Wendy Ide

Interviewees tie themselves in knots of gushing superlatives, but the real insights come from the man himself.

Part thriller, part family drama, part satirical commentary on the way that the pursuit of wealth is a cultural cancer that taints everything it touches, The Hummingbird Project is no less compelling for its odd mishmash of components.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is an impressive achievement, a piece of storytelling which balances moments of flighty whimsy against deeper existential questions, marking Foldes as a talent to watch in the world of adult-skewed animation.

The special effects are bracingly revolting, the malevolent smiles as creepy as ever. And the film has the added bonus of some killer choreography, in every sense of the word.

Carey Williams’s smart satire of the daily realities of racial profiling is a switchback ride that lurches between comedy and nerve-shredding tension, but loses focus in an extraneous coda.

Mini-chapters focus on characters in turn, each offering a new perspective on the unfolding drama; choral and chamber music is an unexpected but effective punctuation in the storytelling, but most powerful is sound design that understands the gravity of moments of weighted silence.

There’s a bracingly astringent bleakness under its surface layer of melancholy humour; a biting, sharp edge that counters the occasional lurch towards sentimentality.

The sickening facts of the case are presented with a respectful restraint but it’s impossible to watch this and not feel a cold, hard rage on behalf of the victims.

Kendrick’s knack for capturing period detail goes beyond the psychedelic synthetics and kipper ties. She taps into the treacherous sexism that was hardwired into the entertainment industry and wider culture of the time, both of which are shown to be minefields of fragile male egos and potential violence.

What’s crucial to the film’s success, however is the fact that, despite its candour about Lara’s pain, the film refuses to relinquish a note of hope.

One of the discoveries of the year so far.

This well-acted outsider’s-eye view of the inner workings of the US armed forces is fiercely candid, in its condemnation of the brutality that is enmeshed in the training programme, and in its celebration of the bonds and brotherhood that grow between fellow cadets.

It’s directed with verve and acted with gusto.

This is subtle, unshowy film-making that is entirely in the service of the screenplay and the performances – and what performances.

With its colour palette of mossy greens, terracotta and earth tones, and its matter-of-fact approach to themes of folklore and mysticism, this gorgeous first feature from Italian director Laura Samani is as enchanting as it is unusual.

Architecton is a gorgeously photographed poetic reverie on the subject of stone and concrete, permanence and profligate waste.

The high-concept plot is held together more by force of will (and some decent special effects) than by logic, but the core of this engaging, kid-friendly Netflix production is a big-hearted tale of broken families made good.

The result is enlightening and affecting, providing a missing piece in the puzzle of a life prematurely ended.

It’s powerful and profoundly moving stuff.

Turning Red is a fizzing, squealing adolescent explosion of a movie that nails a fundamental truth about growing up.

It’s a very watchable picture, but one that, like the plan that Williams famously wrote for his daughters, feels at times like a checklist of challenges overcome and decisions vindicated.

Seedily handsome cinematography captures a city full of secrets and simmering violence.

If you pick apart the story threads, Sinners is a little messy, but Coogler’s assurance and vision holds everything together.

With its nonlinear structure, Maestro feels a little like a scrapbook of life moments – glittering career achievements; crackling explosions of domestic tension – and Cooper keeps up a zesty, kinetic energy throughout.

Ultimately, as Agniia Galdanova’s remarkable observational documentary shows, Gena is her own extraordinary creation.

Slick, thrilling and saturated with vivid hues and 60s can-do optimism, Le Mans ’66, James Mangold’s follow-up to Logan, is a precision-tooled machine of a movie.

The weathered earth tones of Campion’s subdued colour scheme conceal a vivid and full-blooded emotional palette.

It’s a gorgeous, quietly affecting film that finds an unassuming beauty in this simple life in rural China, but which doesn’t shy away from the extreme hardships faced by the very poorest.

[An] impressive drama.

A provocative, superbly acted action drama that combines big-hitting ambition and spectacle with just enough humour to temper the whole end-of-civilisation meltdown scenario.

For all its decorous restraint, this is emotionally potent storytelling.

It’s a wildly original work from De Los Santos Arias, a film with a gleefully wanton approach to form, style and story in which no directorial decision is predictable, and, despite a slightly overstretched running time, no moment is ever dull.

Key to the success of the film is the editing, a pinballing assault of free association, claymation and gleeful profanity, which goes some way towards recreating what it must have been like to spend time inside Zappa’s head.

The film’s main asset is impressive newcomer Box: veering between bratty backchat and bruised reticence, she’s tossed on unpredictable tides of teenage emotions.

Guzzoni crafts a suitably glowering and hostile atmosphere for this story, which delves into the very murkiest corners of Chilean society.

The directors’ first joint feature is a tremendously effective revenge movie; a picture that reframes the neo-noir by harnessing a hate crime and diverting its power into a thrillingly transgressive erotic thriller.

