Wendy Ide

Sara Forestier is likable enough as the somewhat hapless Sophie, who dreams of working as an artist but whose main preoccupation is finding a man.

Anderson’s backdrop, a kind of steroidally enhanced Frenchness reminiscent of films such as Belleville Rendez-Vous and Amélie, is rather lovely, if ultimately as far removed from reality as is the film’s romanticised view of journalism.

The Phantom Of The Open is an amiable little picture which might be dramatically as flat as Mark Rylance’s vowels but still packs a considerable helping of crowd-pleasing charm into its cap and golfing slacks.

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

Provocative and challenging, if not the most subtle piece of political commentary, the film certainly cements Kaouther Ben Hania as a name to watch in Arab cinema.

The latest film from the acclaimed writer-director Pema Tseden casts a typically wry eye over the collision between modernity and tradition in 1980s Tibet.

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

The impressive feature debut from Maltese-American writer and director Alex Camilleri manages to be both self-contained, in its depiction of an embattled community, but also unexpectedly far-reaching in its themes. The film is an exploration of masculinity in crisis, of the attrition of traditions by the forces of progress and of the agonies and uncertainties of new parenthood.

A collision is inevitable, but even so, the film’s climax is unexpectedly devastating.

A singularly unattractive animation style, jokes as flat as roadkill and a score that could be used as an instrument of torture are just some of the problems with the latest attempt to squeeze yet more blood from the Addams Family mausoleum.

The film’s actual pay off – the truth exhumed from this tainted earth – is ultimately not quite as satisfying as the picture’s elegantly constructed mood.

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.

Milocco’s performance manages to walk a thin line between credibility and delusion, a line which is less successfully negotiated by other aspects of the film.

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.

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.

It’s undeniably entertaining stuff, but this choppy collage-style portrait of the formative figures in the life of the young Tony Soprano (Michael Gandolfini) is better suited to the needs of existing fans rather than those of Sopranos neophytes.

Much of the film’s appeal comes from its star, newcomer Max Harwood, who, despite a chiffon-wisp of a singing voice claims every frame with his knife-sharp cheekbones and charisma to match.

Tiresome stuff.

It’s almost worth watching just for the way that Cage delivers the word “testicle”: it sounds as though all the syllables got caught in a combine harvester and then had to be reassembled, with the accents and emphases in the wrong places. It is, like much of the film, utterly barmy.

This thorough and informative documentary, from the team behind RBG, shines a light on a brilliant and uncompromising firebrand who paved the way for generations to come.

This intriguing political thriller uses the ideological beliefs of its characters as a jumping-off point, but is most effective when it takes its own stance, and starts to unpick the tiers of exploitation within society.

As a portrait of friendship, viewed through the compound eye of a mutant insect, it is multidimensional and rather moving.

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

Costa Brava, Lebanon is a terrific feature debut from Mounia Akl which works both as a compelling domestic drama and an elegant political allegory.

It’s a handsome film, but a conventional one, rather missing the opportunity of allowing Salomon’s thrilling uninhibited style to inform the film’s aesthetic.

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.

It’s fair to say that in this singular piece of filmmaking, with its dense deep-dive into arcane legend and mythology, selling out is certainly not on the cards for Masaaki Yuasa right now.

Parental indifference is not attuned to the looming tragedy in this horribly compelling fable.

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.

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

It’s an elegant piece of filmmaking, if a little too decorous at times.

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

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.

Whatever else could be said about this competent and generally pretty entertaining latest addition to the series, surprising it is not.

Ultimately what makes this an unusually rewarding picture about motherhood is the fact that it shatters the binary distinction between the good mother and the bad one.

A puzzle box of a structure reveals fresh angles to the story with each new contributor, but the woman at its core – the discredited author Misha Defonseca – remains silent and unaccountable, to the film’s detriment.

It’s a film that sets out to tackle the impact of degenerative disease, but, barring a few moments of confusion and a forgotten name or two, is infuriatingly evasive when it comes to showing the realities of the condition.

While Shorta is certainly a propulsive piece of action cinema, which makes effective use of its acid yellow, cement grey and burnt umber palette and warren-of-concrete location, there’s a crudely schematic quality to the writing.

