Phil de Semlyen

Sure, some of the historical detail is terrible (did Henry V really get crowned topless?) and Shakespeare purists may scream heresy, but director David Michôd has done something genuinely fresh and confident with this well-told piece of English folklore.

The Informer is a film that favours brawn over brains, punching its way through any plot predicaments. A smart hairpin or two would have made it a juicier watch.

Joaquin Phoenix is devastating as the villain-in-the-making in this incendiary tale of psychological escape and psychopathy.

It’s often thrilling, occasionally improbable, sometimes confounding, but like its director, Ad Astra is never bound by the gravitational pull of the ordinary. Strap in.

It’s frenetic, brashly executed and so full of shooting, you’ll stagger away with tinnitus.

It’s defiantly cheesy and very hard to resist.

It’s all watchable enough but hardly a giant leap for documentary making.

Clearly surge pricing also applies to jokes, because it’s mostly about as funny as a traffic jam.

The storytelling never lacks for sincerity and quiet power. It’s a cry from the heart with a courageous message.

As an object lesson in leadership, Maiden is compelling, but its flashbacks to a less enlightened time in sport are the biggest showstoppers – and jaw-droppers.

It’s not nearly as good as Logan or X2, but it’s a whole lot better than the eyeball-poking affliction that was X-Men: Apocalypse. On the flipside, it still feels like a fairly pointless retread of Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s The Dark Phoenix Saga, which we’ve already seen (and hated) in Brett Ratner’s 2006 disaster X-Men: The Last Stand.

Diego Maradona has the football and the drugs – think Scarface with screamers – but it’s a surprisingly emotional ride too. In the spirit of all good docs, it’ll make you reappraise your feelings about the man and the myths around him.

The Whistlers has a tonne of pulpy circuit-breakers – look out for a hilarious ‘Psycho’ tribute – to remind you not to take it all too seriously. Hitchcock would have approved.

It’s a hugely impressive debut and visually arresting from first to last.

Gardening has never been so creepy.

Maybe the film loses its head a bit at this point too, with its deeper message lost in the epic bloodshed, but the chances are you’ll be having too much fun to mind.

Diehl and Pachner are both terrific, mastering Malick’s improvisational style and bringing earthy authenticity to its playful family moments.

If there’s one thing Rocketman does have in common with Bohemian Rhapsody, it’s a commanding central performance.

For all its inspired moments, this is a movie content to coast on the charms of its terrific cast of comedic actors. Welcome to Night of the Living Deadpan.

If the final act is a bit dull and the anarchic Reynolds factor ends up muzzled, director Rob Letterman makes sure not to lose that self-aware edge altogether, while providing enough Pokémon Easter eggs to satisfy the most demanding fan. He’s also helped invent a whole new movie genre: cuddly noir.

Despite the best efforts of its committed young cast, and especially a game (if suspiciously old-looking) Nicholas Hoult as Tolkien in his late teens and early twenties, it’s a plodding and polite portrayal that holds few surprises.

The overall effect is glassy and inert, with Rooney Mara’s Mary an oddly elusive presence in the film that carries her name.

There’s the odd nifty camera move but the action sequences are often messy and rote. The self-healing Hellboy is able to withstand endless punishment, which may be faithful to Mignola’s source material but hardly ups the stakes. The audience is not so lucky. Hellboy? Just hell, actually.

Even leaving aside the fan-pleasing sight of Burton’s Dark Knight and Penguin sharing the same big top, the Batman parallels are inescapable. Keaton tears a page from the Jack Nicholson Joker playbook with his most deliriously huge performance in years.

Nemes wants to let the chaos and noise of Sunset overwhelm the audience, but like Irisz herself, it’s hard not to get a bit lost in the clamor.

You’d call it Tarantino-esque but for the pacing and lack of a soundtrack. (Even Tarantino might have cut a couple of these baggy subplots.)

This unusual film sits in a genre of one.

It’s the visuals, though, that really soar. With master cinematographer Roger Deakins again lending his eye as consultant, the camera weaves in and out among photo-real flora and fire-breathing fauna.

A motorsports movie you don’t need to be a petrolhead to enjoy. Rev up those whiteknuckle thrillride clichés, you're going to need them.

This visually epic, but monotonous collaboration between James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez is less than the sum of its slick parts.

It falls short of enchanting but it's never less than fun and likable. Watch it through the eyes of your inner teenager and you’ll have a blast.

It's a film that bores straight into your soul and leaves you shattered, but somehow richer for having seen it.

There are also juicy supporting roles for Shirley Henderson and Midnight in Paris’s Nina Arianda as the comedians’ long-suffering wives, Lucille and Ida. The film may be called Stan & Ollie, but it’s never more alive than when the four of them are onscreen.

