Donald Clarke

By way of contrast, Imitation of Life and its predecessors really poked their noses into the ratty, fetid spaces behind the plush curtains.

Joshua James Richards’s poetic cinematography – allowing in sunsets that drag us back to the America of John Ford – contributes to the queasy sense that redemption can come from landscape. Those sorts of conflicts are everywhere in a film that is quietly at war with itself throughout.

Gleeson and Farrell play off one another in a perfect complement — sulky gorilla opposite enthusiastic puppy — that, as awards season kicks up a gear, has been entertaining premiere audiences on both red carpets and inside the auditorium.

This is a Macbeth for the head rather than the heart, but no less beguiling for that.

Flow needs to make no specific points about human misuse of the planet. Its generalised sense of environmental dread reminds of something we all know and constantly pretend to forget.

Resurrection, shot with extravagant beauty by Dong Jingsong, makes more sense on first viewing than the director perhaps allows. Each story is whole in itself. But it has the quality of a gorgeous knot that will never fully be untied.

The main body of Across the Spider-Verse is, however, so endlessly, dizzyingly imaginative that few will lose hope at the mildly disappointing denouement. There is surely more to come, and the potential is there for endless variation. Excelsior!

We have a new cinematic poet in Kulumbegashvili, and she doesn’t care if the stanzas rhyme. Difficult. Abrasive. Worth persevering with.

Maybe, Morgan’s Creek does not have the ironic grit of Sullivan’s Travels or the suave perfection of The Lady Eve, but, as a showcase for Sturges the comic impresario, it can hardly be bettered.

Detailing the cold shoulders offered to a young woman after she becomes pregnant in 1960s France, the film works evocative period detail in with implicit warnings against contemporary backsliding on reproductive rights. The relentless clockwork of human biology lends it an awful tension. The actors give in to no cheap options.

Lilleaas and Reinsve go up against each other with nuanced vigour. Fanning, though not suggesting any real film star I can think of, has fun spreading trivial glamour about the place. Skarsgard deserves the Oscar he may well receive.

There is a point to all this. As well as offering a delicious audio-visual feast, the film firmly makes the case that those who have least to blame for global warming — those living close to nature — will be the ones who ultimately suffer the most. If we have to be taught such a grim lesson then this is the way to do it.

A small film about great matters.

The cool, often static shots and unhurried editing are characteristic of a school of documentary film-making that allows the viewer complete freedom to shuffle significances. There is a beauty in the empty precision.

Not every tweak and shave works — there is a brief, unfortunate vacuum in the closing scene — but Spielberg has given us more than most of us deserve. Here is a fitting, accidental tribute to Stephen Sondheim, whose lyrics still crackle above Leonard Bernstein’s score, a few weeks after his death.

Though immaculately made in every respect, Paradise Is Burning never quite finds its narrative rhythms. The story is happily fussing over here and then gets distracted by something over there. But Sine Vadstrup Brooker’s lovely cinematography, drifting in the liminal spaces between city and country, keeps the viewer uneasily gripped throughout.

A superb family entertainment. Maybe even a future classic.

Passing is, in some ways, a slender story. But Hall’s feel for the period and her gift for folding potent discourse into the attractive visuals kicks it up to the level of high art.

A terrific, gripping drama that will cross cultural borders with ease. Every nation has such stories.

It would be a mistake to seek too many lessons from the film. Its great achievement is in the creation of a timeless nowhere that is both drawn from history and independent of it. That is the absurdist ideal.

At the heart of Pillion, a very English class of reasonableness brushes against an equally English interest in hierarchical kink. Nothing wrong with that sort of thing, but doesn’t it play terrible havoc with the knees.

No doubt the unrelenting archness will annoy many. But, honed to an economic 93 minutes, Black Bag beats all the current worthless streaming thrillers for wit, pace, style and commitment to the bit.

As in the best of Anderson’s work, there is a lesson in here about the addictive balm of storytelling.

The result is neither as sentimental nor as moving – if those adjectives can be separated – as the director’s more personal 20th century films. It does, however, feel complete in itself. Cleanly shot. Immaculately performed. And, no, you probably don’t need to know Spielberg from Carlsberg to have a good time.

Energy does not buzz around this film, but it swells with decency, humanity and quiet bravery.

This is a profoundly serious film, one concerned about our disregard for animals and our disintegrating ecosystems, but it is also restlessly alive.

It is a terrible story, but, in its constant discovery of bravery and compassion, ultimately a hopeful one.

A thrilling picture. But also a sobering one.