Wendy Ide

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.

Tonally, with its extravagantly arched eyebrow and lacquered manicure of irony, this film feels oddly dated – a couple of decades out of step with current sensibilities. Were it not for Carey Mulligan’s Cassandra, an avenging angel in bubblegum-pink lip gloss, the picture may well have toppled off its stripper heels long before it got to stomp into its divisive shocker of a final act.

The community support for the embattled shop surprises nobody, except, perhaps Tannenbaum, the ageing hippy whose love of literature is evident on every groaning shelf.

While Mickey 17 isn’t in the same elevated league as Parasite, it’s a lot of fun.

Boy From Heaven is an ambitiously complex story of religious espionage.

Nine Days is, in its subdued way, a profound and powerful commentary on life.

And while the story of the film lacks some of the sinuous inventiveness of its predecessor [Your Name], it shares the striking animation style, romantic sensibility and a similar poppy score.

There’s an atmospheric, unsavoury oiliness to the cinematography and an uncomfortable tussle of sympathies – director Carlota Pereda shows real promise as a genre film-maker.

The intelligence and craft of the film-making, the way Fingscheidt guides us along the emotional journey of the central character, is absorbing.

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.

The prosaic anti-escapism of this sprawling American indie thoroughly subverts the expectations of the festive family movie.

The humour is low key, repeatedly mining the juxtaposition of the supernatural and the banal; a likeable performance from Maeve Higgins is the picture’s driving force.

While it is not quite in the same league as any of the films that clearly influenced it, The Sheep Detectives is an appealingly offbeat children’s film, showcasing Balda’s knack for visual humour while also sheep-dipping into unexpectedly weighty themes.

The latest picture from Melanie Laurent is a strikingly beautiful production which delves deep into the ugliness at the roots of psychiatric medicine.

The early potency of this macabre fairytale becomes increasingly diluted however, as the film progresses and the story broadens.

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.

This pleasing, if perplexing, feature debut from Qiu Sheng takes an agile and experimental approach to structure, as two story strands glance off each other, and occasionally intersect.

The yagé trip sequence is overlong, baggy and indulgent. The characters lose all sense of their bodies; the film simply loses its point.

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

Slow is a supremely confident piece of filmmaking that negotiates the tricky terrain of non-typical sexualities with sensitivity, humour and a refreshing lightness of touch.

Possessor is ultra stylish and uber violent, but, despite a top tier cast, it’s not always entirely clear what is going on and who is in control of the finger on the trigger.

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.

Like a big old glass of pub wine, it might not be particularly complex or sophisticated but, my goodness, it hits the spot.

While there’s a sense that Korine is fully at peace with a lack of meaning in his work, it’s doubtful that he was aiming to be boring.

When the film is this much fun, who cares if Grant recycles some of the greatest hits from his gag repertoire?

The third act action is propulsive and stylishly executed, and the film’s conclusion has a bittersweet poignancy. And while Arco’s journey is not an unexpected one, the film’s optimistic endpoint brings a welcome note of hope.

At the very least it’s a fascinating historical document. However, the fly on the wall songbook approach is draggy and repetitive – this remains a flawed and slightly frustrating music documentary. [2024 Restored Version]

While there are moments in which the film’s generous running time starts to take its toll, Bayona’s smart decision to make this a tale of both the survivors and victims brings a nervy uncertainty to the story, even if we all know broadly how it ends.

Writer-director Paul Andrew Williams is a furiously visceral force behind the camera. His knuckleduster direction goes beyond mere muscularity and takes on the daunting persuasive power of a mob enforcer; his storytelling is both thrilling and utterly terrifying.

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.

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

There’s a sparky authenticity to the performances , bolstered by the fact that Carpignano cast a real-life family in the central roles.

All but the most dedicated fans of the director’s work might find this story a little too diffuse and meandering, its rewards too deeply buried beneath the evasive wordiness.

[A] fascinating, troubling but overlong documentary.

Although Mother And Son loses some of its energy as it unfolds, it is still a sensitive and complex examination of the shifting tensions in a migrant family.

Smart, cynical and at times devilishly funny, the film delivers a crackle of disruptive static to the demonic possession genre.

It plays out at the tipping point at which living with loneliness starts to feel easier than tackling the daunting prospect of conversation with a stranger.

It’s a gripping piece of film-making: a propulsive, kinetic account of a grassroots campaign captured at what would seem to be considerable personal risk to both the subject and directors. And as a snapshot of a curdled, corrupted political system, it is eye-opening and at times genuinely terrifying.

