Mark Kermode

It’s that sense of beauty – of the possibility of redemption – that prevents Les Misérables from being crushed by the grim weight of the world it depicts. It’s a world in which Ly grew up, and his love of these neighbourhoods, in all their hardscrabble glory, is tangible.

Top Gun: Maverick offers exactly the kind of air-punching spectacle that reminds people why a trip to the cinema beats staying at home and watching Netflix.

Tonally, the film is mercurial, capturing the multiple realities of its young subjects who are both children and soldiers – the distressing, disorienting dichotomy at the centre of its eerie spell. With skill and sensitivity, Landes manages to capture both sides of their fractured world, evoking empathy without resort to pity.

None of which is to say that Good Luck to You, Leo Grande isn’t admirably subversive and enjoyably whimsical fare.

What Enys Men “means” will differ for each viewer. For me, it is (like Bait) a richly authentic portrait of Cornwall, far removed from any tourist-friendly vision. . . I’ve seen the film three times so far, and I can’t wait to dive into it and be swept away again. Bravo!

I found myself gripped by a universally accessible tale of a divided soul – a figure whose dual personas are embodied in the two names of the film’s title; Diego and Maradona.

Vividly rendered, and filled with tangible yearning, it strikes a balance between romantic passion and mundane domesticity, as the skin-prickling attraction of new love is tested by the day-to-day tribulations of real life.

For all the steel-trap visceral efficiency, it’s the more low-key moments that really pack a punch – those moments when we’re confronted with the simple human cost of war.

Astutely amplifying the absurdist – and remarkably modernist – elements of his source, Iannucci and co-writer Simon Blackwell conjure a surreal cinematic odyssey that is as accessible as it is intelligent and unexpected.

An awards-worthy performance from Danielle Deadwyler (who stole the show in 2021’s The Harder They Fall) lends a passionate heart to this solidly engrossing and still contemporary historical drama set in 1955 and dedicated “to the life and legacy of Mamie Till-Mobley”.

The film too often seems to be heading somewhere extraordinary, only to disappear into an ambitious conceptual hole that, while occasionally startling, is ultimately less than the sum of its parts.

An atmosphere of empathy, reason and wit pervades Polley’s film, underwritten by an emancipatory urgency (“that day we learned to vote”) that drives the narrative even in its darkest moments.

It’s the eerie mystery of sadness that rings most clearly through Nikou’s film, a meditation on the construction of personality that, like all the best ghost stories, combines wistful melancholia with a hint of wish-fulfilment, of lost souls who, in forgetting, are trying to remember.

As for Baker and regular co-writer Chris Bergoch, they refrain from judging their characters, observing the world from Mikey’s maniacally self-serving point of view even as comedy turns to queasiness and worse.

The drama may be down to earth, but that doesn’t stop the film – or indeed its protagonist – from dreaming big, and daring to look beyond the horizon.

For all the genre nods, this remains very much its own movie – a film that isn’t afraid to talk to its core audience, even while giving them the heebie-jeebies.

Playing out over three excruciating days at Sandringham – from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day – and carried shoulder high by a note-perfect Kristen Stewart, Spencer (the very title of which seems to present a challenge to the House of Windsor) dances between ethereal ghost story, arch social satire and no-holds-barred psychodrama, while remaining at heart a paean to motherhood.

Fans will doubtless be dazzled by its meticulous imitation-of-life-in-miniature visual aesthetic, yet I swithered between whimsical amusement, mild curiosity and outright irritation.

This sublimely orchestrated marvel takes fantasy film-making to a new level, looking back to the dramatic choreography of silent cinema and forward to the colourful ecstasies of Ken Russell.

This is a playfully sensuous affair that wonders what happens to slow-burn intimacy when mediated by the urgency of the online world.

Ali & Ava is a vibrant work that uses the transcendent power of song to turn a streetwise tale into a diegetic musical, with genuinely surprising results.

Throughout, there’s an intriguing interplay between the performers’ real and fictional personae that lends emotional weight to the “stuff and nonsense” of their act.

This is full-blooded (and arrestingly tactile) fare, which gets right under the skin of its central character, in appropriately unruly and unflinching fashion.

There’s an inherent irony in any drama that places her centre stage. Yet at a time when news itself is under fire, with journalists demeaned and attacked by despots bent on obliterating the very concept of truth, perhaps Colvin’s story is more relevant than ever.

O’Connor clearly isn’t afraid of rattling cages when approaching sacred texts. There’s something refreshingly untethered about the gusto with which she reimagines Emily, tossing aside the image of a shy, sickly recluse, replacing it with an antiheroine whose inability to fit in with the ordered world is a source of strength rather than weakness.

