Wendy Ide

The gimmick for this schlocky action picture is that it’s almost entirely dialogue-free. The story unfolds through ambitious action sequences and montages; the film helps itself liberally to the cheese buffet that is 1970s MOR rock.

While the interviews are largely quite banal, thanks to Song’s expressive performance, they are intriguing. But the picture loses what steam it had once we get to the final two chapters, where the actress is required to transcribe what she remembers of the conversations, memorise them and then perform them for her acting coach.

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.

This is an underdog tale straining so hard to be endearing that it’s more likely to pull a muscle than tug a heartstring.

What’s perhaps unexpected, in a film that has the look of a brooding fable by Carl Theodore Dreyer, is how funny it is at times.

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

Josef Kubota Wladyka’s third feature film is a playful and whimsical confection, a deft blend of escapist kitsch and the real emotional heft that Kikuchi brings to the role.

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’s a gloriously punk spin on the historical documentary genre, channeling the humour and rebellious spirit of a people who have been part of “eight or nine different countries” during the 20th century, who have spoken multiple languages, but who have managed to maintain their own distinct identity nonetheless.

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

DaCosta’s film is a macabre morality tale about the best and worst of human nature. It is utterly brutal, and one of the most compelling so far.

There’s considerable cumulative power to these intimate glimpses of kids, from primary school tiddlers to high school graduates, all facing an uncertain future.

While this is a familiar story and backdrop, its tender, empathetic storytelling is elevated by handsome cinematography and heartfelt performances.

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.

While the film is largely content to tread a safe path, it does at least feel full-hearted in its appreciation of the way music can connect lost souls and enrich lives.

It evokes a specific time and a place so vividly that you can almost taste the stale cigarette smoke and cheap beer. But while the picture affectionately skewers the youthful pretensions of the aspiring artists, it also allows the students an overly generous space in which to pontificate and navel-gaze.

Foy is terrific in a film which balances bruising candour about mental health issues against arresting wildlife photography and a fervent appreciation of the natural world.

Like the characters it follows, this first feature from director Jaydon Martin is unpolished, honest and a little rough around the edges at times.

Koberidze invites us to reshape and reappraise our perspective on what constitutes beauty. It’s a bold decision and, coupled with the endurance-testing pacing and running time, one which will make the film something of a marketing challenge beyond the die-hard Koberidze fan base. And yet there is something alluring here – it’s a meditative and elusive picture that conveys a spiritual beauty as much as an aesthetic one.

The aim was to create something “funny, beautiful, spiritual, political, complex, simple and true”. The Scriver brothers succeed in pretty much all of this and, with the film’s quirky, psychedelic style of computer animation, create something genuinely unexpected and visually playful.

Djukic’s coming of age drama is heady with intertwined sensual and religious symbolism; the first rate score and sound design teases out the tangled, conflicting impulses towards Catholic devotion and erotic abandon.

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

While Wicked: For Good repeats much of the same formula as the first picture, there is a crucial ingredient missing: humour. Without it, the spark is extinguished; the astringency that cut through the sentimentality of the first picture is gone.

This initially subdued, superbly acted story of an unlikely connection takes a savage and unsettling tonal swerve in the final act. The latest from Paul Andrew Williams will not be for everyone, but it is a chokingly tense commentary on the precarious nature of community.

The storytelling is so deft and slick, it almost feels scripted at times. But there are certain elements that you can’t dictate in advance, like the almost spiritual connection that grows between Nikola and the gangly, damaged bird that he rescues from the dump, and which, in turn, reaffirms Nikola’s bond with the land.

Cactus Pears is a subdued, sensitive study of bereavement and the quietly radical act of being queer in a rural, lower-class Indian community.

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.

There’s an undertow of melancholy certainly, but also a light, buoyant quality to a film that cherishes its moments of humour and absurdity.

The lack of a satisfying human connection between key characters is a stumbling block, but Wyatt does deliver plenty elsewhere.

Filmmaker Julia Jackman’s droll fantasy feminist fable is a true original.

The boundaries between fiction and reality are permeable throughout, with some shots juxtaposing actors against phone camera footage of the real life characters that they portray. For the most part, it works very effectively, although the snippets of real life phone footage are a little distracting, jolting us out of the nervy chokehold of the story.

