London Film Festival — A–Z of films

Two things that save this cowp of a film from utter banality are the cinematography, which is technically competent, and the quality of the actors and their performances.

Like several genre-splicing and convention-lampooning comedies of late, the film tries to have its cake and eat it, but this can leave both sides of the recipe feeling half-baked.

Las Acacias is a slow subtle film which focuses on the interaction of the three main characters within the bubble of the truck's cab.

If Emmerich doesn't quite hit all his targets dead-on, he should at least be commended for trying to take his career and chosen genre down a less obvious route while remaining crowd-pleasing.

I cannot remember the last time a film made me cry and laugh out loud half a minute later, especially not in public. The Artist did that.

A film that represents a transgressive broadside against every value held dear in Bollywood.

The Awakening is a film that will keep you guesing as multiple possible solutions to its puzzles appear and disappear.

Complex ideas are brought out in part through a brilliant script, in part through brilliant direction.

Doolan does a good job of distilling an incredibly complex period of history down to a manageable length.

Like the man after whom it is named, is joyously camp and colourful, and not a little eccentric – even unhinged.

The film effectively outlines a very worrying situation.

Unfortunately, the strong performances and engaging visuals come together to form a film that ultimately seems to lack direction.

Unlike many of his other films where there are underlying touches of humor, Polanski plays this one more as a straight comedy.

Movement is everywhere, from the shadows playing on the characters' faces to the grace with which they move through the city of Paris.

The film also looks great, with a rich and varied colour palette and costume array, plus crisp camerawork from Barry Ackroyd combined with nifty editing.

The two central performances – Vianello’s bewildered, sensitive, lonely young girl and Cantalupo’s harassed moral inadequate – are pitch-perfect.

Without any constraints of time or budget, and no need to impose any narrative on their musings, the result is often vague, undefined and verging on the pretentious.

This alien landscape, shot wide by the Swiss filmmaker with an outsider's eye for the dustily hyperreal, is teeming with strange life and even stranger stories.

Keira Knightley... will be tough to beat at next year's Academy Awards for her portrayal of Spielrein

The plot’s undoubtedly secondary to the characters, and once again Solondz has drawn a gallery of very recognisable and very flawed human beings.

Rachel Weisz makes it her own, delivering a powerful, raw performance that is undoubtedly Oscar material.

In truth, although the story sets up Dendera in contrast to the traditional male norm, there’s little new empowerment or deeper understanding gained.

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.

Patterson’s undoubtedly got the confidence of these rad dudes, creating the feel of a genuine dispatch from another tribe.

In a sense this is more about how people perceive the dead - or even the living - than about the realities of its ostensible subject's existence.

Petzold exposes the social machinations behind the seemingly simple love stories.

The fantastic interrupts the profane.

After seeing three films in and around the small town of Dreileben, the landscape has become familiar and inescapable.

Breathtakingly ambitious, exquisitely realised and performed and made under extreme circumstances, Les Enfants Du Paradis is an absolute joy to behold and a monument to the power of the arts to transcend opressive social and political climates.

The film has a better narrative flow than their earlier movies, although some of the gags inevitably work better than others.

The initially breezy tone of the comedy gives way to a depiction of calculated cruelty monstrously vicious enough almost to qualify as horror, human enough to count as tragedy and nuanced enough to face viewers with a most unusual kind of dilemma, part in

The screenplay deservedly won a Silver Bear at last year’s Berlin Film Festival, taking the audience to the heart of a culture at once markedly different and universally familiar.

The Future starts off eccentrically enough, before descending into unbridled zaniness, all to the feyly plangent strains of Jon Brion's score.

Whenever the three kids are together and, basically, bullshitting and fooling around the way teenage boys do, the film works like a charm.

It is the black comedy that is the real surprise, rescuing Headhunters from both Norwegian dourness and Tinseltown blandness.

Hara-kiri: Death Of A Samurai is in fact a lesson in artful restraint, slowly and deliberately building to its violent conclusion with a multi-layered narrative of flashback and counter-flashback.

The couple's love of old Soviet style filmmaking techniques manifests gloriously in images that charm and delight.

Despite the good dialogue the script is lacking depth.

