London Film Festival — A–Z of films

8 Bar makes light work of sketching the conditions that shaped the music, betraying a canny understanding of the music industry’s politics, as well as the changing shape of music sales in the 00s.

As a whole, it appears way too kinetically ostentatious for its own sake, sadly making it less than the sum of its parts, but there are things to appreciate here.

The problems with gun violence in Chicago are well documented, so the directors don't have to do much to set the scene here, which means they can immediately shift the focus to the men at the projects' heart.

Many doors are not very open, they give us merely a little glimpse into a strange world.

At times, the dialogue is well done, scores points. At other times, it felt like we had wandered into a Socratic symposium.

Directing with confidence and misdirecting with grace, Paxton draws us into a world where the absence of apparent solutions becomes compelling in itself.

Branagh has an easy way with a camera and isn't afraid of sentiment, but he offsets this with a good line in comedy that cuts through the softer stuff like an astringent.

The interplay of the spiritual and the sensual is vital here.

The film unfolds at an easy pace, Hansen-Løve making everything matter of fact and yet beguiling, thereby softening viewers up to accept the fantastic or surreal aspects of the narrative as normal.

Binoche gives her all, stripping away any vestiges of actressy pretence to assimilate herself in the community while at the same time investing her performance with an authentic conviction.

The focus on bright colours and sparkles makes it easily accessible to young viewers.

Given the state of the things, it's fair to say that some of the situations that will arise are telegraphed ahead of time, but that adds rather than detracts from the tension - after all, aren't all satisfying meals in some ways connected to anticipation?

The director shows the warmth of the children against the cool aloofness of teachers who feel little connection to their wards, even as we know even Yusuf's herculean efforts are likely to prove ineffectual.

The everyday feel is acute – you can virtually smell the pickle jar vinegar and raw spirit and imagine a slight stickiness on the seats as Jani-Petteri Passi’s camera captures the scene with a looseness that rocks along with the rhythm of the train.

This film is nothing if not derivative. Except, therein lies its beauty.

Corsini agilely combines elements of cinéma verité and farce.

Earwig invites you to listen, to put out feelers, to scurry.

The beat and rhythm are often deliberately relentless, pushing onwards even when sometimes going around in circles - as circular as arguments that the characters find themselves having to make over and over again.

The way that director Lee Haven Jones frames male and female characters is intriguing, with classic gendered shots reversed.

Heineman is careful not to bludgeon viewers with the horror of it all.

It all has a very particular flavour. Even a new one.

The balance of Javier Bardem's central performance as the CEO of the title is what elevates this from being another run-of-the-mill satire.

There's a straightforwardness to the telling of this tale that adds to its accessibility.

Everything is elevated to an almost cartoonish level, but the performances are big enough to carry it, with Elba maintaining a calm presence at the centre.

Beautifully photographed as always, with a colour palette whose soft, shifting hues reflect its moral and narrative ambiguity, A Hero is one of Farhadi’s finest works.

With backdrops which hark back to early German expressionism, looking for all the world like a Robert Wiene or FW Murnau set, Hinterland is a visual treat.

Despite being rather on the nose in terms of his plot beats, del Paso has an eye for a strong image and a psychological feel for the insidious viewpoint of the adults, washing over the children like a bad benediction.

It's not the cliches that are its main problem, although the setting and set-up are straight down the line.

Invincible Demons is a film that understands the aesthetic appeal of environmental abuse, but it doesn’t titillate with images of eco-collapse or sensationalise interviews with long-suffering Delhi citizens.

This unexpected emphasis on the entire clan and, particularly, its eccentric patriarch offers an interesting change from more straightforward biopics.

It’s a film which some viewers will find exhausting to watch, hammering home its emotive points rather than letting us explore on our own. Within this, however, there are some surprisingly delicate performances.

If Matuszyński’s film tends towards soap opera in places and could definitely do with a trim here and there, its long running time does allow the grind of what happens to play out in ways that emphasise the sheer slog of it.

