Poekel keeps things natural, letting Noel's sadness slowly permeate the atmosphere along with the scent of pine needles rather than ringing it out at high volume.
A heartbroken Christmas tree salesman returns to New York, hoping to put the past year behind him.
Writer/director Joe Begos really knows how to tell a story, and against the odds, this film is a gift to jaded viewers.
It's Christmas Eve and Tori just wants to get drunk and party, but when a robotic Santa Claus at a nearby toy store goes haywire and begins a rampant killing spree through her small town, she's forced into a battle for survival.
The camera drifts through it at a leisurely pace, back and forth, up and down, taking in different details one might when wandering around drunk or half asleep. From these, story and meaning gradually coalesce.
A clan gathers for what could be their last Christmas together at their family home.
The real appeal of A Christmas Karen lies in the fact that there ain’t nothin’ like a dame, but US culture has never really seemed to know what to do with such women.
Karen is an entitled middle-aged woman whose demanding nature has alienated her neighbours and family. One Christmas Eve, she receives an 'intervention' from some unconventional spirits.
In this Christmas-Horror Anthology, a family's movie night on Christmas Eve is interrupted by a stranger, insistent on making the next Christmas 'classic' film himself.
Manages to impress through nifty direction on a relatively low budget, slow-burning performances from promising newcomers and a thoughtful, perceptive script.
Gaining superpowers exposes three friends to dangerous temptations.
It's true that Voyage Of The Dawn Treader - as with all CS Lewis books - lionises God in more ways than one, but Christians are not the sole proprietors of the moral lessons learned.
The Pevensie children and their brattish cousin Eustace are whisked back to Narnia on a quest.
While tolerance levels for this kind of self-consciously arty style will vary, it is hard to fault the fizzing ambition and high-voltage energy that K-Stew and her team bring to the party.
A troubled young woman escapes an abusive childhood, family tragedy and addiction issues by slowly finding her creative voice as a writer.
There's some intelligent drama here structured around intersectional issues, which manages to show, at least to an extent, where lesser films only tell.
A young man is forced to face past traumas when he embarks on a new relationship.
The director drops her audience into the lives of these two women and lets the rhythm of their lives guide the narrative.
A woman whose marriage is crumbling and is struggling to care for her ageing parents has an encounter with a single mother that leads to an unexpected bond.
McAlpine is so eager that we experience the same sense of joy that she is that she over-editorialises, offering voice-over observations that are more distracting than deep.
A documentary about the sky above the Andes and the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, and those who live under it.
A stunningly realised piece of magical realism quite different from anything that writer/director Alberto Sciamma has created before.
How far would you go to reach heaven? Santa, a young indigenous girl, embarks on a rollercoaster journey to take her mother out of a life of hardship and into eternal paradise.
Lucrecia Martel's debut as writer/director captures the many layered character of the Argentinian upper-class so perfectly that explanatory scenes would appear bourgeois in their desire to tidy the place up a bit.
A long hot summer on Argentinian estate for dysfunctional extended family.
What the film does have going for it is Natasha Henstridge as a fairy godmother who genuinely seems to have sidhe blood.
Cinderella is pushed too far by her evil stepsisters and stepmother, which causes her to switch out her glass shoes and use the assistance of her Fairy Godmother to seek bloody vengeance.
Some of the animation here is beautiful, especially when we're in watery spaces with things floating around.
The daughter of a brilliant builder betrayed by those close to him finds herself in deadly danger as she reaches the brink of adolescence under the watching eyes of her cruel stepmother and the local mafia.
It ain’t Citizen Kane, but equally it’s a notch or two above the legions of Z-grade schlockers that Hammer was already beginning to churn out at the time and which proliferated as the Sixties swung on.
A deranged plastic surgeon transforms disfigured prostitutes in a circus - but leaving the ring could prove deadly.
In many respects it resembles a Cold War thriller, but set under the Manchu dynasty in the 17th Century with all the trappings of classic wuxia.
A woman undertakes a dangerous journey to join her comrade in Dragon City, a military base controlled by the Jin regime, to find a map showing the deployment of the resistance army against the northern invaders.
Wiseman has stuck around to the point where people forget that he's there, so we see people as they habitually present themselves to one another, rather than more self-conscious performances.
A look at Boston's city government, covering racial justice, housing, climate action, and more.
It lays the emotion on so thickly that now, at a distance from the death, it begins to feel uncomfortably hagiographic. It's a relief when speakers recall snippets of Ali's humour, always essential to keeping the rest in proportion.
A documentary about Muhammad Ali's funeral and what he meant to the people of his home town, Louisville, Kentucky
A living portrait of youth rage and criminality within an anarchic structure, where law is the enemy and corruption the currency. God doesn't live here; neither does hope.
There are some truly horrific stories here, including several involving the rape of children, and some viewers will consequently find the film too distressing to watch. Its overall message, however, is one of empowerment and self-realisation.
A chronicle of resilience as female survivors of violence create a revolutionary community in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
City Of The Living Dead lacks the sophistication of Fulci's later films about Hell, coming across as significantly more camp, but it still has plenty going for it.
After a psychic has a disturbing vision, she and her reporter friend race to rescue the inhabitants of a town where a priest's suicide has released a terrible evil.
Purev-Ochir gives a sense of the pressures the younger generation are under through their experience in the classroom, with a tacit implication that Ze’s struggles are reflecting a spirit of a nation.
A teenage shaman finds his life shifting after he meets a girl.
This is a considered film, a triumph, there are few like it and more's the pity.
The story of a mother whose teenage daughter is kidnapped in Northern Mexico. When the authorities offer no support in the search, she takes matters into her own hands and transforms from housewife into a vengeful militant.
The comedy banter of the film’s middle stretch gradually gives way to anxiety, aggravation and despair, until we reach one of the darkest endings of any film in recent years.
A misanthropic, struggling photographer just wants to watch TV and eat candy while his wife is out of town, but when a desperate old pal resurfaces, his plans are thwarted, with spooky consequences.
I think that Civil War succeeds but I'm still not sure what it's hoping to say.
A journey across a dystopian future America, following a team of military-embedded journalists as they race against time to reach DC before rebel factions descend upon the White House.
News and features
News & Features
Going ape
Antonin Niclass on character creation, empathy and animated short Into The Forest
Freeform
Will Niava on grief, new immigrant experiences and Jazz Infernal
In silence
Emir Kumova on child marriage in Türkiye, moral challenges and making The Witness
