Mark Kermode

Like the unblinking closeup that concludes the deeply moving (and ultimately redemptive?) epilogue to Quo Vadis, Aida?, Žbanić’s powerful and personal film keeps its eyes wide open.

Thrillingly played by a flawless ensemble cast who hit every note and harmonic resonance of Bong and co-writer Han Jin-won’s multitonal script, it’s a tragicomic masterclass that will get under your skin and eat away at your cinematic soul.

Director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s feature debut intertwines music and politics in one of the best concert movies of all time.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (the French title uses the less Jamesian “jeune fille”) seamlessly intertwines themes of love and politics, representation and reality. At times it plays like a breathless romance, trembling with passionate anticipation. Elsewhere, it seems closer to a sociopolitical treatise, what Sciamma has called “a manifesto about the female gaze”.

A brilliantly assured and stylistically adventurous work, this beautifully understated yet emotionally riveting coming-of-age drama picks apart themes of love and loss in a manner so dextrous as to seem almost accidental. Don’t be fooled; Wells knows exactly what she’s doing, and her storytelling is as precise as it is piercing.

What a wonderful, heart-breaking, life-affirming gem of a movie this is.

When a parishioner leaps to her feet, her spirit clearly moved, you’ll want to do the same. Wholy Holy indeed.

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.

There’s something quite breathtaking about the deceptive ease with which Song’s first cinematic foray juggles the metaphysical and the matter-of-fact, conjuring a world in which every decision has transformative power, and concepts of love and friendship are at once mysteriously malleable yet oddly inevitable.

This often hilarious heartbreaker is simply Baumbach’s best film to date – insightful, sympathetic and rather beautifully bewildered.

Like the musical itself, the film has timeless charm and a brave sense of adventure. Bravo!

Petite Maman is short and sweet, yet fearlessly profound. A mix of fairytale, ghost story and rites-of-passage journey, this is at heart a cinematic parable about healing intergenerational wounds, about breaching the barriers that inevitably grow between parents and children.

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.

Filtering his immense contribution to cinema through a deceptively incidental lens, he once again reminds us that movie-making can be a profoundly humane endeavour; at once comedic, tragic and truthful.

The film takes a fantastical leap that viewers will find either breathtaking or ridiculous – probably a bit of both.

Perfectly pitched and sensitively played, this is truthful, powerful and profoundly moving fare from a film-maker at the very top of her game.

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.

In Time it’s an almost superhuman sense of togetherness that rings through, a refusal to bow down, to be broken or defeated.

I struggle to remember the last time a non-documentary film proved so profoundly, soul-shakingly distressing. This is as it should be – anything less would be immoral and irresponsible.

This is a triumph-of-the-human-spirit story as dramatic as the most finely wrought melodrama, with flashes of vintage newsreels reminding us that it is all “real”.

It’s that blend of heartbreak and joy, profundity and absurdity that is the key to this enchanting movie’s magical spell.

I’ve often argued that cinema is a time machine, but rarely has that seemed so true.

Amid such strangeness, the central performances keep us grounded.

Blending melancholy wistfulness with unruly energy and piercing humour, it’s a down-to-earth tale of love and death, boosted by a brilliantly believable central performance and elevated by fantastical moments of hallucinogenic horror and ecstatic joy.

Like all the best evocations of times past, Licorice Pizza has no answers – only an enraptured sense of awe that makes Anderson’s joyous film feel like a very personal memory.

Certainly the performances by Léa Seydoux (already an important screen presence) and newcomer Adèle Exarchopoulos are extraordinary. Their portrayal of a blossoming, fragmenting relationship is shot through with genuine grace and conviction even when the film itself descends into indulgence.

There’s a sustained tension between the concisely epic sweep of the narrative and boxy confinement of the 4x3 frame that perfectly matches the film’s twin themes of freedom and incarceration.

With footage as raw and dramatic as this, it’s a credit to composer Nainita Desai that her score remains restrained and understated throughout, emphasising subtler themes of endurance and empathy, while gesturing gently toward the possibility of hope – of love – even in the midst of tragedy.