Fionnuala Halligan

It’s extraordinary how a work like Nomadland can hold a mirror to society and refract back to the audience the light of their own lives.

The result is engaging, tender film-making which tugs at the heart-strings, spurred by a sympathetic cast and the young lead, newcomer Jude Hill.

These troubled, lovable, prickly, obsessive entertainers, supported by brother-son Todd, invite the viewer into their rackety lives – bright, lived fully in the spotlight, chin-up and completely unsinkable.

In true, blunt Aussie fashion, Last Stop Larrimah takes this wild-west story as it comes, and Tancred tells it well.

Occasionally schematic, albeit only in the service of pricking our consciences, Petra Volpe’s tense drama is a shot in the arm of undiluted empathy for the over-stretched, under-valued nursing profession.

It’s clear that waters need to be calmed or someone will be hurt, but The Librarians also shows that won’t happen unless people stand up and take action. So it’s a call to arms, then. But, be warned: a horror story too.

Resurgence doles out the action and effects work in carefully calculated, incremental doses, which give the film a cumulative tension. Even if it’s hokey and jokey, this is a loud, effects-driven piece, with a driving score. For fans of Roland Emmerich disaster movies, this both hits all the marks, while delivering nothing new.

Glassland is impressive, although Barrett struggles to give this carefully crafted narrative a coherent resolution.

Together Together makes for comfortable viewing elevated by Harrison’s sparky presence.

There’s real magic here, and nothing fake about the emotions which guide it.

The first half of Age of Shadows feels muddy as momentum builds; the latter stages boast a cinetic energy - cutting a violent melee to classical music (in this case Ravel’s Bolero), may be a tribute to John Woo, but it’s stunning nonetheless.

The trouble with a high-stakes “small” British project like this is that everyone involved tends to want to play it safe.

While Bob does slink around some predictable narrative beats, this is still a slyly subversive film with a social point to make as it highlights James’s isolation in a cold, hard-faced London which responds better to animals than its hopeless humans.

A small-scale, covert glimpse of the lives led behind the headlines.

A quietly thoughtful and impressively acted drama.

It’s all glossily camped-up nonsense with an amusingly inappropriate title, but luridly – and ludicrously – entertaining nonetheless.

Despite its vaguely-generic title, this well-crafted close-quarters suspense from British-Iranian director Babak Anvari is firmly-written, -shot and -acted.

Lucy And Desi benefits greatly from a raft of archival footage ... Repeated montages and a schmaltzy score can lessen their effect, but Poehler has strong sense of the couple’s contribution to the entertainment industry, and nobody watching her documentary will emerge anything less than convinced of how outstanding that was.

Tenet is as generous as any Bond when it comes to a big-buck opening sequence and regularly-scheduled, muscular set pieces. If anything, it showers the viewer with too much, over-balancing a ticking-time-clock finale which is only saved by Elizabeth Debicki’s raw acting talent.

Anchored by a funny, foul-mouthed performance from McDormand, McDonagh’s daringly-structured dark comedy is rich and layered and often laugh-out-loud funny but trips over constant tonal shifts.

Amidst an orgy of cameos and spiked with more than a few stinging gags, the further travails of Patsy and Edina as they battle irrelevancy is bright, light entertainment, even though it never quite makes a convincing case for itself cinematically.

Overall, it’s as cheesy and just as hard to resist as a Mamma Mia! with smoother production values and a LGBTQ+ heart. The fact that Meryl Streep connects the two is a delight: at 71, this is an actress who still knows how to have a good time in her craft, and the viewer can feel the joy in it.

The film is called, and certainly contains, cries from Syria but in itself Afineevsky’s documentary is more of a shout, a piercing scream.

Shaun exists simply to entertain children and he fulfils his brief.

Markees Christmas is an appealing, sensitive find as Morris, with Robinson striking all the rights notes as his struggling father.

Whitney Can I Be Me delivers yet another tragic lesson in the toxic mix of fame and talent and children: it should be required viewing for all those who seek to follow this diva’s path to fame and fortune.

Greta is best read as tongue-in-cheek femme fun. And proof, certainly, that despite her considerable success, Huppert has not at all fallen into the trap of taking herself to seriously.

There is a big effort put into the world building, which pays off.