Tim Robey

As bizarre as it is terrifying, Backrooms may not be a revolution in horror, but it’s a beyond-freaky remapping of the genre.

Rarer still is comedy direction so inspired from someone making their feature debut. Alicia MacDonald is the real deal. There are dozens of characters here all nailing laughs by being 100 per cent themselves: that takes not only inspired casting and acting, but a person in charge who knows how to wring the juice out of every syllable.

This might be familiar dramatic terrain, but it’s handled with blazing empathy by all involved.

It makes for easy-breezy viewing, the daft tone landing halfway between Buñuel and the Farrelly Brothers.

It’s an achingly elegant piece of work which I’m already looking forward to revisiting.

The performances across the board are keenly felt yet commendably unshowy: Branagh gets his character’s crumped forbearance spot on, while Abbass’s portrayal of Christian fortitude in the direst of circumstances becomes the wellspring of the film’s deep, multi-axial compassion.

The film’s addictive needle-drops and sassy ensemble – including a sparingly used Cara Delevingne as Peter’s cutting business partner, and The Night Manager’s Diego Calva as an extremely obliging social worker – make it nothing if not easy to like.

The film is inescapably hilarious too, though – such is the weird power of swearing when the swearer can’t keep a lid on it.

This comedy-drama with a surrealist edge is more than strong enough to be worthy of praise beyond Byrne, who is legitimately fantastic.

There’s no breakneck pace, no urge to pulverise the audience with action. Bart Layton’s film is methodical and moody – that mood being one of bone-weary fatigue. These are stuck lives, the products of bad luck and unfortunate choices

It’s very much the point of Athale’s screenplay that life was too short for such a grudge after the epic association these men had. By saying so, Giant hoists itself out of sports-biopic ordinariness and becomes really quite moving.

Seyfried reads the tone of this hokum better than anyone, and knows restraint is hardly called for, using every excuse in the book to go completely bananas.

Without a doubt, it gives us the oddest couple of the year in Alexander Skarsgård’s Ray and Harry Melling’s Colin. For that, and many other reasons, this fresh, funny and poignant pairing is one to be cherished.

The film has clout, vitriol and an impressive payload of blackly comic despair.

The energy, gruesome thrills and craziness of this flick are hard not to admire.

It’s quite cheeky that Cooper should swipe the biggest laughs himself in what he intends as a love letter to the New York comedy scene. Equally, though, the fact that he can’t resist being part of this sparring, riffing ensemble is an endearing indication of how much he adores it.

Roofman has heart, energy and personality fit to burst. If the cinema gods decided that it was finally time for Channing Tatum to have a chance at an Oscar nomination, they could hardly have equipped him better than with this role.

Fast becoming one of the most reliable character actors we’ve got, Strong gives a quietly heroic rendition of Landau which bolsters White’s performance beautifully.

The scenario is so familiar it could have been the same old story, but the texture of all this street life gives it rather a special shine.

As a feat of adaptation by Max Porter, from his 2023 novella Shy, it’s quite fascinating.

The film scores highly as a Highsmithian three-hander, and particularly excels at illuminating all the ways this trio have failed to grow up. It shimmers, convinces and thoroughly absorbs.

Chaves has become a skilful enough craftsman that he deserves parole to pastures new. Meanwhile, Wilson and especially Farmiga, who have lent gravitas to so much that’s profoundly trumped up and silly, can take a long-deserved bow.

None hold a candle to the main event: pulverising verbal jousts between two stars who can toggle between serious and silly like few others. Watching them cajole, manipulate and savage each other is effervescent bloodsport: you want neither to win, or the fun will stop.

Weapons manages to keep its powder dry – a feat of crafty editing by Joe Murphy – for a knockout finale that’s twisted, hilarious and savage, all at once.

It’s the opposite of a gateway horror for the trepidatious. It beckons in the brave.

Anyone interested in animation needs to pay attention to what these films are doing. The writing formula may be crude, but the whiz-bang aesthetic is sensational.

We’re stuck with Key, a stand-up virtuoso who is thankfully amazing playing a windbag who can’t read the room – a ludicrous ruiner of sunsets, or any other vaguely peaceful moment.

Ramsay’s main tour de force is with the Andrew-Wyeth-esque weirdness of the countryside: counting the insects buzzing on the soundtrack could make the viewer go insane. We’d be right there alongside Grace, whose rebellious freak-outs should be alienating – she hates the world – and yet thanks to Lawrence feel majestically raw from beginning to end.