Peter Bradshaw

In many ways it’s a shrewd sketch of the ways that real life, in all its embarrassment and banality, does not respectfully stop for bad news.

The combustible mix of lowlife cynicism and high art provide enough energy and enjoyment to power the first two-thirds of this long film. But in the end it flags, and it’s as if the outrageous black comedy has to be paid for with solemn romantic fantasy. But what a performance from Butler.

Here is a really impressive directorial debut from Mumbai film-maker Rohan Kanawade: tender, subtle, candid, scrupulously observed.

It’s almost incredible to think that the Toy Story series is more than 30 years old, a central plank of the Pixar animation golden age. But now it is played out and IP exhaustion has set in.

As a formal experiment, Dry Leaf has its own conviction and self-possession and there is a deliberate, if opaque artistry here: one shot shows us a dry leaf under Irakli’s car-tyres, another gives us wet leaves in a waterfall. The soft-edged, pixelated look is, however, interesting and surprisingly watchable, bringing a kind of painterly effect.

Overall this is a frustrating and rather precious piece of work.

Disclosure Day does give us once again a very Spielbergian primal scene of suburban childhood, though not with the devastating reality of his autobiographical The Fabelmans; rather, it is that aliens give Spielberg his way of defying the old maxim about not being able to go home.

Black-belt performances from Claire Foy and Richard E Grant put some vim and vigour into this haranguingly one-note and unidirectional period romp of the raucously bewigged and be-poxed 18th century.

Here is a niche drama about one of the most important chapters in the history of experimental jazz. It is however watchable, well acted and avoids the music-movie cliches – though I could have done without the fourth-wall-breaking lectures about the nature of jazz improvisation.

Backrooms progressively raises its game towards the big finish with jump scares, squirm scares and tiny shiver scares. There is real fascination in exploring this vast, invisible city state of fear.

Power Ballad is about making it and dreaming big, about every busker never giving up on hopes of one day being mega. But as so often with Carney, it’s about something else, usually left unacknowledged in movies about music or any sort of showbusiness: the terrible binary of success and failure.

An absorbingly intimate, novelistically detailed procedural about the day-to-day, moment-by-moment lives of the Vichy administrators after the fall of France, mostly shot conventionally, sometimes jolting into an anachronistic dreamlike scenario on video.

The tension is capably managed and Magimel is a gargoyle of menace.

Teaching scenes in films always have a fascination for me, and these are tremendous; Mercier patiently, sometimes angrily, tries to get the students to appreciate the complexity, nuance, eroticism and social commentary in the frescoes and artwork.

With warmth and heartfelt passion, and a quintet of outstanding performances from young actors shot in looming closeup for so much of the time, Clio Barnard has created an absorbing and moving social-realist picture.

There is archival interest and historic drama in what Lennon has to say – and especially for me in his generous, open-minded comments about newer bands such as the B-52s and the Clash. But this is a disappointment.

The Dreamed Adventure is clearly the work of a director with a fluent, distinctive film-making language, but what she is trying to tell us is elusive.

The Esiris have created a seductive, mesmeric picture.

One for the fans … but some nostalgic entertainment here.

There is much that is valuable and interesting in this movie, although it is a little predictable in what it has to say and how it says it, though Campagne and Macchia give committed performances as secret lovers in the shadow of war.

The Black Ball is handsomely produced, lovingly detailed and confidently constructed, bringing the puzzle pieces together in the edit and contriving an elegant, poignant cameo for Lorca himself, a kind of incidental choric figure who seems to intuit all the future triumphs and disasters of love and war. It is a rich and rewarding movie.

The Man I Love is an honestly intended and conceived movie, but that faintly baffling and strenuous lead performance sits uncomfortably.

Fares’s gaunt, handsome face so eloquently conveys vanity, but also a poignant emotional woundedness, anxiety and self-pity.

A sweet, odd diversion – more eccentric, maybe, than Travolta intended.

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s new film is a bafflingly unsatisfying and unconvincing muddle of ideas and moods.

This one, sadly, is flawed by that perennial problem of how to end a story with a great premise.

The performances from Mazurov and Lebedeva are outstanding, and Zvyagintsev’s direction is superb with his cold daylit compositions and scenes in grim streets and housing estates. Everything here looks like a crime scene.

There is something stolid and at times monotonous about the way this is presented to the audience – as ever with Nemes, the force of gravity is increased, making everything 20% heavier and denser. And Barábas’s performance is frankly actorly rather than real in his incessant frown of righteous resentment. It’s a minor movie from this always interesting film-maker.