Tara Brady

George Lechaptois’s sunny cinematography and ROB’s lively score add bright notes to a film that is consistently light on its feet, despite its potentially weighty subject matter.

Straddling the current revival of the picaresque in US indie cinema (The Sweet East, Riddle of Fire) and cinéma vérité, this is a pleasing meander, skilfully directed, shot, and edited by the upcoming auteur siblings.

The director’s formal control, from the eerie electronic sounds of an ondes Martenot to the startling image of blood flowering across ice, collides the cinematic and the liminal.

Risk and bondage are seldom as playful as they are in Babygirl.

The camera dutifully records esteemed actors – including one Corrie veteran, as it happens – talking in beautifully appointed rooms, but it seldom finds the cinematic spark that might elevate the drama beyond a polished theatrical exercise.

Working from a script composed of real-life testimonies and dramatised with youthful verve and extravagant flights of fancy, the director’s follow-up to the exquisite Pinocchio is a true adventure.

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.

Morris plays along, but his visuals – shadowy rooms, obfuscated photographs, carefully filleted scenes from adaptations of the novelist’s work – hint that this isn’t the whole story.

Youthful exuberance has seldom been so painful or compelling to watch.

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.

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

Grief is seldom this entertaining.

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

Vogt coaxes impressive, carefully calibrated performances from his creepy young ensemble.

Lawrence Michael Levine’s blisteringly original, provocative, often hilarious screenplay lurches between familiar tropes – “I saw the way you were looking at her!” – and jagged edges. It’ll keep you guessing long after the credits roll.

In common with Jude’s scathing attack on the gig economy and toxic online culture in Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Kontinental ’25 takes a scattershot approach to various targets: anti-Semitism, capitalism, nationalism and religious hypocrisy. The incomparable writer-director’s dark comedy doesn’t care to resolve its heroine’s quandary; it’s out to poke with ethical heft and barbed wit.

In his impressive feature-length debut, the Irish documentarian Gar O’Rourke offers an immersive and mesmerising portrait of life in a still recognisably Soviet institution.

Pitched somewhere between The Social Network and The Thick of It, BlackBerry brings a welcome touch of anarchy to the corporate drama.

McCarthy’s directorial precision is complemented by wit and an imaginative backstory that deserves an expanded universe.

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

Servants confirms the director as a major talent.

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

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

Reflection in a Dead Diamond cares not a jot for the confines of conventional narrative and identification. This is cinema as bombardment, as fetish, as swooning fan collage. Who needs a new Bond film?

The ensemble remains electrifying against the damp.

The Card Counter – executive produced by Martin Scorsese – revisits Schrader’s twin preoccupations with despair and salvation, powered along by tart political urgency, a magnetic central performance from Isaac, and no little style.

Mulligan brings heart to Basden’s wistful folk compositions, and Key babbles amiably, as this crowd-pleaser salutes the redemptive power of a singsong.