New York Film Festival — A–Z of films

Takes hold of the audience and never lets go.

Ponderings on the effects of war become distinctly ponderous.

Beg, borrow or steal a ticket to see it on the biggest screen you can find.

The way the plot manipulates every worst case scenario is fiendishly clever. Seldom has an ensemble cast meshed so effectively.

Chaotic, funny, beautifully shot and performed with a childlike deadpan.

Truly cutting-edge cinema, daring and imaginative, quite unlike anything else you'll see this year.

A macabre fairy tale in black-and-white without fairies is superficial enough to be frivolous.

A contemplative and visually dulcet experience.

Colours and style ooze from the screen.

A beautifully shot, brilliantly acted incoherent mess, ranking up there with David Lynch’s Inland Empire as one of the most inscrutable films of the year.

You feel your will to live give a whimper, make its excuses and start heading for the bar.

Quirky directorial touches – such as Vellini’s blowing of smoke rings, or a dimming of sound at key moments - put the audience into the head of the protagonist and help us connect us fully with the characters.

Margot ought to be a plum rôle, but Kidman withers it to a prune.

The feel of this film is sumptuous - convincingly recreated mid-century sets, an evocative soundtrack, gorgeous gowns for the women and smart suits for the guys.

The forlorn beauty of The Man From London might inspire you to question the assumptions we make about cinema.

Against the whisper of wind and buzz of flies, the Coens manage to find tension in the subtlest of movements and cut the dialogue through with humour as arid as the landscape.

Sanchez and Bayona never lose sight of the requirements of the genre, providing plenty in the way of seat-gripping tension and finding suitable shocks in the everyday.

There are many remarkable things about this unusual movie.

Seen purely in aesthetic terms, Persepolis is an object of rare beauty, with no obvious precedents or parallels in the history of anime.

Unlike most of the films about Iraq, Redacted portrays a military that’s a catchall for the uneducated and unsocialised; and while many may find this offensive, it’s perfectly in line with the draft-deferring lowering of recruitment standards.

It is unlikely you are going to see a more palpable portrayal of grief this year than Jeon Do-yeon's magnificent perfomance as Shin-ae in this Korean drama of the heart.

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