Palm Springs International Film Festival — A–Z of films

The effect is sometimes comical, but true intimacy often looks absurd from the outside.

As the surveys continue, different ideas of happiness emerge along with moments of shared humanity.

Far from dull, not as camp as you might expect, emotionally at a high pitch, expertly directed and nudgingly naughty.

Less concerned with scrutinising the playground than the dangerous games adults can play with one another.

Film's ability to change scale and scope turns Better Man from a jukebox musical into something at once more and less personal.

Visually, Guan never puts a frame wrong, whether he’s setting up a physical comedy set-piece, idly incorporating a solar eclipse or letting the dogs steal a scene.

Director Edward Berger and his director of photography Stephane Fontaine have made every frame art.

Vigorously covering all bases, Diop cuts elegantly to give each position ample space.

By withholding information from us, Bareisa puts us in a similar headspace to the main characters.

Audiard has assembled a remarkable team of actors

Cat’s viewpoint predominates, and Zilbalodis has an acute understanding of how the world looks from its point of view, of what catches its attention and how its body follows instinctively.

A very New York film.

The stories are highly personal and individual. It is the background observations, as much as anything, that makes the experience of viewing them sequentially crushing, and leaves one in awe of the fortitude of people still surviving there.

This non-sensationalist approach allows much more room to address the psychological effects of prison life itself, whilst emphasising the mundanity of much of what happened under the Nazis.

Illusions are everywhere in this film.

There is a sense of living in the moment but for the future, a deep connection with nature and a willingness to face whatever happens together.

This kind of layered story construction is a difficult thing to pull off and it makes the film shine.

This is a tactile retelling, inviting us to imagine the sticky feel of Coca-Cola on hot skin in the sun or the heat of a sheepskin coat and the love that goes with it being passed from mum to daughter ahead of a trip abroad.

From the start, there is something different about this film.

The director shows how it’s not just Julie’s tennis skills that have been groomed by the coach but large aspects of her life.

It's got the musicality that proper swearing should.

Coppola has style, but sometimes employs too much of it.

Although this is set in the Nineties, the gritty feel makes it redolent of Seventies-set thrillers, a mood reinforced by the way that du Welz embeds us in Paul’s life from the start.

It is gorgeous, both to look at and to listen to. It's perhaps Larrain's most accessible film, though that's as much to do with its star as its subject.

Once again, Guiraudie proves himself the master of setting up a mystery by the means of perfect script economy that functions strictly on “need to know” basis.

While many other films feel as though they are really staking out a deliberate political stance against the Iranian regime or coming at it from deep within metaphor, My Favourite Cake is casually, but almost constantly, rebellious in small ways.

Hairabedian patiently captures all this with an intimacy that stems from trust, with Vrej viewing her and the camera increasingly as a confidante as time passes.

Nickel Boys is a tremendously daring film.

No Other Land brings humanity and particularity to a topic that is too often discussed in the abstract.

Nyoni expertly controls her narrative so that it glides effortlessly between the reality of the funeral preparations to the more surreal psychological trauma Shula is working through.

Coogan is well cast in this tricky role, moving easily from humour to heartbreak..

It’s the hopefulness at the heart of their tragedy that really kills you.

There’s also an emperor’s new clothes feeling to the general style, look closely and there's very little there.

Almodóvar goes all out with the delights fashion has to offer, bright colours, the joy of transformation - because it is never too late for sartorial metamorphosis.

Writer/director Sandhya Suri - who has a documentary background - is keen to show that everyone plays their part in the prejudices and corruption of the legal system.

Takuro Takeuchi’s cinematography, with its frequent close-ups, use of blurring, beguiling shadows and blow-out blasts of light, plunges us into the heart of the action.

Grittily compelling

September 5 might not be a masterpiece but it is a tense, nail-biting thriller.

Bojanov draws not only a sensitive portrait of the bond between the two women but also exposes the dyn.amics of a deeply conservative and religious society

Using a mix of both professional and amateur actors the film reveals the intimate details and attitudes of these incarcerated individuals

The intensity between her and the angry young man drives the action in Sons, capturing a relentless cycle of aggression reverberating throughout the sullen halls.

There is a feeling of being in a constant movement, with cars and buildings whizzing by as Souleymane is rushing through the city, either riding his bike, or running from one type of public transport to the next.

A fascinating portrait of a woman ahead of her time.

Reaches touching heights as it follows the marked son of a dead sicario from childhood to young adulthood.

The film is absorbing rather than depressing, uplifting rather than sad.

Becerra’s film is a measured affair that takes pleasure in its surroundings, whether it’s the mountain lakeside where the alpacas graze or the warm intimacy of Felciano’s home.

What emerges is a carefully calibrated, bleak but elegiac picture of an environment where people are being forced to perform rather than allowed to live on their own terms.

Maura Delpero’s multi-layered drama sees its heroine growing up and coming to understand the world in new ways at the same time as the village itself shifts, not altogether willingly, into the modern era.

For fans of the musical, this will give them more of what they already like, perhaps even too much. For those not yet fans I'm not sure this will give them enough.

An ostensibly rousing speech is aiming for Braveheart but has all the grip one would expect from an address to an adhesive sales conference.