Wendy Ide

Mostly Regan’s unfiltered approach brings a fizzing unpredictability and vitality to this abrasively empathic exploration of a father-daughter bond.

It’s a work of undeniable historical significance.

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

This spry little French-language picture, which delights in subverting our expectations and leaves us with teasing questions about culpability and a crime, shows the director at his most understated, the better to foreground the excellent, intriguingly layered performance from Hélène Vincent.

More concerned with creating a slowburn of discomfort than with deploying jumpscares, it is driven by first-rate performances from Bracken and, in particular, rising star Doupe.

It’s a savagely funny showcase for Cage at his very best. But the picture sours somewhat in a third act that departs from crisp character study to target cancel culture, losing some of its biting humour in the process.

The cushioning effect of Ferrell’s celebrity and, judging by the closing credit list, an extensive and well-funded production team, mean that while this is a likable-enough film, it is an insulated and artificial construction.

The screenplay is a rudimentary thing – scaffolding to support the set pieces – that starts to creak whenever it attempts any depth of character. But the action is terrific, with a screaming, tyre-shredding extended car chase around Lisbon’s tight, cobbled alleys a breathless and exhilarating highlight.

An impressively nuanced portrait of the three-way relationship between a man, a woman and his disease.

This accomplished and satisfyingly hard-edged drama harnesses the monetised narcissism of influencer culture and looks beneath the gloss to find an ache of emptiness.

Unfolding over the course of a year, and divided into seasons, the film digs deep into the psychology of dying but is curiously unmoving, despite milking every last cancer-afflicted frame for sentiment.

Schrader’s sensitive, unshowy approach to the directing choices is a smart decision; this is a film that is respectful of and in service to the stories of the women.

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

Through the love story at the heart of this visually arresting feature debut, Utama offers the audience a relatable connection with a way of life which is on the verge of extinction.

The characters and plotting tend to be a little schematic, but just because the trajectories of the women’s narratives are predictable, it doesn’t follow that the story lacks power. On the contrary – this is fearless, potent storytelling.

Bird finds beauty and wonder in every frame (one that Arnold has slyly shaped to evoke the format and curved corners of a smartphone screen, echoing the way Bailey captures private moments of visual poetry). The film celebrates rather than judges its erratic and occasionally challenging characters It’s the closest Andrea Arnold has come to a feelgood flick.

It’s a terrific little film that combines the earthy humour and honesty of a Shane Meadows movie with an unexpected expressionistic section – flooded with colour – that channels the boys’ joyful dancefloor abandon.

Driven by strong performances, this is, however, a more conventional piece than other recent pictures which explored crises of faith.

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

While the first two acts are more engaging and accessible than the third – the picture does get a little bogged down in its effects and ideas – there’s no question that this is an imaginative and original debut from director Jake Wachtel.

Even if The Iron Claw doesn’t quite match the bracing originality of the other two films, it still cements Durkin’s status as one of the most consistently impressive American directors of his generation.

It’s certainly informative and affecting, but the limited use of early archive footage and the emphasis on Williams’s decline and suffering make for bleak viewing.

The pivotal scenes may be fictionalised, but the prickling, precarious threat is clammily authentic and inspired by the experiences of the film’s writer, director and star, Ana Asensio, as an undocumented Spanish immigrant eking out an existence in New York.

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

It’s maliciously effective, up to a point: an enjoyably lurid piece of classy-trashy psychological warfare. Unfortunately, both the plot and the performances boil over in the third act, and the film loses much of its icily calculated cool.

The beauty of Wham!, a key part of the appeal of the band, came from the perception that they were a self-contained unit, a guaranteed good time seemingly impervious to negativity. And for a while, that was true.

Jordan is doing double duty here, directing as well as starring in this solidly by-numbers chapter in the ongoing Creed saga. He does a workmanlike job – the fight sequences are thrillingly visceral, but his weakness for cheesy montages and the film’s formulaic screenplay ensure that the picture was never going to take the franchise anywhere new.

With its all too timely themes of bullying, corrupt leaders and the demonisation of difference, this is a movie that promises a froth of pink and green escapism but delivers considerably more in the way of depth and darkness.