Abertoir — A–Z of films

Directing with confidence and misdirecting with grace, Paxton draws us into a world where the absence of apparent solutions becomes compelling in itself.

High concept films like this can easily go awry, but Makoto Ueda’s script somehow manages to stay on the ball throughout.

The film has that trademark combination of high artistic ambition and crude pornographic content, sometimes charming or am,using, sometimes repellent.

It touches on an underlying anxiety in British society as few other films have done.

Timely in its exploration of how we determine what’s real and how easy it is for what seems like legitimate research to become unbalanced and lead to strange places.

Running a tight 84 minutes, the film still feels like an epic journey into both its seedy world and its heroine’s psyche.

Handsome sets and costumes give the film a certain glamour that helps to obscure its weaknesses.

The sensitivity of Lee’s performance helps to draw out the ambiguities in Shelley’s work, and the moral complexities which, acknowledged or not, are a critical component of the story’s staying power.

Director Rueben Martell also makes great use of the snowy forest setting.

The way that director Lee Haven Jones frames male and female characters is intriguing, with classic gendered shots reversed.

One of the most impressive horror films of the silent era.

There were a lot of bad horror films made in this era but The Lift is in a different class, and loveably so.

Marvellously entertaining for all the wrong reasons.

Keating is a master of building up atmosphere and is much more interested in that than in conventional plot mechanics.

The sheer quantity of imitable violence in the film is likely to frighten censors around the world.

Drifting through the angst-ridden conversations of a classic New York drama before morphing into something more like giallo, the film makes a positive asset of its low production values, which give it a sense of freshness and urgency.

A beautifully self-contained, self-sufficient little film.

Esterhazy is showing us that she knows how to play the game by the old rules – before she subverts them.

If you're a fan of Three Stooges-style silent slapstick but wish it came with a lot more gore, then, Sweetie, you won't believe what a treat you are in for

The audience laughed at times that were not meant to be that kind of funny, a primate exhalation of surprise and relief.

This film is long overdue.

Blackshear pulls off quite a trick by giving us the impression that things are as bad as they can get and then delivering something still more devastating.

Rather than trying to establish a thesis of her own, Janisse allows her interviewees to deliver contradictory viewpoints on key issues, and the film is richer for it.