Locarno Film Festival — A–Z of films

It's a far more interesting movie to think about than to watch.

Doesn’t just reflect the reality of modern Ireland but actively embraces it when it makes its presence felt.

A serviceable thriller with a good bit more soul than most.

Payne's premise resembles a dare: How can I make you care for a person who looks and acts like this? He works the Disney device of love at first sight in reverse.

As an exercise in world building, Zünd nails a vibe of general otherworldliness.

Somewhere between the low brow cock jokes and the high stakes – by which, I mean the sharp wooden pointy ones – Radu Jude serves up a sharp edged critique of populism, capitalism and the modern world.

The blurry, hazy images recorded entirely on a discontinued Sony Ericsson cellphone – frequently in long takes – make it a hardly digestible slow cinema challenge, yet rewarding as an aesthetic experience.

The Fallen Idol is overshadowed by Reed and Greene's The Third Man but is in many ways a precursor for the later film, not least in visual terms.

An extremely unnerving viewing experience

As you would expect with actors of this calibre, there are some delightful sequences where the two leads display their acute comic timing by playing off each other.

Hell Drivers is a gem.

A visually inventive watch even if it is going over familiar turf

The takes are usually long and static, but every cut and move is justified for the purpose of dramaturgy.

The pace is deliberately slow to give time for these fears and passions to settle in a civilised way.

Rivers' dreamlike approach has the quality of memory in places, full of figments and fragments, although that inevitably means some episodes are more engaging than others.

It is described simply as “A Fable”, but there is nothing simple about this over-ambitious allegorical sprawl.

When the twist, or better said, something actually resembling a plot, arrives, it is too late and the mechanics of it are too illogical, while the ending comes abruptly.

The memories have the vibrant immediacy of teenage energy and are treated by Hadjithomas and her co-director Khalil Joreige in the same spirited fashion.

Shot in squared off 1.85:1 ratio – except for a handful of ‘world expanding’ moments – the choice is fitting for the intensity of the children’s gaze.

The film has style, created as much by Max Greene’s atmospheric camerawork as Widmark’s bravura acting.

Behind the surface simplicity of a father and son road trip lurks a sharp and bitter-sweet odyssey with a strong sense of satire.

This neatly packaged film noir is proof that you don't need violence to create tension.

Even if almost all of Johnny's journey into darkness takes place on foot, only his first steps are truly pedestrian.

Every performance in this film is spot on.

Peeping Tom is a film all about watching and identification, a film whose real horror hinges on the way it implicates the audience in its dark voyeurism.

Constantly inventive and packed full of things you shouldn't try at home.

Project A is a film which plays to its strengths, delivers what is expected and will not disappoint fans of its star or his genre.

Offers a savage anthem to doomed youth.

What marks Trier out is his ability to take on intellectual ideas like this but make them play out in ways that don’t feel forced or overly constructed.

A masterpiece of horror cinema, it features a bleak atmosphere, striking visuals, frenzied performances, and an utterly unshakable, creeping sense of dread.

Jenni Kivistö and Jussi Rastas take an appropriately balletic approach to the life of contemporary dance choreographer Sibiry Konate.

Silent Light is a powerful, technically excellent piece of cinema.

While Simon and Laura may predict the reality TV genre, its take on it can't really be called prescient or telling.

Askevold’s refusal to offer easy answers is compelling.

The summer-winter dynamic may lean a tad on the obvious side, but the structure primes us to meditate on the way friendships form during different stages of life, and which lives they’re most likely to change.

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