Donald Clarke

Anderson and his fine cast layer all these pyrotechnics with a palpable sadness for their characters and for the country. There are few explicit arguments here about the state of the US, but one can imagine endless such arguments being projected upon it.

Aftersun’s greatest achievement is to gradually reveal the imminence of a tragedy that, though never explicitly confirmed, feels inescapable by the already celebrated final shot. It is hard to think of another film that has pulled off this trick so effectively.

If we were previously in any doubt, Haneke is confirmed as the premiere European director of his generation.

It is a film of high emotions and quiet conversations. It is a film that embraces blended nationalities while acknowledging the pull of one’s earliest home. One leaves aware of unavoidable open-endedness but sated by a work that has achieved all its lofty ambitions.

Beautifully shot by Ranabir Das, a cinematographer who apparently revels in the variety of artificial light sources, those scenes welcome us into the last act with a warm, satisfying hug. It is, however, Kapadia’s generous polyphonic engagement with Mumbai that sits most memorably in the brain.

The audience, eager to give such characters their due, has to crane its collective neck as the momentum drags it to a relentless conclusion. But it’s worth the muscular strain. There’s more to Uncut Gems than dizzying momentum.

The middle body of the picture, shot impeccably by Florian Hoffmeister, takes on the quality of an oblique ghost story as, struggling to prepare a performance of Mahler’s Fifth, she finds her fragile carapace creaking and cracking.

So hard and chillingly perfect is the aesthetic – Friedel and Hüller adding another carapace with their unflinching performances – that one bristles a little when it is occasionally broken.

The closing sequence, sure to endure future homage from impressed film-makers, has already become famous for its chilling ambiguity. One of the year’s very best films.

It is the breathless dynamics of Son of Saul that really sets it apart.

All the best science fiction on artificial intelligence is really about the challenges of being human. Her is full of strong, sly jokes and intriguing speculation on future technologies. But, ultimately, it is a sad story about the difficulty of making meaningful connection with any psyche, whether organically evolved or digitally tailored to the user's needs.

A lovely comedy of the most serious hue.

No purer entertainment has come our way this year.

If The Brutalist were not so wedded to audiovisual effect, it might play like a lost Great American Novel.

One can scarcely imagine a more enjoyably chaotic way of welcoming in the new year. What a blast.

It has the precision of retooled memory. It speaks to experienced time and place.

Kechiche’s intention – fully realised – is to immerse the viewer completely in the nuances of the relationship. By the close, one feels (and this is not meant as a facetious dig) one has lived through the girls’ experiences in something like real time.

Hogg has created her own universe and explored it with relentless vigour. Few final shots have so satisfactorily summed up such a magnum opus. Sod the detractors.

Sound of Falling asks a fair bit of audiences. It provides great rewards for those who oblige.

One good reason we all have to remain upright is this clever, original, warm cinematic balm.

Those who do stick with Killers of the Flower Moon – and you all should – when it opens later in the year will, however, be rewarded with the most ingenious of closing codas. There are issues here, but the great man has still got it.

Here is an intelligent entertainment as generously stuffed as the greatest 19th-century novel. They rarely make them like this any more.

A highly original, singularly beautiful film.

Working halfway round the world, Campion has fashioned a startling translation of later chapters in the American creation myth.

The action is unsettling throughout. There is a pervasive sense of unspoken menace lurking just outside the frame (or somewhere in the near past or future). But it is also a celebration of uncomplicated human kindness.

A knotty, rough-hewn marvel.

It amounts to a dizzying feast of cinematic excess. But there is intellectual traction and psychological grit to the project.

Now 85, Scott again proves there is nobody so efficient at pressing contemporary technology to the limits. He also draws heroic performances from fleshy human beings