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.

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

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!

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

It’s the kind of horror which eschews jump scares in favour of a more subtle, gauzy sense of unease, a slow-burning discomfort that creeps up on the audience like a half-seen shadow. It’s not exactly terrifying, but there’s an oppressive sense of menace which is magnified by the high-quality performances from the two young stars, and by the nervily watchful camerawork.

Law manages to be both utterly authentic and glossily untrustworthy.

While the picture doesn’t quite maintain its vigorous energy through to the very end, it is still a satisfyingly knotty exploration of the bi-cultural experience.

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.

What the film does brilliantly is compose a symphony of social awkwardness, with Anne as its virtuoso focus.

This lean Danish drama is not wholly original – David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom is an obvious comparison – but it’s a tense, suspenseful piece of storytelling and a showcase for a treacherously mercurial performance from Knudsen as the fearsome matriarch.

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

The film is fascinating on cult capitalism and the power of personality as a marketing tool for an otherwise unremarkable business plan.

The set up promises a high concept romantic comedy, but in execution, Maria Schrader’s immensely enjoyable picture delves rather deeper, touching on philosophy, socio-sexual ethics and humanity’s uneasily symbiotic relationship with technology.

There are thematic parallels with everything from The Lego Movie to The Matrix, but key to its appeal is an unabashed sweetness and goofy enthusiasm that proves irresistible.

What makes this particular adaptation, co-written by Bravo and Jeremy O Harris, sing is the fact that, while it winks at Twitter with a smattering of emojis, it’s the legitimacy of Zola’s voice, rather than the means of its dissemination, which is prioritised.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra creates a romp of a picture booby-trapped with adventure movie tropes (arcane curses, snakes, evil Germans) which, while they might seem familiar to Indiana Jones fans, still combine to make for a decent family flick.

If we can’t believe the characters, how are we meant to accept the film’s central premise?

Handsome animation adds to the appeal of this sequel to the 2002 animation Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, but this is family entertainment that’s quite niche in its appeal – pony-mad kids will love it, but it may test the patience of parents.

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

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.

Bickering middle-aged women obsessing over travel arrangements is not entertainment, it’s a living hell.

It’s amiable enough, but this broad French comedy is not distinctive enough for the arthouse crowd, and too Gallic for the mainstream.

This is a singularly subdued kind of storytelling. Passions run deep, but there’s a reticence in the film-making that makes them feel like a whispered secret in a church pew rather than a grand, soul-baring declaration.

Beautifully observed and saturated with warmth, this tender family drama gradually reveals the fact that it is Aharon, as much as Uri, who depends on their relationship.

We laugh, partly, from relief at escaping the unimaginable.

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

Seydoux is as charismatic and minxy as always, but the role of Lizzie is maddeningly elusive and underdeveloped. Perhaps the main disappointment of the picture, aside from its lifeless and conventional approach, is the fact that it is so preoccupied with the leaden Jakob, while his mercurial, treacherous wife is a far more interesting character.

It is a film which celebrates empowerment and the exhilarating release of finding a voice and being heard.

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.

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.

In its own rather clunky way, the film strikes a blow for feminism in central Africa, and Amina, who strikes several literal blows on the man who impregnated her daughter, ends the film unexpectedly empowered by the experience.

Pratt, and in particular Betty Gilpin as his wife, give likable, grounded performances. But the screenplay is a bloated, unwieldy thing that is at least 30 minutes longer than it should be.

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

Rothwell uses the language of cinema – macro lens closeups, distortion, off-kilter framing and an evocative blend of sound design and score – to convey the autistic experience of the world.

The dismal dialogue wouldn’t matter quite so much if at least the action sequences delivered a few thrills, but the whole thing is so shoddily put together it looks as though it was edited with a strimmer.

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.

Levan Koguashvili evocatively captures the unpredictable crackle of tensions and the tacit loyalties between the men; all sweat and beer and maudlin machismo, although the atmosphere of the picture is rather more compelling than its somewhat workmanlike plot.

