Clarisse Loughrey

The irony of Eternals is that, despite its characters explicitly tussling with their own lack of humanity, Zhao has delivered one of the most emotionally grounded entries in the entire franchise. She puts into full view the kind of moral quandaries that Marvel’s only ever really danced around in the past – the cost of individual life, or whether humanity is even worth saving in the first place.

This action caper is less a film than a collection of buzzwords.

The Card Counter is claustrophobic, certainly – but not always in the right ways.

There are measured performances here by both Russell and Plemons, two unfailingly talented actors, and a host of well-crafted practical effects that explain why producer and horror veteran Guillermo del Toro would take such an interest in the project. But all the trickery in the world can’t conceal how inauthentic Antlers feels at heart.

Passing is as richly felt as it is carefully conceived.

When all roads lead back to Evan, and to Platt’s misstep of a performance, the film becomes one giant gamble that’s quite disastrously failed to pay off.

As a thoroughly modern, self-reflective revival of one of the most famous horror films of all time, 2018’s Halloween felt like a small miracle. Its sequel suggests that Green shouldn’t have pushed his luck.

The Last Duel is perfectly engrossing as a slice of historical intrigue, a clash of iron wills and iron swords, all muddied on the battlefields of medieval France. But there’s a tendency here for the film to present basic facts about contemporary gender politics as some earth-shattering revelation.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage is a love story written in blood, sweat and the slime of half-eaten brains.

Every aesthetic decision here seems carefully made, even down to the brightly painted frontier towns (the historically accurate choice), which play in jokey contrast to a literal “white town”, in all meanings of the phrase. That’s what makes The Harder They Fall feel so thrilling – it’s a film that exists in the past, present, and future, all at the same time.

There’s a mainstream, global scope to the film, but Smith and Peter Bayham’s script isn’t without the small quirks and observations native to British comedy.

Like the very best of Anderson’s films, The French Dispatch is both utterly exquisite and deceptively complex – a film that, like the finest of dishes, is even richer in its aftertaste.

Director Pascual Sisto has achieved something a little more clever than pure imitation. He takes his audience’s expectations, that his film can only lead to bloodshed and despair, and leaves them hanging in the air for as long as he likes – it’s both tantalising and deliberately unsatisfying. You’re never given the comfort of knowing what comes next.

No Sudden Move may be a fairly minor entry in his filmography, but it’s well-crafted and thrilling in a way that feels oddly reassuring.

These animated outings will always feel like a flash in the pan if they continue to rely on contemporary nods as a source of cheap humour.

The Tender Bar is uneventful. But its performances have such an easy, lived-in quality that it wouldn’t be fair to call it inauthentic – just a little rosy in its outlook, perhaps.

This project should have been relatively straightforward: to provide a worthy showcase for Hudson, who is tremendous in exactly the kind of way that grabs the attention of awards show voting bodies.

The Many Saints of Newark is both instantly recognisable and somehow unplaceable. It’s fierce and brilliant, too – a work that both expands on and complicates the cultural legacy of The Sopranos.

A wrong turn was taken. And The Starling has come out the other side an utterly bizarre, tonal misfire that fumbles through several ideas before implying that it’s perfectly OK to berate the suicidal for being so suicidal.

There’s enough warmth to Guerrero’s script, co-written with Shane McKenzie and Perry Blackshear, to paper over the odd rickety effect or wooden performance.

It was Gyllenhaal, here in a producer role, who initially bought the rights to Gustav Möller’s Danish film. You could call this a vanity project, but at least his presence adds a dose of originality to this carbon copy remake.

It is a film of such literal and emotional largeness that it overwhelms the senses.

Cary Joji Fukunaga has made a smashing piece of action cinema with No Time to Die – it’s just a shame it had to be a Bond film.

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.

Its self-congratulatory crusade to restore its subject’s reputation has, for the sake of entertainment, distorted reality to the point that it borders on farce.