Tara Brady

Gran Turismo, a spectacular new racing film from the Oscar-nominated writer and director Neill Blomkamp, wisely sidesteps the pitfalls of many dreadful screen outings (often from the perennial game-ruiner Uwe Boll) by finding a big-hearted human-interest story to better explore the racing environment.

It takes a while for Winocour’s gentle drama to consolidate into a satisfying detective story as Mia pieces together the events of that fateful evening. The denouement is dramatically convenient but undeniably moving.

Maintaining a giddy tone through murder and mayhem is a tricky business, even if the Coen brothers can, on occasion, make it look easy. Maggie Moores(s) is way off the pace, however.

Gore, who directs with her partner, Damian Kulash, maintains a giddy tone that sometimes sits uneasily with temporal shifts that mirror the narrative complexities of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. The needlessly busy structure is easily offset by appealing performances from Banks, Snook and Viswanathan and by a keen critical eye for the mad free-for-all economics of the Bill Clinton era.

Beneath the zany antics and pastiche aesthetics – Ken Seng’s cinematography knows all the fly moves – the satire has plenty of bite.

The stoical, quiet, affecting beast of burden in Li Ruijun’s much-admired drama is emblematic of the film’s larger appeal.

The filmmaker’s technique generally counterpoints any caveats and script imperfections. The ensemble cast is starry and strong. The segue from the end of the second World War into the cold war is marked by a spectacular explosion sequence. “Brilliance makes up for a lot,” Murphy’s Oppenheimer tells us. It sure does.

The oppressively neon musical numbers and ominous pastoral pronouncements that “secular government was a mistake” are more convincing than the film’s late swerve into Giallo terrain. But the writer-director’s ideas about women as religious enforcers, complicit in their own subjugation, are fascinating.

Dupieux, as ever, writes, directs, shoots, and orchestrates the madness. This isn’t as conceptually neat as Deerskin nor as playfully intertextual as Rubber, but it’s consistently fun.

It’ll do well enough for summer-break popcorn-lovers, but as DreamWorks Animations go, it’s no How to Train Your Dragon.

It accordingly falls to Ford to save the day. The octogenarian’s gruff charm endures against the brain-numbing CG tableaux.

In common with LeMond’s career, during which the interloping Yank won over spectators and rivals alike, The Last Rider proves a charm offensive.

Every pratfall, including the naked ones, is joyless and witlessly timed.

The epic results simultaneously function as endoscopic body horror, as a portrait of overworked and underfunded medical staff and as a business study of death.

Recent cinematic representations of Jehovah’s Witnesses, notably in Dea Kulumbegashvili’s Beginning, Richard Eyre’s The Children Act and Daniel Kokotajlo’s Apostasy, have not been kind to the Christian denomination. This compassionate story of puppy love – co-written and codirected by the former Witness Sarah Watts – shows more understanding towards the community, through conversations.

Working with Gammell, Keough, a granddaughter of Elvis Presley and the compelling star of The House that Jack Built and Daisy Jones & the Six, successfully transitions to the other side of the camera with this respectful take on a community under pressure.

Masculinity has seldom been more cartoonishly toxic than in Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s compelling hair-trigger drama.

There’s something of the Greek weird wave or Wes Anderson in Cavalli’s deadpan humour, which is offset by Porcaroli’s wildly energetic central turn.

The film is ultimately a showcase for Sweeney, however. You can see the panic rising beneath the young actor’s calm, collected front. It’s a brilliantly measured turn that couldn’t be further from Sweeney’s iconic breakdown as the vulnerable Cassie on Euphoria.

At 76, more than 20 films into his storied career, Paul Schrader can still deliver a sucker punch.

Jalmari Helander, who previously scored an international hit with his Santa-themed horror, Rare Exports, mines every gory set piece for squeals of delight and revulsion. Styled as a midnight movie, Sisu makes terrific use of limited military hardware and a forbidding Lapland landscape.

Anderson’s 11th movie is simultaneously furiously busy and curiously uneventful.