There are memorable cameos from collaborators (Josh Homme take a bow) and a triumphant coda, but most of all, the rather melancholy sense of a visionary struggling to stay relevant.

Sure, some of the plot twists are a bit labored, and there’s maybe a henchman too many—but, trust me, you’ll be too busy rooting for the superhero with a snout to care.

The resulting film is beautifully crafted and, despite what Hitch might say, definitely cinematic.

This riotous, arcade-game-inspired sequel powers up with fresh ideas and some brilliantly-executed pastiching.

While his bandmates are happy to fade into the background, Martin – part puppy dog, part jack-in-the-box – is a magnet for the camera. He’s restless, funny, insecure and likeable – often all at the same time.

As with his first directorial effort, the ace meta-horror The Cabin in the Woods, Goddard has a blast toying with genre expectations, although here the payoff is a lot less satisfying.

The Sisters Brothers may be a violent movie but it’s not an especially graphic one; the bad guys are coolly dispatched from a distance and with minimal Peckinpah-ish splatter. The one genuinely stomach-turning moment comes at the hands of a surgeon, not a gunman. Prepare yourself.

Greengrass’s heart lies in exploring the ways a nation processes such a horrific, unexpected event, but Breivik’s odious ideas also get a comprehensive airing along the way. It makes for an uncomfortable, challenging watch.

The authenticity is immersive, even if the historical exposition occasionally feels like prep for an exam no one’s warned you about.

Richly entertaining and blackly funny but told with sincerity and heart, the half-dozen Western tales packed into The Ballad of Buster Scruggs show the Coen brothers loading up their six-shooter and firing barely a blank.

See it, then go home and wipe your hard drive.

The most harrowing revelation of all comes during two of Macdonald’s many interviews with friends, family and associates. It’s a piece of digging that adds investigative weight to the film and a hard-hitting coda to his exploration of the fragile psychology of stardom.

For a man so singular, the film’s chronological approach feels conventional and there’s little of the spark or fantasy he infused into his work in evidence.

Granik builds her engaging, sympathetic characters in subtle increments.

For all its sombre revelations, A Cambodian Spring exudes a powerful sense of possibility. In these days of popular protest, it makes for an enthralling case study.

This fun, pacy addition to the dino disaster franchise doesn’t do much that’s particularly new – though what it does, it does with a fair whack of panache.

Director Nora Twomey’s film is about the ways we try to cradle each other from the harsher realities of life. This is a day-to-day survival story that stirs the heart and fires the imagination.

Veering from blaxploitation spoof to undercover thriller and ending with a no-punches-pulled real-life coda, it’s riotous fun one minute, savagely biting the next.

The Polish filmmaker has conjured a dazzling, painful, universal odyssey through the human heart and all its strange compulsions. It could be the most achingly romantic film you’ll see this year, or just a really painful reminder of the one that got away.

It’s not that you can’t see what Von Trier is getting at, it’s just you wish he’d get there quicker and without all the desecrated bodies. For most of its hefty runtime, The House That Jack Built is just a slog.

Newcomer Fonte is terrific in the lead role, communicating Marcello’s meek protests with a twitchy physicality that grows slowly into a sketchy defiance.

Ron Howard has come through with a frisky space caper that zips along like a speeder on a bed of air. It’s far from perfect, but it’s much better than it has any right to be.

It’s not a bad movie, by any means, but it strains to turn a seriously introspective story into something cinematic.

Immaculately composed yet skittish, edgy and surprising, this impressive debut by writer-director Michael Pearce emanates a chill that will have you hugging your sides.

It’s a long movie and when its star isn’t on screen and cracking wise, the boundary-pushing shocks and endless self-references wear thin. Still, if you’re the Deadpool fanatic who recently had Reynolds’s name tattooed on his arse, you definitely won’t be grumbling.

The Cure’ has to be the first to reanimate corpses as a means of examining Ireland’s post-Troubles tensions. It’s a bold idea – and a good one – even if it never fully pays off in a ploddingly predictable final act.

Journeyman may be intimate but it never feels small.

Its world is weirdly familiar and yet alien. It’s also darn scary.

It’s unblinking in a Dardenne-ish way and often hard to watch, with the emotional toll playing on its characters’ faces. The ending is a floorer too.

It’s a CGI-heavy fantasia that will pop your eyeballs, but giddy as it is, it never quite sells its characters or gets much purchase on your emotions.

This moving, surprising documentary offers a tale of Hollywood pigeonholing that feels particularly timely.

A gripping, chastening study in what it’s like to spend your entire life behind enemy lines, A Fantastic Woman offers uplift, too – as well as the odd surreal touch.

It’s brimming with fascinating insights into the skill, conviction and sheer slog that went into tackling several rogue states, climate change and the odd dead cockroach on the West Wing floor without losing optimism, sanity or custody of the kids.

