Donald Clarke

Considered as an exercise in hushed mortal contemplation, The Shrouds, sombrely scored by Howard Shore, earns a spot beside Cronenberg’s best work. This is just the sort of unclassifiable oddity that the greatest directors, now less concerned with expectations, manage late into fecund careers.

For all the undeniable power of Occupied City, some will wonder if, given its formal repetitions, the piece should not be presented as an installation. Maybe. But the concentration and lack of distraction allow that greater degree of immersion. That sense of being dragged through a narrative – even a non-linear one – is a vital part of its unsettling appeal.

Night Shift does not go for full-on social realism. One wealthy patient comes across as something of a cliche. The details of Floria’s eventual meltdown would be more at home in a medical soap than in a film that, elsewhere, strives for rigorous representation of working practices. But Benesch carries us compellingly through those narrative convulsions to an ending that makes an epic of the everyday.

Time will tell if the social media thread is set to become the epic poem of the new millennium. For now, Zola feels like a triumphant lunge into fresh territory.

For all the eccentricity of its premise, Rose of Nevada has things to say about how easily we can become disconnected from the relatively recent past.

The Surfer, for all its unpleasantness, offers encouraging evidence that there is still room for existential awkwardness in contemporary cinema. No better, odder man than Nicolas Cage to act that out as the catechism of surfism gains another worthy chapter.

Perhaps Gray’s best film so far.

It doesn’t exactly subvert expectations, but the sharp writing and subtle acting make for a more satisfying experience than a bald synopsis promises.

A real stonker of an entertainment.

Older than Ireland is at its most moving when addressing the universal experiences that shape all lives.

It is such a shame that momentum is allowed to sag as the film shuffles through six endings when either of the first two would do nicely. To that point, Project Hail Mary is a model of high-class popular entertainment. An explicit tribute to a Steven Spielberg classic in the opening third feels like no great overreach.

The film is a genre entertainment and, like all such beasts, it honours certain conventions and allows certain compromises.

For all the plum-on-the-nose satire, Östlund does not, however, fall into the trap of making every target a monster.

Honour Among Thieves could have tidied away its plot more economically, but the leisurely pacing does allow us to connect with the surprisingly fleshy characters. It is no mean feat to make something so funny from such unpromising material. It is more impressive still to end on a genuinely moving note. A welcome surprise.

What makes the thing really fly – and it does still fly – is the witty energy of Jon Watts’s direction and the fizzy chemistry between the core actors.

In short, Kosinski and his team have accomplished their odd, hybrid mission more impressively than should have been possible. Most importantly, they have, in an age of cartoon computer graphics, delivered action sequences that appear to be taking place in the real world.

For all that self-aware fuss, Glass Onion works darn well as a mystery romp. It is a little smooth to the touch, but there are beautiful chicanes along the route to a satisfactorily clamorous conclusion.

This tribute feels plausible. It feels touching. But it also feels a bit otherworldly. All those adjectives are appropriate for another tremendous film from one of our era’s great young directors.

At the risk of damning with the faintest praise, this is easily Bay’s best film in more than 25 years.

Strickland has expressed a passion for This is Spinal Tap and Flux Gourmet has much to do with how close confinement causes creative types to claw out one another’s eyes. The characters here are every bit as cleanly drawn as the members of that fictional rock group and, even if they generate less open affection, they also encourage one to take sides.

Nia DaCosta, young director of the fine Little Woods, is behind the camera and she shows a real gift for gruesome showboating.

Many will retain understandable uneasiness about the project, but few could deny the technical brilliance and dedication to an austere brief. An essential watch. Though maybe just the once.

One Life breaks no new cinematic ground. But it tells a story worth hearing. And it allows an indisputable great one more chance to show us what he can do.

Here is a film clawed up from the damp soil and smeared imaginatively across the screen. It is unlikely to be confused with Wild Mountain Thyme.

Nobody with a sense for contemplative cinema will be left unsatisfied by Notturno.

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.

Allegories are unavoidable. The walk is American capitalism. The walk is life itself. It requires, however, no such connections to enjoy the best King adaptations in many years.

James Watkins’s version easily justifies its independent existence, however. Four first-rate performances find new energies in the story. The shift in nationalities adds other interesting angles.