Perhaps a more potent political statement is the way that Christopher Scott’s choreography claims and owns every square inch of the block. Reclaim the streets (with fabulous shoes and glorious Latin dance routines)!

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 barrier between the real and the fictional encounters is increasingly permeable, as is the line between social norms and unacceptable behaviour, in this freewheeling, spontaneous voyage into the unknown.

With its black and white characterisation, the film approaches its complex theme in a way which may seem a little too simplistic to be fully satisfying.

As Ellie and Abbie respectively, Sophie Hawkshaw and Zoe Terakes make light work of a somewhat heavy-handed screenplay.

Montages, seesawing Dutch tilts and profligate overuse of lighting gels fail to conceal the fact that the film’s writing doesn’t match the lure of the central idea.

Was the persona 6ix9ine an act or a kind of addiction? Was he a professional troll – the Katie Hopkins of hardcore hip-hop – or a genius marketeer? This intriguing documentary fails to fully answer these questions, but it does shine a light on a particularly uneasy aspect of internet celebrity.

Remarkable access and nerves of steel (on the part of both the subjects and of filmmaker Hogir Hirori) makes for a riveting documentary which is as tense as it is revealing.

It’s a blast.

Kala Azar is something rather special. It’s foetid and atmospheric, a feral scavenger of a film which sniffs around its themes before sinking its teeth into the meat of a beasts’ eye view of the breakdown of civilisation.

This impressive Israeli feature debut from Ruthy Pribar stars a mesmerising Shira Haas.

There are charismatic figures fronting the movement, but the real power comes from each of the many shared, sad stories from women whose lives were affected by the law.

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

This feature debut from the Sydney-based writer and director Samuel Van Grinsven may tackle familiar material – gay coming-of-age stories are hardly uncommon – but it does so with a lustre and style that marks Van Grinsven out as a name to watch. Perhaps even more notable is Leach, a silky, feline presence who owns every moment that he’s on screen.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Surface similarities to Groundhog Day are relegated to background noise, thanks to the crisp writing and the nihilistic bite of the humour.

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.

As the story progresses, Bell’s decision to share the focus and to examine her relationship with her mother makes more sense, bringing an intimacy and tenderness to the rock documentary format.

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.

As the detectives start to lose the plot, so does the film, fizzling into an unravelling tangle of loose ends.

The film busts a gut attempting to free itself from the confines of the couple’s home. In this, it’s at least true to the spirit of lockdown, but it feels like a missed opportunity.

It’s a crowdpleasing tale of triumph over adversity which hits its raw highs and gritty lows every bit as emphatically as Turner during her famously electric performances.

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

Key to the success of the film is the editing, a pinballing assault of free association, claymation and gleeful profanity, which goes some way towards recreating what it must have been like to spend time inside Zappa’s head.

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.

It works on the assumption that a story about grumpy old gits united against a common foe has a universal appeal. True, to an extent, but what the makers of this film fail to realise is that it was the specificity of the Icelandic original that made it such a glumly hilarious delight.

Fascinating, mind-expanding, infuriating and bewildering, this is a bracingly ambitious documentary which embraces the artificiality of the computer generated animation which constitutes a large part of its approach.

While this lively crime comedy doesn’t exactly break new ground, it does, in the form of an appealingly naive central performance from Brown, have a disarming, sweet-natured charm at its heart.

This impressive, unflinching debut from Ninja Thyberg eschews the victim narrative which tends to shadow stories focussing on women in the porn industry, instead following Bella’s cool-headed navigation of this treacherous and frequently exploitative world.

This is not a film which minimises the pain of depression or the impulse to end it all. Bruises, both physical and mental, are on show throughout. It’s an approach which might come at the expense of some of the humour – the comedy evokes bittersweet grimaces rather than belly laughs – but does make for a satisfying study of male friendship.

The picture draws parallels between China and the US when it comes to botched and skewed deployment of information.

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.

An elegant, absorbing piece of storytelling.

It’s an unforgivable waste of Jackie Chan, action-movie legend, reduced here to pratfalls and gurning double takes.

Deft editing and unexpectedly affecting music choices make for an engaging portrait of the kind of impassioned and dedicated politician who seems in short supply right now.

