Tara Brady

La Cocina makes watching The Bear feel like listening to Enya in a garden centre.

The director of Stranger by the Lake returns to the deadpan, sexually unstable working-class environs that have shaped many of his previous films with this pleasingly confounding tale of displaced characters and desires.

The best Irish film in a long time.

The grand casting gambit of pitching De Niro against De Niro proves an unnecessary distraction. Curiously bloodless in every respect.

The most distracting flaws are rooted in the problematic re-creation of animated material in “live-action” cinema. The permanent magic-hour lighting is hard to look at.

The loud bangs and snarky zingers that powered their Marvel films towards box-office billions are fine for superheroes but not, it transpires, for a big-hearted teenage heroine and her robot chums.

Edebiri works hard, but her notebook-clutching Nancy Drew asks dimwitted questions, even after the guests start to “disappear”.

Franchise fans will appreciate another glimpse of Plankton’s unlikely hillbilly clan. And there’s plenty of room for traditional SpongeBob bungling. Who knew marital discord could be so much fun for all ages?

Stanfield and Peck movingly channel their late subject against the sweep of history: “The total man does not live one experience.”

Simultaneously folkish and earthy, Delpero’s follow-up to the much-admired convent drama Maternal shares DNA with Small Body, Laura Samani’s equally remarkable tale of spiritual redemption.

More than 100 artists contributed to the homeschool green screen and rough-hewn post-Minecraft animation. The anarchic and imaginative world-building around Batman’s hood is impressive.

The details and atmospherics are diverting. The blindingly obvious plot twist is less impressive.

For all the gloom, this is a lovely, heartfelt creation from the Oscar-winning animator.

The Fire Inside has enough quality to please genre and sports enthusiasts even if it feels like an undercard fixture. For all the talent on both sides of the camera, the nuts-and-bolts script lacks innovation and the pacing neither bobs nor weaves.

The lack of geopolitical context is questionable, but the film-making is sound. The movie’s editor, Hansjörg Weissbrich, maintains a brisk pace. Deftly used snippets of archive footage amplify the documentary realism. A sure-footed ensemble propels the story towards its harrowing conclusion.

We salute the costume and continuity departments (Betty Austin) on Iris’s consistently bloody frills as she runs, fights and reasons for her “life”. We are with her every step of the way.

There are no big dramas, save for a call up to the office for skipping a school trip. Reiko Yoshida’s script instead foregrounds sincere friendship and the joyful mechanics of songwriting.

The parallel father-and-son storylines may feel a bit too tidy, but Nabulsi’s film is powered along by terrific performances and palpable fury.

We’re never properly spooked. The presence, ironically, lacks presence. An excellent cast and flashy film-making ensure we are entertained, nonetheless.

The action is character driven, not issue led. It’s a heartfelt miniature, prettily shot by the cinematographer Kristen Correll.

Laurent Tangy’s slick cinematography adds to the sense that we’re watching a luxe commercial. But for what? It’s impossible to figure out who this empty film is for or why it exists in the first place.

Fans of the playful meandering of the Romanian auteur Radu Jude will likely enjoy the haphazard storytelling and epic travelling shots.

The ever-reliable Dyrholm is both charismatic and curdling as the grubby matriarch. But most of the film is writ large and affectingly in Sonne’s agonised face.

The final reveal is as unnecessary as it is predictable, and the pace can be as glacial as the setting. No matter. The Damned is powered along by suspicion, atmospherics and an unforgettable landscape.

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

The first half of the film is spellbinding; Eggers and his cinematographer, Jarin Blaschke, brilliantly redeploy the grammar of German expressionism to make Dracula (or thereabouts) scary again.

A series of indelible images coalesce into a powerful chronicle of institutional abuse and racial inequality.

This is a Terrifier movie: everything is bigger and scarier, including the psychological damage.