John Bleasdale

Covino’s brilliant comedy is original and smartly entertaining: a celebration of male friendship in all its ups and downs.

Bright Sunshine In is a pithily precise portrait of the love life of an artist.

The film reveals its twists and turns with a delicate hand and always manages to stay one step ahead of the audience, even as most of those watching will surrender to the hypnotic erotic charge that runs through the film.

Men is a hallucinatory provocative work which will provoke laughs and yelps and not a little self-reckoning.

Dean doubles as cinematographer and his ability to unobtrusively capture moments of village life is matched for an eye for the natural beauty the tribe lives amidst. But it's a beauty which never drowns the film. There's also room for jokes and gossip, nastiness and fun.

In Farrell and Kidman, he has found two performers who are utterly willing to go the whole hog and their performances are brilliant deadpans.

Fukunaga and his actors - especially the two leads - have managed to create a riveting drama which is suitably appalling.

With a richness of characterisation usually reserved for hefty novels, each shot in Winter Sleep glows like a symbol, whilst each digression is almost a short story in itself.

Following the disappointing period dalliance of Jimmy's Hall, Ken Loach's latest I, Daniel Blake is something of a return to form. It stands as a succinct and furious raging against the dying of the light, or more accurately the snuffing of the light by a privatised and punitive system more intent on lowering the figures than caring for those in need.

[Bahrani's] created a complex and thoughtful political drama with the speed and tension of a good thriller.

Goldin’s career and Poitras’ latest asserts the primacy of the artist as a participant in the world. Something which will make us see the world differently starting from the very walls from which the art might hang: the rooms in which the films are seen.

Saturday Fiction certainly demands patience, shrouded at first in a smog of exposition.

With starkly enigmatic, but beautifully wrought and filigree imagery, with a dark cutting humour which is bleak rather than ironic, Garrone is not interested in touching our hearts or giving us a comfortable moral.

Alongside The Wrestler, The Whale is Aronofsky at his most compassionate. It’s a gargantuan invitation to empathy and understanding.

The Wonders is a complex and nuanced illustration of a family trying to live by their own standards - whilst only partly failing. Rohrwacher's vision is tactful and restrained, with so much we don't ever know. The characters' histories are there to be guessed rather than spelled out.

Although Tamhane's film recalls Franz Kafka in its nightmarish vision of inhumane bureaucracy, Court is neither faceless nor surreal. Rather, the absurdity and numbness are all too human and as such even more frightening.

Whereas Senna had that one moment of horrible impact, this latest tale is the story of one long car crash.

Everything builds to a brilliantly over the top finale that becomes almost mesmeric with its use of colour, music, movement and panting.

The President has an urgent relevance to all too many countries around the world, including those touched by the Arab Spring; a darkly comic and poignant portrait of an Ozymandian fall from grace and the subsequent damage that ensues.

Larraín is as good at navigating the treacherous waters of internal White House politics as he is capturing the moments of intense, if numbed, private suffering.

Most importantly, Red Rocket is a humane comedy, a portrait of romantic douchebaggery and an America of flailing last chances.

This isn’t a film about sexual assault as a rare aberration, but about a culture which collectively diminishes any notion of consent and encourages a rush to experience.

Iran is a complex and bureaucratic country, but it is also the role of social media and so-called ‘fake news’ that lend A Hero a contemporary relevance, even as it feels like an ancient morality tale.

It's a feel good movie but also a refreshing blast from the past, expressing a nostalgia for a time when political quietism and apathy had not won the day and a Billy Bragg song made more than historical sense.

Kreutzer employs a variety of subtle anachronisms – servants wearing modern glasses, a concrete wall here and there – to allow herself and Krieps the freedom to introduce a modern sensibility that sticks a middle finger up at the polished production design of most films of this genre as casually as Elisabeth does at the decorum of her courtly life.

The movie is a gas. It moves with, well, dispatch, clattering along in its own eccentric way.

After Yang is a moving, subtle and grounded piece of science fiction that doesn’t necessarily get to the core, but certainly hits the heart.

One More Time with Feeling is a bold poem in itself, a portrait of the artist struggling to understand the essentially incomprehensible.

Youssef himself with his crooked smile and exuberant enthusiasm comes across as someone who in a normal state of affairs would be just another amiably slick joker. But in this context he takes on the bravery and the bearing of a hero.

Though the film tries for ironic detachment – twelve chapters with a prologue and epilogue – it ultimately can’t wink away its own heartfelt compassion and sympathy, even as it refuses to provide any trite solutions.