Some will be repelled, many will be bamboozled. But for those with an appetite for cinema that gets you in the gut, Ducournau delivers the goods.

Blessed with not one but two resourceful heroines, and painted with a glittering digital palette which conjures a spectacular backdrop for the romping action (Arendelle and its environs are part Norway, part Narnia), this is terrifically enjoyable – romantic, subversive, engaging and enthralling.

Right now, Villeneuve is riding the sinewy worm of Herbert’s sacred text with aplomb.

Particularly intriguing are the scenes in which Colette’s travails become the stuff of pantomime in the form of increasingly provocative theatrical productions, staged with a hint of carnivalesque chaos and evoking the spirit of Fellini.

While The Duke is never quite as surprising as the case that inspired it, it nonetheless retains a much-needed astringent streak.

It’s a terrifically tactile film, full of the kind of deliciously observed detail that lingers in the mind long after the movie has finished.

A film that knowingly lifts riffs from screwball capers and melancholy romcoms alike, writing love letters to the city of New York as it swirls from one upmarket fairytale locale to the next.

Miss Juneteenth is a beautifully observed and quietly powerful drama that applies its coming-of-age tropes to children, parents and politics alike.

A thrillingly intense central performance by Alice Krige (who earned her genre spurs in the underrated 1981 screen adaptation of Peter Straub’s Ghost Story) is the lightning rod at the core of the film, grounding its hallucinogenic visuals in the terra firma of past tragedies and modern traumas, provoking “dark thoughts; really dark thoughts”.

While the result may occasionally get bogged down by dramatic contrivance, it’s generally buoyed up by a pair of likably bickering performances from the two leads.

The result is a spicy nerve-jangler served with a chargrilled side order of jet-black gallows humour – a divine comedy barrelling towards inevitable tragedy, played out in hell’s kitchen where someone is bound to get burned.

I found this a rewarding and entertaining drama, heavy with the weight of the past, yet buoyed up by the possibilities of the future.

While the film may be flawed by some dramatic missteps, it remains buoyed by the surefootedness of Polster’s performance, which is engaging, believable, and wholly sympathetic.

In a film defined by understatement, it’s the little details that matter.

Scenes of faces melting and bodies merging have a satisfyingly tactile feel, harking back to the experimental cinematic trickery of Georges Méliès, albeit with added 21st-century oomph. There’s a real physical depth to Possessor that helps keep the story grounded even during its most outlandish flights of fantasy.

Watching this sporadically sparkling yet weirdly saggy “cover version” of Argento’s biggest international hit, I couldn’t help wishing that someone had been there with the scissors to trim the film of its indulgences – not the violence, but the verbosity.

This is Day’s show all the way, and her performance remains the film’s strongest suit.

Pretty Red Dress is both playful and defiant, swept along on a tide of toe-tapping tunes that tug at the heartstrings, yet unafraid to face up to complex personal issues while still maintaining its solidly mainstream appeal.

Few will remain unmoved by this intriguingly adventurous and thought-provoking drama.

In the lead role, Anya Taylor-Joy creates an admirably spiky character who is less likable than some of her screen predecessors, and all the better for it.

This crystalline tale of memory, love and brain surgery from writer-director Lili Horvát (who made 2015’s The Wednesday Child) is a treat – sinewy, seductive and beautifully strange.

It’s a collection of grimly satirical snapshots, fitting together like the misshapen pieces of a Chinese puzzle ball to create a dyspeptic, dystopian portrait of our past, present and future.

The result is a nicely nasty tragicomedy, a rollercoaster ride that swaps real moral dilemmas for something more disposably entertaining, picking you up, spinning you around and then spitting you out with a neat sucker-punch ending that leaves you feeling entertained, if a little bit empty.

Directed with wit, subtlety and great emotional honesty by Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn (the co-directors of 2012’s brilliantly life-affirming Good Vibrations), it’s a singular story with universal appeal – striking a very personal chord with some viewers while finding common ground with the widest possible audience.

It all adds up to a very modern drama about age-old anxieties: the fear of ageing and death; the desire for intimacy and reassurance; the allure of artifice and deceit.

Despite the background noise of police brutality, gang violence and financial peril, it is the altogether more intimate elements of Brother that drive the drama.

Years ago, I compared Del Toro to Orson Welles, a film-maker who instinctively understood the hypnotic power of cinema to dazzle, delight and deceive. On the basis of Nightmare Alley, which is blessed with more than a touch of evil, that’s a comparison by which I still stand.