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.

Tinder-dry delivery bolsters the film’s gentle humour, and while the momentum sags a little in the second half, the natural chemistry between Matafeo and Lewis keeps the audience invested and the story relatable.

It is, at times, harrowing. The film doesn’t shy away from grief at its rawest, fear at its most paralysing.

Powered by a surging, impatient energy and a bracing undercurrent of spite, Ramin Bahrani’s version of Aravind Adiga’s 2008 Booker prize-winning novel is one of the more successful literary adaptations of recent years.

Love Sarah is a well-meaning exploration of female friendship, and of the cultural significance of cuisine. Yet the under-developed story leaves us with the sense that this is little more than a foodie instagram feed with a narrative attached.

Coward’s brand of urbane casual elitism is rather past its sell-by date. But the problems run deeper in this energetic but scattershot version of a property which might have been best left to rest in peace.

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

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

Choppy editing adds to the sense that this picture is struggling to achieve a tonal balance and work out exactly what it is trying to say.

Fascinating, confounding and continually surprising.

The directorial debut of Viggo Mortensen, which he also wrote and stars in, is an empathetic but gruelling account of a father-son relationship.

This is film-making as role-playing, which has immersed itself, method-style, in a past era and aesthetic, which wears its luminous black-and-white cinematography like a costume.

Temple has always used archive material playfully; here, it’s particularly riotous, like a chaotic patchwork quilt tacked together by one of Shane’s drunk aunties.

It’s a slow burner which gambles that the incremental build of tension will keep the audience involved, even as the stoically inexpressive central character holds them at arm’s length. It’s a gamble that pays off

Writer-director Evan Morgan’s deft screenplay balances a taut crime story against a textured character study.

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

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

Subdued in tone and stoic in its approach to the dangers that can decimate an entire community, Identifying Features is admirable in its restraint, and all the more powerful because of it.

This terrific, unexpectedly moving documentary portrait captures the man at work.

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

The restrained, austere filmmaking of the latest picture from Wayne Wang belies the emotional depth of this sober picture.

Personally, I would have preferred a little more Wheatley edge, a little less Country Living.

Visually glorious, frequently very funny and genuinely profound, this is a picture which cries out to be seen on the big screen.

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.

This is a film that examines both the past and the present day; that plots a path on the common ground between them.

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.

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

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.

Theatrical, both in its single-location setting and its tone, the film manages to be simultaneously laboured but also oddly opaque.

This is storytelling which is as enigmatic as it is compelling. Not surprisingly, the use of music throughout is superb.

The audience brings to this film a set of expectations born from a lifetime of watching romantic fiction. That Monday skewers them so pointedly and thoroughly is what makes it such an entertainingly subversive spin on the genre.

A meditation on memory, identity, grief and loss, with the narrative device of a global pandemic thrown in for good measure: Apples might initially sound like a tough sell. But this hugely accomplished, satisfyingly textured first feature is really something special.

A political thriller charged with anger and sexual tension, this is as timely as it is bracingly entertaining.

What’s most interesting, although it gets slightly buried under a few too many almost identical musical performances, is the film’s account of the fractious symbiosis of the guru-disciple relationship.

Ultimately, the revelation here is not so much Dolan’s more contemplative approach to film-making, but the subtlety and sensitivity of his performance.

This is not cinema that leaves you feeling good about things. Nor does it tread a familiar path. But I’m Thinking of Ending Things is one of the most daringly unexpected films of the year, a sinewy, unsettling psychological horror, saturated with a squirming dream logic that tips over into the domain of nightmares.

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.

The shared experience between the filmmaker and the subject of the film allows for a character study of depth and intimacy. However, the story itself – a slightly soapy ‘romance against the odds’ narrative – presents few surprises.

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.

Heavy-handed symbolism aside, this is a decent little drama which digs into the bewildering limbo state between childhood and the adult world – a time in which everything hurts, heads are full of hormones and time stretches out interminably.

There’s a fearlessness to Murphy’s film-making, a slightly wayward, maverick spirit. I can’t wait to see what she does next.

