Sundance Film Festival — A–Z of films

A close, thoughtful and unexpectedly moving film.

The documentary is well balanced and never presents either party in a more favourable light than the other.

It's the emotional insights, and the laughter, that lift Becoming Chaz above the average observational documentary and give it wide-ranging appeal.

You'd have to be a real Grouch not to enjoy it.

Rajesh is a real life private detective, the founder of Always Investigatings and Security Concern, and he runs it as if he learned everything he needed to know from Seventies TV shows.

Intriguing, funny, and sad.

Captivating and informative.

Concheiro's pacing - although perhaps a little too slow in places - allows us to become steeped in the teens' disenfranchisement to the point where we can understand how they come to view a robbery as a good idea.

Lee Tamahori opts to swim in the shallow waters of gaudy exploitation rather than explore some of the deeper issues of the politics of power.

It struck such a chord in Brazil last year that it quickly became the biggest selling movie of all time.

Despite the fantastic image this family first presents, the film's best trick is to reveal the ways in which it resembles any other.

Sington has found a range of economists and experts who explain in clear language the roots of the crisis.

McDonagh takes what could be a hackneyed tale of mismatched buddy cops and spins it to blisteringly funny effect.

The film is at its best in its footage of those who are picking up the fight that their parents began against Montt, these 'granito' - or grains of sand - who hope that by coming together they can make a difference.

Ali Samadi Ahadi paints a poetic and heartfelt portrait of a nation oppressed.

The photography is sumptuous throughout - we often forget that this is a documentary, such is the quality of the footage.

The sort of movie that Rob Zombie should have made by now and will no doubt wish he had.

Make no mistake, this is a difficult film to watch - but it is also a surprisingly uplifting one.

Though providing food for thought regarding the nature of conflict and how easy it is to tear a community apart, Villeneuve's heavy-handed approach to metaphor will not be for everyone.

Fascinating, haunting and often very tense, The Interrupters is a solid piece of social comment that gets the camera intimately into the action, and it suffers only in that such an issue demands more be brought into the camera's scope.

The microcosm of the children's world is exceptionally well drawn.

A triumph of blood-soaked style over meaningful substance.

Squarely aimed at a student demographic, the entire affair plays out like an episode of Scooby Doo on acid with the added fuel of frequent sex.

Palmer successfully captures the abundant passion, charisma and loyalty of those involved, yet inescapably through the prism of the community shows a wider, bleaker picture.

The cinematic equivalent of coffee table literature.

Offers plenty of uncomfortably familiar observations for anyone engaged in a relationship that is either long-distance, or just long-term.

Chandor makes good use of his acting assets and there's no doubt that he knows how to direct, but ultimately, the dullness of the script is just a little too toxic.

As a moody, atmospheric study of paranoia, it is hard to beat.

Along with her eye for composition, Reichardt also deserves praise for the focus on the smaller period details.

It’s definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, having more the feel of a gallery installation than a feature film.

We lurch between environments where there is no freedom at all and where one might get away with anything, and the effect is morally dizzying.

Given that his documentary only runs 90 minutes, Rossi barely has time to do more than scratch the surface of these momentous issues facing the newspaper industry.

Spurlock is mesmerising in his pitches.

The family are captivating subject matter, the strong personalities frequently tugging in different directions, so that the film is never short of drama.

Pariah is not apologetic or even coy about the high school senior's lesbianism, nor is it graphic or titillating in presenting it.

There's an awareness here that's missing from many such tales, a more astute take on how disability and society interact.

A thorough and provocative portrait.

Billed increasingly as a horror movie, the shifting sands of its tone means it sits uneasily in any category, as Smith flirts with comedy, action and horror without carrying off any of them particularly convincingly.

The combination of its backwoods horror-style set-up, an excellent score from Michael Montes - at once childlike with a fairytale edge, yet quietly menancing - and the off-kilter but nice-as-mom's-apple-pie characters gives the comedy its disturbing edge.

The movie also has much to say about this none-too-subtle take on voyeurism, and the nature of unexpurgated creativity uninhibited by copyright.

It’s impossible not to admire Belafonte's courage and commitment.

Maggie's interrogation of Peter is a fascinating back and forth - leveraging sexual attraction with effective psychological showmanship.

The film’s undoubtedly a dream ride for any boy racer.

Ayoade’s aesthetic choices as well as his many cinematic nods make the film a genuine treat for the cinephile set, but not to the extent of alienating those who may not grab the references to Bergman, Roeg, or the French New Wave.

The film is crammed full of archive footage, talking heads and some cracking music.

An astounding film.

A refreshingly intelligent film with skillfully drawn characters.

In a filmic landscape littered with the lurching corpses of zombies and the emotional angst of vampires, it's refreshing to be presented with a mythology that is less familiar.

What really stands out in Tyrannosaur, however, are the towering performances.

Everything about McCarthy's film feels easygoing and economical. His scripting is sharp and laugh-out-loud funny, with relationships and family dynamics establilshed quickly in an unfussy fashion.

Interviewees struggle not to break up as they recall the things they witnessed, even at this distance. But what also emerges here is the warmth of the community that sustained them.

Horror film of the year so far, and likely to be one of the most memorable and celebrated of the coming decade.