Trust Kelly Fremon Craig, the writer-director of The Edge of Seventeen, the best teen movie of the past decade, to translate Blume’s seminal novel into a funny, exhilarating coming-of-age movie that will charm all genders.

Keeping up with the many, many characters and their peccadillos is dizzying.

There are few reveals, but narrative restraint is commendable in the telling of this almost unbearably unhappy tale.

Happily, Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi put in mountain-sized performances to offset the film’s silences and propensity for postcard shots, bringing heart and guts to the chilliest scenery. A worthwhile hike through many obstacles to friendship.

For all the interesting biographical details unpacked here, Harris remains a strangely elusive presence, as if he’s refusing to co-operate from beyond the grave.

A triumvirate of superb performances and the warmth of Maryam Touzani and Nabil Ayouch’s screenplay offset the clumsier tropes. Virginie Surdej’s cinematography bathes daylit scenes in golden light to match the thread Halim uses on his petroleum-blue creation.

An ambivalent, accusatory depiction of intercountry adoption, Return to Seoul mines South Korea’s controversial adoption history to craft a smart if maddening character study.

Lisa Cortés’ fond, scholarly, starry documentary not only ensures that the innovator behind Tutti Frutti and Good Golly, Miss Molly gets his due but also provides a rip-roaring bow for the artist variously known as the Georgia Peach, the Living Flame and the Southern Child.

Every scene, every ride and every development feels dangerous and combustible.

Writer-director Kristoffer Borgli’s pitch-black comedy makes merry with malignant narcissism and the worried well.

This meandering, mysterious 164-minute meditation on French imperialism is not for everyone.

A deserving winner of the best screenplay at Cannes last year, this nail-biting drama is offset by Barhom’s terrific wide-eyed performance. The gorgon’s knot of political and religious machinations add distinctive hues to a genre piece with shades of All the President’s Men and The Name of the Rose.

Seydoux and Poupand bring plenty of emotional clout to their roles, even if the script straddles uncomfortably between verité and melodrama.

Elliott Crosset Hove and Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson make for compelling adversaries in a wonderful terrible contest.

It is unfortunate that two directors and a screenwriter (Matthew Fogel) felt the need to shoehorn in an extended family and – groan – Oedipal crisis for both Mario and Donkey Kong. Despite this misstep, the film belts along with an assault of candy colours and a commendable command of canonical detail.

By relocating a Parisian crime to the French Alps, Moll and his cinematographer Patrick Ghiringhelli visibly stifle Yohan’s frustrated inquiries. The comings and goings among the gruff, macho unit are not particularly interesting. But The Night of the 12th, which was nominated for 10 César Awards, winning in six categories, including best picture, is otherwise absorbing.

It’s not for everyone. Please Baby Please often forgets that it’s a musical, and the action is increasingly chaotic.

Léa Mysius’s accomplished second feature is the time-travelling, olfactory-driven LGBTQ romance and family melodrama you couldn’t possibly have seen coming.

Extravagant horrors and psychological torments ensue. James Vandewater’s edits and Karim Hussain’s phantasmagoric visuals add to the anxiety and chaos.

It’s not world-building; it’s world-sprawling. Imagine Harry Potter. But with head-stomping.

With its lurid libidinous action and over-the-top murders, Pearl is a jokey spin-off of a jokey film. Imagine – and we mean this as a compliment – the slasher equivalent of The Naked Gun 2. Offsetting the self-indulgence, Goth sinks her teeth into the goose-killing heroine and spits out all the feathers.

The kind of kids who hide behind the couch during Scooby-Doo may well feel emboldened by the fuzzy feelings, silly quips and toothless villains. But it all feels rather pointless for the non-meek community.

It is often argued that The Strokes are the last rock stars and that their Manhattan peers are the last great bohemians. It’s an Americentric view, but it’s gospel truth for this appealing if impressionistic time capsule.

It seems churlish to complain that a film about a global serial killer is unnecessarily brutal and nasty. But between blackmail victims splatting on the pavements of Piccadilly Circus to bodies frozen under snowy lakes, Luther: The Fallen Sun is as distasteful as it is silly.

