Sundance Film Festival — A–Z of films

There’s undoubted style and polish from Grou here, but the disjointed whole doesn’t stand up to the weight of its own pretensions.

There's some late in the day pathos which does pull at the heart strings, but the film falls flat once more with a half-baked open ended conclusion.

Michod has created a deeply pessimistic but fascinating world lit by excellent cinematography and set to a moody score.

This is an upbeat, often hilarious, but never mawkish, celebration of love.

The film's chief virtue is that it remains true to itself - there are no sly cutaways to phones ringing in empty apartments or flashbacks to happier times, just Reynolds stuck underground and hoping for rescue.

There's potential with no pay-off, desolation with little downslide.

On stage, energetic performances can overcome slight characterisation and shallow plotting but onscreen, the wafer-thin characters and lack of plot thrust are exposed.

Well-researched and interesting.

It's well directed but even if most of the cast weren't phoning it in they would have real difficulty eliciting sympathy.

If the plot development lurks on cusp of credibilty, the characters feel genuinely complex and are given a real sense of humanity by Tomei Reilly and Hill.

What directors Benny and Josh Safdie have done here is show the destructive effects of fairytale.

Some will find the apparently random nature of its early scenes so irritating that they'll just give up. But there will almost certainly be others who will consider this to be one of the best films they have ever seen.

Ryan O'Nan is good value. He is ably supported by Ferrera, as the long-suffering spouse. They're stuck with a script that can't quite find the right voice for its concerns.

A day-glo postmortem avant-garde mind-trip that for some will be enlightening, while others will find it to be little more than an endurance test.

The juxtaposition of natural cycle and human genocide is subtly and deeply conveyed.

So overloaded with oddball characters that it never finds an even keel.

Because it wouldn't be a Chris Morris production unless it made me feel horrendously uncomfortable in some way or other, I laughed a lot, realised with horror what nightmarish events I was laughing at, and then started to laugh at that instead.

Although this is worth watching purely for Duvall's superb turn, he doesn't want for support.

This is a movie in serious need of pruning.

An odd mixture of the striking and the squandered.

The most important message the film has is follow your heart, no matter how weird other people think you are for doing so.

Despite its stoner credentials, HIGH School thrives on speed.

Concentrated insights (without any complicating distractions) into sex, family, the shifts in generations and the continuities of life.

The real standout performance is Franco’s.

I Am Love is social melodrama in the best traditions of Italian cinema.

The problem is that whatever you find to like in this film you're almost certain to find other aspects of it extremely irritating.

It is as though Glaudini expects character tics to substitute for plot development.

What is most surprising about this film is not the dilligence with which Sundberg and Stern set about following the course of Rivers through a year of her life - although that is certainly in evidence - but how incredibly welcoming she is.

Required viewing.

On the one hand this is a very personal tale of one family's struggle to make the best of trying circumstances, but on the other it is a stinging indictment on a political and economic structure that is stretching families to breaking point.

This is a film with a fine regard for detail, and it is neither mocking nor deferential.

Although presenting a multifaceted view of the winners and losers behind the millions (or lack of them), it's an overwhelmingly upbeat, positive experience.

From the two-tone credit sequence to the jaunty camera angles, this is visually striking stuff.

Whit Stillman's screenplay is a lesson in tact, wit and modesty.

Bening’s performance is a triumph over leaden writing.

Another documentary gem from the incredibly strong factual line-up at Sundance 2010.

There is something a bit bland, a bit kitchen sink, a bit telemovie, about this portrait of the artist as a young man.

A low-key, but fascinating, documentary.

A very large cast, outstanding production values and a solid story cement the reality of the situation, and no character's motivations go unexamined.

It wouldn't matter so much if Holofcener was seeking to undercut some of this privilege but what the film appears to be saying is that it's okay to be materialistic, as long as you occasionally wring your hands about it first.

An unlikely, but highly effective, marriage of arthouse and mainstream sensibilities.

Moving and extremely clear-sighted... will live long in the memory.

There's a wham, bam, thank you, man, quality to this music biopic that makes it a pleasurable rock rush that's easy on the eye, even if it fails to do much more than skate the surface of the band of its title.

Neither Entel nor Sebastian promote drugs as a lucrative trade - it may have made Escober millions but it ultimately cost him his life and ruined the lives of his loved ones.

What gives the film an edge is its immediacy and emotional impact.

Gast's documentary has an effortless charm.

The road trip device may be a familiar one but it is a choice that broadens the appeal and accessibility of the film and takes it away from more political machinations into the realm of simpler storytelling.

This movie has some of the strangest moments you’ll see on film this year.

In many ways, The Taqwacores is punk movie-making by numbers.

This is a delicate examination of attitudes and social mores, touching on issues of self-hate and betrayal.

Walker's documentary is moving, life-affirming and challenges what you think you might know about these people who pick through the rubbish.

While this might sound like a trite story of redemption, it’s one infused by both a unique aesthetic and compelling central performances.

An unrelenting, yet utterly mesmerising cinematic vision.