Stephen Dalton

Though handsome in style and admirable in ambition, this sprawling neo-Western never comes together as a satisfying whole.

As its attention-grabbing title suggests, Everything Everywhere All at Once is a supercharged, sense-swamping, overstuffed feast of a movie.

I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians is a mature, ambitious work from a spirited auteur who has mastered the cinematic rules well enough to break them with confidence.

Driven by nuanced, persuasive performances and shot with an urgent, jittery tension, White Lie is a compelling close-up character study of a recklessly needy anti-heroine caught in an impossible dilemma of her own making.

Both surreal and sinister, it feels like we are watching a real-life version of The Truman Show.

This may be one of Jude’s minor works, but it delivers a quietly devastating emotional punch.

Perfect Days turns out to be a surprisingly charming, haunting, moving work with deliberate echoes of Japanese cinema legend Yasujiro Ozu.

There are so many witty touches and sharp little observations here that The Strange Little Cat can be forgiven for ultimately making no dramatic statement.

White Riot is a timely, engaging exercise in social and cultural history, but a wider focus might have given it deeper context and broader marketability.

The premise of this Hungarian/German/Swedish co-production is solid, even if the execution feels a little slack and the running time too long.

This ebullient equestrian comedy thriller is effortlessly enjoyable as camp spectacle, with shades of Almodovar in the mix, even if its twist-heady screwball plot ultimately delivers more style than substance.

A fable-like story about a young African girl banished from her village for alleged witchcraft, it blends deadpan humor with light surrealism, vivid visuals and left-field musical choices.

The Endless is not just about latent power struggles within cults but also within families, and about how both are eclipsed by more ancient, malevolent cosmic forces.

Despite a few bumpy moments, actor-director Noémie Merlant's gory feminist horror comedy paints a rowdy, richly imagined portrait of three ladies on fire.

Examining the idea of paranoia as an engineered reaction, a tool of control that inhibits potential activism and self-expression, it's more than a lesson in living history. It's a powerful argument for how necessary it is to watch the watchers.

The tone veers into film-fan geekery in places, but Jodorowsky is such a natural showman and irrepressible egotist that his ancient anecdotes never become tedious.

Haunting and atmospheric, For Those in Peril proves that creeping grief and guilt can deliver just as much dread-filled dramatic tension as a straight horror movie.

Another Round ultimately has little fresh or profound to say about intoxication and addiction, but it is an engaging tribute to friendship, family and bacchanalian hedonism in moderation.

Clearly weighted towards Gitai's own liberal political stance, but incorporating a range of other views too, West of the Jordan River is a dry and sometimes depressing film, but informative and humane too.

Long Strange Trip is an affectionate and well-crafted documentary, but it would have benefited from a little more of this emotionally raw material and a little less fawning reverence.

The film repays patient viewing as it evolves into an engrossing, nuanced, philosophical drama.

Crucially, like its predecessor, Gloria Bell maintains a warm but rigorously unsentimental tone despite material which could easily lend itself to mawkish sentimentality.

Take a pinch of Top Gun, stir in a generous dollop of The Right Stuff, add a light sprinkling of Mad Men and you have the formula for this uplifting documentary portrait of former Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan.

The director's latest rise-and-fall chronicle suffers from a few structural problems that did not bedevil Senna or Amy. Most obviously, the subject is still very much alive, which may explain why this officially endorsed film feels more cautious and compromised than it might have been.

The pace is gently hypnotic and the topic fitfully interesting, but the format will test the patience of all but serious art-cinema fans with its narrow focus and chilly film-school minimalism.

The story ends in a muddled rush, leaving many unanswered questions. Like a newly launched high-end smartphone, Ex Machina looks cool and sleek, but ultimately proves flimsy and underpowered. Still, for dystopian future-shock fans who can look beyond its basic design flaws, Garland’s feature debut functions just fine as superior pulp sci-fi.

It is a testament to the immersive immediacy of Victoria that the scale of its technical achievement only really dawns on you afterwards.

The real problem here is not the shameless blurring of fact and fiction, but how unforgivably dull it all seems.