Reema Kagti’s fiction feature gets a little bogged down in the tension between the friends, resulting in a marked dip in energy in the second hour. But the (literally) uplifting final act raises the roof and, through rudimentary green-screen technology, some of the cast.

This is abrasive, confrontational film-making, with a machine-gun assault of ideas and influences.

Cretton negotiates potential cliches such as flashback sequences and that hoariest of old chestnuts, the training montage, with a gravity-defying lightness of touch.

While Luca might lack some of the dizzying inventiveness that marks out top-tier Pixar, it’s packed to the gills with charm.

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.

Subtle it’s not, but it’s maliciously entertaining. It turns out that revenge on the ultra-wealthy is a dish best seared over a naked flame.

It’s terrific: nail-chewing, edge-of-the-seat stuff.

Much of Catch The Fair One’s lean authenticity comes from the film’s star (and real-life boxer) Kali Reis, who also gets a story credit on this picture. It’s a propulsive watch but, in common with many of the missing-person stories which inspired it, finds more dead-ends than answers.

The film is all about the chase: it’s an aggressive seduction that teases with bold visual statements, with flesh and flame throwers. But does it satisfy? Not on any deep emotional level, certainly.

It’s all very meta and self-referential; screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers hoover up memorable lines from past movies and serve them with a flourish and an exaggerated wink to the audience. It’s also a good deal of fun.

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

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.

The picture, a big-budget spectacle guided by the sure hand of action director Seung-wan Ryu (Crying Fist), is at its most effective when the hurtling camera is strafed by bullets. It’s less successful when the headlong pace falters to allow the screenplay to hammer home its message of collaboration and tolerance.

A mosaic portrait of Hong Kong’s older gay community is pieced together, but the film loses some of its energy and focus as it drifts to its close.

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.

The emotional impact is true and clean. The fractious bond between the brothers and their aching anger at the loss of a parent are evoked with exquisite sorrow and clarity.

In Pearce’s sure hands, the film sustains its tension, even as it sideswipes the audience with slickly executed change of tone.

Filling in the details of a life that touched many others is not the point of this film. Rather, the picture approaches her as a catalyst who unlocked something in the people she encountered: the emotions that pour onto the pages of letters, the creativity and inspiration that nourish Torrini’s musical project.

Lady is a vivid, bracingly energetic examination of sisterhood and female bonds in an unequal society.

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

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.

Like Maryam’s approach to local politics, the film is well-meaning but occasionally naive.

Andrew Gaynord’s debut feature doesn’t quite hold together, but the atmosphere of twitchy paranoia is horribly effective.

This decision to seek out the sun rather than just the clouds, to focus on resilience and healing won’t be for everyone, nor will it represent the experience of all victims of terrorism.

It’s not a showy piece of film-making, but then this indomitable 85-year-old is not an ostentatious person.

What makes this amiably amusing Danish comedy work is the fact that it takes its hapless protagonist almost as seriously as he takes himself.

Roberts relies heavily on imagery suggesting a confused reality ( characters are constantly fractured into multiple reflections) but the use of colour is an effective shorthand that clues us into Jane’s state of mind.

The scenes that Chastain and Elba share are enormously enjoyable. There’s a crackling, almost screwball quality to their rapid-fire banter. You rather wish they had more screen time together. But there’s a lot of backstory to explore and many fools to be parted from their money.

This gentle comedy trades heavily on Tsai Chin’s deliciously abrasive central performance, but stumbles when it comes to the execution of the action sequences

Swinton is massively overblown and Torres too wispy and diffident to balance things out.

There’s a real emotional heft to the storytelling and Caine, at 90, is a knockout.

Fonte, who deservedly won the best actor prize at Cannes this year, is remarkable.

Hardy is terrific, his face crowded with conflicting emotions that Luke doesn’t have the words to express.

This arresting first feature blends sci-fi and fantasy to create a worldview which is at once savagely grotesque and alarmingly familiar.

It’s unsavoury viewing – flies on the wall are rarely attracted by the sweet smell of roses after all – but it’s queasily fascinating nonetheless.

At times the film feels almost subversive in its resolute lack of dramatic tension. And yet, as a melancholy mood piece, there’s a haunting quality to this handsomely filmed account of the slow attrition of faith, hope and purpose.