It’s a frayed fabric of a story that contains moments of daring artistry and beauty, but doesn’t always knit together into something satisfying and solid.

Late Fame is a deliciously acidic examination of the thin line between creative aspiration and pretentious poseurdom.

While the crime spree may be inept, Park’s filmmaking is as elegant as ever, in a wildly enjoyable picture that balances psychological tension against giddily hilarious comic set pieces.

Architecton is a gorgeously photographed poetic reverie on the subject of stone and concrete, permanence and profligate waste.

This sensitively structured psychological drama benefits from first-rate casting.

It is a fascinating, free-spirited tribute to two men whose lifelong connection to the earth is only rivalled by their bond to each other.

While it may struggle to satisfy diehard Orwell purists, the film still takes a political stance and delivers an emphatic message celebrating equality and the power of the collective – albeit one which permits us a little more hope than was present in Orwell’s 1945 novella.

Hot Milk lacks some of the lush, heady symbolism of the book, and opts for a less teasingly ambiguous approach to the storytelling. Mackey, however, impresses, as a woman driven to distraction by the neediness and manipulation of those around her.

This is a solid, watchable drama that, while perhaps lacking some of the directorial flair of Heal The Living, evocatively tallies the costs of living on the wrong side of social and sexual conventions in the 1950s and 60s.

The child’s eye view of a seismic time of political upheaval is not an entirely new storytelling approach, but Davies breathes fresh life into the device.

The Dardennes’ typically no-frills approach means that these glimpses of young lives feel unvarnished and honest. There is, however, a degree of predictability to some of the plotting.

While this picture lacks the guileless immediacy of the child’s-eye view of her first two films, Romeria demonstrates once again that Simon has a rare gift for capturing the unpredictable, mercurial beast that is the family.

A testy father-daughter relationship adds weight to the story, all of which Armanet, in her first lead role, tackles with a convincingly frayed and frustrated performance.

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.

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.

Many of these jagged little vignettes are exquisitely realised, others are genuinely chilling. Whether they fully coalesce into a coherent whole is one question; whether they even need to is another. Renoir may leave questions, but it’s an elegant, thoughtful piece of filmmaking that digs into the guilt and confusion that underpins a child’s struggle to process death.

Although it’s a wisp of a thing, it delivers rich rewards. Mirrors No. 3 (which takes its title from the third movement of a Ravel piano suite) is an elegant demonstration of what can be achieved with limited ingredients in the hands of an inventive creative team and a first-rate cast.

This gritty social realist character study is spiked with striking and unexpected detours.

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.

What’s certain is that Sound Of Falling, the striking second feature from German director Mascha Schilinski, is a work of thrilling ambition realised by an assured directorial vision.

With its VHS bargain-bin aesthetic, this is scuzzily enjoyable stuff.

Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty) directs, just about striking a balance between the fluffy sentimentality of the story and its hard-edged political backdrop.

The overriding impression, once the adrenaline has drained away, is of futility, waste and pointless destruction.

If you pick apart the story threads, Sinners is a little messy, but Coogler’s assurance and vision holds everything together.

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.

Ultimately, One to One might not reveal a huge amount that’s new about Lennon, but it makes him feel bracingly alive in a way few other documentaries have managed.

James Hawes, who directed the entire first season of Slow Horses, clearly knows his way around the spy genre. Which is why this disjointed thriller about a brilliant CIA code cracker turned elite operative (Rami Malek) delivers at least some pacy thrills and globe-hopping intrigue, despite numerous issues with the screenplay, structure and casting.

As anyone who saw The Woman King will know, Davis has a formidable screen presence and serious action chops; for all its silliness, there’s plenty of fun to be had watching her slaughter the bad guys amid a diplomatic hail of bullets and canapés.

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

Both are terrific, but Binoche is the standout.

It’s a pity, then, that this sluggishly paced film, which leans heavily on a fussy, twinkling piano score, is so meandering and listless.

It’s tender, thoughtful film-making from Finnish director Mikko Mäkelä, exploring the bond between two men separated by generations but joined by literature and love.

Rather than a slick, high-concept fantasy action picture in the vein of Everything Everywhere All at Once, here is a B-movie throwback with its roots in the pulpy creature features of the 1950s. Viewed from this perspective, the shonky special effects are just part of the fun.

