Robbie Collin

Think of The Nice Guys as candy noir: all the key ingredients from mysteries such as Chinatown and The Long Goodbye poured into a tall glass, then topped up with sugar syrup, a spritz of club soda, a sprig of mint and an ironic paper parasol.

Two decades after dinosaurs ruled the Earth’s cinemas, are we still capable of putting our phones away for two hours and being honestly amazed by them, without a glaze of cynicism or irony to keep us stuck? Trevorrow, his cast and crew would clearly like to think so. And in light of their efforts, you’d have to grinningly agree.

Farhadi’s films are like moral whodunits, and as Sepideh and her friends gradually unearth the truth, he expertly buffets our sympathies in all directions until the very last shot.

An alternative title for this one might have been Avengers: Encore, since the film knows its entire audience has been here for the long run – even beside Infinity War, Endgame would be completely impenetrable to a novice. Think of it as a kind of victory lap, in which a decade-plus of painstaking team assembly is re-run at top speed, then paid off with thermonuclear dazzle and force.

Reeves marshals more than his fair share of battle scenes and sweeping set-pieces, but never forgets the flicker of a face can provide all the spectacle that cinema requires.

The film has a cumulative power that sneaks up on you even as you think you’re keeping track of it, and a twilit afterglow that hasn’t faded yet.

Dora and the Lost City of Gold has contraptions to spare – falling platforms, lava pits, a water slide that pays homage to The Goonies – but its storytelling is commendably lean and faff-free. In the depths of summer break boredom, it’s a treasure horde of fun.

This is the same wondrous journey on which Apichatpong sends his audience: inwards and downwards, to a place where the simplest rhythms of everyday life become hallowed and mythic.

It’s tense, absurd, desperate and daft, all at once: seldom have so many contradictory tones been so gainfully employed.

The premise sounds morbid but the execution couldn’t be sunnier: think Snoopy does RoboCop.

Its loopy verve is reassuringly human.

It’s all thumpingly corny, but in the way good family films often are.

Could this be the late-emerging hit movie of summer 2013? No chance, although if this was August 1987, a time when we allowed action films to be smart on their own dumb terms, it might have cleaned up.

It’s a hysterical screwball fantasia that openly steals from Lubitsch, Hawks, Capra and Sturges and wants to be caught with its fingers in the till. The result is a highly-sexed Jenga-pile of silliness, to which Bogdanovich can’t resist adding block after teetering block.

Via breezy metaphysical farce, Palm Springs identifies this very recognisable strain of millennial malaise, before skewering it with merciless accuracy.

This is a heartbreaking story – how could it not be? But Frears’ film breaks your heart and then repairs it.

It’s a film which understands the pleasure of seeing familiar roads driven with consummate expertise. The F does stand for formula, after all.

Heidi Thomas’s screenplay, cannily expanding a little on Bennett’s glisteningly witty original script, shows its hand with tactical finesse.

It’s a wholly respectable adaptation, though perhaps a flash or two more of wildness wouldn’t have gone amiss.

A summer blockbuster that’s not just thrilling, but that orchestrates its thrills with such rare diligence, you want to yelp with glee.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is both a courtroom drama for the ages and an urgent shot across the bows.

Russell, a revelation in Trey Edward Shults’s under-seen Gen-Z melodrama Waves, is career-makingly good here, while Chalamet’s tender, tousled allure and razor-edge of raw danger powerfully recall the late River Phoenix: his Lee is a hustler to the core, always calculating where his next meal is coming from, and who he’ll have to sink his teeth into in order to get it.

This is an energised romantic drama overflowing with humour and passion.

Dupieux is clearly aware there’s no real dramatic mileage in Mandibles’ absurd premise, but it’s the opposite of a problem: Mandibles becomes funnier the longer it wanders around aimlessly, kicking at rocks.

For all its feints and innovations, Frozen II knows its audience inside out, and wants to ensure every last subdivision leaves feeling both seen and satisfied. That’s obviously good business. But it’s also generous, deeply charming filmmaking.

