Edinburgh International Film Festival — A–Z of films

The long wordless opening of 2001 remains one of the most beautiful sequences on film.

What makes About A Boy so refreshing is the surprise factor - surprisingly funny, surprisingly unsentimental, surprisingly enjoyable.

Through it all Yasuda brings an excellent game.

Charm' is just one of the words, and others like 'winsome' are right there - it manages this without ever feeling forced, without ever feeling twee - and that makes it a triumph.

Nölle's greatest achievement is to keep the magic realist realm firmly anchored to the real so that reality feels touched by imagination rather than smothered by it.

Light, almost ethereal, despite the weight of its subject matter.

Fonda's resolutely straight-faced performance makes Barbarella a character who can charm you with more than just her physical assets.

Any dedicated film fan would be poorer for overlooking this comic gem.

Betty Blue is a film that hurls itself into being, brash and unbridled and now.

The Big Blue is pure cinéma du look.

It isn't doing anything new, but it does do it well, and entertainingly.

This energetic film has a lot to recommend it, not least the way music is juxtaposed with action.

So much depends on Freya Park's performance as Tasha. She achieves something many young actors would be afraid to try.

Simply rendered and very effective.

Cements Shashank Arora - so good in gritty drama Titli and demonstrating sharp comic timing here - as an up-and-coming Indian star to look out for.

This is how Brakes comes across. Cynical and homemade.

Though it is Cox's turn that grabs, it is Konig's that delights.

A beautifully crafted piece.

After all, what’s so sinister about reading Aesop’s Fables? Everything and nothing, Corbet suggests.

The film does entertain, even excite at times, but it never creates a sustained atmosphere of dread.

The film plays on its clever concept, forgetting that its audience wants the agony to end and the action to begin.

John Phillip Law is a bit wooden in the central role, though, like Roger Moore as Bond, he compensates by doing one particular expression really well.

Despite the confusion there is a tremor of excitement that never goes away.

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

What should have been a chamber piece for veteran writer/director Jean-Paul Rappeneau turns out to be a racer, neither in control nor out of breath.

It's worth noting that making a genre film is no excuse for crafting a female character this depressingly weak.

For those who are living with a 19th century idea of what art is, dismissing fashion as trivial and frivolous, Bolton counters that sometimes "fashion is easier to understand than language itself."

Max Von Sydow's magnificent Emperor Ming is a template against which all future alien rulers have had to measure up.

Balance is the thing and Stanton and MacLane know when to use a well-timed piece of slapstick or visual gag to cut through sentiment.

The physicality and fluidity of adolesence are brought to the fore by Anna Rose Holmer in her tightly directed debut feature that avoids the bear traps of American coming-of-age cliche to offer a classy, thoughtful character study.

Everything here is sincerely meant but Gobadi struggles to make the stories fit together in any meaningful way, with the scripting paradoxically too loose for most of the film and then suddenly far too on the nose.

The film is enjoyable enough, but unfortunately Kiefer Sutherland is not Alan Ladd.

An underdog story with bite, and a hymn to the equality movements of the 20th Century.

A film that is confident in visiting the past not only as flashbacks but as repercussions, relations, revelations.

Highlander cannot be faulted for its boldness, trying to reinvent the genre by dragging it kicking and screaming into the modern age.

Taika Waititi knows growing up isn't child's play but he also respects childhood as a place of adventure, where spontaneity rules and the possibilities are only limited by imagination.

Unfolds as an epic poem in which the fiction alternates with documentary inserts and strange, dreamlike hallucinations.

Overall, this is more miss than hit, but there are some nice ideas that will appeal to genre fans.

What happened here? Where did all the people go? This question might be asked as much of the settings as of the story they create.

The Islands And The Whales knows when to be small, and its intimate portraits of day to day life illustrate how the monumental intersects with the personal.

This is a much more confident and relaxed film than Lilti's previous, showing more faith in characters and less need for dramatic incident.

A technically accomplished portrait of aging and an individual.

Ryan is never less than sincere but fails to penetrate the heart of the matter.

A confident and assured portrayal of a distinct lack of confidence and assurance.

The territory feels familiar and the high cliche level holds this thriller back from being as gripping as it should

What might easily have been a dry historical drama is delivered as a gripping action film complete with brutal battles and inventive chase scenes.

