Geoffrey Macnab

A House of Dynamite (which premiered in competition at the Venice Film Festival) stands as a grim and timely warning about the renewed dangers of nuclear proliferation. Another way of looking at it, though, is as the most entertaining Hollywood movie on the subject of potential mass destruction since Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove.

The real way Safdie puts a chokehold on his audience is by examining Mark and Dawn’s physical and emotional weaknesses in such forensic detail. The Smashing Machine may not provide the pay-offs that audiences expect from more conventional sports movies, but this is the most raw and vulnerable that Johnson has ever been on screen. Once you’ve seen him this exposed, you won’t watch his typical action movie stunts in quite the same way ever again.

A very cleverly crafted screenplay, co-written by Baumbach and British actor-writer Emily Mortimer, balances the in-jokes with perceptive observations about status anxiety, the vapidity of celebrity culture, and the fragility of family ties.

This is slippery, subversive storytelling that’s very hard to get any firm grasp on – but that is one of its main pleasures.

This, then, is everything you expect from a Wes Anderson film. If you like his work, you’ll love it. If you don’t, you’ll probably break out in hives again.

Phoenix’s performance remains powerful and stirring, too. The genius of it is that we can’t help but care for Arthur despite his neediness and derangement. Even during the film’s most apocalyptic and violent moments, we’re always aware that, underneath Joker’s gaudy warpaint, lurks little, feeble Arthur. Against the odds, this ingenious and deeply unsettling film even turns into a bit of a weepie by the final reel.

Director George Miller combines speed, grace and explosive violence, emulating Sam Peckinpah westerns and even, at times, the work of Charles Dickens – Furiosa is a bit like a young Artful Dodger, using her wits and courage to stay alive.

Cooper shows us his subject’s mix of magnetism, volatility and childlike egotism but he remains a strangely elusive figure. It’s left to Mulligan’s Felicia to crack the film’s sometimes too-shiny facade and to give its story some bruising emotional depth.

Stone gives surely the boldest performance of her career so far, in a role that puts upon her heavy physical and psychological demands.

In its own offbeat way, Asteroid City is an Anderson patchwork of Cold War paranoia and American family values in all their often hypocritical glory. It is every bit as arch as his best work, while still managing to tug hard on the heartstrings.

It’s a closely focused character study, galvanised by the tremendous performances from Portman and Moore, which delves into areas more conventional dramas don’t go near.

Against the odds, Jeanne du Barry has turned out to be a subtle and well-crafted costume drama with plenty of satirical bite.

Penn and Kaufman’s film about him is sprawling and uneven but also heartfelt and inspiring. It’s informative but has an immediacy which you rarely find in conventional news reports. The documentary leaves you with admiration not only for its subject, the comedian turned wartime leader, but for the doughty Hollywood star who put himself in the eye of the storm too.

In its morbid and provocative way, the film is often funny but it’s thought-provoking and very creepy too.

The pathos is laid on very thick. At times, you wonder why a filmmaker as sophisticated as Aronofsky is resorting to such manipulative tactics. Beneath all its blubber, though, this turns out to be a film with a very big heart.

Stanley Donen's 1957 musical represents a triumph of form over content.

All the characters’ feelings here are very deeply sublimated. The fascination of The Power of the Dog lies in its ambiguity and its depth of characterisation. Nothing is obvious here, not even the title.

It is more a film poem, an ode to modernity and a symphony of a city.

It is typical of Orson Welles that he takes a B-movie thriller set on the Mexican border and gives it a Shakespearian grandeur.