Atmosphere alone is not enough. Abramenko fails to generate much in the way of empathy with the characters, resulting in tension being diffused by the fact that it’s hard to care very much for their outcomes.

The film’s main asset is impressive newcomer Box: veering between bratty backchat and bruised reticence, she’s tossed on unpredictable tides of teenage emotions.

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

The car chases should be the escapist, high-octane fun part of the movie. But fun is in short supply in a picture which is fuelled by a full tank of ill-will and fury.

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

Strong central performances from Emily Mortimer, Robyn Nevin and Bella Heathcote, as three generations of women from one family, contribute to a sense of claustrophobic unease; a tone which is unnecessarily bludgeoned home by the over-excitable sound design.

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.

The film’s empathetic approach allows Dixon to explore her decision, peeling back the layers of complexity that racism brings to the burden of sexual abuse. A must watch.

This oppressive, atmospheric Austrian drama takes the kind of alpha female high achiever familiar from Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann, but undermines her with splinters of Hitchcockian paranoia.

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.

There’s a savage, sometimes surreal wit to this anarchic tale of violence and revenge; it’s an eye catching first feature from actress Mirrah Foulkes, and an intriguingly eccentric addition to an already offbeat CV for Wasikowska.

The approach is scrupulously even-handed. The film is just as interested in mild-mannered Sue’s journey as it is in Daniel’s coming of age. The screenplay, adapted by Lisa Owens (Bird’s wife) from an award winning graphic novel by Joff Winterhart, is wryly low key, with a keen eye for the subtle stabs and small daily humiliations that gradually mount.

While The High Note doesn’t serve up any real surprises, it’s a pleasant diversion, a sunny, slick production that delivers an upbeat refrain of dreams realised and talent appreciated.

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

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

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.

Crisply British and deliciously no-nonsense, Kennedy is a wonderfully bracing character for Elizabeth Carroll’s deft documentary.

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 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.

This should amuse the younger members of the family, but it's unlikely to offer much more to parents than a couple of hours' respite.

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

Most essential is the central performance: Zengel’s oscillating wild joys and storming furies are painful to watch. A moment when she howls for her mother (always tantalisingly out of reach) brought me to tears.

LaKeith Stanfield and Issa Rae light up a beautiful-looking movie that weaves together love stories from the past and present.

A pacy screenplay, co-written by director Francis Annan and adapted from a book by Jenkin, rarely flags, but it’s the nervy camera, hugging the characters at hip height, the better to scrutinise each locked barrier to freedom, that most successfully builds the tension.

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’s generous documentary is a fitting tribute to the late, great author.

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.

Despite Willem Dafoe bringing gnarled gravitas to a screenplay which pinballs between oblique portent and grotesque shock tactics, this is an incoherent indulgence.

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.

Although perhaps on the enigmatic end of the Hong spectrum, The Woman Who Ran touches rewardingly on themes such as relationship dynamics and gender roles. The delicacy of the predominantly female-driven storytelling is unassuming but beguiling. And Hong goes so far as to skewer his own tendency to indulge monologuing windbag male characters in previous films.

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 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.

Captured by a camera that frequently rattles against the sides of the hurtling ambulance, the Ochoas’ night-time escapades are electrifying and urgent, doused in strobing emergency lights and powered by adrenaline.

It should please family audiences; it’s a handsomely mounted, stirring adventure. It’s just a little bit declawed.

As rambunctiously entertaining as it is crude.

Director Miguel Arteta, who brought a bracingly transgressive tartness to indie comedies Chuck & Buck and The Good Girl, delivers sloppily paced hack work here, while Tiffany Haddish and Rose Byrne, two fine comic actresses, are shackled to a screenplay so crassly tone-deaf, it makes you want to chisel off your own ears.

Tim Sutton’s idiosyncratic outsider romance contains moments of haunting oddness, but has a tendency to stab home its points and issues rather emphatically.

The transporting power of art is a difficult thing to capture in cinema at the best of times, and this film struggles to do so, leaning heavily on a score which signposts the emotional content of each scene a little too emphatically.

Erskine, with her earthy chuckle and precision-tooled comic timing, is the real discovery here. She’s a smutty, sniggering joy in the role and I can’t wait to see what she does next.