It’s a playfully twisted affair – not quite as profound as it seems to think, perhaps, but boasting enough squishy metaphorical slime to ensure that its musings upon textbook male characteristics are rarely dull, and sometimes deliciously disgusting.

This thrilling, dizzying debut from Welsh writer-director Prano Bailey-Bond is a nostalgic treat for anyone old enough to remember the infamous “video nasties” scare of the early 80s. Yet beneath the retro surface lies a more universal tale about the power of horror to confront our deepest fears – a timeless celebration of the liberating nature of the dark side.

It’s one of the lovely ironies of Akhavan’s bittersweet film that Cameron finds true friendship in a place dedicated to stamping it out, and there’s laugh-out-loud joy to be found in the acid-tongued interaction between these soulmates.

Fletcher is the real star of this show, a director whose enthusiasm for musical storytelling shines through every frame, hitting all the emotional high notes.

It’s a credit to Feldstein that the wobbliness of her Wolverhampton accent never comes between us and her character. Instead, we simply get on board with her adventures, accepting her for what she is – however odd that may sometimes sound.

What it all adds up to, other than a moment-by-moment experiential overload, is uncertain.

It’s tempting to view Selah and the Spades as a triumph of style over substance, richer in visual promise than thematic rewards. Yet there’s also something thrilling about Poe’s refusal to smooth the odd and potentially alienating edges off this very personal (and ultimately empowering) drama, suggesting a strength of creative purpose that will doubtless pay great dividends.

It’s a delicate balancing act that Merchant handles with aplomb.

With great physical poise and precision, Wilson (who optioned and developed the source book) engages the audience on a visceral level, her deceptively low-key performance taking us deep inside her character’s dreams, desires and insecurities.

As for Foxx and Jordan, their dialled-down discipline pays dividends, lending greater weight to those few moments (a courtroom showdown, a jailhouse breakdown) when Cretton briefly turns up the dramatic heat, with rousing results.

While the direction may be deceptively unfussy, Deschanel does brilliant work bringing Kurt’s worldview to life, enabling us to understand his progress towards an artistic breakthrough, represented here by paintings conjured by (among others) Richter’s former assistant Andreas Schön.

Mortensen and Seydoux play it deliciously straight, jumping through the well-rehearsed philosophical and physical hoops with elegant ease, conjuring a sense of yearning humanity that saves the production from descending into silliness… just about.

A lumbering, humourless, tech-driven damp squib of a movie, this long-awaited (or dreaded?) sequel to one of the highest grossing films of all time builds upon the mighty flaws of its predecessor, delivering a patience-testing fantasy dirge that is longer, uglier and (amazingly) even more clumsily scripted than its predecessor, blending trite characterisation with sub-Roger Dean 70s album-cover designs and thunderously underwhelming action sequences. In water.

After four decades of diminishing returns, the fact that a guy in a mask can still take an entertaining stab at a somewhat jaded audience is oddly reassuring.

Despite a spirited performance from Comer and an impressive roster of supporting turns (including a scene-stealing Harriet Walter as Jean’s withering mother, Nicole), The Last Duel has a tendency to mirror its central battle’s attempts to address complex issues with the blunt tool of rabble-rousing spectacle.

By comparison with 1999’s Pola X and 2012’s Holy Motors, Annette (which Carax tenderly dedicates to his daughter Nastya) is surprisingly accessible fare: adventurous, anarchic and unexpectedly heartfelt.

Buoyed by Joe Murtagh’s screenplay, which keeps the warring elements of the narrative elegantly balanced throughout, the excellent ensemble cast create a complex emotional ecosystem through which our troubled antihero stumbles in search of his identity.

For all its multitudinous reference points, this remains very much Da Silveira’s movie – as distinct and pointed as Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night or Julia Ducournau’s Raw­ – a genre film with something to say, and a unique voice with which to say it.

Akinola (best known to some for his work on Doctor Who) is clearly completely in tune with the director, getting under the skin of his story and striking just the right note of internalised anguish and ecstasy that defines this tender, heartfelt and clearly very personal movie.

The result has homemade charm to spare, proving delightfully ridiculous but also poignant.

The main selling point is Loren, who combines world-weary abrasiveness with a sense of something softer, turning Rosa into a believably divided character who puts a brave face on the future while seeking refuge from the past in the sanctuary of her lonely basement.

It’s the more deceptively restrained and poetic elements that strike home.

