Kevin Harley

Taut and sprawling, riveting and haunting: firing on all cylinders, Nolan tackles world-changing history with fearsome force and focus.

Del Toro’s Valentine to boundary-crossing love pours from the screen in ravishing torrents of feeling and style. And Hawkins is sublime.

Adam Sandler is off-the-scale good in the Safdies’ latest: a scuzzy shot of adrenaline into the crime pic’s heart.

Alluring and unnerving, Lynch’s horror-show reminds us how much cinema misses him. Watts is electric, too.

Part Two is an inarguable marvel technically, almost leaving its Oscar-grade predecessor for dust.

Prepare to be spirited away. A brain-scrambler to make hearts swell, Shinkai’s giddy romance brims with emotion and invention.

Between the vast exteriors and candlelit interiors, the expressive authority of Kubrick’s direction is breathtaking.

Moving ever-onward from the sequels years, Pixar gets right back in the zone with Soul. Deep, witty, and fast on its jazz-loving feet, it doesn’t miss a beat.

Anderson crafts another classic of obsession and strange love, played by dynamite leads: Day-Lewis retires in style, Krieps is revelatory.

Under Haynes’ sure hand, Blanchett and Mara deliver a love story to melt to. Every glance means something, no strain shows: it’s filmmaking as natural as breathing.

Defiant, determined, Vega delivers a star-making performance in a drama of embattled grief, directed with heart.

Even the devout, surely, will warm to Dormael's alt-gospel: one of compassion, oddball fish gags and cheerier skylines.

Between its orgiastic carnage, orgasmic colours and very good dogs, Wick’s return gives hyper-stimulated action cinema a good name.

Gibson returns to film’s frontline with a ferociously felt anti-war movie, while Garfield invests his Doss with tremendous conviction.

An earthy, affecting and droll celebration of the unique alignment of influences that forged a great band – and the thrusting live footage rams Pulp’s greatness home.

A genre-blender imbued with style and substance. Magnetic and elusive, Stewart matches her director.

Vogt’s droll, daring meta-drama flows in subtle, surprising fashion. Petersen provides a magnetic focus for a mischievous, moving debut.

Ragnarok is both the MCU’s funniest outing yet and its clearest beneficiary of a playful, character-ful director’s voice since Guardians.

The drama gets overwrought but Shults stages the fallout artfully, stressing choppy montages and a nerve-rattling sound mix as tensions erupt.

Kapadia lays bare the tragedy of Winehouse’s story. It’s a tough, unfiltered watch but a thoughtful, thorough, feeling one.

A meditation on repressed desire with deep secrets, Thelma throbs with hypnotic intensity: it burns slow, but its magnetism holds right up to the teasing climax.

Over-ambitious perhaps, but Freyne’s intensely executed ‘infected’ fable packs tension, resonance, and clout.

It might not venture into the unknown, but Raya takes spirited wing.

Dudok de Wit and Ghibli have birthed a pan-continental marvel: a fable-cum-fantasy of a life adrift, aching with tender beauty and awed by nature’s extremes.

Mackenzie goes western in satisfying style, while Bridges, Pine and Foster bring true grit to Sheridan’s tight script.

In Soderbergh’s self-aware hands, it’s a character-centric, director-driven, genre-savvy invitation to take pleasure in a job well orchestrated, right up to a judicious closing shot that leaves you wanting to linger awhile with its motley crew.

Subtexts about grief and revenge help anchor the plot, though the more decisive clincher is Lowe’s guiding imprint – a mix of scathing vernacular wit and genre savvy.

The punning title is true; his bracing words narrated by admirers, Fuller’s amazing journey is lovingly honoured. Fuller Life, full of heart.

As we’re steered from nightmares to raptures, the mix of horror, sci-fi, puberty fable and gender-twisting perhaps strains the narrative. But two certainties hold: it’ll stick with you, and Hadžihalilovic is in total command of her evolution.

Gomez-Rejon’s sardonic yet sensitive story of geek friendship is the best YA illness novel adap yet. And yes, you can stick that on the poster.

With Moss’ brilliance in full view, Whannell’s taut exercise in suspense gives Universal’s monsters a jolt of life.

Famuyiwa’s teen pic mixes a cocktail of crowd-pleasing vim and political punch, lent charm and conviction by Moore – a star in the making.

From the texture of the underground havens to the idea that our leads have to – literally – cling to each other lest gravity tears them apart, it’s a wonder of detail and ingenuity.

