South by Southwest — A–Z of films

Like its subject, the film is a fusion of styles.

Lotus may love pretty things, but he doesn’t hold back on the gore.

I laughed, and was not alone in doing so, out loud, and repeatedly.

Clown in A Cornfield has a lot of heart, and not just of the bloody variety.

The expressionist feeling of early 20th century cinema is further enhanced by the specific colour scheme, resembling a very early version of Technicolor, while the sound recalls that of the early sound films.

The alchemy of film means that sometimes this amount of gold can still feel leaden.

There’s a lot of very good work in The Dutchman.

Any number of films try to sell themselves on inviting us to ogle outsiders like these. The difference with Fucktoys is that it’s made by people who actually get it.

The film is at its most effective when we feel the urgency of their boredom – the athletic one pacing in circles like a trapped animal – juxtaposed with the languid charm of their environment.

Hallow Road is an Irish co-production, and it shows both in theme and in quality.

The real candy is the omnipresent densely uncomfortable atmosphere that comes on top of the richly detailed observations and conclusions in the film's lower layers.

The film hangs on Pemberton’s performance, and he imbues Doug with a sweetness that makes us feel for him despite his deeply misguided actions.

Subtle observations about the racism that underpins this superficially idyllic society pepper a film which repeatedly forces its hero to question his assumptions.

It feels as if a collection of fantasy and dystopian science fiction archetypes have been poured into a blender and swirled around to produce the script and visuals.

The film is a triumph of editing by Viridiana Lieberman, in terms of storytelling

It’s refreshing to encounter a multiverse film that doesn’t mess about.

Bethmann understands the situation well, but her closeness to the teenager and the personal character that the film takes on as a result is something else.

Director Siobhan McCarthy is adept at using the long-established visual language of the high school movie both to entertain and to show us the world from a perspective that’s relatively new to cinema.

The circumstances of women are central to the film.

There are some great stories here, and whilst fans will already be familiar with many of them, they include a few surprises.

The heat is omnipresent, rippling through the air, distorting what we see, distorting time and identity.

So carefully balanced is this that the film could almost have emerged as a romcom, and it’s that possibility, that clash between the absurdity that cinema has taught us to expect and the bitterness of real life, that makes it so effective.

It’s the situation that delivers the strangeness – and charm – mediated by Dudley’s performance as a woman who is self-deprecating and messy but lively enough to root for.

While Verseau talks about how crucial the surgery was to her mental health, the complexity of the emotions experienced afterwards is also made clear.

A surprisingly droll deconstruction of crime reconstruction.