The film could be called "old fashioned" but that is rarely a bad thing.

What remains true now, as it was then, is the scale and scope of the thing.

Misumi employs a vibrant colour palette, making particularly striking use of red, from silk robes to gushing blood.

This is like finding old photos in the cupboard, being prompted to remember.

An inventive and carefully worked short that has strength in being left open for you to draw your own conclusions.

There is smoke, there is a cauldron, there is an altar of sorts and there is a not very Grand Wizard who looks like someone who has crawled out from inside a bin lorry.

At the midway point, the screenplay begins to flap about all over the place but Smoczynska's firm, high-energy directing - including an extras-laden shopping centre extravaganza - doesn't stop to let you consider them for too long.

The film is strongest when it is being visually and aurally adventurous.

Director Rebecca Miller gets terrific performances out of an admittedly terrific cast.

The film has an intensity that creates its own tension.

There's little that's really unusual about this tale, but it's beautifully put together.

Reda's attitude is a testimony to resilience and aspiration even in the direst circumstances but also heartbreaking.

Good, entertaining, verging at times on the self-indulgent.

This is a sweet little film about the dangers of caring too much.

Bowie and Sakamoto acquit themselves well, their otherworldly appearance and rougher edges in acting ability feel quite appropriate for the characters they are playing - outsiders.

When you're watching a film for the wallpaper you know you're in trouble.

Monkey Love Experiments uses a multitude of techniques to good effect.

A really enjoyable piece of Celtic cinema.

Luna wallows in emotional gloom like a pig in mud, coating the script in a layer after layer of regret to little purpose.

Gull has a keen eye for nature, beautifully captured by cinematographer Susanne Salavati.

Simpson has a particularly good eye for landscape and colour.

The techniques Besson uses are are simple and easy to understand. They are blended together with finesse.

The film... shows talent and ingenuity.

What the film lacks in allegorical subtlety it makes up for in depth of emotion.

A thrillingly cinematic film.

Female freedom runs like gusts of wind through hair in Leena Yadav's Parched - refreshing and vital yet easily stilled.

Despite the considerable talents of the two leads it all ends up feeling rather flat.

A fine, observant comedy from a young director who takes chances that pay off and who, like his two main characters, has plenty of potential.

The stills don't do it justice, movement is the thing.

There are moments of brilliance but also points where Tati simply lays on everything too thick.

This isn't just about how the opinions of others shape us but the "male gaze in my head" and how much our desire to conform comes from within, driven by some amorphous set of rules and a cycle of expectations and reinforcement.

River carries the viewer along at a thundering pace as deeper currents gradually find their way to the surface.

Our sympathies are torn and turned on a dime.

The directing duo show a sensibility for wider rural issues that mourns the loss of more than just one person.

Henry Coombes' film contains some highly entertaining banter.

One of the strongest zombie films for years.

What marks her film out is a graceful empathy that helps us feel at least a little of what Ana is going through as well as see it.

If something like Sixty Six were 10 minutes long and repeated on a continuous loop it might have a chance with the Turner prize.

What marks Rúnarsson's film out from so many similar coming-of-age films, however, is its strong sense of place and the inner strength of his central character.

It is about the counterpointing of the popular with the stuffiness of well respected art, the harsh cold fluorescent light of the Metro station with the more humane darkness of the interconnecting conduits and forgotten spaces.

Froggatt and Riley... give finely calibrated performances that make you believe not just in the couple's current predicament but in the strength of their bond.

Mid-life crisis has rarely felt so queasy as it does in Argyris Papadimitropoulos' character study, which features humour so dark you can feel it closing in around you.

This is not a film. It is an endurance test.

Tiger Raid is great.

The somewhat uneven performances and machine-translator dubbed dialogue add to the sense of ramshackle charm.

The film rattles along at a fair pace, peppered with gentle warmth and good humour.

This film does much well but little new.

Its comedy leaps barricades.

Itani's film asks more questions than it answers. She sets herself an impossible task, the sharing of memories, shuffling through darkness to find a familiar pain and then release it.

This particular malt is a wee charmer in its own right.

It is a comic thriller that is not particularly comic nor particularly thrilling.

The honesty and simplicity of this picture were then indicative of talent.

Good documentary finds an interesting story or is interestingly told - great documentary does both, and Zero Days is that.