For me, the moment where it all came together was during Blunt’s haunting rendition of The Place Where Lost Things Go, a heartbreaking lullaby that has something of the spine-tingling melancholy charm of Feed the Birds. Watching this sequence, I noticed I had started crying, and realised that I was safe – the movie’s spell was working and the magic was still here.

Ozon first read Chambers’s novel as a teenager and his adaptation blends the prickly joy of that first encounter with the stylistic confidence of a film-maker revisiting an old flame.

For all its scattershot reference points, however, Last Night in Soho still emerges as Wright’s most personal film – you can feel how much he loves the material. Frankly, I felt the same way.

An impressively slick and slimy performance from Javier Bardem is the standout selling point for this serviceable if (perhaps appropriately?) workaday satire on corporate corruption and alienated capitalism.

It’s a riotously audacious work.

There’s enough visual and thematic invention to keep viewers gripped and unsettled, particularly in these unprecedented, isolated times.

A first-rate B-picture, and a timely reminder of the delights of well-crafted popcorn thrills.

The live performances are electrifying, all jagged elbows and brilliant pop tunes, with the band suitably assisted not by drugs and booze, but by a neatly organised display of treatments for colds, incontinence and light grazes. On the subject of fame, Cocker asserts boldly that "it didn't agree with me – like a nut allergy". Hardcore indeed.

Suffice to say that, as with all of Wheatley’s best works, In the Earth combines humour and horror in terrifically bamboozling fashion, not least during a gruellingly extended amputation sequence that will have you squirming, laughing and wincing all at once.

I think Beau Is Afraid is best described as an amusingly patience-testing shaggy dog story that asks: “What if your mother could hear all those unspeakable things you tell your therapist?” Parts of it are hilarious. Other sections sag. Some will find it insufferable.

At the centre of it all is Kidman, bringing an impressive physicality to her performance that says more about Erin than words ever could. We learn so much from simply watching her walk, her gait combining an air of stroppiness with an overriding sense of being weighed down or crushed, like a packhorse hobbled by years of abuse. It’s a terrific turn that (like the rest of the movie) reminds us that awards often offer little indication of what’s really worth watching in cinemas.

For all its nudge-wink movie-history nods and self-conscious carnivals of bodily fluids and glamorous excess, Babylon is exhaustingly unexciting fare – hysterical rather than historical, derivative rather than inventive.

While the result may not be quite as deep as the cavern at the centre of the story, it has an enticing sliver of ice at its heart.

Despite top-notch period production design and a couple of convincing studio workout sequences (I was reminded of the brilliant Love & Mercy as Aretha tells her bassist to ditch Alabama for Harlem), the drama rarely has the fiery spark its subject demands.

Blue Beetle may be frontloaded with visual fireworks that neatly meld the practical and the virtual, but it is the likable interplay between its down-to-earth characters that gives the film oomph, making it more than just a Shazam-style romp.

While Ronan is terrific, Robbie has arguably the more difficult role, conjuring an engaging portrait of someone whose position has made her “more man than woman”.

While some sections of the globe-trotting plot strike a baggy, backward-looking note, it’s the smaller moments that make this fly, particularly when the film uses fantasy to turn horribly real everyday harassments into moments of air-punching triumph.

For some, Little Joe may seem too sterile to engage emotionally, but I found it glassily unsettling – even more so on second viewing. Inhale at your peril.

For better or worse, House of Gucci is a little too well behaved to become a cult classic. But Gaga deserves a gong for steering a steely path through the madness – for richer, not poorer; in kitschness and in wealth.

Lorne Balfe’s sparsely used music leaves plenty of open spaces for the drama to breathe, as if inviting the audience to fill in the blanks with an internal accompaniment (tragic? Comedic? Ironic?) of their own choosing.

Subtlety is not Phillips’s strong point. What he does have is an eye for a well-chosen location, an ear for a provocative line of dialogue and a finger on the pulse of very marketable, confrontational (if also “cynical”) entertainment. Add to this an incendiary central performance by Phoenix and Joker looks set to have the last laugh.

It’s functionally good-natured rehash fare, bogged down by some watery CG and a few uncomfortable dips into “uncanny valley”, yet buoyed up by Bailey’s winning titular performance.

It adds up to a peculiar mix of the crowd-pleasing and the patience-testing, veering wildly between the entertaining and the frustrating, built round a story that ventures inexorably underground without ever getting to the heart of what lies beneath.

I suspect the strangely good-natured feel of the film will win the hearts of many viewers, but my own head remained too muddled by its uneven and oddly indecisive approach to embrace whatever quirky virtues it may possess.