Edinburgh International Film Festival — A–Z of films

Garland needs to get back to the drawing board and look up the term 'character development' in his notes.

The first thing that will strike you is how absolutely lush it is visually; the pastel landscape is utterly iridescent by day, and star-dusted luminous by night.

Somewhere a story of love and courage lies buried beneath the silt of mediocrity.

A paean to the American dream of self-determination that many Americans have never learnt how to aspire to.

Undeniably well put together at all levels.

There simply is not enough going on plotwise, even if it is a reasonably fascinating psychological study.

Angels Crest has a number of peripheral problems, mostly to do with the sheer number of under-developed characters and subplots.

That they make such a fascinating pair is down to Delaporte's spare but beautifully observed script, and the brilliantly understated performances by Clotilde Hesme and Gregory Gadebois.

Purposefully constructed, and to this point well-made.

The film appears to have had a long and somewhat troubled genesis of its own.

Silver offers no easy way out of his moral maze, just an unflinching look at conflict and its impact both on the perpetrators and those who watch.

Touching but never mawkish and with a steely point to make.

We see the battlefield medics at work in handheld, single camera setups.

This is a tough but beautiful landscape and it has bred tough but beautiful people as director Alma Har'el's film goes on to elegantly illustrate.

A riveting film with a huge amount of depth and a brilliantly deceptive narrative.

What's left for those who don't share intimate knowledge of a South Korean schoolboy's mind?

Intriguing, funny, and sad.

Seems to offer very little in the continuing battle to convince those who still need convincing.

It's a powerful concept that isn't really done full justice.

Despite appealing leads and the subtle creepiness of the escalating phone-calls, director Matthew Parkhill can't make the pieces fit, leaving the audience hanging in frustration rather than in suspense.

An extraordinary achievement - certainly one of the best films of the year.

Lucy Walker's chilling documentary serves as a reminder that the threat of a nuclear bomb going off somewhere in the world to devastating effect has not diminished just because it has slipped from the public consciousness.

The film is aptly photographed, with dingy lighting and somewhat inventive setups.

Alterman's camera languidly soaks up the landscape, lingering long enough so that we can appreciate both the beauty of the setting and the surprising dialogue created between it and Christiaan's artwork.

Ron Howard directs without flair, but with respect for the source material.

The film's strongest suit is, somewhat surprisingly, its rich vein of gallows humour.

The film mixes testimony from surgeons, neurological scientists, patients and computer graphics to draw a complex, interesting layman study of the human mind as a physical entity.

It showcases Spielberg's gifts for light comedy, spectacle, and fairy tale celuloid sorcery.

It struck such a chord in Brazil last year that it quickly became the biggest selling movie of all time.

A deeply derivative string of spew-inducing Inciting Incidents and plot contrivances aiming for the weakest in rom and com.

Not so much leftovers reheated as new twists on old classics.

Dean Stalham's script is nicely paced, touching, and Nele Hecht's direction catches plenty of nuance in the cast's performances.

The plot is thin... but the highly choreographed songs make up for it big-style.

McDonagh takes what could be a hackneyed tale of mismatched buddy cops and spins it to blisteringly funny effect.

If the truth of Her Majesty's Pleasure is a kick in the balls, or a blade in the back, you may be excused for thinking that you have been here before.

Ali Samadi Ahadi paints a poetic and heartfelt portrait of a nation oppressed.

The mysteries are infinite.

The photography is sumptuous throughout - we often forget that this is a documentary, such is the quality of the footage.

This is an excellent film, rewarding audiences with a slowly crystallising sense of dread.

For all the subtlety in Alexander Stewart's script and the confidence of Henry Darke's direction it is Tyson and Dobson who make the film.

Seems to convert someone else's memories to someone else's acid flashbacks.

It is as though Glaudini expects character tics to substitute for plot development.

Frequent languid pacing and an occasional tendency to rehash similar points and stories lends the film a roughshod quality. Technically it's excellent.

This is a relationship drama, simple and direct. It’s well-acted and the script speaks volumes and none of it appears lost in translation.

Holst's film takes on a truly tragic tone that some will find too much to handle, but it's a massively engaging effort that should reward those that stick out its hefty running time.