The murky cinematography further hinders a picture that looks as though it was shot through raw sewage.

It’s the movie equivalent of a fairground ride with all the bolts loosened and the safety booklet blazed long ago when someone ran out of Rizlas.

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.

The cluttered parallel story structure – the fates of several different individuals over a period of two years are woven together – results in a series of mini-scares rather than a gradual build to a big one. And since we already know the fate of most of them, all the diseased yellow lighting and oppressive sound design in the world can’t engineer much tension.

What the film depicts is at times creepy and unsettling, but it lifts the lid on an aspect of the virtual world which may be unfamiliar to audiences in the west.

This contemporary adaptation of The Turn of the Screw takes the ornate enigma of Henry James’s gothic novella and whittles it down into something rather more flat and conventional.

Deliberately scattershot and naïve, this engaging, absurdist collage, shot entirely on VHS tape, smuggles a serious message beneath its 80s poodle-permed public access television pastiche.

This portrait of a woman pushed to breaking point coheres around a fine, friable performance from Kristen Stewart.

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

It’s an absolute joy.

This is beyond inept.

It’s dazzling, baffling and staggeringly ambitious.

What keeps it from top-tier animation status is that, while the relentless killer drone army usually hits its targets, the jokes don’t always connect.

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.

This striking drama vividly captures the sense of uncertainty of transient lives, but loses power in a final act which gets somewhat mired in hallucinatory dream logic.

Motherless Brooklyn is a curious near miss that can be both applauded and criticised for its boundless ambition.

Lucy in the Sky is low on real insight and feels like a psychology column in a supermarket tabloid.

So measured is the pacing, so sinuous the timeline, so understated the subtle ache of the performances that you don’t immediately realise that Wang Xiaoshuai’s exquisite three-hour drama has been performing the emotional equivalent of open-heart surgery on the audience since pretty much the first scene.

This open-sore autobiography feels like the missing piece in the puzzle of this frequently brilliant, invariably self-jeopardising actor.

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.

It doesn’t all work; the flashbacks are unwieldy and the pacing falters in the second half. It’s also rather coy in addressing some of the more damning elements in recent Catholic history. But there’s something disarming about a scene of papal bonding over beer and footy.

The picture comes armed to the teeth with slick action sequences . . . and genuinely funny lines. It’s just a pity that both the action and the dialogue are occasionally obscured by the frenzied editing.

It’s silkily enigmatic and unpredictable, and certainly unlike anything else you will see this year.

Slick, thrilling and saturated with vivid hues and 60s can-do optimism, Le Mans ’66, James Mangold’s follow-up to Logan, is a precision-tooled machine of a movie.

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.

What was intended as an examination of the creative process backfires and becomes instead an inadvertent chronicle of oblivious privilege. Harvey wafts through scenes of poverty and devastation, then returns to her cocoon of a studio.

Every tired war movie cliche is unearthed in a film that brings nothing new but will no doubt please fans of men in uniform yelling at explosions.

Flashes of violence are effectively jarring when juxtaposed with the chintzy cosiness of much of the film. Less successful are two thudding, lead-weight flashbacks, which disgorge chunks of exposition and quash some of the fun in McKellen and Mirren’s deft double act.

Extravagant camera moves, woozy fish-eye lenses and a full-on assault of CGI fail to give this story of warring inventors much in the way of a dramatic charge.

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

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

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.

With its Sadeian overtones, and glumly perverse excesses, this is not a particularly enjoyable experience. It will be best suited to the more experimental fringes of the festival circuit and to audiences who thought that Salo: 120 Days Of Sodom was too much fun.

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.

Fascinating and informative, it’s a ‘must-watch’ for film students and fans alike.

It’s quite an achievement to combine career low points for all three of the female leads, but a film that spends so much time capturing shots of characters walking sassily through the streets of 70s Hell’s Kitchen at the expense of characterisation clearly has its priorities fried.

Ultimately, it’s all about balance, a yin and yang of roots and identities, humour and pathos that comes together into a satisfying, bittersweet wedding banquet of a movie.