The film is not as taut as Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov’s similarly themed 2015 thriller, The Lesson, but its freewheeling authenticity gives it charm and momentum.

The winner of the Ecumenical Jury Award at the 2022 Cannes Festival finds warmth and empathy in the unlikeliest and most unethical places.

Mostly, Joyland is a film of huge heart and empathy. Mirroring the hapless hero’s journey, it’s an unexpected romance.

The powerful current Palme d’Or favourite features terrific performances from youthful leads Eden Dambrine and Gustav De Waele, claustrophobic cinematography from Frank van den Eeden, weepie-worthy orchestrations from Valentin Hadjadj, and meaningful musings on how we hide behind small-talk, and internalise pain and gender norms.

Playwright Florian Zeller’s third instalment – and second film – in a cycle that includes The Father is a muscular, devastating drama that ought to have featured more prominently in the protracted “awards conversation”.

An elegantly structured film composed of clever, delicate movements, every aspect of Georgia Oakley’s debut feature – from Izabella Curry’s editing to Kirsty Halliday’s period costuming – is as restrained as Rosy McEwen’s excellent performance.

There is a lot to like here, not least Ray Winstone’s Papa Bear. The forests are Skittle-coloured. The set pieces are wild and kinetic. But it is Banderas’s star power that saves the day.

Despite the claustrophobic setting, Diop crafts an evocative modern retelling of Medea, with detailed notes on femininity, immigration and race.

Poitras’s biopic of Goldin is powered along by righteous fury: an engaging portrait of both the artist and her activism.

The dialogue is yellow-pack, the set-up is so silly you wonder why they didn’t parachute in a dinosaur or set off a volcanic explosion for good measure, and the sparsely populated commercial flight screams budgetary constraints. Still, it ticks along, makes merry, and everyone works hard and sweatily to put the “AAAAAAH” back into action.

For all Joachim Philippe and Virginie Surdue’s handsome cinematography, this lyrical documentary lacks focus and, more disappointingly, historical context. A missed opportunity.

It’s a cracking, effective thriller, powered by uneasiness, and made all the more potent by the recent death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old killed in police custody after being detained for violating the Islamic Republic’s dress code for women.

The film arguably shares DNA with the psycho-geographical works of Pat Collins and Alan Gilsenan.

Mendes’s script, though it contains some memorable scenes, tries to do too much, as it takes on racial and sexual inequality, mental-health issues and, incongruously, the romance of cinema.

Against the distress, Chukwu and Deadwyler find purpose in Mamie’s transformation into a hugely influential civil rights activist. This is a woman’s account of striving for racial justice in the era of Jim Crow laws.

An entirely non-professional cast makes it seem as if the director-editor Ana Pfaff and cinematographer Daniela Cajias simply happened upon every beautifully composed sequence. The effects can be slow-burning and occasionally a little shapeless, but they cast their dappled spell as the summer wears on.

Corsage shares some obvious DNA with Pablo Larraín’s Spencer and Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, but where those films swoon for their put-upon heroines, Krieps brings an unapologetic flintiness.

We’re accustomed to Dumont leapfrogging from one genre to another, but he has seldom attempted so many swerves and shifts as he manages here.

The Pale Blue Eye is beautifully shot and absurdly plotted.

Working on a small budget, writer-director Alison Locke puts the confinement of one location in service of her claustrophobic script. A promising first feature.

It’s a lovely thing to behold, but who exactly is this for? Unlike Matteo Garrone’s sublime 2019 fantasy, a version that managed to be faithful, wildly imaginative and all-ages in appeal, this brooding musical veers wildly between primary school scatology, repeated journeys to the underworld and darkest history.

Between Kurtz and Stigter – a Dutch journalist who authored Atlas Of An Occupied City: Amsterdam 1940-1945 – no stone is left unturned.

The pretty pictures and silhouetted, sanitised sex will do well enough for Bridgerton fans, but the material has strayed so far from the source, one wonders why they kept the title.

