Francesca Steele

It is a brash, funny, extravagant spectacle about sex and death, pain and pleasure, and – most of all – fashion. Milkmaid corsets, vintage Chanel, latex wedding dresses. Move over, Kate Bush. There’s a new Wuthering Heights look in town.

Crucially, the film is very funny, but like Alex (and Bishop), in a gentle, unprepared sort of way that feels like having good mates over for dinner.

H is for Hawk wants desperately to make you feel the raw blankness of grief and the healing power of nature, but in the end feels more like a kids’ wildlife documentary: beautiful but bloodless.

I’m not convinced that the heavy violence is entirely warranted, but the whole thing is at least unfailingly kitsch, and when the storylines merge they do so seamlessly.

It is a story of family and relationships, of life’s inevitabilities, and the surprises we can nonetheless carve from those. Its gut-wrenching despair is matched by a strange optimism, a powerful embrace of the possibilities of life and love that stays with you long after the end credits roll.

The film’s very last moments are perhaps a little saccharine, but honestly, by this point, you’ll forgive it anything. Supremely confident and stylish film-making that markets itself as big yet feels somehow small, in the sense that extraordinary care is paid to each scene, each modest conversation. Marty’s self-belief may sometimes be unearned, but this film’s absolutely isn’t.

Song Sung Blue’s best moments are when it focuses on its beautifully ordinary love story.

Goodbye June is preoccupied with sentiment in a way that might feel great for a two-minute Christmas ad, but just doesn’t work for an entire film. Still, Winslet is a confident director and Anders has an eye for relationships.

The film never rises above its clichés.

This film has the conversational dexterity and comedy of early Woody Allen films, the sadness of Lost in Translation, and the appealingly self-referential celebrity heft of Notting Hill. It is Baumbach, Sandler and Clooney at the top of their games, in a game where the audience is very much invited to play.

It doesn’t quite reach the heights of Part One, but this is still a highly entertaining display of what musical theatre can do on screen with top level performances and a true affection for the world-building.

This hybrid never feels quite cohesive enough, the pace somehow both rushed and yet too slow. One feels Vanderbilt’s panic at the enormity of the topic. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot to admire.

Die My Love is simply too odd to appeal to everyone – but anyone familiar with the despair induced by listening on repeat to “I like to eat apples and bananas”, while wondering where their life, identity and bodily autonomy have gone, will find truth, if not solace, in its singularity.

What the film does so well, though, is bring enormous compassion to a story that initially seems to despair for the world.

The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White plays Springsteen in a performance that hits all the right beats, including some enjoyably sweaty, raspy musical set pieces (White sings the numbers himself), without ever elevating the role to anything greater.

This dazzling array of top tier actors have to spend most of their time discussing how bonkers the totally sane Lo seems, and so they never get past two-dimensional characterisation no matter how hard they try.

The script for unconventional romantic comedy A Big Bold Beautiful Journey spent some time on Hollywood’s Black List, where well-liked but not yet picked up screenplays sometimes linger for years. It’s a shame it didn’t just stay there.

The Thursday Murder Club never nails its tone, forever feeling like it’s still in rehearsal rather than down to the final edit.

There’s nothing new here and also a palpable reliance on enduring goodwill from the franchise’s existing fanbase, but honestly it doesn’t really matter. This is all such undemanding, carefree fun, delivering exactly what it promised, and simple without ever becoming simplistic.

The film feels limp, palpably too dependent on its source to emerge as its own thing. To convey the messages it wants to convey, it needed to work much harder to be more than just a pretty painting.

I salute Gunn, who was poached from Marvel, for trying to infuse this reboot with humour and vitality, dragging it out of a gloom that no longer suits viewers plagued by enough real-world problems.

Ballerina is actually great fun, a propulsive, pulpy gun-fu joy that revels in the things the early John Wick did so well: stunts and absurd world-building.

It’s a film that could do with a little more feeling overall – and more fury, too.

Mickey 17 is a highly entertaining absurdist ride that embraces nihilism right up until the moment it tenderly skewers it.

It is, indeed, exceedingly tasteful, but without any narrative oomph, and some problematic characterisation to boot.

To enjoy Rumours you will have to accept that despite its opening, its aim is not The Thick Of It-style political skewering, but rather bonkers, absurdist nihilism. In the apocalypse, it turns out, nothing means much at all.

It fails to offer anything new and lacks the original’s fearless spirit. It’s not a dud, just a muted version of its forerunner, getting you where you want to go, just with less wind in its sails.

Paddington in Peru lacks the anarchic humour and originality that made its predecessors outstanding, but it’s all terribly merry nonetheless.

It joyfully expands on the source material with extended musical numbers and astute childhood flashbacks in a combination that will delight committed Ozians and newcomers alike.

The patience and candid discomfort with which Almodóvar approaches it all feels fresh, the women’s relationship increasingly moving.

This film ripples with emotion. It is suffused with a sense of longing that lodges deep in its audience, even if we don’t always fully understand it.