It’s almost certain to be the most existentially probing talking animal cartoon of the year.

No film has made me ache more for the reopening of cinemas in May than this trashily sublime, visual-effects-driven blare-a-thon, in which a king-sized gorilla and a radioactive lizard settle their differences over the smoking remains of a city or two.

It is less a true-life thriller than a kind of justice procedural – and a sharp, scouring work of moral seriousness from Greengrass.

Its control of tone can be a little uncertain, particularly during the ambitious epilogue – and I wish it had allowed itself a little more freakiness in its most savage moments. But at its best, it could be Bergerac reimagined by Nicolas Roeg, with its tangled character psychologies and great shudders of dread that seem to ring through the soil underfoot.

It is a confection in every sense, but plump with natural sweetness.

This isn’t just good writing, it’s humane and honourable.

Its icy conviction and unblinking Bressonian rigour generate their own particular, intoxicating strain of doom-laced excitement.

Inglesby wittily repurposes such modern plot-wreckers as mobile phone tracking and instant messaging into real dramatic assets, while as a director, Pearce is a savvy stylist who knows exactly when to rein things in: imagine Jacques Audiard with a cricket conscience perched on his shoulder whose only job is to say “steady on”.

Scrambling to keep up is part of the fun, but nowhere near as much fun as the parts where the film settles on a good idea for a set-piece and just gallops with it.

The canon of Alzheimer’s films doesn’t lack for performances piled up with compassion and fine-grained observation, from Iris all the way to Still Alice. But as their faded Winnebago wends its way to the coast, Ella and John show there’s room for two more.

In short, the film actually looks funny. Remember when animations always did.

Things keep barrelling along thanks to both Pugh and the plot’s punchy critique of certain recent trends in the internet’s more testosterone-raddled dark corners. With a smudgy red-lipsticked grin, Don’t Worry Darling drags them out into the blazing desert light.

The free-range majesty and fine-grained, muddy-fingernailed detail of Fastvold’s film, though, is entirely its own thing: like Ann, I was left wobbly and breathless by its grandeur and nerve.

Howard’s film is a paean to the courage and canniness of the seasoned non-professional: subterranean heroism has never looked so down-to-earth.

Leigh Whannell’s film – one of the smartest and scariest yet to roll off the production line at horror specialists Blumhouse.

The film depends on a performance from Stewart in which she’s virtually never off-screen or less than riveting.

After its slight 85 minutes had passed, I wasn’t immediately sure how much of it had mattered. It was a lovely, strangely reassuring feeling.

Chazelle has always specialised in virtuoso endings, and his sure hand and sharp eye brings this ambitious character study smoothly into land.

At a time when digital animation is breaking radical new ground, it can be tempting to view the hand-drawn sort as its old-fashioned forebear, with no more scope to evolve. But Momose’s film elegantly proves otherwise: it has the artistry, but also the visionary spark.

Vogt-Roberts manages the neat trick of making his film feel both nostalgic and current.

Allied, swathed in larger-than-life, luxurious imposture, is the real heart-racing deal.

The film is a whirl of pure pleasure that just keeps whirling: Sondheim doesn’t write show-stoppers but show-surgers, and from the moment the glorious opening number whips up, introducing the central players, the film cartwheels onwards until it lands at its unexpected but quite beautiful happy-ever-after.

It’s every inch a group achievement, and the film’s best scenes are its ensemble ones: prayers before bedtime, musical recitals, meals by candlelight.

Wright seems determined to bring in some new blood, and his film is a thrillingly persuasive recruiting tool. For existing fans, it’s a fond and nerdily comprehensive celebration – or perhaps vindication – of the siblings’ extensive, courageously eccentric output.

The Smashing Machine is a crunchily satisfying fight movie that innovates subtly.

Merlant’s film isn’t being unladylike: rather, it’s asserting that ladylike is what all of these things really are, and it’s high time cinema admitted it.

