John Bleasdale

Last Breath makes for a very decent entry into the survival genre of films like Touching the Void with the added appeal of the submarine movie and all the claustrophobia and intensity that comes with that.

Aïnouz has eschewed the post-modern fun of Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite for a much grimmer, darker vibe. This is the kind of film where torches most definitely gutter and men call out directives “on the orders of the king!” But for all the weighty gravitas of Simon Russell Beale as a conniving bishop and Eddie Marsan as a conniving noble bring to bear, the story never takes the history seriously enough either.

Irony has a wearying effect after a while, ultimately leading to a flattening of the ethical landscape so that by the end of it we can’t help but feel they’re all as bad as each other.

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.

With this near-perfect midnight movie, [Glazer] has given us a work of unsettling and riveting brilliance.

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.

Green Border is a powerful and necessary film.

Kröger manages well with moments of pure cinema in between, and a particularly out-there moment of noise and mayhem which threatens to crush the film and the audience in an audiovisual avalanche. There’s an immersive strangeness that only David Lynch has snuck into mainstream cinema.

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.

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.

This is Barbie on absinthe.

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

Few American directors capture the contemporary urban nightscape as well as Fincher: a supreme genre filmmaker, which makes this perfectly fine film so disappointing.

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

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

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

Homecoming gives an empathetic portrait of a family in a phase of change. Girls are becoming women; a mother is beginning to return to life. It has the promise of a prelude.

It’s a pity that on this occasion Scorsese makes an admirable and fine film, but alas not a great one.

About Dry Grasses is part-Chekovian comedy of yearning and male ego, and part-tragedy of a country which stymies the growth of its own citizens.

Glazer’s film is richly daring. It is both meticulous and brutal; aloof and involved; ferocious and cool. It is poetry and cinema, but it is also guilty and it knows that it is.

It is as glitzy and gaudy as the festival itself, with its vacuous politics drowned out by the thunderous sound of it slapping its own back.

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.

Nothing particularly unusual or dramatic happens for the first hour of the film, and yet it is so beautifully done and engaging that the whole thing is riveting to watch.

Ultimately, Narvel is the fascist as liberal fantasy. Someone with access to skilled violence, who can unleash it at whim. It’s such a pity that a screenwriter who used to excel at delineating the intricacies of male insecurity and poison now comes out with such a one-dimensional character.

Saint Omer is a deeply intellectual film – Medea is referenced several times as a frame of understanding – but it’s also heartfelt. There is a compassion to the dispassion: an empathy.

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.

The Eternal Daughter is very much a minor film for Hogg: a small chamber piece which could be watched as amusing marginalia to The Souvenir diptych. It’s a hangout film for those among you who can’t get enough Tilda Swinton and an incredibly cute dog, and as such it works. It doesn’t really have anything to say, and the meta-ness feels a little tired.

The Son, though perhaps not as original and accomplished as The Father, is nevertheless an affecting, empathetic and intelligent drama.

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

The Banshees of Inisherin is a beautifully-shot and deftly-played comedy. It is at once masterful, surprisingly poignant, and profound. Its portrait of a friendship faltering ultimately proves how vital friendship actually is: how vulnerable and naked we are without it.

Wilde has already proven herself as a director with her brilliant debut. Even the hackneyed sci-fi concept behind Katie Silberman’s screenplay wouldn’t have been too much of a problem if it wasn’t for the performances.

This could be seen as a smug, empty exercise in satirical excoriation – and as a smug, empty exercise in satirical excoriation, it’d be one of the best – but there is a genuine heart to the film, as well as intellect. Cheadle, Gerwig and Driver are all superb, while Sam Nivola and Raffey Cassidy give their smart-mouth, role reversal kids an impossible likeability.

There are moments in the film that just feel wrong, sometimes complex and wrong and sometimes just plain wrong.

Ultimately, Decision to Leave is like a beautiful airport novel of a film. It is far cleverer than it needs to be and is so acted with sly charisma.

It’s impossible not to be beguiled by the sweetness of the comedy, the skill of the performers and sheer craft of the film. But hopefully next time out Kore-eda will use it in the service of a plot which is more believable.

Dhont’s second film is a touching and empathetic treatment of male friendship, superbly acted and beautifully filmed.

Just as we learn to grudgingly like Lizzie, we also see the value in her work as it slowly comes together, emerging from the kiln with new colours and finally being displayed among her family and friends.

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

The final twist is so manipulative and cynical as to be actually enraging.

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.

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.

Östlund has created a full-throated, roaring comedy of hate against the upper-classes. It is cynical, nihilistic and has no issue about punching down.

Wells’ debut is a frankly astonishing work which will leave a lasting impression.

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.

What elevates Armageddon Time to something more than a piece of indulgent navel gazing is the way that Paul’s coming-of-age is reflected in the national story which closes a chapter on Jimmy Carter to turn a new page into Reaganite 1980s selfishness, reactionary politics and feral capitalism.

Your appreciation or otherwise of the film is going to be greatly influenced by whether or not you’ve seen the original, and as such Final Cut doesn’t really elbow its way to the front. However, if you can stand the slight whiff of decomposition then this deconstruction is fun and clever.