This sparse, atmospheric fable grows markedly in power in the second half, as Banel’s passion takes on an edge of violence and insanity.

See The Room Next Door for its stunning mid-century architecture, chic interior design, and for Swinton’s enviable euthanasia wardrobe. But don’t expect to feel much of anything, unless you have an unhealthy passion for colour-blocked chunky knitwear.

Of the two main characters, Clara provides the tonal touchstone for the film. Like her, the picture spins off into moments of unpredictable fantasy – musical numbers inspired by television variety shows. Music – peppy Italian pop, schmaltzy ballads – is inventively employed throughout, but the use of colour and costume is particularly evocative.

What The Whaler Boy lacks in story complexity and character depth, it more than makes up in its bone-deep immersion in Lyoshka’s world.

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

7 Keys is a nervy but uneven thriller that is rather let down by the fact that, while the two central performances are independently strong, there’s little discernible chemistry between them.

It Is In Us All demonstrates a sure directorial hand when it comes to evoking a sense of place and community, but falters slightly in the writing and the characterisation – for all Jarvis’s intriguingly complex work, the increasingly nihilistic character he plays remains something of a conundrum throughout.

This is subdued storytelling that, while it drags a little in its pacing, asks tough questions about society’s relationship with elderly people.

It isn’t breaking new ground, but the feature debut from TV director Drew Hancock is pulpy, bloody fun.

Chalamet’s Dylan sucks so fervently on his cigarettes it’s as though he’s breathing in the genius of the musical heroes who came before him. But while he radiates insouciant charisma and channels the once-in-a-lifetime talent, he reveals next to nothing about Dylan as a person. This is not necessarily a failure in Chalamet’s acting. It’s a deliberate choice – the film is called A Complete Unknown, after all, and it’s a manifesto as much as a title.

An achingly intimate portrait of a marriage weathering a storm ... what shines is the combination of Owen McCafferty’s stingingly honest screenplay and the two lovely, emotionally textured central performances.

While the actual plot is a little thin, this is a thrillingly evocative piece of film-making: it’s shot in colour rather than the black and white of Lyon’s photographs but there’s a weary, beer-stained grit to it all, like leathers that have wiped out across asphalt a few too many times.

Though perhaps low on insights, this is an evocative portrait of a brief, intense window of hedonism, self discovery and Olympic levels of self-indulgence experienced by young people on the cusp of adulthood.

Wildly uneven, sporadically brilliant, occasionally unbearable, Alex Ross Perry’s sprawling portrait of a self-destructive rock star is carried by a performance by Elisabeth Moss which is turned all the way up to eleven, and beyond.

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.

For all its originality, the film fails to leave much of an impression.

While some of the decisions by first-time director Gaysorn Thavat reveal a lack of experience, [Essie Davis] is as compellingly watchable as a car crash.

The film’s messaging on female empowerment and living authentically might border on the trite. The means of delivering that message, however, does at least feel genuinely fresh and new.

It’s a visceral, breathless rampage, and while it’s a little rough around the edges at times, the picture’s brawling energy makes it an exhilarating ride.

It may not be as significant to the Marvel canon as, say, Black Panther but the skittish wit and playfulness wins us over.

As the enigmatic, tarot-inspired title suggests, questions remain, but Lentzou leaves us with the sense that this long-stalled relationship can finally move forward.

What we get is closer to early Vegas Elvis – a little bloated and befuddled, and not as light on his feet as he needs to be.

This is a compulsively watchable drama which taps into some genuinely intriguing themes. A twisted and tangled final act makes heavy weather of some of its reveals, but Binoche is terrific throughout.

It’s unabashed froth, as substantial as a tulle skirt. And perhaps that’s exactly what we need right now.

The measured pacing and an overly generous running time might work against the picture, but for the most part, it’s a rich, rewarding and fully fleshed-out drama.

It’s a handsomely mounted period piece, which acknowledges the strength required by previous generations of Indonesian women to rise above the patriarchal demands of a restrictive society. But the storytelling, by writer and director Kamila Andini, is exceptionally slow and can be rather laboured in the points that it makes.

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.

It’s a heightened caricature, certainly, but there are uncomfortable truths underpinning the surreal excesses.

The lack of diversity in entertainment is an open goal, long overdue for a skewering. But rather than kicking over the traces of the patriarchal establishment, the film ends up just giving it a playful tickle.

It’s mildly amusing, and Evan Rachel Wood is great fun as an evil Madonna. But one joke – even a joke as bizarre as this – is not enough to sustain a whole movie.

