Clarisse Loughrey

Wake Up Dead Man extends its usual punchline denouement with a poignant examination of what it means to be truly righteous in an unrighteous world.

Hsu and Cola balance the mania well against Park’s straight woman sincerity, but it’s Wu, a rising star on the standup scene, who serves as Joy Ride’s surprise MVP.

Gaga plays the film’s early scenes with a winking, playful innocence, consciously mirroring Patrizia’s story with that of Ally, her character in 2018’s A Star is Born – another ordinary woman plucked from relative obscurity.

Gladiator II, in short, shows us how to make cinema with a capital “C”.

Does she actually love Hae Sung? The answer to that question eludes Nora, Past Lives, and the director herself, as Song’s script allows these strikingly mature and reasonable adults to work through some very difficult emotions.

Thunderbolts* does feel different to what’s come before, not because of those indie credentials, but because it’s the first of its kind to seem genuinely self-aware.

Radcliffe, who remains movie-star ripped for the film’s duration, is a genius casting choice. He has pitch-perfect comic timing without necessarily coming across as someone trying to tell a joke. There’s a real sincerity to him and he has the eager grin of a Broadway performer about to take their bow.

You’ll likely catch yourself, by the end, weeping while looking up at an alien squid blob who talks like a British Second World War general, one of the Communiverse’s many oddball residents. But that’s just Pixar doing its job, right?

Cillian Murphy allows the light to dim from his eyes in every subsequent scene, but it is Robert Downey Jr who is titanic here.

Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron contains multitudes. It is beautiful, tortured, whimsical, and stoic.

As light as McAvoy’s touch might be – this is a film, after all, that features a James Corden cameo – there’s more to do here than simply cheer the boys on and hope they get one over on the Oxbridge elite. There are bigger questions to ask, and California Schemin’ is willing to ask them.

The unexpected advantage here is that, when Williams wants to be truly upfront about his struggles, that veneer of fantasy shields us from the more harrowing details of his life, so that we can confront them yet still enjoy that “right f***ing entertaining”.

Manzoor’s film, with a roundhouse kick to the heart, both parodies the generational divide with its fantastical plot and finds sympathy for what makes parents domineering.

It’s a little metatextual analysis served up with a generous side of guts and gore, stabbing its cake and eating it with gleeful abandon.

Hermanus is more than happy for his film to live in the shadows of Kurosawa’s. There’s still much to savour.

This is kinetic, muscular, easy-to-cheer filmmaking applied to a story ready-made for the silver screen.

The future presented in The Beast, Bertrand Bonello’s mesmeric blend of sci-fi, horror and romance, feels frighteningly plausible.

Benediction isn’t a cradle-to-grave biopic, nor does it dramatise a single, pivotal event. It’s one man’s breathless search, careening back and forth through the chapters of his life in search of something concrete and true. It’s beautiful, but only in the way it tends to its tragedies with such care.

The Last Wish is visually gorgeous with an attention to detail you might not expect given it’s a sequel to a spin-off of a two-decade-old film.

It’s a phenomenal performance from McAdams, subtle and gentle in its heartbreak.

Beau Is Afraid is an Oedipal farce hysterically outsized in its execution.

The very best moments of Cyrano take place in near-silence, when all we can hear is the breathing of lovers enraptured by each other’s gazes.

There’s an argument to be made that Splitsville’s noncommittal on the subject of polyamory. I think that might, in fact, be the point: Covino and Marvin aren’t interested so much in whether polyamory is the solution to, or destruction of, a longterm relationship, but more the fact people’s stated beliefs and innate desires tend to be two entirely different and conflicted concepts.

Who’s really at the wheel of Richard’s ambition? His love for his children or his own ego? It’s a testament to both Green and Smith that the question is allowed to linger so potently.

Esmail goes big and bold with his Hitchcock allusions and showy camera work, not unlike M Night Shyamalan. At times, he’s a little on the nose, also not unlike M Night Shyamalan. It suits his vision.

Farnaby keeps it fresh and witty, combining the wordplay and low-stakes surrealism of his roots in The Mighty Boosh and Horrible Histories with a keen eye for literary adaptation.

Encanto bursts with colour and abstract flights of fantasy.

Nitram is a stark, difficult, but deeply reflective film that asks sincerely why we describe these crimes as incomprehensible at the very same time as we watch the same patterns unfold, again and again.