Glasgow Film Festival — A–Z of films

The young cast has a natural air that complements the unforced scripting, which brims with an enviable amount of casual humour.

As a story it falls apart because there is no one to root for.

By allowing a slow-build to his drama, he ensures we get a feel for the extended family dynamic before wrong-footing the characters and his audience with the suddeness and deftness of a heartbeat.

Akira was a step change in what animation could show.

Splendidly put together.

There are plenty of incendiary tensions to go round in Ajami, and they fuel one another in unexpected ways, as the personal and the political become horrifically confused.

While the pace may seem slow at times, the deliberate and considered consumption of all the little details that make up the couple’s life results in a more than satisfying pay-off towards the end.

American: The Bill Hicks Story provides us with a wonderful glimpse behind the curtain of performance and lets us see the sensitive, warm, patriotic and fiercely intelligent man we all suspected lay beneath the act.

A film where horror is evaded, elided or merely glimpsed sidelong – but is all the more horrific for that.

There are too many points when misjudged perspective snaps the viewer out of it.

No film by Herzog has ever been so defiantly mainstream – and yet at the same time this remains one of the director's craziest, most outlandish affairs.

There is no simple linear narrative. Beetle Queen is more like a poem, combining fragments of experience to show us something much more than the sum of its parts.

This is less a tale of exploitation than a portrait of isolated individuals still playing a game that long ago lost its meaning.

A gentle comedy that targets its jokes at environmentalists rather than the usual targets, with beautifully drawn characters you can't help but feel for.

Paul may in many ways be the ultimate ‘loser’ but he feels like a ‘winner’, so this becomes not just a study of obsession but of the essence of self-delusion and its importance in many people's lives.

As Ayse, Elif Bülbül is one of the cutest children to grace the screen for years, whilst Mehmet Bülbül delivers a subtle, multi-layered performance as her brother.

Sentimentality is rough hewn and barely sophisticated, given the storyline, but the performances are first rate.

In sheer entertainment terms this is Moore's best yet.

Rather than pursue a nationalist agenda, director Lu Chuan searches for humanity in all his characters, and all his characters are flawed.

This excellent documentary is almost as subversive as its subject.

Writer/director Richard Bracewell uses Andrew Hewitt's eerie soundtrack, darkness and dead space to produce a disjointed, slightly disturbing viewing experience.

Love may heal the wounds of adolescence, but emotional isolation is the prison from which these lost boys never escape.

The success of this film is in its attention to the sort of small human details that create the boundaries of our day to day worlds, the things we hang onto and use to define normality.

Don't read this review... simply go and see it, for if ever there was a film that is best experienced without knowing a single detail, this unforgettable oddity from Greece is the one.

By mixing the situations of a crime drama with dysfunctional family dynamics, the everyday becomes accentuated, meaning that outbreaks of violence are absurdly comic but still retain a nasty edge.

Some will find the apparently random nature of its early scenes so irritating that they'll just give up. But there will almost certainly be others who will consider this to be one of the best films they have ever seen.

Geoff's campaign is more interesting as an exploration of his own failings than as the insightful rockumentary it purports to be.

Every bit as quirky, engaging and rebellious as the artwork it aims to celebrate. Sadly, it also shares graffiti's tendency to be energetic but scattergun and ephemeral.

Particularly interesting in giving a voice to a generation of people who were children when it happened.

A controversial subject that is tackled as full on as is possible within the constraints of Israeli sensibility.

Director and co-scribe Christian Carion, adapting from Serguei Kostine’s book, smartly distills the global Cold War politicking into Froment and Grigoriev’s tense relationship.

It's an old story, but rarely has it been this appealingly told.

This haunting ghost story is an old-fashioned family film that will delight both kids and adults. S

The real pleasure of the film is in the non-stop parade of funny, well-observed scenes and killer lines of dialogue.

Because it is so self-consciously light, this film never quite has the impact it might have done, but it's still an interesting take on an unusual phenomenon.

Baumbach has now reached a point where he is parodying himself, yet he still doesn't seem to have found his own voice.

Wonderful performances abound.

The amount of creativity and ideas on display is astonishing.

All of the pieces fit together perfectly so that questions arise in the mind of the viewer exactly when they should, and little shifts of mood have unexpected consequences.

Concentrated insights (without any complicating distractions) into sex, family, the shifts in generations and the continuities of life.

I Am Love is social melodrama in the best traditions of Italian cinema.

There is nothing to temper all the teenage angst bullshit.

Works beautifully because of Hawks's eye for detail, a rattling good script and comic timing of the most relaxed kind.

The lesbian tag need not restrict heterosexual aficionados of human relationships.

Heavy handed, clunkily scripted and framed like an episode of Eastenders.

The real star here is creator Eromose.

A provocative and visually arresting giallo, with an eerily sensual atmosphere bubbling with sexual deviancy and decadence.

This is a film with a fine regard for detail, and it is neither mocking nor deferential.

A riot of slapstick humour, bizarre gadgetry, spectacular stunts and unlikely adventures.

Whilst the story is ultimately fairly straightforward thriller stuff, the things it has to say are anything but. It's also a stunningly beautiful, atmospheric piece of work.

It's a nonsense, but when the storytelling is this good it doesn't matter.

The chemisty is perfect. Although Bergman dominates by sheer force of character, Grant's cool persona slips effortlessly into her pocket.

The 'story' is somewhat simplistic, but the state-of-a-nation snapshot it allows to be revealed is complex and highly emotive.

A thoroughly disarming horse-fly-on-the-wall documentary.

A brilliant exercise in plotting, drama, comedy and action with a fitting denouement.

If you're a romance fan, take a big supply of tissues.

While one expects a strong environmental theme in a Miyazaki work, it has never before been so heavy handed and crude.

The acting lacks the raw feel from the first film.

One of the greatest works of art in cinematic history.

Just a bit too glossy to convince.

She, A Chinese is slow to build yet powerful throughout, its pumping Chinese pop music soundtrack hinting at the passion that simmers inside mild-faced Mei.

Gets much closer than its predecessors to capturing African viewpoints.

Rarely does cinema speak in the first person, and rarely is it so effective when doing so.

This movie has some of the strangest moments you’ll see on film this year.

Despite showing a lot of directorial potential, the film is let down somewhat by its story, as Thorne forgets that an audience, like the scouts, need to be prepared for plot developments if we are to fully accept them.

This is about the life-changing little things that happen to us all, which makes it all the more affecting.

There's almost a Blair Witch quality to this documentary - the naive young filmmakers suddenly out of their depth in a remote region where they've no idea where to turn for help.

The overall sense of menace the film seems to be aiming for never quite works the way it should.

An affecting portrait of rural life mixed with political thriller and toothy vampire tale.

An effective and well-made entertainment which slowly gets its hooks into you.

Heartwarming without being schmaltzy, funny and biting without being mean-spirited or slapstick and politically rousing without being the least bit po-faced.

An effectively twisty little thriller with enough action sequences to keep it on the right side of farce.

The film's scope is quite narrow but what it does, it does well.

Filippo Timi is excellent as the young, supremely egotistical Mussolini.

This is a shocking, visceral work. There are moments of humour, here and there, but it is the gallows laughing.

Seamlessly balances the scenes that made the band infamous, with the intimate moments and the atmosphere of an era.

Drew Barrymore's directorial debut blasts in some girls who just want to have fun - and you'll be happy to join them.

It has no plot, dialogue or characters, yet is completely entrancing for its entire duration.

Kate Cook as Margot is stunning.

The tale itself doesn't really hold together either logically or emotionally, at least not once we step outside the very particular rules of literary psychodrama.