Perhaps there’s an alternative out there, a sharper, smarter, funnier version of a Minecraft movie. One with actual jokes. Or, God forbid, there may even be a worse iteration, although that’s hard to imagine.

This lovely, compassionate documentary, which recently won the audience award at the Glasgow film festival, is more than a character study. It’s a portrait of a friendship between Smith and film-maker Lizzie MacKenzie.

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.

If you’re a paunchy, middle-aged geezer with a wholesale cocaine habit, an aversion to “woke”, and hobbies that include beer and punching people, well, have I got a movie for you!

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.

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.

The narration, by LaKeith Stanfield, speaks on behalf of the photographer, who died in 1990. It’s through his remarkable pictures of South Africa and Black America, however, that we really hear his voice.

What elevates this raucous romp by music video director Lawrence Lamont is the crackling energy between Palmer (Nope) and singer SZA, making her acting debut here.

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

Salles never over-labours the film’s emotional beats, relying instead on Torres’ magnificent, intricately layered performance to drive the picture.

A delicate gem of a film, with a powerhouse turn from Franky.

As hilarious as it is heart-wrenching – frequently within the same scene.

It’s all fairly predictable. Anyone who has seen more than a couple of serial killer movies will have no problem assembling a list of possible masked murderers. But Josh Ruben’s film goes above and beyond when it comes to squelchy, visceral gore.

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

It’s a humourless drag of a picture, overreliant on clunky exposition and naive geopolitical posturing. Plus it’s ugly, with a greasy murkiness that looks as though the lens was smeared with lard.

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

The Seed of the Sacred Fig may not be his most elegant picture – it has pacing issues and a laboured final act – but it is without doubt Rasoulof’s most important film to date.

The Fire Inside, which was scripted by Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) and directed by cinematographer turned first-time feature film-maker Rachel Morrison, understands that, with storytelling as with fighting, sometimes all you need to do is stand firm and land the punches.

Incoherent, inelegantly choreographed and shot with a colour palette reminiscent of one of those noxious American Candy Stores that have popped up all over London like an outbreak of herpes, this Valentine-themed martial arts action picture is one of the worst of the year so far.

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

Bring Them Down is an impressive first feature from Christopher Andrews.

For all the talk of gamechanging comedy genius, Saturday Night ultimately plays it rather safe: it’s closer to a Noises Off-style romp transposed to a TV studio than the blast off of a cultural revolution.

Great turns don’t always amount to a great picture, and the unfortunate consequence of this no-frills directing approach is that the film-making can feel rather flat and functional – a display cabinet for the acting rather than a vital piece of storytelling.

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

By the Stream is a wry comedy of manners that muses, in its unassuming way, on the creative act.

The wildly uneven wedding clash comedy You’re Cordially Invited is certainly in the vicinity of terrible on numerous occasions.

With its wide-eyed lack of cynicism and the crystalline delicacy of the animation, this is a heart-swellingly lovely work.

This is not the first documentary to deal with thwarted creative ambitions. It may, however, be the one that most effectively and entertainingly cocks a snook at the very fates that conspired in the first place.

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

The combat sequences and SUV shootouts are grimly efficient, but the picture is baggily paced.

The element that makes this intriguing – the ghost POV shooting technique – is also a problem, undermining the suspense and distancing the audience from the vulnerable girl whose fate is in the balance.

Very silly, but pulpy fun.

The film’s main asset is Apte, a gifted physical comedian who puts the dead into deadpan, and loads every gesture with an aggressive, almost demented slap-stick infused humour.

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 film soon runs out of bite, with a plot that repeatedly chews over the same thumps, bumps and rattled doors, and the same shadowy menace in underlit basements.

It’s an alienatingly ugly technique and a mawkish tear-jerker choked up with synthetic sentimentality. You start to envy the dinosaurs their extinction event.

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.

Diwan relocates the action to Hong Kong and remakes Emmanuelle as a glossy but dispiriting treatise on the emptiness of the corporate world, punctuated by lots of panting, lip-chewing abandon.

From the intimate restraint of the early scenes, Delpero’s direction becomes more fractured and abrasive. It’s a remarkable work.

The famous apple incident is a taut centrepiece for Nick Hamm’s picture, and the action sequences are propulsive. The casting, however, is questionable.

It’s all very sweet and well-meaning, yet this story of redemption is a naïve and very pastel coloured portrait of a Yakuza veteran.