As Martin walks to and fro from urban settings to the Edenic countryside, Weingartner's film also seems to meander, and to drift a little too close to the sentimental – until a twist comes that forces the viewer to re-evaluate everything that has gone bef

An intriguing if uneven journey into a strange, violent and very sad part of modern America.

Hirokazu Koreeda's childhood adventure is a sweet and subtle tale of friendship, generosity of spirit and the triumph of hope over expectation.

Italy is the classical home of the diabolical morality tale, and beneath all the sophisticated modern trappings that's exactly what we have here.

It is a striking audiovisual style which rescues this production from many of the more hackneyed tropes of British social realism and urban grit.

In a world where everyone seems so lost, The Kid With A Bike will help you find your humanity again.

Comedy aside, the story hinges on cunning plans and double bluffs that, when they work, are very effective indeed.

The implausibilities pile up to a ludicrous extent and by the time the climax arrived I’m afraid I’d ceased to care what happened to any of them.

Offers plenty of uncomfortably familiar observations for anyone engaged in a relationship that is either long-distance, or just long-term.

The Loneliest Planet spins a carefully constructed net around your imagination.

As a moody, atmospheric study of paranoia, it is hard to beat.

Quietly, in the background, details become almost too horrible to watch.

Naranjo never lets the tension slip and finds ways to make the situation worse for his hapless heroine while still keeping the narrative firmly in the realms of fact not fantasy.

Riisa Naka is great as somewhat obnoxious Mitsuko.

Structured like a Greek tragedy, steeped in Gothic gloom, this is a bold and dramatic tale but also a sly one.

We lurch between environments where there is no freedom at all and where one might get away with anything, and the effect is morally dizzying.

Once Upon A Time In Anatolia produces the most exciting boredom.

A small, quiet, very personal piece that delivers a deeply layered and well acted tale.

Otelo Burning presents us with a world where a great deal depends on trust and goodwill, making its hero vulnerable.

A jarringly odd mix of dull and disturbing that comes with its own quasi-religious frisson for a jaded age.

Pariah is not apologetic or even coy about the high school senior's lesbianism, nor is it graphic or titillating in presenting it.

Ultimately the in-your-face style and confusing story stop the emotions from getting truly under your skin.

Aschan has chosen an austere, cold palette that reflects the cool calculations of Cassandra and Emma as they vie for dominance and she and her co-writer Josefine Adolfsson keep the scripting stripped down, so that the body language of the pair is as impor

It’s impossible not to admire Belafonte's courage and commitment.

Fassbender and Mulligan burn white hot in the central pairing, their emotional maelstrom magnetic even when no dialogue is used.

A Simple Life is a two-hour slice of profound wisdom that gently leads you down to a deep place then whispers helpful truths in your ear.

A lurching and uneven film, Sleeping Sickness resembles a dream.

Guediguian takes a subtle and even-handed approach, well aware that the selflessness of the central characters will be construed as weakness and misplaced guilt.

Layer in the realisation that what you are seeing actually happened and the result takes you beyond disturbing into that place where your skin starts to creep and your brain crawls into the foetal position.

The Somnambulists is a powerful, unapologetically political contribution to the discourse about this country's questionable manoeuvrings abroad since 9/11, lest we forget.

Peschel delivers a superb physical performance.

This documentary's great strength is in the variety of characters it presents to us.

An astounding film.

The effect is absorbing, like opening a wonderfully illustrated storybook.

A refreshingly intelligent film with skillfully drawn characters.

There is a charm and grace to this 'not' film that mirrors all of Panahi's previous filmic masterpieces.

Funny, moving and endlessly surprising.

In the central role, Frieda Pinto shows that she has come of age, delivering the story's most powerful screen heroine yet.

If this is a character study, there is little character in it.

Truth be told, it is annoying as hell and becomes very tired, very quickly.

Achieves a level of emotional authenticity in that it leaves the lasting impression of a first stolen kiss in the dark.

A pleasingly thoughtful and warm-hearted exploration of religion, morality and personal responsibility.

Lynne Ramsay's adaptation of the book perfectly matches its intimacy, too close for comfort for some, and manages to make aspects of it even darker.

Labaki manages to get across a view of life that is not predominant in cinematic stories, without making it seem like an agenda.

The steady - but never sluggish - pace allows the characters to live and breathe.

Andrea Arnold has done well to shift the emphasis from a love story to a dark tale of hatred, cruelty and revenge.