New York Film Festival — A–Z of films

This blending of the truth and invention is a key plank of Chinese director Jia Zhang-Ke's work, which skates so close to documentary it is hard to spot the join.

'An effective and realistic examination of a world where intelligent and privileged characters have reached near-adulthood without having any real understanding of basic morality.'

Each of these storylines wash over one another, refusing to take on a fully-fledged shape and yet they have a surprisingly cohesive cumulative effect.

What would have made an entertaining, if experimental, 20-minute short film has here been extended beyond sanity.

Straczynski's script is a masterpiece of understatement and restraint, and Angelina Jolie is riveting in the central role.

Certainly Soderbergh gives you a sense of the boredom of war - as the days tick by on the screen, you feel your own will to live begin to falter.

All the excitement of a wet weekend in Bognor.

Teachers everywhere will give a smile of recognition as an experienced teacher takes a new colleague through his class list – “nice, nice, not nice, not nice at all…”

A truly innovative piece of filmmaking which mixes cinema-verité style documentary with a knowing postmodern self-consciousness.

Shyness has rarely had such a threatening undercurrent.

In its style, its performances and its confident direction, this film is a triumph.

Shot through with Leigh’s trademark improv-based dialogue, constantly finding humour and truth in the mundane.

Martel expertly compounds ambiguities without ever abandoning the apparent naturalism of her presentation.

Despite the filth, the violence and the desolation, McQueen’s portrait is a thing of brutal beauty in terms of its composition.

The issue of sex is carefully handled and the trajectory the pair take has a fumbling, teenage quality that makes it easy to believe.

Brimming with charm.

Max Ophuls' most controversial, if not his greatest work.

The very number of characters involved leaves the plotlines strung out and little emotion for the audience to cling to.

Superficially Summer Hours is an examination of the emotional fallout from the death of a loved mother, but digging deeper reveals insightful comment on nostalgia, mortality, property and family.

Considering each aspect individually, this is a picture of outstanding quality, from the strong cast to the photography and haunting soundtrack to the acute character studies.

The nature of delusion and fixation has been explored many times in cinema, but rarely with such grim and gripping intensity.

Dvortsevoy shows us the fragility of life, through the birth and death of lambs, while also touching on the innate stoicism of families who live in this toughest of environments.

This quiet, unfussy film feels more important than a whole host of glossy blockbusters.

Folman's use of animation permits an audience to engage with the events, such as they are recalled, in a way that the simple testimony of those involved could not achieve.

Rourke brings a staggering amount of emotional weight to the role of Randy.