciously shivery-our heroes' breath condensing in the air like in John Carpenter's "The Thing"-that you wish the film were naughtier and less nice.

Alice’s often-hilarious journey of self-discovery drives the narrative forward, but even at a breezy 78 minutes, Yes, God, Yes sometimes feels like it’s spinning its wheels.

Both responding to and rebutting critics who dubbed its predecessor fascist, José Padilha's superior sequel to 2007's "Elite Squad" doubles down on the kill-'em-all rhetoric while placing its trigger-happy heroes in a larger context.

Girls Trip is so successful because it lets its cast of improvisers ease into a bond that feels bone-deep.

Dragonslayer captures the aimless, ad hoc nature of this young man's life, leaving open the question of whether Sandoval is a free spirit or simply a leech.

It could have a lot of sentimental mush, but with Jackson and Caine on this form, it’s a total heartbreaker.

The best thing you can say about the movie is that you couldn’t accuse it of being a sellout — nor would you think it was a Joe Swanberg movie.

At its best (which is often), director James Marsh’s affecting biopic of the cosmos-rattling astrophysicist Stephen Hawking plays deftly against schmaltz.

A brilliantly staged early scare signals that the safety rails are off and, despite an unexpected, last-minute swerve into the supernatural realm, the edge-of-the-seat tension is sustained to the very last second.

God bless their antics, but the Yes Men’s jestful jousting feels more like tilting at windmills

The director manages mostly to avoid the enormous maudlin pitfalls of his material, at least until the over-extended final scene. As usual with Eastwood, little is overstated - and the accent is on humour.

Newcomer Fonte is terrific in the lead role, communicating Marcello’s meek protests with a twitchy physicality that grows slowly into a sketchy defiance.

In his debut big-screen performance, the warm-hearted and witty Patel – like Aysha – steals the show.

Engaging tongue-in-cheek exploitation pic.

This disappointing dramatization, mounted with generic blandness by Jean-François Richet, makes no case for the man's larger significance, nor does any emotional digging at all. Such detachment was no doubt considered artistically shrewd-it's a big mistake.

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.

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.

His own worst enemy, Finkelstein has both trouble and tragic writ large on his brow.

Feeling anything in a DC Universe installment is, in itself, evidence of filmmaking that’s superheroic (that overall bluish-gray glumness is completely gone). So imagine the shock to also encounter a nuanced, funny script, a richly developed surrogate family, a visual appreciation of Philadelphia and its heroic Rocky iconography, and not one but two expert jokes involving a strip club.

Not by any means the masterpiece of fond memory or reputation, although the first twenty minutes are astonishingly fluid and brilliantly shot by Karl Freund, despite the intrusive painted backdrops.

The women's weepie angle gets to be a bit of a slog later on, but it is all wrapped up as a mesmerically glittering package by Rapper's direction, Sol Polito's camerawork, and Max Steiner's lushly romantic score.

From sombre Islamic prayers to café-touba-fuelled socialising, Banel & Adama is stitched beautifully together from the fabric of rural Senegalese traditions.