When You Finish Saving the World is fine. It’s well made, witty, and Wolfhard and Moore are effortlessly convincing in their roles; Wolfhard shucking off his Stranger Things image in the process. The problem – if there is one – is in the smooth snark of the title. There are sharp edges here that never bite.

It is a film about a personal grief which gradually, step by step, takes on a mythic resonance. This is a new and vibrant talent to be watched.

Visually arresting and well-acted, Dogs shows promise but one would have hoped for some new tricks.

Hit the Road is damned near to being a masterpiece – if it isn’t simply one already. There are scenes of broad comedy, musical sequences and a wholly tragic episode that plays out in a long wide-shot. The wonderful cast inhabit their roles so fully it’s hard to believe this is not a bona fide family.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Of the many problems the film has, it’s the different plots that never quite bounce off each other.

The performances are pitch perfect, particularly that of Marceau, who is superb in riding through the conflicts of the situation and the moments when the strong emotions riding over the niceties finally come to the fore.

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.

The two-part The Souvenir can be seen very much as one whole, and as such is one of the very best achievements in recent British cinema.

The delight is in the audacity and surprise of the film.

The film’s strongest element and most necessary comes with Luca Marinelli’s performance.

It seems ridiculous to call a film that is only 73-minutes long an epic, but that is what The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet feels like. Though it should be made clear, by epic there’s nothing grandiose; there is nary a special effect to be seen and hardly a cast of thousands. But at the same time, Argentine filmmaker Ana Katz’s sixth feature encompasses a life and very nearly the end of the world.

This is a good solid three star movie. Which is perhaps where Snyder should be anyway, away from the extremes of deification and vilification. When he’s not trying to be great, he can actually be quite good.

The Capote Tapes show a talent that seemed to go to waste while at the same time teasing us with the possibility that there is more yet to come.

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.

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

The alienness of humanity, when seen from another perspective, is evident throughout the film.

Benjamin is a charming metropolitan rom-com which is ultimately too lightweight to escape the gravity of its influences.

Not great, not hilarious, but not terrible or awful either.

Avi Belkin’s Mike Wallace Is Here harvests a vast archive of interviews and b-roll footage to create a fascinating profile of a combative, conflicted figure, who nevertheless substantially changed the face of how news was reported.

Ultimately, though it hints at moments of wit, Cuck never feels serious enough to be a convincing character study and not garish enough to head into genre territory. Ultimately, this sordid tale feels both real and inconsequential.

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.

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.

An acutely observed and frequently heartbreaking documentary.

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

Babyteeth is a funny, vibrant and deeply moving piece of work. Its flaws are the flaws of youth, overcompensating for boredom with frenetic hyperactivity.

Made up of a series of related but not necessarily connected vignettes, each filmed with a static camera, they resemble New Yorker cartoons scripted by Samuel Beckett.

There’s so much to enjoy in Ema that it comes as a surprise that there’s so little there.

Is The Painted Bird exaggerated? Does it go too far? Does it break the limits of taste? “Yes” on all counts. Walking out is an understandable and valid reaction but watching, getting angry, suffering and approaching understanding is also important too.

It might be that there’s a meatier version of the film – a Carlos-style miniseries perhaps – but as it stands, shifting between a lighthearted caper and more consequential political tragedy, Wasp Network is an entertaining fumble.

The King feels disconnected and unurgent. Despite some wonderful moments, it perhaps lacks the requisite majesty.

The film itself is utterly uncontroversial, solid, occasionally stolid, and perfectly fine.

Superficiality soaks the entire film.

Hopefully, Soderbergh’s film will raise more awareness as well as a chuckle.

Phoenix has created a masterful performance for a film which itself feels like a masterpiece: a cracked masterpiece.

The truth is that The Truth is an above-average French comedy and Kore-eda has succeeded in a finely wrought act of ventriloquism and diva worship. But the Japanese director’s fans can be forgiven for thinking above average is not good enough for such an accomplished filmmaker.

At the heart of Marriage Story are two career-best performances from Driver and Johansson. There is sensitivity, wit and intelligence in abundance, and in one barnstorming scene the kind of raw emotional nudity that’s rarely captured on screen: it’s the painful core of the movie which the laughter might ease but can’t erase.

Scenes come and go with a weightlessness that has nothing to do with zero gravity.

This is a powerful and beautifully shot film of love and survival.

Efira is a dominant and compelling presence and Sibyl is frequently funny. Ultimately, it never quite squares the circle of the comedy and the pain, but Triet is a sophisticated filmmaker and this – her third feature – is further proof of great talent.

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

It’s just Huppert on autopilot and like that dry white wine, you can have too much of it.

A masterful dissection of social inequality and the psychology of money.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is bold, beautiful and brutal. It’s Tarantino’s best film since Kill Bill, perhaps even since Pulp Fiction.

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.

Eggers has created a film of disturbing horror, absurdist comedy and probing psychodrama which defies the generic boundaries as it breaks through them. The Lighthouse is a saltwater gothic masterpiece.

Compared to the sophisticated and nuanced horrors of Black Mirror, Little Joe feels like a fairly straightforward riff on a very familiar idea.