Wendy Ide

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

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.

[An] agile, cerebral film.

Tim Mackenzie-Smith’s slightly breathless and overstretched documentary aims for a Buena Vista Social Club-style story of late-life rediscovery but gets a little bogged down in a few too many hagiographic quotes from high-profile fans. Still, the music is sublime.

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

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

An invigoratingly savage Nordic western, The Promised Land is earthy, enjoyable stuff: an expansive, sweeping epic with hope in its heart and dirt under its nails.

What becomes painfully clear is the fact that Bob Marley deserves a better biopic. Still, Lynch’s magnetic presence, and a heartstopping rendition of Redemption Song, almost justify the price of admission.

While it is messy and frequently bewildering, Cuckoo does at least live up to its title, with a commitment to gleefully bonkers twists and a collection of entertainingly deranged supporting performances.

Feels closer in approach to his early gallery installation work than it does to his narrative film-making.

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 helps that Gordon is a dream of a subject: funny, frank and eminently likable, she challenges preconceptions and prejudices about fatness with wit and grace.

The Settlers shows promise: it’s the work of a daring director intent on developing a distinctive and original voice.

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.

A screenplay by White Lotus creator Mike White elevates proceedings with an enjoyably sardonic bite.

The special effects seem shoddy and unfinished and the screenplay struggles to keep up with its own twists and turns.

The impact all but knocks the breath from your body.

The latest from Andrew Haigh is an exquisitely melancholy fantasy-infused meditation on loss and isolation. A luxuriantly sad and skin-tinglingly sensual gay romance, it is propelled by a killer combination of 80s queer pop and a pair of devastating performances from Scott and Mescal.

Union is a solid work about an important subject. Yet, while the observational approach gives the picture an urgency and immediacy, it’s a film that might have benefitted from the addition of more contextual background information about Amazon’s labour practices.

This is a satisfying and impressively acted drama.

It’s a (virtual) life-affirming approach that is certainly affecting, but can feel a little disingenuous.

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

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

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

The scene-stealing standout is Avantika, playing sweet-natured Plastic dimwit Karen. Her comic timing is impeccable; her musical number, a boisterous Halloween party romp titled Sexy, is worth the price of admission alone.

This is a story of survival, but it is by no means typical of the genre – instead it is sensory, tactile; a film that taps into an atavistic, instinctual primal quality that characterises new motherhood.

It’s not bad exactly, but like many film-makers, Clooney is at his most interesting when he’s not afraid to make enemies.

It’s an alchemic combination, this continuing collaboration between Lanthimos and Stone . . . together they unleash in each other an extra level of uninhibited artistic daring that, one suspects, must be rooted in an uncommon degree of mutual trust.