Save for some Skittle-coloured CG and cartoon violence, the original West End director Matthew Warchus puts a filmed version of the stage show onscreen. Theatre fans will be delighted; movie fans will wonder where the wide-angle chorus lines went to.

Bones and All deftly segues between teenage romance, hinterland tableaux and genuinely unsettling encounters.

Named for a Buddhist concept referencing the transition between birth and death, Bardo may transport the viewer to a dream space but not perhaps the one Iñárritu intended. Zzzzz.

Defiant, endlessly resourceful and gripping cinema.

Living, which is composed entirely of delicate movements and earnest pleasantries, maintains a quietude and stiff upper lip in the face of tragedy.

Pugh’s emblematic, muddy-hemmed blue dress — designed by Odile Dicks-Mireaux — marks her out against the windswept exteriors. Not for the first time this year, she’s the standout in a film that, given the remarkable personnel involved, really ought to pack a greater punch.

Taking a leaf from Parasite, Barbarian both literally and figuratively plays with the idea that however unpleasant things seem there’s always a scarier, lower level.

Another director might have fashioned Basic Instinct from such voyeuristic clay. Park dances with the material. Eschewing sex in favour of simmering sensuality, Decision to Leave coalesces into an intricate ballet between the main characters, Park’s careful choreography and Kim Ji-yong’s acrobatic camerawork.

The cast is fun. And any addition to the Henry Selick canon is a welcome addition indeed. A future Halloween classic.

A compelling and hopeful insight into the turbulence leading up to the 2021 coup.

Mackey, in particular, is a powerhouse. The young star is matched well with O’Connor’s carefully calibrated, appealingly earnest script, which approximates a modern sensibility without striking a false note or straying from Emily’s contemporaneous moors.

A winning cast, mostly drawn from the ranks of Gen Z, ensures that Rosaline’s spurned, sulky plans to steal Romeo back from Juliet can be fun.

A good-looking waste, but a waste nonetheless.

All of these parties try hard with a script that, while credited to Jen D’Angelo, doesn’t appear to have been entirely written as yet.

Colin Farrell’s central turn, a lovely, soulful study of melancholy, is one of his best performances to date.

This electrifying new film from director Romain Gavras starts as it means to go on: with a riot and fireworks.

What an auspicious debut for Kline and what a fine showcase for all other parties.

From the moment My Chemical Romance’s Welcome to the Black Parade blasts across the opening credits, this is the unexpectedly moving, nostalgia-soundtracked class reunion that you’ll enjoy despite yourself.

The triumvirate of actors at the heart of the film are so committed and so good. The songs are pleasing. The script is clever. There’s a charming Aristilean intimacy about the fixed location. Conversely, there are too many ideas and ambitions here to fit into a low-budget picture.

This already improbable dream boasts an interesting supporting cast.

Pritz collaborates commendably and sensitively with his subjects.

Dumb, fun, and definitely not for the acrophobic. See it. Then go argue plot points with people on the internet.

Mr Malcolm’s List plays like Jane Austen fan-fiction, which isn’t the worst subgenre in the world, even if nobody could ever confuse the plot with that of Lady Susan, let alone Pride and Prejudice.

Everyone on screen is having a ball — albeit behind the straightest of faces — in this uproarious gallimaufry of movie-related pretentiousness.

Director McLeod — another of Lee’s fellow students — has fun with contradictory accounts, tall tales and faulty memories in a film that pulls the rug just as effectively as its subject and inscrutable star do.

Pitched somewhere between folk horror, ecological revenge and scathing class critique, The Feast is at its best during the elegantly atmospheric, nervy first hour, as cinematographer Bjørn Ståle Bratberg picks out ominous details.

The convention of jumping between time periods can make the plot a little cluttered but the film’s worth as an educational tool for pre-teen audiences is inarguable.

A far better prospect than even the most ardent Predator fan could have wished for.

The Kraffts, who first bonded over their love of Mount Etna, remain as committed to the cause of understanding volcanic hazards and triggers as they are to one another. Their story makes for this year’s best documentary to date, and a film that demands to be seen on the largest possible screen.