John Nugent

Just a solidly made cat-and-mouse thriller, with muscularly committed performances from its two leads. It’ll make you want to explore the Great Outdoors and simultaneously never leave your house again.

A defiantly avant-garde take on commercial chart-toppers. It’s not for everyone, but it deserves to be: a gorgeous fusion of film, fashion, faith, and certified bangers.

Hugely impressive musical and dance performances from the two young men playing Michael Jackson cannot shake off the uncomfortable fact that there is an entire other side to the pop star’s story which is entirely conspicuous by its absence here.

The cinematic equivalent of being teabagged without your consent.

A cautionary tale against the dangers of excessive podcasting, this is a supremely spooky sonic ordeal. As an allegory for Catholic guilt, it’s haunting; as an auditory experience, it’ll fuck you up.

It’s thinner than the paper it’s written on, and full of questionable choices — but in a switch-your-brain-off kind of way, this will adequately activate your heist glands. Light the fuze!

It’s nonsense — but at the very least, well-meaning nonsense.

Van Sant’s previous historical fictions have been more incisive, but this is a tense crime thriller, with a solid new addition to Bill Skarsgård’s rogues’ gallery of scumbags.

A special sort of film, one which can be enjoyed as a dark climate-change allegory and a bright, colourful, emotional yarn on friendship and family. Fantastique!

With some genuinely shocking moments, this is a fascinating, frightening —  if frustrating — account of masculinity in crisis.  

A very watchable old-school blockbuster crowd-pleaser. Ryan Gosling and an alien made of rocks are the best space-based double-act since R2-D2 and C3-PO.

Parochial pub-based piffle — like a pint that’s gone a bit flat. But you can’t doubt its sincerity.

Don’t call it a comeback — but this is really strong stuff from Pixar: funny, thoughtful, sweet, making for a heartfelt paean to nature, and beavers in particular. Dam good.

An energetic, urgent and damning assessment of our prison crisis, Wasteman marks Cal McMau as an exciting new homegrown director.

Lovely visuals, but this is a rare miss from Sony Pictures Animation. Watch KPop Demon Hunters again, instead.

Gorgeous to look at — but this is simply not looney enough to stand alongside the Looney Tunes greats of old. Needs more anvils.

A hugely impressive debut. Personal and political, this is a tender and spellbinding depiction of family in fraught times.

Essentially “Men will literally do stand-up rather than go to therapy”, in cinematic form. An appealing tragicomedy-drama, told with veracity and heart by Cooper, Arnett and Dern.

About as powerful as cinema gets. Its hybrid blend of documentary audio and devastating dramatisation is heart-wrenchingly, shatteringly effective.

A gripping, zig-zaggy potboiler, this is a crime thriller in the old-school tradition, with some enjoyable turns from Boston’s finest, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

Just lovely. Tourette syndrome has not been afforded its cinematic dues, but what an affable, funny character to explore it with in John Davidson — and what a performance from Robert Aramayo.

A true original: an impressionistic portrait of a lost life, recreated in multiple forms with a gorgeous soundtrack. Odd, but unique.

With strong performances in service to a clear, confident vision from Chloé Zhao, this is a wrenching contemplation of the “undiscovered country” of death and grief.

An odd, messy, misjudged shambles. You can’t fault the earnest tone or the plucky performances, but you can fault almost everything else.

Haunting, serenely composed and beautiful, this is an elegy for a life and a country that America used to be. 

This is not the messiah. Nor is it a very naughty boy. There was an opportunity for a truly original spin on the so-called Greatest Story Ever Told here, but The Carpenter’s Son pulls its punches to make a rather rote horror that amounts to little.

Gothic, iconoclastic, engrossing, slyly excoriating of modern-day America and very funny to boot, it’s another solidly satisfying whodunnit from Benny B. Keep them coming, please.

Wicked: For Good, sure — but not quite Wicked: For Great.