Not everything in this Leone-inspired Latino western hits its target, but the picture has a venomous bite, and a smart, slippery final scene that turns the lens back on to the act of film-making, questioning cinema’s role in (mis)shaping the way we view history.

Meditative and meandering, this handsomely shot but unfocused picture might present something of a challenge to all but the most dedicated students of Chinese cultural history.

There’s an edge of panicky desperation to the film-making – the lurching, swooping cameras; the skittish editing; the arcing lens flare. It all seems a little too eager to distract from the fact that top-hatted, frock-coated, mutton-chopped chaps burbling on about the relative advantages of the alternating current versus direct current system does not, in fact, make for electrifying drama.

There’s plenty to enjoy, not least Layne’s terrific turn as the newbie with a fresh take on forever.

Offbeat flashes of humour punctuate this stylishly enigmatic, Jean-Pierre Melville-inspired crime picture, but the momentum flags a little in a convoluted final act.

This is filmmaking which echoes Cohen’s music style – it’s contemplative, searching and stripped back, but it can also be somewhat navel gazing, ponderous and very slow.

It’s this aspect – the real warmth, the way the camera becomes almost incidental in the encounters between documentarian and subject – which gives this film its satisfying emotional depth.

Australian director Cate Shortland (Somersault, Lore) takes a horror movie premise and imbues it with the knotty emotional complexity of a dysfunctional relationship psychodrama.

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.

This French and English-language drama is a film about taking ownership over the end of life; about dying personally and, if necessary, selfishly.

Sluggish pacing slightly undermines the film’s main assets — the strong performances from Kelli Garner as Mary and a suitably ravaged-looking Nick Stahl as Eli.

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.

While the fantastical elements provide a distance for the audience from the bleak core of the story, they also heighten the sense of enveloping melancholy of this aching tale of thwarted first love.

Földes’s matter-of-fact approach to storytelling balances the tendency towards quirkiness in the material. Dream logic coexists with the crushingly mundane, in a picture that also showcases the director’s musical talents with an intricate and involving score.

It won’t be for everyone, certainly, but if social distancing has you not just climbing the walls but contemplating punching a hole in them, this might just be the perfect cathartic lockdown movie.

Blending science fiction and magical realism, environmental catastrophe and family secrets, Francisca Alegría’s heady mystery is an ambitious and murkily atmospheric debut.

This solid but familiar drama is acted with conviction; Watson and Mescal are equally compelling. But there’s only so much a quality performance can do – and the film leans heavily on shots of Watson’s troubled face – when the material is a well-meaning but dourly rote exploration of cycles of violence.

This is film-making that really tests the elasticity of its story strands, but it largely manages to keep the audience from teetering into disbelief. For the most part, that’s thanks to persuasively solid characters and casting.

It’s striking, certainly, but teasingly elusive when it comes to story resolution.

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.

This lean, intimate drama is a Paul Andrew Williams film, and anyone who saw his brutal revenge picture, Bull, will have an inkling of how dark his movies can get. Even so, the blunt force of Dragonfly’s tonal swerve is enough to knock the air out of you.

Sama’s film captures the quicksilver sparks of an artistic moment – the point at which a loose bohemian community collectively finds its voice and forces the mainstream to take notice.

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

Ali beautifully captures the complexity of the man who juggles whiskey-soured, morning-after regret with a stubborn pride in his true self.

The film works its showy magic. Or perhaps enforces its magic would be more accurate.

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.

It’s a handsome production, and an impressive debut from first-time director Malcolm Washington, Denzel’s son. But like the previous two pictures, it’s stagey and mannered – a film that never quite sheds its theatrical roots.

There’s an oddball intrigue and a dry absurdist humour to this journey which largely transcends the uneven pacing

Combining news footage, interviews, blustering commentators and vox pops, the film serves as an accusatory finger pointed at public appetites and the press that fed them, and a cautionary tale.

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

Unshowy camerawork and an understated score both place the emphasis on the largely impressive and naturalistic performances.

A brisk and efficient thriller ... This combination of moral quandary and ticking clock peril makes for a bracing, if occasionally didactic, political drama.

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.

Wells’s bracingly spiky writing vividly draws both the characters and the connections between them.

All seamy New Orleans sleaze, with a neon and nylon aesthetic, the film relishes its own trashiness. But the writing is not focussed enough to make this much more than a cheap thrill.

