Benjamin Lee

There’s an almost meta-maturity, as if Scorsese is also looking back on his own career, the film leaving us with a haunting reminder not to glamorise violent men and the wreckage they leave behind.

Song is a writer of elegant restraint and as the final act progressed, I worried that perhaps this restraint might end up a little too delicate for the years that have preceded and the feelings that have amassed. But then in a bar scene for the ages, we find ourselves floored, a slow buildup that finally hits like a bus.

Lady Bird doesn’t exist as a twee indie movie construct, it feels thrillingly real and deeply personal, every single beat ringing true.

It’s a remarkable match-up between film-makers and actor and reaffirms the importance of that partnership, especially for a movie star stuck in a profitable rut. Sandler deserves more, and if he wants us to keep watching, then so do we.

Flee is a remarkably humanising and complex film, expanding and expounding the kind of story that’s too easily simplified.

Chung’s nuanced portrait of a family figuring out their place in the world is both small and somehow rather grand.

It’s a slight film at times but one that builds to a crescendo of emotion.

It’s a difficult, often quite brutal, viewing experience, as it needs to be given the subject matter, not only because of the fractured storytelling but because of the devastating lead performance from Hopkins.

It’s a film with love at its root, both familial and romantic, and Jenkins fills so much of it with a radiating warmth.

Sometimes the shagginess of the film can make it feel a bit slight and at times it does work better as a concentrated character study, but it’s such a joy to spend this time with McCarthy, drunkenly scheming and grumbling, that it’s hard to complain.

I Saw the TV Glow marks a remarkable progression for Schoenbrun as both writer and director, a more substantive, if still challenging, narrative married with an incredible, expanded ability to fully immerse us in the visuals they have created. It’s made with such transportive precision that I can still feel it as I write.

It’s as involving as it is necessary, a rare ray of sunshine on yet another cloudy day.

Sarandon’s force and confidence are undeniable, and she easily holds her own against Burt Lancaster.

Given the nudity on show, some are already quick to criticise Park’s direction as gratuitous and to claim that his male gaze is affecting the depiction of lesbian romance. But the impotency of the male characters helps to counter this while the sex scenes themselves, as lovingly shot as they might be, feel vital to the narrative.

Obsession is satisfyingly slick proof that [Barker] knows just what to do when levelling up to a different platform, and while his debut might have been a film designed around a very modern form of horror, this time he’s looking back, his set-up using elements of a classic fable and the kind of grabby schlock you’d see in a video store back in the 1980s.

Her film reaches the audience-friendly highs of a studio comedy while retaining an indie sensibility, both in its visuals and its tone, and coupled with the script’s rooted awareness of the moment we’re now in, it feels fresh, a film that will be rewatched and quoted, held on a pedestal by those who understand its necessity.

There are so many characters at play here and McQueen and Flynn’s script manages to let them all breathe, giving each actor small defining moments and given the exceptional cast involved, it makes for a richly rewarding experience.

In many increasingly overcrowded fields – trauma horror, curse horror, gay horror, Sundance horror – Leviticus stands tall.

It’s a deft and thrilling conceit, experiencing the highs and lows of life through different people. Stolevski, in a film that feels less like a debut and more a late-stage magnum opus, has found an ingenious vessel to make profound observations on gender, sex and being.

A contemporary whodunnit that both respects and revises the subgenre. ... It’s such a rare pleasure to see a director so in love with a genre without slipping into Tarantinoesque fanboy indulgence, remembering his audience is bigger than himself and also that his film requires both head and heart.

It’s a haunting little film that ends with a somewhat overwhelming poignancy.

There’s an emotional restraint in both the performances and the film surrounding them, despite the time of the year, and when a light sprinkling of sugar does come in the last act it feels earned.

Working through one’s own strife as a form of autofiction can often lead to self-indulgence but Kaphar has crafted something that deserves to exist outside of his inner circle, an emotionally wrenching drama set to resonate with those who have also had to confront the complicated equation of radical forgiveness.

Neruda takes a lot of wild chances and, like the poet whose life acts as inspiration, it’s unwilling to play by the rules. Dizzily constructed and full of more life and meaning than most “real” biopics, it’s a risk worth taking.

It’s an airless chamber piece, a self-assured gamble that pays off almost instantaneously thanks to the four impeccable performances at its centre, each parent processing, intellectualising and vocalising their anguish in different ways.

Coco is a rousing, affecting, fun and much-needed return to form after underwhelming Finding Nemo and Cars sequels and will help to ensure that Pixar’s legacy remains intact.

It’s elegantly constructed and precisely composed, with Durkin painstakingly recreating an era without falling into nostalgic overload. But it’s also a drama about a family that keeps us at a distance for the most part.

While some of the in-your-face attempts to combine YouTube videos with animation are jarring at best and annoying at worst, the cautionary stabs about unregulated big tech that come alongside are no bad thing, nestled within the framework of a brightly coloured kids movie. It’s also genuinely funny, a credit not only to the hit-a-minute script but also to a finely picked cast of comic actors