Phil de Semlyen

Navalny is a barely believable brew of activism, resistance, poisonings, death squads, exiles and homecomings. Most of all, it’s a story of courage in the face of ruthless repression and one of those all-too-rare geopolitical stories where the bad guys actually get some comeuppance.

The dog of the title – a sinewy, reputedly rabid greyhound mix – offers Lang a foil and a path to rediscovering his sense of self. Their snappy early encounters give way to a deepening bond; two solitary souls forming one of the most touching on-screen relationships of the year.

You’d need an army of flying monkeys to find a Wicked fan with a grumble about this film.

Tom Cruise’s latest IMF outing is so relentlessly exhilarating, you’ll need a lie down afterwards.

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 a journey into the lives – and headspaces – of several young non-verbal autistic people around the world that’s part immersive deep dive, part primal scream of upset and frustration, and part cri de coeur for more understanding and empathy from the rest of us.

Happily, Send Help is both a return to the world of horror and a major return to form for the Evil Dead man, who’s been waylaid with bland franchise fare in recent years.

Like those truffles that kick it into gear, this film is a rare treat.

Kids will love its primary-coloured wonderland that teems with weird and wonderful beasts, and only the stoniest-hearted grown-up won’t be moved by its inclusive celebration of family across generations.

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

Japanese superstar-in-the-making Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s (Drive My Car) latest film is a touching ecological parable full of little feints and narrative red herrings. Just when you think it’s heading in one direction, it slips off elsewhere, like a fawn in the woods.

The death of le Carré feels like the end of an era. The Pigeon Tunnel is its enthralling epitaph.

Thanks to its pointed message about violence against women and injustice, this is a thriller with even sharper edges. Somewhere beneath its enthralling depiction of obsessive police work is a cry from the heart against a broken system.

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.

It’s defiantly cheesy and very hard to resist.

By keeping the camera in the vehicle, hauntingly lit with the blur of passing houses and the glow of the mobile phone, Hallow Road invites you to fill the scene at the other end of the line with a shadowy menace that the final stretch really delivers on.

With top performances and real heart, American Fiction is a film that diagnoses the problem and presents a cure.

So, sure, the plot is overstuffed, the cross-cutting is frenzied, and Pegg’s goofy asides are the only light relief from the underlying somberness. If you’re looking for flaws, The Final Reckoning definitely has them. But with action sequences this adrenalised, no one is leaving short-changed.

Minor grumbles aside, few Hollywood reboots can boast this blend of nostalgia, freshness and adrenaline. You will want to high five someone on the way out.

What separates the ensuing mayhem from a thousand generic thrillers out there is an impish streak and writing that smartly juggles big ideas, mad gun battles and guilty laughs.

In Saeed Roustayi’s Woman and Child, a carefully crafted and endlessly gripping drama that follows a Tehran family’s slow disintegration, it’s the supposedly joyous occasion of a marriage proposal that set the wheels of fate in motion.

It takes a steady hand to pull off a horror film as outlandish as Dangerous Animals – a movie, lest we forget, that is literally about dangerous animals – but Byrne has pulled off something slick and confident here. It’ll keep horror fans out of the water for years.

Journeyman may be intimate but it never feels small.

Some of that tension dissipates in a more low-key third act that foregrounds the excellent Foïs and Colomb as a mother and daughter at loggerheads, but The Beasts is still a compelling, tragic study of human conflict in a scarily believable context.

It’s an exercise in mindfulness that asks you to give yourself over to it lock, stock and barrel. If you’re willing to do that, you can cancel that meditation course.

It’s rare for something this necrotic to feel this fresh.

I’m Still Here takes you right into the machinery of a repressive regime, showing just enough of its dank jail cells and casual cruelties without overwhelming its deeper story of loss.

Society of the Snow is careful to memorialise the dead in a moving, meaningful way.