The impressive feature debut from Maltese-American writer and director Alex Camilleri manages to be both self-contained, in its depiction of an embattled community, but also unexpectedly far-reaching in its themes. The film is an exploration of masculinity in crisis, of the attrition of traditions by the forces of progress and of the agonies and uncertainties of new parenthood.

There’s a new maturity both in the character and in the storytelling that makes this final film in the trilogy take wing.

Parental indifference is not attuned to the looming tragedy in this horribly compelling fable.

With its eddying, fluid score and judicious use of silence, its satisfying layers of storytelling, this is a supremely confident piece of film-making from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, albeit one that, at three hours long and with a rather Chekhov-heavy second half, will certainly require the right mindset.

There’s a sparseness and stillness to Max Walker-Silverman’s storytelling that is filled by Dickey’s terrific, lived-in performance and the brief spark of connection between two lonely people.

This is pungent filmmaking which creates a world steeped in superstition, ritual and folk-magic.

Ultimately, the revelation here is not so much Dolan’s more contemplative approach to film-making, but the subtlety and sensitivity of his performance.

Central to the spirit of the film is Seydou, a gangly string bean with a smile that warms the screen; a teenager who is still enough of a child to believe that manhood means never being afraid. It’s a gorgeous, sensitive performance from Sarr.

About Dry Grasses tiptoes around the edge of being suffocatingly verbose, and there are scenes that could stand a tighter edit. Still, the meaty, novelistic writing and exceptional quality of the performances make for a rich and engrossing viewing experience.

The story works on two levels, first as a prickly critique of the pressures facing Black creatives. But equally satisfying is its depiction of the abrasive, complicated dynamics in a high-achieving family.

Part cautionary tale about the pitfalls of judging a book by its cover, part wily, gaslighting mind game, Luce is a tricky thing to pin down. And it’s entirely appropriate that a film that so bluntly challenges the preconceptions that determine society’s evaluation of a person should itself be a slippery enigma that defies neat categorisation.

Rauniyar handles the socio-political complexities of life post-conflict with a lightness of touch and flashes of absurdist humour. Much more than a photogenic ethnographic postcard from afar, this is a deceptively complex story of muddled allegiances and proscriptive social rules.

There are few genuine surprises, perhaps, but there are distinctive elements here which set the film apart, not least the way lack of fluency in a language (Julia’s Romanian is sparse to non-existent) creates a sense of siege.

Huezo’s picture, which is loosely adapted from a novel by Jennifer Climent, is distinctive in its child’s-eye-view of this most abnormal of normalities.

Favouring an unhurried pace, Filho takes the time to let us get to know Clara. And while the moments of drama are small and intimate, the effect is engrossing.

The narration, by LaKeith Stanfield, speaks on behalf of the photographer, who died in 1990. It’s through his remarkable pictures of South Africa and Black America, however, that we really hear his voice.

Roquet’s intimately textured filmmaking captures not just the hot and cold currents of sentiment between the girls, but how all-consuming and all-important it feels to the sheltered Nora.

Plante’s measured pacing and cool, dispassionate storytelling burrow into the skin of the character. It’s not a comfortable place in which to spend time.

The interview subjects are fascinating throughout, but jewellery designer and author Aja Raden is a particular gift: funny, insightful, dripping with sarcasm and oversized earrings.

The precision in the shot composition is mirrored in the storytelling – there’s an unassuming elegance that balances the eccentricity of a film that makes something as mundane as Scrabble into a taut dramatic device.

Like Wain’s art, the film is superficially twee – characters are referred to as “nosy poseys” at one point – but under the kitsch is something more rewarding: an affecting portrait of a creative but troubled man.

Even by the standards of a Yorgos Lanthimos film, Bugonia is an unhinged and savage piece of storytelling.

This is pretty much exactly the kind of film that anyone familiar with Eisenberg’s body of acting work might imagine he would make: it’s sharp, challenging and wry, but as insistent and uncomfortable as a splinter.

It’s a rich depiction of a traditional Yörük community – Turkic tribal people – that feels authentically lived in rather than an ethnographic curio, as well as a fresh coming-of-age film.

The directorial debut from David Oyelowo is a rewarding, (older) family-friendly adventure which packs some crisply executed moments of nail-biting peril into a moving story which deals with grief, loss and newly forged friendships.

Greene is terrific – her Rosie is a force of nature. When she cracks, briefly, under the strain, her voice is a raw blade cutting through the bubble of safety she has created but no longer believes in.

This is an enjoyably pacey spy picture, unfolding against the backdrop of a country that has imploded. It’s a film in which smiles are masks and conversations are loaded with double meanings.

Beautifully observed and saturated with warmth, this tender family drama gradually reveals the fact that it is Aharon, as much as Uri, who depends on their relationship.

Zellweger and Garland coexist symbiotically on the screen, in a kind of magic-eye illusion of a performance that flips back and forwards between the two. Zellweger is phenomenally good nonetheless.

