Tim Grierson

This gritty, gripping movie starts slowly but builds in intensity, culminating in sorrow and raw nerves.

Pointedly recounting the history of the LGBT movement in New York, director David France shines a light on how, even within that community, transgender people have been treated like second-class citizens.

A treatise on art, ambition, long-distance relationships and the struggles to find one’s own voice, the film unfolds with uncommon grace.

Drawing from elements of his own childhood, Miyazaki has dreamed up a fantastical environment in which anything seems possible — including the potential to remake oneself.

Even when the film risks becoming overly precious, Ronan keeps Rona’s struggles gripping. It is a tale not so much of triumph as one of melancholy resilience.

The new film from ’71 director Yann Demange is best when it pauses to explore the father-and-son drama at the heart of this tale, as well as coldly examining America’s ruinous drug policy.

Bratton’s depth of feeling elevates the material, suggesting that, for the filmmaker, there’s something intensely cathartic and therapeutic in this retelling.

Civil War is an exciting, often giddy pop pleasure.

A confident blend of comic-book élan and stirring sentiment, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse finds fresh ways to tell the familiar story of everyone’s favourite web-slinger.

Underneath the percussive, buoyant tunes and the colourful, breezy animation is a story about understanding that people who seem better off than we are may be carrying private pain that they keep bottled up inside.

The Seer And The Unseen director Sara Dosa has fashioned this documentary with modesty and sensitivity, in some ways as awed by the strange beauty and destructive power of the volcanos as she is by the nonchalant willingness of the Kraffts to put themselves at risk in the name of science.

Inside Out 2 is strongest when harnessing the essence of how our emotions define us and, occasionally, lead us astray. But Mann never condemns any of Riley’s feelings, recognising that each has its place.

It might be a given that Pixar’s movies are visually spectacular, but The Good Dinosaur may be the studio’s most purely cinematic, the richness of the design and the emotional power of the widescreen compositions stirring deep, almost primal feelings about childhood, the loss of innocence and the untamed ferocity of the natural world.

The Hateful Eight’s impact expands and grows richer the further away you are from the experience of watching it.

As a director, Dano prefers static camera setups and uncluttered frames, emphasising the mundane nature of the drama, which only allows the increasing darkness of this tale to become more upsetting.

While this simple story may not seem inherently momentous, it speaks volumes about the ways in which women are marginalised — especially when it comes to making decisions about their own bodies.

As is often the case with del Toro’s pictures, Frankenstein is frequently a triumph of spectacle over nuance — grand gestures over precise character insights. Still, by envisioning this confrontation between its paired protagonists as an epic metaphor for humanity’s hubris at trying to play God, the filmmaker knows who the novel’s true monster is.

Brandon Cronenberg’s third feature is best appreciated as a singularly unnerving experience, one punctuated with enough outlandish and disquieting moments to compensate for a script that can be episodic and thematically repetitive.

Despite their clear affection for these women, the Dardenne brothers never sugarcoat their characters’ unenviable circumstance or latch onto phony bromides to alleviate our anxiety. And yet Young Mothers contains its share of sweetness and light.

The Devil’s Candy is a masterful slow burn, the horror and violence alluded to rather than seen.

Redford has rarely been this commanding in his recent work, playing Tucker with a mischievousness in his eyes but also so much soul that his thieving feels more like an expression of some sad longing than a chronic criminal mind-set.

All three leads get stronger as the movie goes along, in part because Miller’s full intention isn’t clear until about halfway through. These characters are foolish without being idiots, which produces a more sophisticated type of comedy.

Director Gavin Hood gives the proceedings a rousing electricity, and he’s aided by a cast which leans into the story’s urgency and continued relevance.

A Compassionate Spy is intimate and modest, more about a marriage than geopolitical tensions.

The film refuses to go in predictable directions, unveiling bizarre side characters and travelling down odd narrative backroads. But that occasional bagginess also allows for a richly textured picture bursting with energy.

There’s nothing adorable or convoluted about this collision of worlds. The Other Side of Hope makes room for jokes about bad restaurants alongside stark monologues about the horrors of Syria. It operates in an atmosphere of constant conflicting emotions.

The Wild Robot’s nicely modulated ending packs a wallop, hinting that a mother’s job is never done — that’s just not in her programming.

On its surface, the film may touch on the familiar theme of how artists draw from their own lives, but Renate Reinsve and Stellan Skarsgard bring incredible tenderness to a story that is ultimately about what children and parents never say to one another — and whether those lifelong silences can ever be broken.

Tim Roth gives a meticulously withdrawn performance that speaks volumes, and although filmmaker Michel Franco can be too fussy in his starkly somber design, Chronic is nonetheless a captivating work.

The broader approach to storytelling on McQueen’s part robs 12 Years A Slave of some of the precise, up-close vibrancy that was the hallmark of his earlier films. As a consequence, this new film feels a little less personal, although that criticism should not dismiss the intelligence and feeling on display.

The going can be a bit slow at first, but the interweaving narratives, which comment on (and sometimes echo) each other, begin to develop a hypnotic grandeur. It’s a hell of a trip.

Delightful, occasionally quite moving and always exquisitely crafted, this is a modest charmer about trying to make sense of the world either through art or other pursuits.

Reconceiving the iconic sci-fi villain as an underdog hero, Predator: Badlands is a consistently entertaining action-thriller filled with propulsive set pieces.

The Oscar-winning actress gives a volcanic performance that is nonetheless very controlled, avoiding melodramatic theatrics. Pattinson plays off his costar superbly, giving us an inattentive husband who comes to realise how little he understands about his wife.

Suffice to say, Suspiria tries to do much, culminating in a finale that’s almost laughably over-the-top. But the passion of Guadagnino’s messy vision — the swirl of emotions he conjures on this grand canvas — has a forcefulness that mostly transcends its sizable flaws.

