It is at its most effective when honing in on the psychological and the social, looking at how easy it is for children – and adults – to find themselves in trouble.
Mikey’s night terrors become reality when his mother begins showing signs of demonic possession. What he’s about to experience will haunt him for the rest of his life and claim countless lives across generations.
Characters who belong to a fairy tale or folkloric world struggle to contain themselves in flesh, edged out by the existence of mere mortals who, despite their vulnerability, forever push them to the edges of the narrative.
An aspiring author gets more than she bargained for when she writes an article for the local paper about her small town’s dark history, prompting unwanted speculation on what monsters may lie within.
All attempts to document true crime could be informed by this.
In Pittsburgh in 2018, a white supremacist opened fire at the Tree of Life Synagogue in the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in American history. The survivors recount the harrowing experience and detail how their lives have fundamentally changed.
Matsuoka’s emotionally complicated performance anchors the film and keeps Yoshika interesting even at her most self-centred or self-abasing.
Life becomes complicated when a young woman who has clung onto her unspoken love for a high school classmate for ten years meets him again - just after she's met somebody else.
When the film focuses on the living over the undead it is at its strongest.
In the final days of WWI a shell-shocked soldier must lead a mission deep beneath the trenches of No Man’s Land to stop a German experiment that could turn the tide of the war. But the Germans have already lost control...
Despite the clichés that follow, director Orson Oblowitz does a good job of keeping viewers guessing, with some of the film's most shocking incidents coming out of the blue.
Two couples staying in a remote house have enough discomfort in one another's company before a stranger arrives on the scene - and that's just the beginning of their problems.
Definitely not for dabblers - but for those with more than a passing interest in the corruption and misogyny which, in part, led to Jair Bolsonaro's rise to power, it's compelling viewing.
Documentary following the impeachment proceedings against Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff.
This is a clean-cut, old school script that has no time for messy interludes or spare chat, but this is a feature film not a documentary and the polish adds pace.
Retelling of the conspiracy trial that occurred following protests at the 1968 Democratic Party Convention
Shot at night with scenes designed to look as if they're lit by torchlight, this is no small technical achievement.
Nine friends, each harbouring a dark secret, go camping in the woods. When they wake up with bombs strapped to their chests, they find themselves caught up in a deadly game.
Cambre uses physical space well to illustrate mental pressures or relief therefrom, and moves characters in and out of frame so that in busy scenes we're constantly being interrupted or having to look past people to see what's going on.
A lonely boy tries to cope with the weight of a family secret by imagining himself travelling to the moon.
In a filmic landscape littered with the lurching corpses of zombies and the emotional angst of vampires, it's refreshing to be presented with a mythology that is less familiar.
A group of student filmmakers get more than they bargained for when tangling with a man tasked with protecting Norway from giant trolls.
You are unlikely to see a better-looking film this year or a film that is more of its moment – but if you see this a few years hence, it will no doubt already have started looking as redundant as an Eighties arcade game.
Seven years after his mysterious disappearance, Kevin Flynn's son discovers his father is trapped in his own 'utopia'.
What really matters is the positive energy - from the scripting to the lively colour scheme, there's a sense of maximum fun being had by all concerned at all times.
A young girl founds a girl scout troop in a bid to win a NASA competition.
The science fiction elements of the film take a back seat for most of the running time in what is essentially a story about how people deal with extreme situations and with a sense of being cheated out of what they are due.
Astronaut twins go through a lot when one of them is contaminated with a mysterious residue from space.
The True Glory is an interesting and invaluable record, but its relentless progress towards an inevitable end and the repetitive sameness of much of the footage eventually begins to pall.
The last year of the Second World War, as witnessed by 700 frontline cameramen.
It may be one of the finest performances you see this year, and see it you should.
Born into a family of poor Irish immigrants, Ned grows into an angry young man, constantly at odds with colonial authority. Ruthless bush ranger Harry Power becomes a father figure/mentor as Kelly embraces his
destiny as gang leader, folk hero and legend.
True Lies might not be what many expect from James Cameron (given that it’s not thought-provoking or full of copious amounts of water) but it’s undoubtedly entertaining.
A secret agent comes to suspect his wife may also be leading a double life.
This is a sensuous plunge into a world that's built on simple pleasures.
In the secret forests of northern Italy, a dwindling group of joyful old men and their faithful dogs search for the world’s most expensive ingredient, the white Alba truffle. Their stories form a real-life fairy tale that celebrates human passion in a fragile land that seems forgotten in time.
Despite this period being so rich in potential subject matter, this admittedly handsomely mounted, nimble and quite funny film chooses to take a pretty much conventional ride to a victory-lap finish.
Story of the career of Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted in 1947.
In less sensitive hands than Kore-eda's, it could have come across as cloyingly introverted but instead there is wit and warmth in the observed relationship between the two women.
A reunion between a French cinema star and her daughter descends into confrontation.
He speaks of “sea bells”, in The Dry Salvages, bells we don’t hear. But we discern gulls instead.
In the shadow of the Second World War, performance of a poem is a searching examination of who and what we are. A journey into the imagination, bound by experience, memory and time.
The idea of different things being in and out of focus for the various generations runs through a film that has sweetly comic moments and poignancy in equal measure.
In a large house, friends and family meet for a dual ritual: it is the birthday of young father and painter Tona, but also a farewell ceremony.
Nesbitt is magnificent, letting us see the weight of all those years of regret and self-hatred but also the joy that comes from approaching life in a new way and helping somebody else gain confidence.
A ageing drag queen who has just received a terminal cancer diagnosis discovers a new love for life when he befriends a younger queen who is just starting out.
Making a movie about a suffering mother who cannot admit that her tether has snapped is a brave endeavor
The exhaustion of being a wife, mother and now having another baby is saved by a young, optimistic, attractive night nanny who loves everything, especially her job
Dvortsevoy shows us the fragility of life, through the birth and death of lambs, while also touching on the innate stoicism of families who live in this toughest of environments.
A man dreams of becoming a shepherd in the Kazakhstan steppe, but is there room for such dreams in the modern world?