Despite its bleakness, Al-Khatib also captures the spirit of the older Palestinians - already exiled once and refusing to simply move on again - and the resourcefulness of the children.

The film comes into its own because of Gyllenhaal's non-judgemental perspective, even sympathy, for the small suffocations of motherhood.

This is a clear-eyed view of the choices Jesmark and those like him are facing, showing just how complex the situation is, cutting beyond work to community and culture.

The family portrait is devastating.

Kranz, best known for his acting career, certainly didn’t pick an easy project for his debut behind the camera, but his work proves exceptional.

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.

The façade of a happy picnic shows all the cracks, despite the lovely geese flying overhead.

Unlike many first-time directors who have the urge to cram more and more in, Nagy and his co-writer Pál Závada instead strip things back, letting the trudge of the men tell its own tale.

Though some aspects of the film will mean more to you if you have a New Orleans connection, Hunt strives to ensure that it's accessible to everyone.

As is almost always the case with this sort of casting, the essential 'truth' of these non-professionals is visible beneath the constructed story.

The role is a gift for Negga, who has always evinced considerable talent but has not previously had the chance to demonstrate her abilities to this extent.

The autumn setting fits it perfectly, because although this is the change of the year as things die back for winter, it is also blazing with colour and hopefulness.

This is the playground as a warzone, where the sandpit might, indeed, be as deep as the sea and hold dead bodies and where adult authority might only make things worse.

Campion treats the material with such well-mannered reverence that you begin to wish that not just the characters, but she too, would loosen up a bit.

By delving into fiction, Huezo is able to focus on the impact of this crisis on individual human lives.

The grooming of Strawberry may have some moments of levity but that, in many ways, makes it all the more uncomfortable.

It’s beautiful, compelling, helping us to grasp how people become addicted to this.

Shengze Zhu mixes the past, present and vision of the future in a new, strange, anti-social, empty world.

The action also feels under-powered in places, with set pieces mainly reminding you of other, more accomplished Wallace & Gromit outings, while you long for a bit more of the Gruffalo's heart.

This is an animated kids' movie in a furrow well ploughed.

In its quiet, observational way, Sediments gets closer to the experience of what it means to be trans than any number of more direct interrogations.

A beautifully self-contained, self-sufficient little film.

There are different kinds of horror at work here and Owen keeps us waiting to see which will come to the fore.

It is impossible to deny the director's poetic and aesthetic talent, as well as her ability to offer a critical deconstruction of social relations through a seemingly simple story.

Hogg has always had an eye for architectural as well as emotional spaces and we see it here, as she floods the large rooms of Julie's parents' home with light, so that she almost seems to be paling out of them, which, coupled with her often silent reactions as others babble around her makes it seem as though she is the one who might be the ghost.

There are strong supporting performances from a relatively small cast, but they pale in comparison to Stewart.

Cousins' observations are, by their very nature, particular and personal - but that is part of the joy of this sort of essay film.

Philippe’s incisive, forthright approach leaves no room for apologism.

A film that celebrates the joy and fears associated with youthful lust, while exploring ideas of internal cultural conflict, without making it feel tacky or like a diatribe.

As Jackson Browne’s My Opening Farewell delivers a lyric about standing before a window, we get a shot of the boy standing before a window. Did Clooney make this in his sleep?

With characters coming and going continually, the film is wildly uneven in tone, sometimes broadly comic, sometimes painfully dark. In many ways this suits its efforts to address the chaotic nature of life.

Digression builds upon detour, which piles charmingly onto excursion, sometimes lifted, sometimes pushed and always shaped by a score that also roams freely in its influences.

The Japanese filmmaker guides his actors as if they were just learning emotions, creating an impression of awkwardness.

Corbine gets caught up trying to cover the narrative ground, to set up both characters in twin time periods and explore their motivations and relationship.

There is a lingering, half blossomed melancholy that lies underneath the often very funny, fast-paced moments of quotidian chaos.