Ben Nicholson

It’s a coming-of-age tale without summer sun that feels all the more formative because of it.

As with much of Miyazaki’s own output, the film offers a winning heroine and a joyful dip into Japanese folklore, even if it does not stand up against the studios most celebrated works.

The result is a formally loose, but dizzyingly dense and morally forthright examination of national attitudes and the myopia of nostalgia told through ranging meta-constructs and highfalutin debate.

A vital and timely missive to a new generation that is as sobering as it is uplifting, all built around a performance of astounding accomplishment.

Where Tan describes the process of making Shirkers as an exorcism (presumably of Georges), the final product is more akin to a séance, a communion with a lost soul keen to still be heard from beyond the veil.

Besides the overt journey for Christopher Robin of rediscovering some childhood joy, this film is a poignant exploration of the way in which we sideline important friendships at the behest of professional advancement.

Kelly eschews talking heads or expert testimony, and only rarely to characters flesh out the skeleton provided by occasional intertitles. When this style is employed for a single, short-term conflict, it can be incredibly powerful (just think of Sergei Loznitsa’s Maïdan) but Kelly’s film effectively drops the audience in situ at specific events within a much broader six-year framework without any context.

Di Giacomo doesn’t build sequences to heighten tension, although some is unavoidable. Often, the film follows the relatively mundane work of the Franciscan Father Cataldo Migliazzo, the film’s primary protagonist, and the otherwise everyday lives of those who come to him for help.

A compelling re-telling of the singer's story.

For all of the perfection of the period-detail browns and greys, Afterimage could have done with a touch more colour.

By focusing on the family, James makes Abacus about resilience and humility rather than the mechanics of litigation and in doing so underscores - perhaps more strongly than in other louder films on similar subjects - the injustice of the situation.

Like much of his recent scripted work, it's a mannered affair that's vague and clumsy.

The period atmosphere isn't alive with bold ideas as much as decay.

All of the film is handled in such a way: from the beautiful monochrome photography that only extends the disconnection Olga feels with the world, to the understated and haunting performances, particularly Olszanska's.

It's a sparse and ravishing meditation on faith.

Bold in ambition and delicate in execution, it will break your heart and then piece it back together.

The story begins with the film's defining act and most accomplished sequence but, despite handsome execution, never hits those heights again in a plot where familiarity severely dampens the squib.

Johnson is pushing the audience to see these images as a dialogue between herself and these subjects, both in the frame of her representation of them and their impact on her.

It's a film swimming in symbolism, transgressive eroticism and perplexing details that will infuriate some audiences but for others will add to its irresistible allure.

Striking a balance between the dark and combative religious humour and its more saccharine elements proves difficult.

Evolution more often chimes aesthetically with a European arthouse drama, but that is only until it voyages into more fantastical territory. Then this haunting and esoteric work manages to seduce and repulse in uncanny harmony.

For Herzog it is people that matter and he's just as fascinated by Elon Musk's gazing at the stars as those battering their keyboards or avoiding them altogether.

Louis Black and Karen Bernstein pay warm tribute to the filmmaker in what is a fitting ode to independent spirit more than a penetrating portrait.

While it hardly pushes the envelope in terms of developing Marvel's homogenous narrative conveyor-belt, it does do so in other areas, suggesting that the MCU can see beyond the confines of its first two phases.

Greene seeks a deeper truth amidst the fragments of arch drama and investigatory reportage; artifice and reality bleed into one another with ease, the transitions smoothed by Sean Price Williams' photography.

The two stars stay on their game but their relationship is largely sidetracked in favour of fending off ghouls. While the heart rate may increase the creepiness dissipates, though The Autopsy of Jane Doe remains good genre fun - if little more.

It's not just some science-fiction about rodents preying on humans; it's a documentary about it. "They will literally kill us," explains a lecturer early on in what the filmmakers frame as a fully-fledged horror complete with jump-scares, an ominous score, and all manner of squeamish moments.