The final message of hope is resolutely upbeat and desperately needed.

A screenplay which could have benefited from another pass undermines the credibility of what comes before, and, despite a formidable intensity from Riseborough throughout, leachs tension along with plausibility.

While Winton’s achievements and his dedication were remarkable, the film-making here is less so. There’s little to set One Life apart from the very crowded field of films exploring equally laudable tales of second world war heroism.

It’s not subtle – at one point he grafts Trump’s voice on to footage of Hitler addressing a Nazi rally. But subtle was never in Moore’s cinematic vocabulary.

Sporadically very funny, always entertaining, tonally, it’s a blend of The League of Gentlemen and Deliverance, but with beatboxing rather than banjos, and considerably more drug use.

In its unassuming, intuitive way, the film is rather beguiling, if a little gauzy and elusive at times.

Raiff knows exactly what he’s doing – Cha Cha is funny, honest and shamelessly manipulative.

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

Big, bombastic and full-blooded, Jeymes Samuel’s neo-Western might tick off plenty of the tropes of the genre, but the outlaw energy he brings to the picture makes it feel, if not fresh exactly, then certainly a whole lot of fun.

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.

Wry rather than uproarious, it’s a little uneven at times. But Suleiman is a master of slow-burning, cumulative humour; this is the kind of comedy that creeps up on you.

The brilliantly sustained mood and matter-of-fact absurdity of Valdimar Jóhannsson’s impressive debut is slightly let down by a pay-off which doesn’t entirely land. Still, the majority of the picture is strong enough to satisfy audiences with a taste for folk horror oddities, even if the ending isn’t quite as punchy as one might have anticipated.

A subplot about George Orwell is perhaps surplus to requirements, but otherwise the film is a striking, efficient political thriller.

The combination of a committed central performance from the increasingly gaunt and haunted Bacon, and a jarring, tortured score, makes for an enjoyably nasty brush with the smiling face of evil.

The message is not always clear, but it’s an entertaining ride.

The film might not be doing anything revolutionary with the gay coming of age story, but it is heartfelt and honest. And at times, unexpectedly hot.

The latest picture from the chameleonic film-maker François Ozon is one of his less formally adventurous. Ozon adopts a light-footed, naturalistic approach in this study of domestic dynamics. It’s not a film that is interested in taking a moral stance on assisted dying, nor is it a picture that wallows in tragedy.

Strikingly photographed, sensitively acted but torpid in its pacing, this is filmmaking which will require a degree of patience from its audience.

The laughs are split between deft sight gags and set pieces, and goofy word play.

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.

At a time when the press is routinely denigrated, an account of investigative journalism as a force for good makes for inspiring viewing.

It can feel a little scattershot at times, but the film illuminates the considerable cost of dissent, both then and now. It’s at its best, however, when it gives Choy free-rein to speak her mind.

It’s not a showy piece of filmmaking, but it is one which earns its emotional authenticity with a perceptive eye for detail and a sure directorial hand guiding the cast of non-actors.

The film crackles with energy every time Erradi opens her mouth to sing.

Radwanski uses restless, handheld cameras and improvisation to capture micro-moments in which not a lot happens but the implications are huge.

Not everything works in Mika Gustafson’s feature debut, but the performances, in particular that of the magnetic Delbravo, have an unpredictable, wayward energy. And the restless, hungry gaze of the camera captures the savage love and joyous freedom that unites the girls.

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

While the 2022 expedition doesn’t match the nail-biting life-or-death stakes of the original venture, it’s compellingly captured through the eyes of a likable cast of eccentric world experts.

Lindon creates a portrait of first love which is fresh, honest and engaging.

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.

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

A heart-pounding heist movie and a bantering conversation between real life and fiction, the debut drama by documentary director Bart Layton (The Imposter) is a great deal sharper – and more slickly executed – than the lunkheaded criminal debacle on which it is based.

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.

This is quality film-making, with enough that’s distinctive – Dan Deacon’s score is a pulsing, panicky jolt of energy – to appeal beyond basketball fans.

Essentially, for all its sci-fi/disaster/zombie movie trimmings, at its heart the film is a mismatched buddy movie that celebrates the bond from birth between Porky and Daffy.

The clear lines of the elegant 2D animation are not matched by the mythic muddle of the storytelling, an exposition-heavy slog of warring factions, convoluted webs of enchantment and a deadly, wolf-borne pandemic for good measure.