Happy End may be something of a greatest hits mixtape, but it's also an arresting offering.

This Is Congo is an angry film, yet one which is never blinded by its anger. McCabe offers no solutions – the UN Peacekeeping Force are rounded on at one point by furious locals – and no grounds for optimism. Yet even in its attempts to understand and to communicate that understanding, there is a defiance against the easy fallback of despair.

An expertly handled and brilliantly performed feel-good comedy with an original twist.

With The Postman's White Nights, Konchalovsky offers up an intimate and moving pastoral.

Laverty and Loach have created another hard-hitting, powerful film, spiked with humour and moments of rare but profound humanity.

Okja is exuberant and wild filmmaking.

Not since Jane Campion’s The Piano has a costume drama presented such a gorgeous view of love from a woman’s point of view.

In arguably a career-topping performance, Timothy Spall plays the cantankerous painter as a complex, grunting, snarling and utterly single-minded creature.

Mulubwa’s performance gives I Am Not a Witch its furious heart, but Nyoni weaves her spells subtly and has produced a film of intensity, satire and grace.

It's witty, smart and brilliantly played, plumbing the sub-aqueous depths of our psyches, our histories and desires.

Francofonia is a chatty and occasionally brilliant rumination on art, history and death.

Despite the multiple viewpoints, Monster is actually the anti-Rashomon, a jigsaw puzzle rather than a riddle wrapped in an enigma. The care and empathy with which the director and writer, as well as the performers, extend to all corners of the piece is extraordinary.

Kurzel is a master at building tension of a tragedy foretold.

The final few minutes will baffle some, infuriate others, but it will also be the wildness of the imagination which will have you pondering Evil Does Not Exist long after it has ended.

There’s no revolutionary moment of success in which the meanies are ousted and hip-hop declared godly. Music is like education in this: it’s all about the movement, not the destination.

A brutal, crackling and savage Hollywood satire Maps to the Stars knows exactly where it's going, carefully breaking every rule in the book. After carefully constructing his crystal kingdom, Cronenberg launches his stones with dark, mischievous joy.

Memoria is gloriously weird and it has that most magical quality of making you look at things in a totally different way.

Maidan is a stunning piece of political cinema and a documentary of quietly moving power and beauty.

A superb character study of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

There are moments when Garrone’s vision strays too close to the fable in its narrative even as its images portray a brutal reality. However, Io Capitano doesn’t lose its humanity.

Doing these usually faceless public servants justice is vitally important. But Totally Under Control somehow feels unfinished.

Polsky keeps Red Army driving forward and the result is a film as fast-paced and bloody-minded as the sport it celebrates.

Despite some imperfections, Arrival is a close encounter with the best of intelligent, thoughtful science fiction.

At almost three hours, Puiu's latest is as long as most family events are, but the observations made are brilliantly bright and there is love here, after all.

Sweet Country is a hoarsely angry film, a powerful denunciation of the racism and violence on which modern Australia was eventually founded.

After the profanity-laced Shakespearean barrage of Deadwood, Dewitt and Audiard’s Wild West is a more prosaic place, but it is also sharply intelligent, extremely funny and full of surprises.

With a fantastic stunt team, a gamely macho star and some wonderful editing, Rollerball is so convincing, urban legend had it there were fatalities during the shoot.

It shows the desperation, the pain and the suffering, but it also reveals the spirit and fortitude of those tasked with caring for the sick.

There is quite literally a darkness at the heart of the American dream as seen through the eyes of a teenage girl.

This is not just a biopic, or a bunch of worthies singing the praises of the King of Rock and Roll and hoping thereby to get a dribble of the blue suede limelight. Rather, it is a thought experiment, an argument, an essay in the true sense of that word, which is truly revealing.

Baumbach writes his dialogue with a sharp pencil and the film bursts with non-sequiturs, put downs and hilarious lines.

Petzold's Phoenix is a high-concept premise executed as a heart-wrenching character piece.

Andersson packs his film with thought-provoking deadpan humour.

A unique and beautiful boxing movie.

Cooper’s performance is sublime, delicately balancing the problem of playing a ham while not becoming a ham.

Although the narrative risks becoming arbitrarily episodic towards the end, Neon Bull is a genuine celebration of its characters and their grounded physical life as well as their obstinate ability to dream.

It’s open to debate whether this claustrophobic little parable means something. It’s devilishly clever but there’s a suspicion that this is beautiful calligraphy without words. And yet with the added circumstance of self-isolation, quarantine and quiet four-walled despair, Vivarium will undoubtedly resonate.

