Stephen Dalton

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.

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

A Hard Day offers a masterclass in throat-squeezing, stomach-knotting suspense.

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

As gripping onscreen as it was onstage, London Road remains a work of great finesse and originality.

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.

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

As a piece of drama, Citizen Saint is opaque and cryptic, leaving many loose ends unresolved. Even so, it is never boring, holding our attention with outlandish plot twists and strong performances. But its key strength is as an exquisite visual artwork, largely thanks to Krum Rodriguez’s gorgeous high-resolution monochrome cinematography, which makes every shot an Old Master tableaux of fine-grained detail and chiaroscuro shadow.

The Zone of Interest is a gloriously original work and a boldly experimental addition to the canon of high-calibre Holocaust cinema.

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

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

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

Stylistically limited by its strict adherence to Lerner’s vintage footage, Newport & the Great Folk Dream does little fresh with the music documentary format. But behind its deceptively austere, artless, hand-held aesthetic this deep dive into musical history is actually slickly edited and elegantly structured, with a strikingly clear, cleaned-up audio soundtrack.

Tales of the Grim Sleeper is unusually somber and conventional by Broomfield's standards, relying more on slow accumulation of detail than caustic commentary or ambush interviews. But it has a quiet emotional force which pays off during the powerful final sequence.

Ghost Stories is a witty and well-crafted love letter to old-school horror tropes.

As a immersive primer on the first-hand experiences of British soldiers, this innovative documentary is a haunting, moving and consistently engaging lesson in how to bring the past vividly alive

A Field in England is a rich, strange, hauntingly intense work from a highly original writer-director team.

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is full of understated, melancholy poetry.

A deluxe multi-character drama that blends real history with semi-fictionalized spy thriller and soap opera elements, Burning Bush feels in places like an extended Czech remake of the Cold War-themed German Oscar-winner The Lives of Others.

Jenkin's heavily stylized debut is a disorienting experience at first, but it ultimately creates a boldly Expressionistic mood of uncanny beauty and mesmerizing otherness.

Scorsese's choice to make this a standalone feature and not a limited series seems mildly perplexing. Anyone hoping for the propulsive dynamism of, say, Goodfellas or Casino may be disappointed. But The Irishman is also on many levels a beautifully crafted piece of deluxe cinema.

It is a superior genre piece at heart, but elevated by its high-caliber leads, Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg, plus a script rich in political and cultural resonance.

Collins has crafted a mesmerizing modernist memorial to ancient Celtic traditions, even if its determinedly slow pace and diffuse narrative will likely leave some viewers unsatisfied.

An ingenious micro-budget science-fiction nerve-jangler which takes place entirely at a suburban dinner party, Coherence is a testament to the power of smart ideas and strong ensemble acting over expensive visual pyrotechnics.

Graced by a strong cast, visual poetry and great formal control, this brooding meditation on evil still resonates a century later.

Mother is a crisp, sardonic, darkly funny mystery thriller with a claustrophobic feel that occasionally betrays its roots as an Irish radio drama.

For all its narrow focus, this is a pleasingly personal breakdown of a fascinating episode in recent European history, tightly composed and crisply edited, with an appealing undertow of dry humor and some cautionary lessons for modern voters.

As a whole, Amy is an emotionally stirring and technically polished tribute, its sprawling mass of diverse source material elegantly cleaned up, color-corrected and shaped into a satisfying narrative.