Martyn Conterio

Suburban suffocation, impending doom, a tragedy waiting to happen, The Swerve is a compelling depiction of existential angst, melancholy, and mental illness, with director Kapsalis opting for subtlety over big-scene meltdown histrionics and much to his credit.

William Faulkner once made the sage point that “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Louis Malle’s Golden Lion winner Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987) is a Second World War-set film very much guided in spirit by the US novelist’s musing on the febrile relationship between memory, time and individual and collective histories.

Jaws is still terrific and has lost none of its bite.

The Wild Pear Tree isn’t a showy or boldly radical work, this is still Ceylan’s brand of poetic landscapes and intimate dramas, but it does represent an intriguing artistic progression, so any claims of ‘more of the same’ are redundant.

It doesn’t quite click, is too weird, leads to a lurch from one cinematic style to the other and fails to gel as a satisfying whole. Yet the director’s imaginative intention is apparent in the first shot.

Birds of Passage is an enthralling, powerful statement and lamentation on the drugs trade’s inevitable encroachment upon on indigenous peoples and how gangsters casually destroyed them.

Under the Shadow is not only perfectly paced, the storytelling and plotting is emotionally gripping. The director also uses setting and location, composition and framing like a master of horror.

Its emotional dilemmas, depictions of trauma, revenge and fractured family ties are handled with such skill and sense of purpose, it is truly exemplary film-making.

That Lee has crafted a funny film full of snazzy editing, stylish imagery and a tremendous blues rock score, yet is laser-focused on a very serious subject matter, demonstrates his mastery of the cinematic medium.

Biller is an eccentric talent - always a plus in the world of film - and The Love Witch is a triumph of form and style.

It’s wholesale thievery of what is a director’s famed aesthetic, for sure, but it does somehow fit the lyrical and haunting material, often beautifully so. Also, the shallow field of depth used to heighten – and blur – the boundaries between the magical world and the natural world is successful in creating rich atmospheres.

The film is packed with laugh-out-loud moments, full of deadpan observations – a quintessential Anderson touch – and exciting sequences.

This might not be the film you’re quite expecting from the director of arthouse dramas focused on modern life in Brazil, but it fits right in as a variation and continuation of Mendonça Filho’s pet themes.

Not only is the film a compellingly told tale of suspense and terror, but it's crafted with such precision and sense of timing that one can cry "Masterpiece!" without being shamefaced or wondering if a hyperbole-induced crime against all good sense has just been committed.

If you’re an admirer of Malick’s poetic investigations into the mysteries of existence, faith and our tragic disconnection to the natural world, A Hidden Life will leave you enraptured and profoundly moved.

The tradition of star-worship and auteur theory has unnecessarily diminished the key roles of others. Thankfully, Making Waves gives these genius-level background figures their well-earned due.

Undoubtedly flawed, Freaks is also admirably bonkers and quite simply unforgettable.

The Cordillera of Dreams is a stirring look at a nation still recovering from the brutalisation meted out by General Pinochet’s callous and paranoid actions, but Guzmán goes further to offer his opinion of the present issues facing the country, specifically neoliberalism’s assault on land, resources and people.

Although the handling of certain plot dynamics on occasion isn’t as strong as its potent aesthetic finesse, Ly mounts a thriller operating as a savage indictment of social policies and underhand police tactics and ass-covering corruption.

The film’s displays of humour give away to harsher scenes of brutality and intense moments where rural calm is suddenly disrupted by mortar explosions and transformed landscapes dotted with corpses.

Husson’s film is first and foremost an appalling account of stomach-churning misogyny and the sickening horrors Kurdish women met at the hands of their vile captors.

The editing might be unexpected, unconventional, a bit annoying, but it is also very smart. Creating as it does a vital tension between plot and theme, pushing the two characters unrelentingly towards an event horizon and black hole denouement.

While not amongst the greater, more celebrated titles in Billy Wilder’s acclaimed filmography, his big screen adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution boasts a fine, scenery-chewing performance by Charles Laughton, here playing a cantankerous barrister defending a murder suspect.

Director Akay is not messing around with his disgusted assessments of conservative Turkey in 2020.

Makes for a generally powerful statement on human misery and grotesque inequality, though some third act creative decisions and maneuvers cause a wobble or two.

Zombi Child is a stirring and highly peculiar piece of work.

Martin’s film is a thoroughly sobering watch and leaves us with tough questions about how the West chose to deal – or rather not deal – with Assad and the refugee crisis.

Bones and All, like the best horror movies, finds poetry in the frightening, in the transgressive, in the perverse. It mines light from darkness and transforms it before our eyes into something universal, shining and true, no matter how ephemeral.