It captures beautifully and atmospherically a sense of mounting tension as the military men grapple with their impotency in a newly independent country.

Anderson, whose character is left questioning not just what the future holds, but also the costly choices that shaped her past, is excellent, delivering a performance that has single-handedly rewritten the way she is viewed as an actor.

The bleak warning of this environmental parable notwithstanding, this is arresting, frequently unsettling, cinema.

This is a singularly subdued kind of storytelling. Passions run deep, but there’s a reticence in the film-making that makes them feel like a whispered secret in a church pew rather than a grand, soul-baring declaration.

A superb first feature from Marcelo Martinessi, this entirely female-driven story is full of gentle wit and playful observations on the crumbling upper echelons of Paraguayan society – there are parallels with early Lucrecia Martel, and with Sebastián Lelio’s exploration of older female sexuality, Gloria.

Sirocco And The Kingdom Of The Air Streams is a beguiling and surreal story of sisterhood and survival.

It may lack the originality of the best Miyazaki films, but with its heart-swelling score and exquisitely realised worlds, this is a must for Ghibli fans.

A portrait of a man who, as one of his contemporaries remarked, feels almost too comfortable on the side of a mountain.

It’s an investment in time, certainly, but this profound and hopeful picture justifies every second of its three hours and 38 minute running time.

Byrne and Hawke, both easygoing, naturalistic performers at their best when they barely seem to be acting, have an utterly persuasive connection.

Set in the murkily atmospheric underworld of 1980s Hong Kong, wildly entertaining, eye-poppingly violent triad martial arts flick is an old-school throwback to the action cinema heyday of the territory.

Leigh’s egalitarian insistence on voices for all means that there are a few too many of them in play. Still, there is a fascinating wealth of detail, both in the vividly recreated period backdrop and, more remarkably, given the sheer volume of people on screen, in the characters, however fleetingly they appear.

While Alien: Romulus leans into the grislier elements of its horror heritage – at the expense of much in the way of deeper story development – it fails to assert itself as a particularly distinctive addition to the series, formally, tonally or thematically.

Sweeping and novelistic in scope, the film, adapted from an Italian bestseller by Paolo Cognetti, combines the earthy, rooted grit of Jack London with the vivid emotional landscapes of Elena Ferrante.

Like McQueen’s designs, it is thrilling, troubling and tinged with tragedy.

For the most part, this is a beautifully judged picture from a director to note.

It’s a prequel to the Predator series that stays true to the essence of the original – stylishly violent, stickily graphic, impossibly tense – while also working satisfyingly as a self-contained entity.

The culturally specific elements that Iran-born, British-based first time writer-director Babak Anvari brings to the picture makes this a distinctive spin on a familiar premise.

With its wide-eyed lack of cynicism and the crystalline delicacy of the animation, this is a heart-swellingly lovely work.

The film does not serve up its ideas in easily digestible bites. The audience needs to work with a dislocated string of scenes that sometimes highlight absurdity, sometimes violence and frequently say very little at all.

What could have been laboured and polemical is deftly handled, defused with comedy and powered by a pulsating score. Dialogue that slides into rap at key moments adds a heartfelt sense of honesty. This is the real deal.

The atmosphere, of sun and celebration, rings as hollow as the Europop that Ante blasts to drown out arguments; sonar-stabs of cello on the score sound a warning

It’s thought-provoking stuff, which also explores our own role, as audience members, in the voracious demand for other people’s stories.

This is a film which breathes life, as well as alcohol fumes, into history. Like its central character, Darkest Hour has “mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.”

Lunana’s appeal is hard to miss: though rather naive in its messaging and unashamedly sentimental, the film is so pure of spirit and so open-hearted, you want to breathe it in, to fill your lungs with it.

The film manages the tricky feat of both staying true to Waters breathless, page-turning prose, and creating a wholly persuasive new milieu for the story.

Perhaps, in its polite and unassuming way, the film advocates not just a new way of looking, but also a new way of living.

While not as satisfying as the director’s two previous films – a jarring ending knocks the picture off balance – this uneasy eco-parable is still very much worth your time.

Writer-director Carolina Cavalli (with the considerable contribution of Benedetta Porcaroli in the title role) crafts a refreshingly unconventional and acidic deadpan comic portrait of an offbeat female friendship.

The picture is also perceptive on the dynamics of a newsroom under duress, with Billie Piper terrific as Sam McAlister, the straight-talking producer who managed to land the interview to end all royal interviews.

It is very much the MIA story told from the MIA viewpoint. Normally, this might be an issue, but, as the film points out, so many people have rushed to undermine and discredit her, it’s perhaps only fair that in this case she gets to tell her side, without spin or sly references to truffle fries.

Any film which features Demi Moore breathily vamping her way through an appreciation for her dishwasher and which permits Andrea Riseborough to deliver a performance as gloriously OTT as this one has plenty to recommend it.

It’s a fascinating and enraging film and a timely reminder of the courage of members of the feminist vanguard.