Cath Clarke

What follows is a race against the clock, cleverly constructed by director Maximilian Erlenwein and co-writer Joachim Hedén. Their script throws in plenty of calamities to nobble the diver’s escape, but didn’t quite manage – for me at least – to spark a vertiginous clammy terror.

It’s a measured, quietly powerful film with a performance from Virginie Efira that seems almost telepathic at times; in scenes where she doesn’t say a word, barely twitching a muscle in her face, yet somehow you know what she’s feeling.

Without a doubt, it is an impressive debut from director Thomas Hardiman, even if his script doesn’t quite pull off a first-class whodunnit.

With Ladybug doing as much mooning as superheroing the girl power message feels more afterthought than heartfelt.

A smarter, sharper film might have explored what happens next in an otherwise happy marriage when the spark goes out. Instead, the comedy here is as broad as it gets, with some wildly unconvincing and unhilarious set-pieces.

It’s the only documentary I’ve ever watched with a reading list in the credits – what a treat this film is.

It’s a political thriller that tells the story matter-of-factly, and is perhaps a little lacking in the pace department. But Isabelle Huppert carries it along with a performance every bit as gripping as you’d expect.

It’s a striking, ambitious film, but there is something about the tone – both glossy and grittily real, stylising everything to mythic proportions – that left me a bit cold.

Calamy is utterly convincing, giving a performance that pulls us right into Julie’s inner world.

It’s super fun entertainment, which mostly disguises the fact it’s not going to stick in the mind for long.

Though she might have turned the dial up, Burkovska conveys Lilya’s depression and anxiety, and finally her resilience, with a muted, powerful performance. This might be one to file away for the future, when the current conflict has ended.

A Bunch of Amateurs is a thoughtful film about film-making and has some unexpectedly deep things to say too about camaraderie, community and male friendship – though there are a couple of women in the club’s ageing membership.

At times I wondered if the film is a bit too tasteful and tactful about the pain that Halim and Mina have to suppress, but still it’s a hugely compassionate and emotionally satisfying movie.

What a shortchanging of Af Klint’s extraordinary life and work this is.

The film offers a fascinating glimpse into the mystery of other people, especially other people’s marriages. Friends and family still look dazed that the Alters – Rita and Jerry! – were behind the theft.

While, yes, TCWSSF is a dreamy magical realist fable with an environmental message, Alegría weaves into her tale an emotionally satisfying, gripping family drama, with singing cows – and fish too.

That sweaty, close-to-a-nervous breakdown tense feeling of being trapped is nowhere in the film. And where the script goes in its pulpy nasty final twist felt to me like a disturbingly misogynist move.

It’s heartfelt and sweetly earnest, but humdrum and disappointingly unmagical. The animation doesn’t help: characters speak with blank paralysed faces as if they’ve had botched Botox.

This gentle, authentic-feeling coming-of-age drama from Ukrainian film-maker Kateryna Gornostai premiered at the Berlin festival in 2021. Released in the UK almost a year to the day since the Russian invasion, her film has become unbearably poignant.

What’s missing is a sense of what’s at stake – we never quite get a feeling for how desperate these men are, and for the most part they feel a bit too familiar from the Britcom playbook. That said, Burrows brings cheeky-chappie warmth to the character of Curly.

Nearly everything about Epic Tails feels a bit underwhelming, and limited imagination-wise.

At points I wondered if this is a film that tells us anything about anything. Some of its ideas feel a bit thrown together.

The film gives us a precious glimpse into LGBTQ+ life in the postwar period.

This is a film with a lot of charm, and gives cinema its most lovable rats since Ratatouille. But I did wonder at points who the audience is.

Chumbawamba split up in 2012. They’re still mates and come across here as extremely likable, not taking themselves at all too seriously. Scenes of them nattering together, having a giggle now, are lovely.

There is without a doubt something uncanny, almost seance-like, in the way Canadian film-maker Kyle Edward Ball evokes childhood fear of the dark.

The film sags a little towards the end, with a few too many implausible action sequences: characters jumping out of helicopters and fighting on top of speeding SUVs, the choreography glossing over the basics of gravity and physics. Still, the cheers kept coming.

It’s a film with a decent bit of charm, and it’s hard to argue with the greed-is-bad message.