Wendy Ide

It’s an appealing little charmer of a film, captured with a pleasingly lithe and lively animation style.

What’s deeply satisfying about this knotty drama is the even-handed approach.

This is not the first documentary to deal with thwarted creative ambitions. It may, however, be the one that most effectively and entertainingly cocks a snook at the very fates that conspired in the first place.

Heartbreaking as this story is, the picture’s peppy energy results in a film that is celebratory and defiantly upbeat.

The result is a film of quiet but considerable power.

It’s a testament to the quality of writing, and to the action direction, that this never feels as corny or as crass as you might expect.

This is an archetypal Anderson film: mannered, fussy, obsessively designed – normally irksome traits, but in this alchemic instance it’s an utterly delightful combination.

If anything, this follow-up is even more enjoyable, its appeal boosted by Milady slinking on to centre stage, her weaponised sexuality backed up by her private collection of daggers and swords.

The message that brutalism is not only beautiful but therapeutic will probably have its detractors, but for those who, like me, love both pensive arthouse cinema and cantilevered concrete structures, it’s a rare treat.

Ultimately, the film makes a case that perhaps it’s better not to know everything about the person you love. And sometimes you just need to shed the baggage and start the relationship again from the beginning.

Minor quibbles aside, this is a remarkable achievement, and a persuasive argument in favour of carte blanche creative freedom for Edwards in whatever he chooses to do next.

There’s a thrilling charge to the film-making. Jostling, overlapping dialogue feels lived rather than written.

Although it’s a wisp of a thing, it delivers rich rewards. Mirrors No. 3 (which takes its title from the third movement of a Ravel piano suite) is an elegant demonstration of what can be achieved with limited ingredients in the hands of an inventive creative team and a first-rate cast.

This impressive feature from Alexandre Moratto takes the topic of modern-day enslavement as a jumping-off point for a morality tale which gets increasingly knotty and satisfying as it goes on.

A weaponised comedy which concludes with real poignancy. ... The film shares with [Veep] a similarly tart and unvarnished view of the savage, sweary machinations of power and the expendable status of the powerless.

The performances, from Moore and in particular Portman, are sublime: both bracingly unsympathetic and wildly enjoyable.

This Paris-set debut feature from Australian director Josephine Mackerras negotiates morally complex territory and the minefield of society’s double standards with an admirably light step.

The third act of this film is a celebration of Simon’s determination and of supporting team which surround him.

The screenplay dwells obsessively on certain aspects and rushes blithely past others. The craft of the film-making, though, is exemplary.

What makes it so compelling to watch is the choice of characters and the examination of what, beyond sporting glory, they are actually fighting for.

Many of these jagged little vignettes are exquisitely realised, others are genuinely chilling. Whether they fully coalesce into a coherent whole is one question; whether they even need to is another. Renoir may leave questions, but it’s an elegant, thoughtful piece of filmmaking that digs into the guilt and confusion that underpins a child’s struggle to process death.

This is pure genre exploitation – a gleefully gory revenge flick that leaves its small-town streets awash with blood. It may also be one of the smartest, most perceptive commentaries on a contemporary society distorted and magnified by online hysteria that you are likely to wince your way through.

There’s considerable cumulative power to these intimate glimpses of kids, from primary school tiddlers to high school graduates, all facing an uncertain future.

What a joy is a documentary that neither talks down to its audience nor diminishes its subject.

It’s a blast.

And as a statement of intent, it’s unequivocal: Rowland combines striking visual flair with razor-wire character studies.

The film makes its points — about ableism within the world of sport and broader society — as emphatically as any of Nao’s punches.

Happening is a visceral, confronting experience.

This is a top-quality summer blockbuster, bringing fresh blood and new ideas into the series while staying recognisably within the worlds so meticulously created in the previous three movies.

While it’s not quite as light on its feet in terms of the plotting, and while several key incidents and character motivations are rather questionable, it’s an immensely enjoyable movie which is at least as funny as the first outing, if not more.

The space that Mungiu leaves, both physically, with his immaculately composed wide shots, and temporally, in the unhurried plotting, allows for a satisfying complexity, and an eventual swerve into dreamlike symbolism.

The latest documentary from Mexican-Salvadoran filmmaker Tatiana Huezo (Tempestad) is an intimate, immersive portrait of a way of life – its rhythms, hardships and its communal joys – told through the eyes of the young people who rarely question it.

Has value as a cultural document as well as a riotously entertaining film.

The main selling point remains Moana herself: the sparkiest and most intrepid Disney heroine of them all.

It’s Cruz who sets the tone, with a performance that radiates warmth and is refreshingly forgiving of her character’s flaws. She has never been better.

The Suicide Squad has found its place in the superhero pantheon: the gutter, and proud.

