Mark Kermode

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.

It’s an eerily moving piece, masterfully blurring the divide between the unforgivable and understandable, finding tenderness in the bleakest and most traumatic of circumstances.

Hats off, too, to choreographer and movement consultant Madeline Hollander for bringing a shiversome physicality to the shadow roles that recalls the creepiest moments from Hideo Nakata’s Ringu.

That a film with such an apparently familiar narrative can keep us this intrigued is a credit to the film-makers – particularly Patterson, from whom we should expect to hear much more in the future.

Today, Browning’s sympathies are clear; if there are “freaks” on display here, they are not the versatile performers to whom the title seems to allude.

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.

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.

Astonishingly natural and engaging performances from young newcomers Eden Dambrine and Gustav De Waele lend heartfelt authenticity to a film that builds upon the promise of 2018’s Girl, confirming Dhont as a deft and empathetic chronicler of the tumultuous anguish and ecstasy of adolescence.

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

For all its flash-back/flash-forward tricksiness, The Irishman rarely seems disjointed or thematically fractured. It conjures a kaleidoscopic illusion of depth that only starts to shatter as the pace flags in the final act.

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

Watching the film for a second time, with prior knowledge of the revelations of its final act, Close’s performance seemed even more nuanced, as if each look now meant something different.

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

It’s powerful stuff: wryly tender, frequently funny, but insidiously suffocating. More than once I found myself stifling a scream – and I mean that as a compliment.

Yet there are also moments of heart-stopping tenderness and beauty.

The primary tone is gentle and melancholic – an almost existential evocation of memory, and the longing to be made whole.

Interlocking vignettes swing from laugh-out-loud comedy to piercing melancholia, but at the centre of it all there is a genuine sense of rebirth and renewal – no mean feat for a small movie with a big heart and a surprisingly wide-ranging vision.

Beautifully believable performances from Haarla and Borisov add emotional weight, rivalling the nuanced naturalistic charm of Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy.

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”.

What makes this more than just another formulaic feelgood film is the grit with which Chung evokes the hardscrabble lives of his characters, balancing the dreamier elements of the drama with a naturalism that keeps it rooted in reality.

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.

BlacKkKlansman slips seamlessly from borderline-absurdist humour to all-too-real horror, conjuring an urgent blend of sociopolitical period satire and contemporary wake-up call.

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.

What a lovely, hopeful and rather magical movie this is.

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”.

Throughout, Konchalovsky juxtaposes wide-ranging events with seemingly insignificant details to dramatic effect.

“Narrative art is dead – we are in a period of mourning”; “To scandalise is a right, to be scandalised a pleasure”; “Refusal must be great, absolute, absurd…” Abel Ferrara’s infatuated tribute to Pier Paolo Pasolini is littered with such gnomic bon mots, which could apply equally to either director.

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.