Wendy Ide

This picture is more or less equal parts an indulgent, endurance-testing slog and a brilliantly audacious, fiercely political poke in the eye to conventional cinema. I loved every enraging minute of it.

Perhaps the most impressive element is the way that the picture so deftly juggles its tonal shifts. Rocks is as mercurial and complex as any moody teenager can be, veering from hilarity to misery and back again in seconds.

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

Chalamet, with his restless, impatient physicality and a face as sensual and sculpted as a fallen angel from a Caravaggio painting, is quite simply astonishing.

Like its dappled forested backdrop, the film is a thing of pensive beauty rather than volatile drama.

It’s a marvel of a movie, with something of the humanist poetry of Satyajit Ray or Edward Yang. And it’s all the more remarkable given that this is Kapadia’s first fiction feature (her 2021 debut film, the documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing, also picked up a prize in Cannes). What a talent.

The friendship that grows between the two is a splinter of hope in an otherwise increasingly bleak situation.

The latest from the Safdie brothers is a cracking follow up to Good Time: a jangling panic attack of a movie and a timely reminder that, when he puts his mind to it, Adam Sandler can be one of the finest actors currently working.

The genius of Todd Field’s superb Tár comes from the way the film-making echoes the treacherously seductive and mercurial nature of its central character.

Sunday’s Illness doesn’t put a foot wrong.

The impact all but knocks the breath from your body.

The fourth fiction feature from Kleber Mendonça Filho is a sweat-saturated riot of a movie: a dual-timeline thriller powered by the kind of anarchic, erratic energy that you would expect to find at the end of a two day bender.

It’s chilling and brilliant.

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 seam of pitch black gallows humour running through the picture, and moments of absurdist hilarity. But mostly, it’s an impassioned and forthright condemnation of the regime and of the men who do its bidding.

Inspired by Diop’s own experience of attending the trial of a woman accused of murdering her baby, it’s a meditative exploration of a complicated connection between the woman in the dock and the one who bears witness.

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.

By encouraging a merry chaos of overlapping personalities and performances – restructuring the timeline into a multilayered playground where the child and adult stories interact – and subtly foregrounding existing themes of female fulfilment and the economics of creativity, Gerwig creates something that is true to its roots and bracingly current.

The ropey special effects and platitude-heavy climax mean that the film goes out with a whimper rather than a bang.

Informative, exhaustively researched, but never dry or didactic, this is a phenomenal achievement by Grimonprez, who holds his own country to account for its shameful role in this sorry tale.

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.

A masterpiece.

The lush orchestral score, by regular Miyazaki collaborator Joe Hisaishi, is shimmering and exultant. All the elements are in place. So it seems almost churlish to note that this is middling Miyazaki at best.

What becomes clear from the film, which vividly details the cultural backdrop as well as Goldin’s work, is that fear has never been part of Goldin’s vocabulary, either creatively or personally.

Thrillingly inventive, satisfyingly textured and infused with warmth and humanity, this is a triumph.

A wildly entertaining, modern-day screwball comedy ... Baker continually ups the ante on the picture’s unruly humour and propulsive pacing.

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

There’s something about the folkloric quality of Rohrwacher’s films, their embrace of a kind of earth magic, that prompts people to describe them as fairytales. But this is perhaps misleading. La Chimera is no twinkly escapist fantasy, it’s a film full of grit, thorns and greed.