Phil de Semlyen

It’s Woodard’s film from start to finish. She’s been great for three decades, but this is her best work yet.

But what comes before [the ending] is so overflowing with ideas – about the erasure of Black culture, our relationship with past traumas, and the underseen side of the moviemaking business – and so brimming with visual flair, it puts most other blockbusters in the shade. Spend two hours watching it and a couple more unpacking it – with or without that know-it-all mate.

It’s artfully shot, the aspect ratio tightening claustrophobically as it flashes back to the 1970s. But Perkins’s script also sprinkles in sudden shocks, deeply macabre moments and slashes of dark humour to generate a deep unease all of its own.

The hackneyed thieves-with-a-heart-of-gold trope is reinvigorated by the sharpness of the writing and Song’s Basset Hound charms. While Broker occasionally gets close to cloying, especially in its neat ending and jaunty score, Koreeda keeps it the right side of cutesy. It’s best enjoyed as a modern-day fairy tale – only, one where the abandoned baby sparks nothing but enchantment.

There’s a tonne of interesting questions raised in all this that you’re just too numbed to absorb. No matter how often Malcolm goes outside to yell his frustrations into the night sky, the drama doesn’t feel any less airless.

It’s beautifully observed stuff – its fractured but tender family dynamics and depiction of parental pain reminded me a little of Ang Lee’s "The Ice Storm" – as it gradually lets you into a world of well-heeled suburbia that’s carefully shorn of all the usual Sydney landmarks.

[Arcel's] crafted a kind of Danish The Last of the Mohicans that’s full of passion and political conviction. It should stand the test of time almost as well as its rugged hero.

It’s a film for cinephiles as well as musos and romantics, with its discrete ‘movements’ mirroring the movie making style of its time frame.

With Gosling and Hüller to the fore, Lord and Miller have delivered a cosmic adventure with hope in its heart and a twinkle in its eye.

Thelma is neither as funny nor as Marmite-y as Little Miss Sunshine, a kindred spirit in the quirky indie realm, but its light shines in myriad little character beats.

Apples is less sharp-edged satire, more humanist exploration of the importance of memory.

Splicing in montage footage of marching soldiers, shots from Lawrence Olivier’s Henry V, and even archers in action, and layering in discordant sound design, Boyle reinvents the zombie movie as a bloody pop-art installation.

Can a movie leave you with a comedown? If it’s as raucous and unruly as Kneecap, a nonstop blizzard of beats, bumps of white powder and punky defiance of the British and Belfast’s sectarian past, the answer’s a firm ‘yes’.

Not top tier Jarmusch, but still a funny, soulful anthology worth seeking out.

Compelling performances and beautifully told heroics but the pacing is flawed in terms of a thrilling cinematic experience.

History nerds will note the strenuous efforts to capture the realities of the conflict, but the film’s use of smart Spielbergian grace notes to share its emotional truths is a real strength, too.

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.

Egilsdóttir centres it all wonderfully as the lugubrious Inga, bemused to find herself slowly transforming into a champion of the underdog.

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.

Even with its cramp-preventing intermission, Occupied City’s epic runtime doesn’t deliver the same accretion of emotional power that makes, say, Claude Lanzmann’s nine-hour Holocaust doc, Shoah, so great. Instead, it begins to open itself up to monotony and worse, glibness.

Things in The Hand of God are often funny and sad – all at the same time.

Dreamweavers, visionaries, plus actors… filmmaking pair Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s latest DIY sci-fi bubbles with mad ideas and eerie pre-apocalyptic vibes.

The overall effect is one of wonderment, eccentricity and heartache that will connect deeply with anyone who recently spent an extended period stuck in close proximity with other human beings.

For devoted filmlovers, Nouvelle Vague is a must-see – a joyful homage to the art of cinema that’ll have you queuing at your local repertory cinema as soon as the credits roll.

It’s not judgy or lecturing, and there’s nothing too didactic here – and maybe not a lot to linger over either. But if you’re looking for a couple of hours of sexy Parisians hooking up, falling out and finding their feet again, all set to pulsing electro and with a baked-in romanticism that makes a built-up corner of Paris feel like Casablanca, Audiard and his co-writers have made the perfect film.

Malek’s twitchy brand of anti-charm makes him an unusual lead for a film like this, and his outsider energy works better as the tormented killer-to-be than the doting husband. Heller is not always easy to root for, which can make The Amateur a chilly experience.

The symbolism is lightly worn here in a gently observational film that’s underpinned with humanism and compassion.

This unusual film sits in a genre of one.