An acutely observed and frequently heartbreaking documentary.

Hawke's performance is his most mature to date, a masterpiece of a man who cannot work himself out and yet is compelled to try.

With The Homesman, Jones has produced an original and cantankerously offbeat western which becomes increasingly beguiling as the road stretches on.

Morgen presents a sense of Bowie as a man who is in search of himself and who, through philosophy and a bold commitment to art, finds his wisdom.

The result is a beautifully entertaining film. It is witty and the scenes between Gerwig and Pacino fizz alternately with flirtation, humour and occasionally rage.

Linklater’s Hit Man is an Aperol Spritz with enough fizz and prosecco to cover the taste of the strychnine. This could be one of the brightest dark comedies of recent times.

This is a rich and complex take on guilt and anger.

Essentially a caper movie, Dope defies the wearisome social realism that is often used to depict lives at the bottom of the social ladder. The script is verbally smart and the various contrivances and tangles of the plot are amusingly played out.

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ timely documentary on the Nobel Prize-winning novelist is a persuasive argument for rereading Morrison if you’ve already read her works – and if you haven’t, an imperative to get to it.

Brawl in Cell Block 99 is a midnight movie to relish.

The Wakhan Front's script is finely-balanced, allowing the possibly supernatural to slowly impinge without resorting to genre clichés.

The thoughtfulness of Plummer's performance is not matched by a script that forgets human logic in favour of narrative tricksiness that ultimately undermines the initially intriguing premise.

The film is often remarkable, gorgeous even - many of the shots in Youth would make excellent closing shots, including the opening shot - and funny. It's a work of wonderful moments, but it's less than momentous and, significantly, you'll never believe a single word of it. This is a pity as the performances are excellent.

There are moments of real wonder and delight and Quentin Blake's original illustrations are occasionally glimpsed in the set ups. This isn't an epic of visual wizardry and there's zero irony or clever wit. Rather, Spielberg's latest is an old-fashioned children's tale told simply and with plenty of heart.

Everything looks beautiful: sand the colour of peach fluff and skies, a cyan blue.

The Seasons in Quincy is most compelling when we and it listens to Berger or captures him listening to someone else.

This is the kind of oddball midnight movie that could easily gain a cult following and there are delights to be had in the midst.

Crimes of the Future still has its strengths. Howard Shore’s score lends a tragic, almost stately emotional counterpoint to the steel of the wit.

Fans of Kawase will likely enjoy this delicate tale of people finding their way in the dark.

Eisenberg avoids, for the most part, doing a Woody Allen impersonation, but his bumbling guilelessness is wearing and Stewart seems out of place, unable to ever quite get over being Kristen Stewart in a Woody Allen movie. In fact, both young leads seem nervous to have been invited and often appear simply pleased to be there.

The humour is as gentle as the girls are and, without sharp edges, the film occasionally veers towards schmaltz, but Kore-eda's deft touch and his eye for a subtle yet precise detail keeps the world grounded and consistently interesting, funny and at times moving.

For the occasional lapse...there is often a striking image or sly moment of humour to take away and overall, the film rewards persistence.

Although not quite the bounty of its title, The Treasure rewards the patient viewer with a quietly enchanting drama.

Mia Madre is an intimate and sincerely made family portrait, which ends up betraying its own indifference to anything beyond the confines of the family.

Plá's film is a caustic, genuine swipe at a selfish and insincere society which is content to make money from the suffering of ordinary people.

The dénouement when it comes doubles down on the madness and 11 Minutes is never boring, but neither is it quite as revolutionary as it thinks it is.

As you'd expect from an actor-director of Amalric's pedigree, the performances are brilliant throughout and Mathieu himself has a wonderful eye for the telling tick and/or the revealing gesture.

As fascism in South America, North America and Europe is rising from the grave, it needs a properly-aimed and delivered stake, rather than complacent sniggering

A well-behaved and unashamedly populist film, the kind that could be shown in schools and community centres, Akin's The Cut remains an undeniably important film regardless. What it does extremely well is to movingly illustrate a terrible moment in history which has been sadly neglected in the West and actively suppressed in other parts of the world.

The first forty minutes or so are – as you would expect – a harrowing recreation of the bombing and the crime.

There's something highly familiar about the material and although it is artful and occasionally powerful, Akin and co-screenwriter Hark Bohm have constructed their story without straying far from countless other versions of the same thing.