It seems a strange thing to say about a film featuring a giant man-eating mallard, but a bit more eccentricity wouldn’t have gone amiss.

But while it may not be strong on nuance and the story moves with all the careful pacing of a human cannonball, it’s got gusto and verve in abundance. An old-fashioned musical with a none-more-zeitgeisty songsheet, it may not be a flawless piece of storytelling, but it’s a pretty decent show.

The story isn’t wildly original – think ‘Leon’ with throwing stars – and it’s overlong, but the action is unrelenting, thrillingly staged and occasionally even flat-out hilarious.

Being dead has never looked as fun as it does in Pixar’s latest adventure, bursting with skeletons, magical spells and Mexico’s annual Day of the Dead.

It’s hard to know if this clunky comedy is part of Mel Gibson’s redemption arc or some strange new form of karmic retribution.

In a world of portentous blockbusters getting ever darker, it’s a joy to see one throwing on the disco lights.

In short, the raw materials are there for a fun – if throwback – genre piece of the kind that kept ’90s cinema stocked with stiffs. Alas, the tension dissipates in a tangle of muddled subplots, sluggish pacing and some strange decisions from director Tomas Alfredson (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy). The result isn’t a Bone Collector, never mind a Se7en.

Baumbach’s drama of grown-up kids seeking emotional restitution sees Sandler and Stiller at their best. If it feels like familiar turf for the writer-director, the emotions here are rawer than ever.

It demands patience and an open mind, but Lowery’s return to his indie roots after Pete’s Dragon is a highly unusual and, at times, emotionally shattering fable.

A winning double act never quite gels in a fish-out-of-water road-trip caper — think ‘National Lampoon’s Gringo Vacation’ — that leans hard on its stars’ charms and very lightly on coherent plotting.

Ozon’s latest is a twisty-turny post-War mystery — think ‘A Very Long Bereavement’ — that boasts a kaleidoscope of quiet emotions. It unfolds slowly, but rewards patience with strong performances and a swooning third act.

An unusual and richly enjoyable love letter to a fellow artist and Chilean, Neruda further marks out Larraín as a director of serious range and ambition.

A handsome and well-acted rumination on memory, boyhood and ageing that sees Ritesh Batra deliver a solid rather than inspired interpretation of Julian Barnes’ prize winner.

A high-altitude horror – think a Bram Stoker reworking of *The Shining* or Shutter Highland – of real craft. Ultimately, though, the plot turns out to be thinner than the air.

The third part of Berg’s unofficial Americans-in-crisis trilogy will play better for US audiences than overseas, but it’s still a pacy and often enthralling disaster movie.

Complicated and long but deftly handled adventure/caper/satire that ends up being thoroughly entertaining

Occasionally soapy on the homefront but cataclysmic in combat, this is a worthy addition to the WWII canon. Garfield underpins it all with skill, showing that sometimes, war can be humanising too.

Masterfully told and beautifully acted, Manchester By The Sea is a shattering yet graceful elegy of loss and grief.

An unapologetic, impassioned biopic, The Birth Of A Nation begins quietly but ends in a howl of rage. It might not be perfect, but it’s powerful enough to stay with you.

Zemeckis’ old-school romance has its moments and Cotillard gives it her all, but it lacks the zip and chemistry to truly spark.

Theroux’s first big-screen doc is an entertaining affair, peppered with surreal moments and wry wit, but its elusive subject remains out of reach.

Following up Love Is Strange with another slice of urban bohemia, Sachs’ latest is another gem that's full of heart and warmth.

Slick but forgettable, Fuqua’s suicide squad is a macho posse movie that could use a jab of fun. It’s The Magnificent Seven, but the “magnificent” is silent.

The ending doesn’t quite land, but this timely right-wing allegory promises there’s much more to come from Corbet.

Terrence Malick’s Hollywood tale is a frustratingly fleeting experience, a sleepwalk through Tinseltown that beguiles you with its visual artistry but leaves only the faintest of impressions when the curtain falls.

A humdrum remake of a crackerjack thriller, this never gets out of second gear despite a classy cast and intriguing premise. Credit to Dean Norris for playing a character called Bumpy with an entirely straight face.

The franchise squeaks past with a so-so sequel that barely improves on what came before. Our only hope is that at some point they'll have to hibernate.

An Alpine study of ageing and creativity that’s as fresh and bracing as the mountain air, although occasionally just as chilly.

Another dazzling Jennifer Lawrence performance anchors a blue-collar parable that boasts some inspired moments but never quite gels.

The interviews are as entertaining as the slick interplay on the ice.

Minnie’s inner life, a fantasia of animations appearing Crumb-like around her, is dazzling, and there’s plenty of naked emotion amid the sex, drugs and hand-drawn penises.