Fantastic Fest — A–Z of films

Whilst the film may appear chaotic, there’s real artistry behind the scenes, and not just when it comes to special effects.

Sofie Gråbøl is superb as the troubled Chana.

Plotting is kept fairly simple to leave room for the sprawling fights and some spectacular action set pieces.

Banshees is lifted by good performances, particularly from Keoghan and Condon, whose major scene together has a delicacy of emotion that is sharply at odds with the brute force McDonagh more generally employs.

The balance of subjectivity and object status becomes important in a story whose protagonists are always potentially dangerous to one another.

Shot in lush black and white with a depth and tonality which makes every frame look worthy of becoming an art print.

Park does it the hard way, building up a complex psychological and intellectual relationship in which sexual desire feels like an emergent characteristic rather than a starting point.

Part investigative thriller, part chilling horror film, Disappear Completely is brilliantly directed.

Cerezo and Gómez remind us that we are living through some of the strangest days our world has known right now.

A treat for the eyes, if not the ears.

An homage to truly bad film-making - but it sails perilously close to self-parody

While it's a road well-travelled, here it's a road travelled well.

It’s a wonderful experiment, and often very funny, but it is also, perhaps intentionally, exhausting.

This is less about the puzzle of who the murderer is... than about the way he slots into society and, after his arrest, is viewed by the public.

Wonderfully uncomfortable.

The big challenge here lies in attempting to do more than scratch the surface of a subject which keeps on offering up more possibilities.

Shows that escapist films can serve every bit as valid a purpose as anything else when it comes to uniting people.

The film is often more interesting as a study of privileged people’s beliefs than as a portrait of Charles himself.

A film full of great stories and packed with details which will fascinate fans.

The shark scenes may not be as dramatic or explicit as those in Jaws, but they feature far more real shark action.

While the choreography of all this is audacious, Hardiman is equally interested in dialogue. He loves an intricately worked sentence as much as a finely coiffed barnet.

This may become a cult movie.

Against this troubling backdrop, the killer seems less a disruptive influence and more an expression of widespread despair.

If you haven’t knowingly observed a narcissist before, this may well make for fascinating and, indeed, cautionary viewing.

Beautifully acted, the film by turns charms and repulses its audience, all the way to its abrupt and shocking ending.

Nvotová is well versed in the language of the horror film, and some scenes echo the early work of Neil Jordan, but go much further in their hallucinatory concatenation of the forest wild and the monstrous feminine.

Corduner is on exceptional form and imbues the early part of the film with warmth and hope.

It’s an anarchic mess – the sort of film the Joker himself might have made, and that’s part of its triumph.

Galán is extraordinary as the traumatised girl in a performance which requires a considerable amount of courage.

An all-action spectacular with some smart ideas which sustains itself surprisingly well over a full two hours.

Although multiple directors were involved, it maintains impressive consistency in both style and tone, each of them adding their own quirks and flourishes without anything jarring.

if you have ever enjoyed a kaiju film, you will love this.

The film is less about ambition or striving for success, as it’s about the fetishisation of that image of success, and how striving for the perfect image can destroy you.

There is a complete disregard for any kind of consequence or continuity in this film, and you know that the rug could be pulled from under you at any second.

What matters here is not so much the phenomenon itself, but the way that the characters become obsessed with it.

We can’t tell what’s supposed to be a product of the characters’ imaginations and what’s simply a consequence of the filmmakers not understanding their subject.

A thoughtful, offbeat film with the character of folklore.

Pleasingly disconcerting.

A roller-coaster of the effects of absolute power corrupting absolutely.

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.

A quirky yet moving character piece full of absurdist comedy, with an optimistic streak which is rare in cinema today.

A story which is, ultimately, about learning to think differently, to change the way that we direct our attention and resources in order to open up the possibility of renewal.

Unashamedly arty yet still packs an emotional punch.