Spectacular archive footage from the event captures an inescapable sense of excitement – infectious, even to cycling agnostics in the audience – and interviews with LeMond and his wife, Kathy, are unexpectedly affecting.

A combination of tender details – the way Guo carefully picks the fibres from his girlfriend’s skin after a gruelling shift at the factory – and a strikingly surreal approach to a scene in which Lianqing prostitutes herself for the first time makes this unflinching picture a notable addition to the ever-swelling list of films that deal with migration.

While it takes a few dramatic liberties and could have benefited from a tighter edit, there’s a swell of goodwill as the story progresses that is hard to resist.

This is a stylish and satisfying prequel that elegantly integrates Sam’s poet’s sensibility into the storytelling.

This is tense, essential film-making that argues for the importance of serious, balanced journalism in today’s world of factional infotainment, while also showing the cost to those who stand against the tide.

This is where the film slips up. With a Bond as dangerous but dour as Craig’s, the onus is on the villain to inject a little levity, hence the ham-tastic turns from Javier Bardem and Cristoph Waltz in the most recent outings. This film’s main bad guy is Rami Malek’s lacklustre Lyutsifer Safin.

A film can be obnoxious and simultaneously very funny, and Deadpool & Wolverine is frequently hilarious. But it’s also slapdash, repetitive and shoddy looking, with an overreliance on meme-derived gags and achingly meta comic fan in-jokes.

Although conventional in its approach, the film is a forceful reckoning of a broken legal system.

While the film is not particularly groundbreaking in its approach to the music documentary, it’s unusually candid and open in what it reveals about the cost of the creative process.

The screenplay is so meta that at times it is practically consuming itself, an ouroboros of in-jokes. But there’s an affable appeal to the picture that disarms the more self-satisfied tendencies of the writing, and which stems from the chemistry between Cage and Pascal. Come for the industry satire, stay for the endearingly goofy buddy movie.

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.

Unfortunately, for all its daring, Eureka is often stultifyingly slow.

Although the sparse dialogue and gradual build requires an investment on the part of the audience, this is an accomplished work.

This is more of a dutiful plod through the facts than the kind of film that makes history come alive.

It’s a remarkable achievement – a raw and potent piece of storytelling that grabs you by the heart and doesn’t let go.

What’s both intriguing and enraging about the film is the fact that it so defiantly rejects the language of cinematic storytelling; this is a film which is intended to upend audience expectations.

A gentle, unassuming picture, it does have a satisfying, feelgood trajectory and empathetic central performance from Marie Leuenberger.

The stark beauty of Florian Ballhaus’s black-and-white cinematography and painterly framing can’t conceal the ugliness that unfolds as the death toll mounts and Herold starts to believe his own grotesque creation.

The film is at its most successful in the first half, which shows the genesis of a pop phenomenon...But once Portman takes over the role, as a jaded, jangled pop veteran, the picture becomes less persuasive.

The tonal shift in the sequel compared to the original means that, although there are plenty of moments of savage humour, the highs are just not quite so high any more. There’s a melancholy maturity, however, which is satisfying in its own way.

It’s a fascinating story that starts as an affable, strange-but-true tall tale but ends in a decidedly minor key.

There are pacing issues in a brooding, cautious middle section, but nothing terminal. There is also the problem that this elusive supernatural mystery has been mismarketed as a horror – unfortunate, certainly, but not the fault of the film.

The choice of characters is strong enough to ensure a broad and insightful overview of the subject, which is explored in considerably more depth than might have been expected from a film which is packed to the gills with high-strength weed.

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

Aside from the mother-daughter relationship angle, this splashy, showy assassin picture doesn’t really cover any new ground. But the lack of imagination elsewhere is offset by some impressively slick tailoring – Boksoon really does dress to kill – and extravagantly athletic fight sequences.

While vivid in its depiction of Paris’s vibrant lesbian culture, seems curiously slight and modest in its emotional impact given the seismic internal battle the central character wrestles with.

All loose limbs and exposed emotional scar tissue, Davidson is persuasively raw in a performance that becomes increasingly textured and interesting as Scott finds a father figure in his mother’s ex-boyfriend. It’s his bruised charisma that compensates for a certain spaced-out lethargy in the storytelling and an overlong running time.

The film’s main asset is Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror: his performance, with its velvet-soft line deliveries and unfathomable, boundless rage, is the magnetic core of this incoherent effects-dump of a movie.

There’s a feverish wildness to Corrin’s performance, while O’Connell unleashes the full force of his considerable charisma.