The film manages to illuminate precisely what makes Dylan’s opaqueness so captivating.

The film benefits from Pugh’s charismatic performance and writer-director Stephen Merchant’s cheery mixture of crowd-pleasing sentiment, wry laughs and genuine sweetness.

The shifting loyalties and treacherous power plays that go on in Triple 9 are engaging, but Hillcoat especially shines in a series of three taut life-or-death sequences — one at the start of the film, one near the middle, and one at the end — that articulate more about who these characters are than anything they say.

The plotting gets confusing, but what’s crystal-clear is the filmmaker’s skill at concocting a grippingly pessimistic worldview that permeates his den of thieves. No Sudden Move makes an impact, even when it doesn’t always make sense.

What’s best about the film is how Cedar and Gere have dreamed up a character who’s equally desperate and preternaturally ingratiating.

As a meticulously coiled study of nasty doings under one roof, Bring Her Back convincingly argues that terror starts at home.

Perhaps Us stumbles near the end while straining for an operatic, shattering finale that explains everything that preceded it but, after capturing the zeitgeist his first time out, Peele avoids the sophomore slump by methodically laying out his riveting tale.

Consisting of three non-fiction segments and four narrative instalments, the film is refreshing in its understated modesty. If anything, the shorter running time seems to energise the directors, who tell miniature stories with a minimum of fuss but careful attention to the emotional fallout of life under quarantine.

By depicting Coppola simply as a diligent director at work, Megadoc is ennobling without being hagiographic.

As much as is possible considering all the Dark Knight films that came before, The Batman feels like its own creation, not beholden to past instalments while still honouring what remains riveting about this character’s milieu.

Rambunctious and playful, writer-director Nida Manzoor’s feature debut radiates fizzy delight, showing audiences a breezy good time.

At a time when comic-book films have become formulaic and interchangeable, James Gunn’s third instalment of Guardians Of The Galaxy feels refreshingly vivid and distinct – a rousing space adventure which is dedicated to delivering both gorgeous spectacle and an emotional wallop.

Often, the randomness of the jokes is as sparkling as the execution, creating the sense that the filmmakers will try just about anything for a laugh — and the more shocking the better.

Uneven, sometimes repetitive but also powerfully moving and thought-provoking, Silence is an imperfect movie that’s very hard to shake.

Writer-director Sara Colangelo’s intimate, slender drama withholds much about its main character, which allows Gyllenhaal to sketch the outline of a fractured soul.

Leave The World Behind draws from familiar elements, but this adaptation of Rumaan Alam’s 2020 novel stands apart thanks to its excellent performances and slow, superb escalation of tension.

A superbly silly sendup of the modern musical landscape, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is as thimble-deep as the throwaway hits it’s satirising, but also just as lively.

The film’s Lynchian surrealism and time-jumping adventurousness, although occasionally hobbled by narrative digressions, are lifted up by the two leads.

It is as visually extraordinary as its predecessors and, while the film contains some of those earlier pictures’ weaknesses, the deficiencies are starting to feel like charming quirks in an otherwise transporting series.

It would be unsporting to say more but, simply put, there are moments of unalloyed terror (juxtaposed with a crowd-pleasing giddiness) that make Nope worth not just seeing on the big screen but with as huge a crowd as possible.

The narrative may have familiar contours, but Ford’s close attention to the have-nots’ desire to transcend their circumstances gives the proceedings a gripping emotional undercurrent.

Dancing across multiple themes and frequently upending expectations, Barbarian keeps us wonderfully uncertain about where it’s going — or even what it’s ultimately about — which only makes the picture that much more gripping.

This brutal survival tale is so powerfully engrossing that, despite the clear limitations of his monochromatic, showy approach, the film’s compelling construction tends to override the legitimate criticisms.

A confection that is equal parts murder mystery, old-fashioned ghost story and supernatural thriller, the third instalment of Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot series proves to be the most enjoyable.

Napoleon features exceptional battle scenes as well as tart back-and-forths between these romantic combatants, resulting in a lavish, thoughtful drama that remains entranced and bemused by France’s most notorious emperor — a brilliant strategic mind who could not have been more insecure.

This is a generous, consistently pleasurable comedy.

This is a Western which is rugged and raw, eschewing the genre’s mythmaking for something a little more off the beaten path.

Turning Red is often very funny thanks to the fact that Shi lets her main character be smart and three-dimensional — the filmmaker doesn’t talk down to her adolescent audience by burdening the script with juvenile jokes.

A winning romantic comedy about two men whose emotional intimacy issues may jeopardise the good thing they’ve got going, Bros is frequently funny but also quite touching, spearheaded by the dynamite chemistry between co-writer Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane.

Filmmaker Tim Sutton elicits pitiless performances from Frank Grillo and Jamie Bell playing two very different criminals on a collision course, and the film exudes a grungy, B-movie ethos in keeping with its scrappy, resourceful characters.

Garner and co-star Jessica Henwick navigate the picture’s mixture of drama, suspense and horror superbly, leaving the audience fearful that this slow-burn powder keg will eventually go off — although we’re not sure who the casualties will be.

It’s no surprise that director Spike Lee prefers a hammer to a scalpel for this real-life drama, but his righteous fury is supplemented with a mature thoughtfulness that gives the proceedings the grim weight of history.

Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Creed) has fashioned a slightly more earnest variation on the typical MCU movie — one that is still fun and funny, but also rooted in a desire to speak meaningfully about racism, global culture clashes, and the tension between hiding behind one’s borders and helping outsiders in need.

Superb performances from Boyega and the late Michael Kenneth Williams highlight this sombre, character-driven tale.