It’s a black-and-white period piece invested with a supremely eerie folkloric edge – a bleak historical chapter made timeless, and all the more troubling for it.

Sharp, exacting, trenchant, and fascinating, it’s a shard of history which uses immense polish to make of itself a mirror.

Östlund’s film is a sleek rejoinder to Christian’s disastrous PR team, who believe cutting through the noise of modern life requires short, sharp shocks. The Square shows that slow burn, when it’s kindled just right, has a cumulative heat that makes you wilt in your seat.

The generational rewrite has been deftly done, with enough timeliness braided in to make it feel freshly relevant, but all the gags fans want to hear again left reverently intact.

Logan is a film for people, like me, who thought the only good bit of X-Men: Apocalypse was Michael Fassbender crying in the woods, and left the cinema wishing that had been the whole thing. It’s something no-one could have expected: a creatively risky superhero movie. And it deserves to pay off.

This is his and Swinton’s first film together: in fact, it is the Spanish master’s first English-language production. But the two are an obviously good creative match, each one well-versed in the interplay of depth and surface, and capable of switching moods from ripe to heartfelt in a blink.

Yes, Evil Dead Rise indulges in the odd bit of homage, from its chainsaw-based final showdown to an amusing opening gag about Raimi’s trademark demon’s-eye-view tracking shots. But it mostly just wants to scare you witless – and (for this critic, anyway), resoundingly succeeds.

Piece by Piece is a razor-sharp pronouncement on the nature of stardom in 2024. That you leave the cinema wanting to buy toys and records isn’t simply the idea of the story: it’s the moral.

Every frame has been composed with cerebral coolness, and the hotel and its surrounding forests are shot with a dream-like lucidity. I haven’t seen anything quite like it before, and I’m still not sure that I have even now. This is the kind of film you have to go back to and check it really happened.

The staging and tone are determinedly old-fashioned, and the atmosphere of romance and danger only amplified by the glorious French settings: lots of muddy byways, echoing courtyards and fine, candlelit interiors, and not a green screen in sight.

In a pivotal scene, the younger Nicholas explains to his colleagues that he has faith in ordinary people because, well, an ordinary person is all that he is. One Life’s wholehearted embrace of that sentiment is the root of its limitations – and its potency too.

The Last Duel, which was adapted from a non-fiction book by Eric Jager, is a knotty, stimulating drama with a piquant #MeToo edge and the heft and splendour of an old-school historical epic.

The animation is photoreal – startlingly and mesmerisingly so. And the depth of feeling the tale of their friendship evokes is matched only by your incredulity, as you paw at your eyes six minutes later, that you are crying about two computer-generated umbrellas.

Army of the Dead is a kindred spirit of, rather than sequel to, Snyder’s earlier film – but it still cleaves faithfully to the Romero template, with its gaggle of abrasive, slippery lead characters that don’t obviously qualify as heroes, and its generous dousings of vinegary cynicism and apocalyptic dread.

This is an all-singing, all-sobbing weepie with sequins, featuring comedy, uproarious choreography, and a suite of soul R&B and gospel numbers that will have you bopping along in your seat.

In the dramatic stakes, the dining table comes a distant second to the swimming pool: a place to undress, bask, flirt, vie for attention, compete, cool off and burn. It’s a shimmering tank of romance, jealously and intrigue, and A Bigger Splash plunges into the deep end.

If Blackbird shows us anything it’s that no matter how carefully we plan, life resists perfection, right up to the end.

This Iberian spin on the Snow White legend is a curio and a wonder; a silent fairy tale woven from softest velvet.

This is a simple and beautiful journey undertaken purely for its own sake, and approached in that spirit, Tracks will lead you to a place of quiet wonder.

Its generation-spanning story has serious power, and, in its masterful opening chapter and final sequence, brushes against greatness.

It’s summer-holiday eye candy with a sherbetty experimental fizz.