Two of the most immediately likable actors in Hollywood, Theron and Rogen are a joy together.

Shot on film, using vintage equipment, the picture has a scrappy, tactile quality, its ghostly black-and-white images scratched and scorched. Meanwhile, Neil Hannon’s smartly used score envisages a chilling authoritarian future for pop music.

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

Barney Douglas’s doc about tennis maverick John McEnroe belongs to that rare handful of portraits that should find an audience far beyond just fans of the game itself. In this, it has a kinship with Asif Kapadia’s films Senna and Diego Maradona.

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.

The film focuses on Taylor’s quest to uncover the perpetrator and learn their motives. And while finally she has a good idea of the former, the answer to the latter remains elusive.

Throughout it all, Knight is a compelling and fiercely persuasive performer.

It’s a solid, sensitively handled study of the aftermath of a trauma, elevated by tricky, unexpected revelations about Park.

Rock’s wildest years – both the man and the music – swirl together into a psychedelic maelstrom of pills, pictures and brilliantly creative swearing.

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.

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

The lip-smacking, acid drops of malice in the latest film from Paul Feig (Bridesmaids) makes this unexpectedly cruel comedy as intoxicating as the mid-afternoon martinis swilled by the two central characters.

Charming and informative as it is, the film may struggle to engage younger audiences accustomed to more overt comedy in their animated movies and less grave-robbing.

Robinson and Bannerman are excellent, warily stepping around each other’s expectations and weighing up the cost of allowing themselves to care.

A beguiling, if slightly convoluted, fantasy.

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.

Timely as it is, this is a film which doesn’t always treat its female characters with the respect that one might hope for, certainly given that it is intended to expose exploitation rather than add to it.

Julia Roberts blasts through this family reunion drama-turned-thriller with one of the most forceful performances of her career.

The second film from Natalia Meta is a slippery thing to pin down. Like the ragged mental state of its main character, it unravels as it goes on. But it is also never less than stridently entertaining, in part thanks to a brittle central performance from Erica Rivas.

It’s a film that cries out to be seen in the cinema. Disney’s decision to bypass a theatrical release in favour of streaming does a disservice to both the film and its audience.

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.

What the film shares with the Zellners’ previous pictures is a deft handling of tonal shifts, particularly the delicate tipping point at which flippant absurdity gives way to the darker minor key of melancholy.

It’s a tense, atmospheric piece of film-making but it made me profoundly uncomfortable – and not, I should add, in a good way. There’s a prurience in how the murders are filmed – the camera hungrily scouring the distorted faces of dying women – that borders on dehumanising.

Comic actors Steve Zahn and Jillian Bell are uncharacteristically earnest in this achingly well-intentioned but thuddingly heavy-handed family drama.

Lawrence is phenomenal, giving the kind of wary, reined-in performance that made such a compelling impression in her breakthrough film, Winter’s Bone. And the always excellent Henry gradually strips back a character who at first seems wholly at ease with life to reveal layers of suppressed guilt and pain.

It’s as though an essential part of the character’s appeal is missing; the knock-on effect is that the film’s glorious scenery and Sicilian backdrop end up doing rather a lot of heavy lifting.

The quality of the performances goes some way towards mitigating the navel-gazing tendencies of the dialogue. Seymour, in particular, gives a lovely, textured vulnerability to recovering alcoholic Kate.

While its ideas might fail to fully coalesce, the film is unnervingly beautiful; an immersive and mesmeric aural and visual experience.

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.

Wonka is an effervescent pleasure – an endlessly, intricately charming treasure trove of a movie. And overall, Timothée Chalamet’s fresh-faced take on the central character – bringing a puckish innocence and spry, light-footed energy to one of the most famously jaded misanthropes in children’s literature – works rather well.

Sunny, soulful, if a little montage-heavy at times, this is a more conventional film. Hekmat’s magnetic star quality, though, is unmistakable: she’s a free and fascinating presence.

The film is acutely perceptive on the effect of a bereavement on other people.

Ali is tremendous in a dual role that takes in everything from a beguiling meet-cute with his future wife (Naomie Harris) to a third act consumed by grief and doubt about whether he did the best thing for his family after all.

For all the impressive qualities of the picture, it does feel as though there is a rigid upper-age limit for its audience.

Ultimately, Dumb Money may not be as revealing about the financial markets as it is about the rallying power of the internet.