It’s cheap and lazy stuff.

Armin seems to get less interesting as a character rather than more as his quest for survival takes priority. Ultimately you wonder whether, dramatically speaking, it was worth wiping out a planet full of people just so that one useless bloke could finally get his act together.

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.

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.

Strong performances across the board and a propulsive sense of mounting desperation makes for a compelling piece of storytelling.

Even when Georgie and Lu share the screen, there’s a curious emotional distance which means that this theoretically torrid romance never fully ignites.

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.

The Liam Gallagher of old, with his shrapnel wit and swaggering crusade against being “suckered in by the dickheads”, would have tossed a grenade into the editing suite rather than sanction a doc that is more extended corporate rebranding exercise than it is rock’n’roll.

This remarkably assured debut ... uses the medium of cinema to its fullest extent, both visually and aurally.

The film does not serve up its ideas in easily digestible bites. The audience needs to work with a dislocated string of scenes that sometimes highlight absurdity, sometimes violence and frequently say very little at all.

The latest from Drake Doremus is a candid, very watchable account of a messy period in a woman’s life.

Fans of the enduringly popular ITV period drama series will no doubt embrace this feature film spin-off, which represents a step up in lavish visual spectacle while retaining a comforting familiarity of themes and storytelling style.

Southcombe deftly threads together the two stories with echoes in the dialogue and in the location.

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

It’s as cosy as Mr Rogers’ trademark zip-up cardigan, but the sweetness of this film about the beloved US children’s television personality is tempered by the inventive eccentricity of its approach.

The initially taut thriller takes an unexpected tonal shift into overwrought suspense, losing some of its claustrophobic domestic tension along the way.

A haunting allegorical tale, Aniara warns of humanity hurtling in the wrong direction and realising too late that there is no turning back.

Both the film and its cast of charismatic, dreadlocked old-timers are loaded with an easy charm that is as heady as anything that gets smoked during the course of the recording sessions.

What starts out as a flinty portrait of the influence of a domineering mother over her unworldly son soon loses momentum.

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.

Even Arterton at smouldering full wattage can do little to hold together a picture in which the chemistry between the two leads is non-existent and many of the directorial choices are decidedly odd.

If it’s a love letter, it’s the kind tinged with the grasping anguish and stab of bitterness that comes from knowing that the object of affection is almost certainly eyeing up a new favourite.

It’s laughably contrived and shamelessly calculating. Dog’s bollocks, but not in a good way.

While The Lego Movie is all about creativity and invention, Playmobil shamelessly steals ideas.

The words are so piercing and acute that we hardly need the stirring score that swirls in the background.

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.

Greene is terrific – her Rosie is a force of nature. When she cracks, briefly, under the strain, her voice is a raw blade cutting through the bubble of safety she has created but no longer believes in.

Reygadas has made a career out of a confrontational lyricism, finding poetry in images that could be considered mundane or even ugly – but the film is nearly three hours long. You have to question how much time spent loitering next to the carburettor is actually justified.

The performances are so deadpan (or undeadpan perhaps) that most of the cast seem to be flatlining even before the zombies start chewing chunks out of their faces.

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.

In the absence of sharp writing, Bautista and Nanjiani adopt the blunt-weapon approach, shrieking their lines at each other as if they’re trying to hold a conversation from opposite sides of an eight-lane motorway. It’s painfully unfunny stuff.

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.

Ayushmann Khurrana, playing the good cop who can’t bring himself to look away to preserve “society’s balance”, combines soulful Bollywood heartthrob charisma with an arrestingly intense performance.

Under the party whoops and confetti cannons there’s a deceptively complex and layered portrait of female solidarity in the face of ingrained sexism, racism and general male shittiness.

A celebration of human endeavour, and of a rare moment of global unity.

There’s a zesty spark between Patel and James, and for a while the film chugs along happily on the goodwill bought by the soundtrack. Then one honkingly misjudged scene knocks the whole movie off key, heralding a toe-curling, tone-deaf terrace chant of an ending.

For all the energetic hurling around of heavy machinery, the movie feels inert and lazy.

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.

One of the discoveries of the year so far.