“Good Madam is frightening in many of the places you expect, but then lingers in places you don’t: it’s not only South Africans who will watch this and interrogate their own relationship to service, and to the colonialist structures keeping certain social hierarchies in place.”

“When the band starting riffing on the Harry Lime theme from The Third Man, they’re not getting their new material written — except that they are. It’s all part of it.”

“In another time and place in history you could see Benedetta as an artist — she has a creative streak a mile wide and a liberal erotic imagination by which she is initially terrified, having seemingly fairly successfully repressed that side of herself until about the age of 30.”

“Caleb Landry-Jones’ performance in Nitram, as an unlikeable outsider simmering with sadness and anger, is extraordinary. He doesn’t fall into the trap of making the mass killer that he plays here charismatic or sexy, and nor does he give us an obviously over-the-top grotesque.”

“Luhrmann’s unapologetically, even proudly gaudy film isn’t as much concerned with telling its subject’s life story as with channelling his aura and imprint on a culture that didn’t already take sex-selling pop for granted.”

“Unblinkingly explicit and accepting of sexuality in a multitude of forms, Pleasure considers the rewards of pornography for spectator and performer alike, reframing its politics for a sex-positive generation.”

“It comes from a place of such deep knowledge and keen observation that you’re forced to the conclusion that there’s probably at least some element of extremely unforgiving self-portraiture going on here. Perhaps it’s an act of atonement. Whatever, it’s very funny. “

“He’s not attractive, but there’s a picturesque, bumbling appeal to this caricature of a particular type of Englishman. Uncomfortable with silence, uncomfortable with emotion, he fills the air with a stream of idiomatic chit-chat”

“If you want to fly that plane at mach 10, you just have to be enough of a badass. Physics doesn’t come into it. The world is pliable, susceptible to your wishes. Through sheer force of will, you can mould reality to your will.”

“From a certain angle, The Innocents might be seen as a horror film; from another, it’s a lo-fi, unusually intriguing superhero origin story.”

“Vortex is a deeply moving, profoundly powerful, yet unsentimental film about shared old age, the slow approach of death, and the ultimate impossibility of facing said death with anyone other than yourself for company.”

“‘A musical for people who hate musicals’ sounds like a backhanded claim at best, but Bob Fosse’s sensuous, velvety paean to glittery hedonism in fascist times earns it simply by being too heady, too potent, too fascinating to dismiss.”

“The animals are described realistically, but the language used is poetic. This approach is emphasised by the raw grace of a score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, and by the way that the camera situates its subjects in the wider landscape”

“When I recall watching Happening, a year or so from now, I suspect that the element that will endure for me is Anamaria Vartolomei’s face. Her eyes, in particular”

“Plunging us into a Viking Age of elemental survival strategies and unfettered masculine brutality, Robert Eggers’ film shows off all the immersive world-building a huge Hollywood budget can buy, minus any obvious studio lacquer.”

“In her superb, skin-prickling first fiction feature, Tatiana Huezo tackles material that could be filmed as a luridly shocking issue drama — only to seek everyday life, with its pockets of joy, boredom and day-dreaming, around the hovering terror.”

“Exarchopoulos is a very talented actor, and just about able to persuade us that this is someone who might conceivably find herself in the position of having to convince randos online to bang her.”

“If you’ve been dumped by a Julie, a woman who has chosen to break up with a string of perfectly nice men simply because she wasn’t feeling it, perhaps you’ll find her indefensible.”

“It's historically fascinating but all too resonant in the present day, where gay rights in many territories are being sneakily rolled back, like an unspoken extension of the film's elastic, expansive chronology.”

“Baker further provokes with his slamming tonal transitions and overlaps: the film frequently knots stomach-churning tragedy and farcical, high-pitched comedy into the same scene”