The sex is like tennis: fierce, combative bouts in which there will always be a winner and a loser. And the tennis, ultimately, is like sex: an ecstatic consummation between two perfectly matched people at their glistening physical peak.

Despite the fact that we all know the outcome, and that it’s the third film in as many years to tell the story, Ron Howard’s account of the drama is compulsively watchable and breathlessly tense.

Rolf de Heer’s wordless allegorical drama explores its themes in savage, boundless landscapes; in stark images of hate and violence; and in disease and blood.

It’s a richly detailed mosaic of a movie which pays as much attention to emotional authenticity – a dull ache of grief which is the aftermath of the First World War and a smouldering yearning between the two lovers – as it does to the story itself.

A sufficiently motivated woman is a fearsome and unstoppable force: the central premise for this gleefully pulpy WWII horror puts a dash of feminist fury into a schlocky B movie set-up.

Both are terrific, but Binoche is the standout.

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.

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.

The lovely, subtle work from Macdonald, as her character blossoms and her horizons broaden, gives the film a warmth and magnetism.

Dog Man, the half-dog, half-cop protagonist of Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants spin-off book series, is a gloriously funny creation.

Some pleasingly icky special effects add to the general sense of mouldering menace. Where the picture stumbles, however, is in its almost total lack of effective scares.

A workmanlike and sometimes clumsy screenplay is not enough to extinguish the spark from this real-life fairytale romance, which delivers both a heartfelt emotional story and a grim lesson in 20th-century British foreign policy.

It’s a blast. Last Night In Soho is the kind of good time which isn’t over until someone’s either crying or bleeding. And oh, how we’ve all missed those nights!

While it’s an enjoyable family romp that should charm younger audiences, the action onslaught can’t conceal that this sequel lacks the inventive agility, wit, comic timing and, most crucially, the magic of its predecessors.

I can think of few other films that get into the skin of new motherhood, with its formless terrors and fierce, furious primal love, as inventively and effectively as this one.

Like the backdrop – marsh or swamp – it’s all a bit soggy.

It’s pleasant, frothy, unapologetically by-numbers stuff.

This slapdash movie, with its big-hearted, puppyish positivity, might not save the world but it will surely lift the spirits.

Beauty And The Dogs is a forthright and accomplished film which deals with its controversial subject matter without flinching. Tautly plotted, it has a pace and tension which mitigates the exhausting spectacle of watching a vulnerable young woman getting bullied and browbeaten by a selection of utterly horrible men.

The music they create together is emblematic of the central problem. It’s sterile, manufactured and utterly fake production-line pop masquerading as some kind of indie rock spotify sensation.

Although there’s certainly a lot going on on screen, our attention is focused on Bening’s central performance.

Chaotic lives can make for a muddled storyline, yet ultimately Hegemann allows her central character some kind of growth.

Like its magnetic central character, the entertaining latest from Luis Ortega is fascinating: a playful, shape-shifting, questioning journey that refuses to be neatly pinned down.

There is a compassion in this filmmaking that is markedly lacking in America’s attitude towards the people it pushes to its outer fringes.

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

It’s mildly amusing stuff that delivers no surprises, but may muster a few laughs.

Todd Stephens’s film is an amiable little story, and Kier is clearly enjoying himself immensely, but this is as wafting and insubstantial as Patrick’s chiffon scarf.

The message of selflessness, generosity and loyalty is by-the-numbers stuff, but embellish it with moss, pinecones and twigs, and it takes on a certain magic.

Ron’s Gone Wrong transcends the familiarity of the story (there’s a thematic an overlap with Big Hero 6 and How To Train Your Dragon, to name just two) with deft writing, appealing animation and a big heart crammed into a small malfunctioning robot.

Ultimately, the picture is entertaining enough, in a somewhat tawdry way. Just do not expect it to hold up to forensic scrutiny.

With slack pacing and insufficient focus, the film lacks the crackle of tension and propulsive efficiency of something like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

It’s possible ... that in his affection for and identification with Nicolaou, Ferrera has over-estimated the fascination of his subject’s life story.

What’s impressive about this psychological thriller, the debut feature film from director Mary Nighy, is how tuned in it is to the dynamics of female friendship.

It’s enjoyable stuff: a taut and crisply edited balance between humour and horror.

The film’s elegant framing and unobtrusive directorial choices give space for Chastain and Redmayne to fully inhabit their characters in a picture that combines compassion and empathy with a sickening swell of almost unbearable tension.