Gyllenhaal is engaged and engaging in Denis Villeneuve’s adventure in psychological surrealism: let’s hope they stay friends.

A lovingly balanced biopic that fends off award-gobbling clichés. Smarts + heart = a winner: it’s a simple equation, but Marsh makes it add up.

The final minutes turn Talk to Me into something almost lyrical, a kind of urban myth you could imagine being shared between parties and campus halls. The filmmakers also blow out the candle at a flab-free 95 minutes. Turns out that’s enough time to get inside you and take possession.

For his part, Trachtenberg has resolved how to give the Yautja its due. Best post-Arnie Predator variant? Undoubtedly. Best Predator movie per se? Tough call, but trust this: Prey gets the job done.

Flawed but often flooring, The Grandmaster swoons with grace, feeling and elegance. With Leung and Zhang on killer form, Wong has delivered his best film in a decade.

Despite the odd awkward tonal gear shift, Knight’s origin story makes refreshingly light work of its uphill climb, fuelled by wit and warmth. And – crucially – with better songs on the retro-tape deck.

Violence seems inevitable but Von Horn plots cause and consequence with patient precision.

Blending the mythical resonances of The Searchers with lyricism and bristly realism, Wolfe’s harrowing, haunting dispatch from Brit-cinema’s undergrowth is strong meat: emphatic evidence of a bold talent’s arrival.

Like a Cobain mixtape brought to feral life, Montage is scruffy, sharp and insightful on an oft-explored subject. The pay-off is terribly moving – it’ll drain you.

Recasting studio formula in fresh, dazzling shapes and shades, Encanto is high-tier modern Disney.

Between Simmonds’ superb lead, the suspense, the slivers of hope, A Quiet Place Part II is worth making a noise for. Just pipe down in the cinema.

Does for Norman’s place what Room 237 did for the Overlook: reopens old haunts for welcome re-investigation.

If some of the stormy relationship stories seem old, the wealth of archive material is gob-smacking: early rehearsals, gig footage and intimate phone calls.

After "Frozen," Disney delivers a heart-melter. The sweet, witty main pairing focuses a potentially busy, derivative super-group tale. Stay for the sting: Big Hero 7 is practically a given.

Torn between mountains and karaoke bars, Tharlo looks as lost as his lamb: a parallel delicately developed in this warm, wise fable of uncertainty.

The music busts a gut straining for weepie affect, but you might shed a few yourself when the five-year battle reaches its jubilant, justified climax.

Between its genre know-how and furious anger, King’s biopic makes damn sure you feel the weight of Hampton’s loss – and the need for his legacy to be honoured.

Even now we know he’ll thrive post-Hogwarts, Radcliffe impresses as Arthur Kipps, the solicitor, widower and father with an invested interest in the afterlife.

Patient, non-judgemental docu-making yields psychologically rich results in Jesse Moss’s potent dispatch from recession-hit America.

Wheatley, Jump, Hiddleston and co occupy Ballard’s towering inferno with brazen style. If the plot wobbles precipitously, chalk it up to the high-rise ambition of a genuinely wayward Brit-film one-off.

Kijak finds poignancy behind the pomp as he builds to a fist-pumping finale.

With measure and muscle, Lawrences Jennifer and Francis nail the job of selling the long, twisting road towards revolution.

The greatest trick he pulls is making you think he’s not genuine: beneath befuddling, bracing digressions on Picasso, Howard Hughes, biography, confidence tricks, growing beards and “girl-watching” lies a searching interrogation of ideas of authorship.

Anderson visits fresh frontiers with a close encounter of the quirky kind, holding wit, whimsy and sly wisdom in supple balance.

Singer has refreshed the series with blasts of his original entries’ X-factors: vim, levity, clarity and a sincere, soulful grip on the emotional stakes involved.

Right from the first frame the urgency rarely wanes as Lee juggles fireworks, firearms and feminism.

Don’t worry, baby: Pohlad’s biopic is reverent, duly, but also rich, clever, warm and sensitive. Banks and Giamatti provide anchor, Cusack impresses and Dano surfs to glory.

Come for the wild ideas, stay for the warm wisdom in the Daniels’ heartfelt carnival of chaos. Yeoh aces every curveball.

Noirish touches flesh out the wispy plot, yet it’s the old-school animation that engages most: lending clarity to the emotions at stake, ensuring our sickly hero’s resilience tugs on the heart.