It’s small wonder that she effectively torpedoed the stardom she never much wanted anyway.

Stevens is one of several reasons to watch this extravagantly gory botched kidnap horror.

The picture’s seductive power lies elsewhere, with a glorious, typically extravagant performance from Eva Green as the treacherous Milady. She’s great fun in a role that might have been tailor-made for her skill set: Milady is vampy, venomous and dripping with goth jewellery.

Law manages to be both utterly authentic and glossily untrustworthy.

There’s a real elegance and economy to Pusić’s direction, in the first half at least. She has a knack for packing layers of story into seemingly insignificant details.

Genre defying and genuinely unexpected, this intriguing urban fairytale takes the mythology of the werewolf story and uses it as a prism through which to view contemporary Brazilian society. Thematically rich, it weaves together fantasy horror elements with commentaries on class, race, sexuality and motherhood.

It’s a punishing watch; a harrowing film which boots home its message by gouging at the vulnerable soft spots of the audience. Like the world she depicts, Kent’s storytelling shows no mercy.

There’s much to admire here, but perhaps the film’s main achievement is the delicate balance struck with the central character.

This Shrek spin-off is a breezily entertaining DreamWorks animation that harnesses the familiar appeal of the self-aggrandising feline (Antonio Banderas), while also adopting a distinctive and original graphic visual style.

It’s caustically funny, albeit wincingly uncomfortable at times. Where the film really excels is not so much in the snappy, trash-talking vag banter, but in the perceptive depiction of the gear changes in a female friendship as the besties start to realise that their paths might be diverging.

Jessie Buckley is a force of nature in the lead role of this sinewy psychological thriller.

Savagely powerful, directed with an unshowy but acute eye (the use of the colour red is a simple but searingly effective device), this is a terrific feature debut from the writer and director Cathy Brady.

Derbez is very likable, if a little too prone to moments of moist-eyed pathos, but the young actors are phenomenal – in particular Jennifer Trejo as Paloma, the litter-picker with a genius IQ, and Danilo Guardiola as Nico, the class clown in the clutches of the cartel.

The latest instalment of John Wick makes an art of pain in a way that is curiously life-affirming.

As the film’s bleak momentum builds, so does a tsunami swell of existential dread. It’s Shyamalan’s most contained and efficient picture in a while.

A savage black comedy and an up-to-the-moment commentary on contemporary society, Bloody Oranges launches a broadside on political correctness.

The film’s main triumph is the way that the toy characters are evoked.

It is a warm, engrossing fantasy.

It’s one of the most bracingly effective chillers of the year.

This very enjoyable Nordic western from Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair), based on a true story, is at first driven by grit and macho hubris. But thanks to the women in his life . . . the captain belatedly comes to realise that there is more to life than potatoes and royal-sanctioned prestige.

Bill Nighy brings a quiet dignity to the role of Mr Williams, an anchor of buttoned-up solidity in an old-fashioned weepie which captures the lush sentimental swirl of the original while also evoking a distinctive sense of backdrop and period.

As an innovative filmmaker who naturally chimes with the perspective of the outsider looking in, Haynes takes a semi-graphic novel which comes with a strong visual identity, and makes it very much his own.

While the plot itself is a little nebulous, the atmosphere that Abbruzzese creates, through a hypnotic, pulsing electronic score and Rogowski’s febrile presence, is unnerving and intense.

The comic potential of the collision of personalities is thoroughly mined: Lazaridis the diffident visionary; Fregin the extrovert oddball; Balsillie the driven, hyperaggressive alpha male.

The story is a touch convoluted, but it’s a gleefully grim good time.

The Taste of Things defies expectations. There is something refreshingly unconventional about its depiction of the tender, well-worn love between Eugénie and Dodin.

With the exception of Stéphane, who becomes more intriguing and less likable with each secret unpeeled, the main characters are a little schematic and two-dimensional. It’s fortunate, then, that the always impressive Calamy is on top form.

The impressive second feature from Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson confronts the feral cruelty and violence of children on the cusp of adulthood, but finds also a tenderness amid the sharp edges and posturing.

To call it horror seems reductive. With its shapeshifting disquiet, I Saw the TV Glow is too languidly weird, too unmoored from genre conventions to be neatly categorised. But there’s not a frame in Jane Schoenbrun’s suffocating second feature that isn’t drenched in dread and unease.

A third act that stumbles into genre territory loses focus temporarily, but is redeemed by a scene that celebrates the power of words above all else.

It’s particularly perceptive when it comes to the ethics of using real lives as material, and the question of the legitimacy of emotional bonds if one party is hiding essential truths about themselves.

What’s particularly striking is an inventive sound design that tunes us in and out of the blood-pounding fury in Roman’s head – a place, we soon realise, which is not somewhere that’s comfortable to linger.