Getting along with Hoard requires playing along with it too. But it’s easier to warm to than you might imagine, thanks to how well it captures the half-dazed tone and flow of early 1990s teenage life.

The Lost City is what could be described as knowingly dated: it’s a film designed to make you regret they don’t make ’em like this any more, even when “this” means escapist Hollywood fluff.

If Miranda’s tendency towards showmanship can leave Tick, Tick…Boom! feeling a little insistent in places, it also means the film shares its hero’s jet-propelled determination to do his own thing – whether the world happens to be braced for it or not.

As a repeat performance – even a cunningly subversive one – Folie à Deux can’t quite match its predecessor for dizzying impact. But it matches it for horrible tinderbox tension: it’s a film you feel might burst into flames at any given moment.

It’s all so giddily bizarre, the film deserves a health warning of its own: will induce (entirely pleasurable) lightheadedness and shortness of breath.

Scrapper rummages around with style. It puts bubbles in the kitchen sink.

Most of the film takes place in this vacuum-packed, Sartrean hell of other people, which Trachtenberg, his cast, writers and crew evoke with chest-tightening efficiency. Every sound and line rings with a tight, tinny echo; every room is felt out to its corners; every knick-knack drily noted.

One of those films whose plot and texture are entirely inseparable.

Showy and ambitious, desperately sincere and self-absorbed, and bursting at the seams with potential, Waves isn’t merely a film about teenagers, it’s virtually a teenager in film form. It’s also the kind of cinema that keeps you young.

That sense of gooey euphoria runs through everything that’s good in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2.

The film looks good and moves well. It earns its initially forbidding running time. It’s driven by human behaviour you might actually recognise.

Happily, what’s in no short supply is the same mix of uproarious failure and sledgehammer pathos that Brent at his best was always all about.

Nothing about it should work as a film, yet almost everything does.

The film is led by a performance of thrilling regality and nuance from Saoirse Ronan as Mary.

To watch it is to be waterboarded by joy. In terms of both visual dazzle and invention and sheer comedic stamina and pep, it handily surpasses the original Trolls from 2016, which itself set an impressive new standard for films based on novelty keyrings and pencil toppers.

Nichols’ film delivers a grubbily glamorous blast of underworld machismo of the sort that Scorsese himself made a mid-career speciality: think wildly charismatic performances, elegant camerawork, regular jabs of barbarous violence, and a skin-fizzingly sharp jukebox soundtrack.

This is a handsome and mature entertainment, rich with novelistic intrigue, that asks for very little in exchange for its rewards.

Against this enticing, enigmatic backdrop, the odd sops to mainstream taste – some comic shrieking, a sprinkling of toilet humour – feel unnecessary, but forgivable. It’s the sort of film you’re relieved to discover still exists.

Carlyle shoots the story with a propulsive, page-turning energy that’s enjoyably at odds with the Glasgow backdrop, which is dilapidated to the point of timelessness.

You could hardly ask for a sharper reminder of blockbuster cinema’s charms than the crescendo from swelling dread to snappily choreographed chaos that comprises the film’s tremendous 10-minute prologue.

For all the placidity of its cud-chewing subject, Cow has a thrillingly alien charge.

Zombi Child is the kind of lithe and lucid dream that gets its tendrils round your brain stem, so that when all hell finally breaks loose, you can’t jolt yourself awake from its grip.

This wintry tale of art blooming in adversity is far from a schematic feel-good jaunt. . . it’s an anthem for doomed youth in a familiar Bennett key: wry, melancholic, sneakily profound.

As a toy-advert movie full of artistry and heart, it’s as slyly progressive as it is shamelessly nostalgic.

While a late twist may potentially dismay, it also allows Mackenzie to raise the stakes in a battle of wits whose participants previously felt more like opponents than foes. It gets personal – nasty, even – and this ice-cool throwback suddenly bursts into flames.

Varda by Agnès is unquestionably one for the fans ... But this film also serves as a tantalising crash-course for newcomers.