Inane dialogue, extraneous scenes and wooden performances make for an experience that's less edge-of-your-seat than one very long, amateur hour and a half.

For those of us with a love of actorly indulgence, though, the film is a treasure trove, filled with enough molten-gold performances to gild a thousand Oscars.

What was Clint thinking? (Or Martin Scorsese, when he made "Shutter Island," for that matter.)

Strikingly picturesque locations and a terrific ensemble cast help this tonally inconsistent adaptation of Posy Simmonds's comic series pass by with relative ease, though it leaves a very peculiar aftertaste.

This stilted but oddly compelling Milwaukee-based throwback to Me Decade cheapies pays homage to the entire spectrum of '70s exploitation cinema, from the mucky Super-8 to the copious nudity.

All ye searching for Primal Fear redux, abandon hope. The character-driven drama he (Curran) offers viewers instead is something far more complex, cracked and unique for an American movie boasting big-name stars: an unblinking glare into the abyss.

Even those that have acquired a taste for Green's rigorous, super-ascetic aesthetic may find this French drama about a starlet (Baldaque) to be almost as bare as it is spare.

Despite a schmaltzy original score and some clunky direction, the film's well-portrayed characters and spot-on depiction of the scene make this a pleasant enough romp.

A distinctly shameless and shoddily made family comedy.

While never uproarious, Punching the Clown exudes the clever, warped sincerity of its star, eschewing uppercuts for a series of playful jabs.

Pillion starts as it means to go on; aligning its oddly innocent nature with extreme, hardcore imagery, and managing to give screwball humour an emotional gravitas.

Japanese superstar-in-the-making Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s (Drive My Car) latest film is a touching ecological parable full of little feints and narrative red herrings. Just when you think it’s heading in one direction, it slips off elsewhere, like a fawn in the woods.

Langley has a tough time persuading people to care as much about Richard III as she does, and so does this film.

Any film that can combine questions of mortality with funny, fully alive scenes of sex, social awkwardness, professional screw-ups and throwaway fun is a rich one. Its brilliant, full-on performance from Reinsve deserves to be celebrated far and wide.

A hallucinatory, claustrophobic examination of the secret potency of film itself, it enters the disorienting world of a young film-maker who discovers his camera has a feature he'd never imagined. Taking one right back to those great '70s mood-movies, it's a singular treat. [05 Nov 2003, p.97]

It’s an old cliché about biopics that if the story wasn’t true, you probably wouldn’t believe it. The Keeper takes it a step further: you know it’s true and you still don’t believe it.

If a subplot showing Orwell writing ‘Animal Farm’ as he becomes persuaded by Jones’s evidence doesn’t entirely work, there’s plenty in this thoughtful journalism drama that does. And not a single scene in a car park.

The riskiness of [Jenkins'] set-up, one that blooms with complications and rawness, is a thing of adventurous beauty. Her film is a gift to those people who discretely flinch at every dinner party and kid-celebratory anecdote.

Eighth Grade is lovely work, lifted up by a timeless piece of indie wisdom: Keep it real, as cringe-inducing as that can be.

A harrowing story of unthinkable family tragedy that veers into the realm of the supernatural, Hereditary takes its place as a new generation's The Exorcist—for some, it will spin heads even more savagely.

It's a bold, significant piece of work: an investigative thriller with a grave finale that stuns you into silence, then, hopefully, something more.

The likeable and graceful Chan directs, sings and performs jaw-dropping stunts. Few of his American or Austrian rivals attempt a fraction of that.

Moral inquiry, wry comedy and sheer cinematic poetry make for a film whose modest form conceals a sharp mind and a wonderfully generous heart.

World on a Wire is the discovery of the season, rarely screened in America but very much a key chapter in Fassbinder's story--a step toward bigger budgets and slicker production values, yet clarifying of his core artistic legacy.

It's the casting, stupid!

Though it runs an epic five-and-a-half hours (it was made for French TV), Carlos books like no film since "Goodfellas." You will not be bored, ever.

This muted mobster story reminds us that the ties that bind can also gag you, garrote you and slowly deaden your soul.

And by the time Thornton has deftly flipped the script regarding the titular Biblical parable's misogyny, you'll feel as if Aussie cinema has indeed discovered its next great voice.