The more knowledge of and interest in L.A. Raeven you bring to this film, the more you are likely to get out of it.

Given how well they've already done, the notion of 'making it' seems a bit moot for this lot.

This carefully crafted and wonderfully edited documentary stands as a warm and absorbing tribute to Tanja Liedtke's work, her impact on the dance scene around her and as a testimony to the joys of creativity itself.

The Last Circus is worth a watch for the unbridled imagination on display but ultimately it falls apart as much as its main protagonist.

The 3D genuinely adds a layer of freshness to the experience, right from the opening frames when we fly into the heart of the film with Zazu, and the immersive effect makes you reconsider and appreciate the exquisite hand-drawn animation all the more.

Manages to do justice to Makeba’s wonderful talent and noble activism.

Fails to do anything that hasn’t been done before or better.

John Williams' direction is good, managing to make stage magic look like stage magic while using screen magic to make photographs come alive.

Mamma Mia! is a roller coaster of emotion, careering colourfully from the blue waters of the Adriatic.

There are great debates about what the best children’s film of all time is, but Mary Poppins surely has to be a strong contender.

A complex thriller, deftly handled.

The performances are predicated upon an excellent script.

Martin's approach, which skilfully avoids melodrama and keeps a respectful distance from her subject, is complemented by Guylaine Tremblay's finely nuanced central performance.

Connolly and Raymond capture both the pressure and exhilaration of practice and performance and include plenty of footage of the teenagers simply going about the process of growing up and learning to work together.

It may be a little rough around the edges but there is plenty here to commend.

The film quietly and confidently draws us in to the lives of one particular family of shepherds, and their ordinary struggle for survival.

Redford, and cinematographer Antonio Calvache, do an excellent job of subtly playing with the audience’s nerves.

Never becomes truly immersive.

Anarchic humour morphs into madness, coupled with racist overtones and a disregard for sensibility.

The intrigue feels under-cooked and the subject matter is yesterday's news, robbing an admirably action-free mystery of much of its impact.

Thanks to the general levels of intelligence evident behind and in front of the camera, it works far more often than not.

If photographs are infinitesimally small slices of time captured, the movies give us that additional dimensionality that turns them into real, living and breathing people.

A gripping and emotionally affecting consideration of the casual evils that men do.

There's an awareness here that's missing from many such tales, a more astute take on how disability and society interact.

A thorough and provocative portrait.

Everson's non-technique may hold a harsh mirror up to our implicit involvement in his subject's plight, but his approach quickly becomes disheartening.

The script is knowing, loving and amusingly toys with the genre.

Robots has a glittering voice cast and astonishing CGI animation and yet is over endowed with too much of this, too much of that and too much of everything.

Demonstrates what an action movie ought to be.

This is at times quite uncomfortable viewing, intimate, neatly demonstrating the barriers that can be created for and by people in their lives.

The movie also has much to say about this none-too-subtle take on voyeurism, and the nature of unexpurgated creativity uninhibited by copyright.

What's so clever about the chattering classes when you've got this?

Hilarious throughout.

This is career-breaking stuff for Black.

An instant classic and far too good for children.

This is possibly the raciest picture ever to get a U-rating.

Won't set the box office alight but has plenty of atmosphere and imagination to commend it.

A complex of narrative symmetry and existential ennui pointing to something far more resonant than the sum of its parts.

Looks lovely but fails to come up with the emotional goods.

The film is crammed full of archive footage, talking heads and some cracking music.

James Cameron's masterpiece. A lean, brooding, violent and unforgettable experience from a director hungry for success.

Sciamma's capturing of children at play is disarmingly accurate, perfectly showing the freewheeling nature of prepubescence in all its glory.

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.

What began as arty-looking cinema, backed up by good performances, is let down by weak plot development.

This is a film where the absence of action is the point, as it plays out like a joke-shorn version of Beckett's Waiting For Godot.

The shame is that there’s the potential for a good film in here.

Commentators have dismissed Mackendrick's comedy about the islanders of Todday as stereotypical, patronising and tame, but it is outrageously funny and highly subversive.

Exquisite.