You root for them as they bond, bicker and endure grim dangers – gangs, traffickers, police – but Quemada-Díez doesn’t play soft, and the stinging climax really sticks with you.

Warm, witty, and occasionally wild, Waititi’s bush-bonding romp is a kind, generous-spirited winner.

Magical and melancholy, tender and robust: rippling reserves of theme and style compensate for wobbly pacing in Keiichi Hara’s adaptation of Hinako Sugiura’s manga Sarusuberi.

Between a fallen king and a rising threat, Marvel’s cinematic Phase 4 ends on a tender and – mostly - triumphant high.

What keeps gratuitousness at bay is Zhangke’s controlled style and empathy for the have-nots

Moore admits he’s out to “pick the flowers, not the weeds” and the end result is witty, moving and brimming with passion and purpose.

It’s the fully invested leads and graceful, poetic direction that give this study of emotional interiors its subtly heartbreaking power.

It’s also enlightening, the Spicers and us learning things about Tom that inform, move, humanise and suck us into his story.

Hogg humanises the set-up with ripples of warmth, but it’s her evocation of a horror-style psychodrama through hints of domestic disquiet that lingers with you.

With the scares stealthy, Gavin’s parable draws power from the heart’s shadows: the climax may alienate some, but its audacity is earned.

When the sentiment threatens to turn gloopy, Ali and Mortensen’s terrific leads steer Farrelly back on-track.

Moore gives a controlled portrait of emotional implosion, bringing quietly heartbreaking nuances to a calm, considered treatment of a life-shattering situation.

Taking a cold, cruel plunge into its sociopath’s world, Winterbottom’s latest genre swerve is an accomplished neo-noir.

Style is substance in Ford’s second film. Unlike many puzzle-piece movies, it thrills on every level.

King’s flair for transposing peak British TV comedy’s character to film is also apparent, thanks to a fine support haul of Peep Show and Ghosts alumni.

Cruel and elegant, del Toro’s nightmares remain worlds apart from the pack.

Underpinned by themes of language and identity, writer/director Rich Peppiatt’s rude, raucous film remixes music-movie clichés to Kneecap’s rebel tune with galvanizing verve. Tearing straight outta Belfast on barrelling beats, Kenneth Branagh it ain’t.

Scott steers his ideas-rich, character-based thriller with brisk authority. Plummer and Williams bring their all.

Here, the working-class milieu invites imagination, adventure, and camaraderie rather than a Ken Loach-style crushing of hope, while a climactic confrontation on divided streets is framed like a thrilling showdown in a black-hat-vs.-white-hat western. But it is the child’s- eye view, the wit, and the generosity of spirit on show that elevate Branagh’s Belfast.

James Cameron mobilizes on all fronts for an imperfect but imposing blockbuster: dazzling, supersized, rippled with currents of sincere feeling.

It’s Ant-Man, not pants, man. Marvel passes its biggest test in years with flying critters… plus wit, flair, top-notch casting and some good, gratuitous size gags.

This is the rare comedy sequel that doesn’t just equal the original: it betters it, with bells and ball-sacks on.

Gadot is a godsend, Pine charms, and Jenkins delivers old-school thrills with heart and conviction.

Peele doubles down on his genre love with a flawed but full-bore frightener, ripe for debate. Nyong’o is incendiary.

Between bouts of partying and freeform dancing, newcomer Park Ji-min brings a near-musical virtuosity to this questing character piece.

The end-stretch is overlong, but the Flash animation style pops with colour, the music is fun, and off-the-scale creature cuteness abounds.

Lawrence’s mechanised menagerie and the directors’ stereoscopic smarts entertain most.

Solid casting and scares mix with thin plotting and middling monster moves in Savage’s King riff.

Reid’s a fine lead, but DuVernay’s usually firm footing wobbles in the CGI clouds of Disney fantasy.

Direction and cast pack a wallop.

Aiming straight for mounting dread, Parker gets the job done aggressively.

Dagg keeps things simple, but his jogging camera whips up the urgency and he’s well-served by Sutherland’s rangy physicality.

Next to message-laden, CG-soaked kids’ animations, SpongeBob stands alone. His return is a skittish but winning splash of nonsense: dip in.

A little more than a remake yet less than a makeover, Tina Fey’s watchable, well-cast revisit needed more daring to be wholly worthwhile.