Mark Kermode

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

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.

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

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”.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

As always, Colman manages to express deep wellsprings of emotion with few words and fewer gestures – her face telegraphing great swathes of anguish beneath polite smiles and annoyed glances.

Where Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner’s version comes into its own is in the moments where it dares to find its own distinct voice – nowhere more so than in placing Somewhere in the hands of Rita Moreno.

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.

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 the more deceptively restrained and poetic elements that strike home.

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.

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.

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

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.

If the result sends viewers scuttling back to Armitage’s uniquely accessible version of the source text, then that would be marvellous indeed. But there is enough here that is dazzling and enthralling for Lowery’s movie to stand proudly as a grand work of poetry in its own right.

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.

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

There’s a strong element of Greek tragedy underpinning Rose Plays Julie.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

From bucket-of-water tomfoolery to visually inventive biography and witty musicology, this really does have something for the girl with everything.