It’s a tricky balance, and one that the film doesn’t always quite pull off, between sounding a warning and screaming with existential terror; between galvanising the audience into action and plunging them into despair.

A masterpiece.

We Live in Time is let down by the jarring product placement (take a bow, Weetabix and Jaffa Cakes) and by the aggressively anodyne score, which sounds like the kind of reassuring, hand-holding mulch that might be played in a dentist’s waiting room.

While I had more time than many of my fellow critics for the two previous movie spin-offs from the Sega video game series, it turns out that you can, in fact, have too much of a good thing.

It’s a droll, perceptive and shamelessly sentimental look at generational tensions.

There are episodes of muscular, tautly directed action but the overall tone is brooding melancholy, all of it accompanied by a fretful, moaning wind and an eerie score.

There’s something about the macabre sensuality and mossy, crepuscular gloom of this retelling of the vampire legend that leaves a mark on the audience. It’s not so much a viewing experience as a kind of haunting.

Better Man is a notable step up for Gracey. The synthetic, rather soulless panache of The Greatest Showman demonstrated his skills as a slick visual stylist, but here he directs from the heart, tapping into the rawness and vulnerability beneath the CGI monkey suit.

Unfortunately, Perry drenches the tale with his trademark syrupy ineptitude, creating a gloopy, turgid plodder.

The latest feature from the Bristol-based animation studio is an absolute delight.

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

Nightbitch would have worked better if it had been pushed further in either direction – as an intimate interrogation, or as a full-bore bestial freakout. This uneasy middle ground feels like a missed opportunity.

This slow-burning drama, which won one of the top prizes at Sundance earlier this year, elegantly balances a spark of hope against a slowly rising tide of dread.

On Becoming A Guinea Fowl is a formally daring picture that blends fantasy, stylised drama and elements of black comedy to explore the societal pressures that rewrite the truth.

An impenetrable plot doesn’t entirely hold together, but the film is worth a look for fans of wigged-out sci-fi, gorgeous framing and lush, orchestral, Bernard Herrmann-inspired soundtracks.

Essential viewing.

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.

There’s a little too much crammed into this overstuffed stocking of a movie, but the gorgeous, lovingly detailed animation style – it’s the second feature from British studio Locksmith Animation (Ron’s Gone Wrong) – and the zippy action sequences should prove a winning combination for family audiences.

The main selling point remains Moana herself: the sparkiest and most intrepid Disney heroine of them all.

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 fierce intelligence of Fiennes’s work is magnified by Berger’s elegant direction.

Caroline Lindy’s feature debut is a droll, if uneven blend of comedy, romance, fantasy and horror that relies heavily on the off-the-charts chemistry between Barrera and Dewey, who manages to convince as a charismatic romantic lead, despite looking like a rejected prosthetics test for the 80s TV series Manimal.

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.

Powerful and enraging.

Layla is less about making peace with the past than it is about staying true to the present.

Given the emotive subject matter, the film chooses to keep the potential mothers at arm’s length as characters, losing tear-jerking opportunities as a consequence.

This sequel is so derivative of its predecessor, it’s practically a remake.

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

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.

It’s a fun watch, and the technique allows film-maker Morgan Neville to visually represent Williams’s form of synaesthesia, which turns music into colours, and to explore his musical process in a suitably playful and creative manner.

A charmless, CGI-heavy spectacle, Red One falls into an ill-considered audience no man’s land: it’s too intense for little kids (we get to visit Krampus in what appears to be a yuletide S&M dungeon) and too bland to attract teens and genre fans.

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.

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

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.

It’s a wisp of a thing, clocking in at barely over an hour. But the agile poetry and formal playfulness of Mati Diop’s exquisite hybrid documentary belies the weight and wealth of ideas within.

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.

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 tough watch – at the start, she suggests that we “close our eyes and take a deep breath if we need to” – but a brave and important one.

Hardy is a highlight, playing Eddie as a man who has had more than enough of the party that’s raging in his head, but Kelly Marcel’s film is a sloppy, incoherent let-down.

Matt and Mara is one of those films in which very little concrete happens, but the tingling possibility that something might makes it compelling.

Kendrick’s knack for capturing period detail goes beyond the psychedelic synthetics and kipper ties. She taps into the treacherous sexism that was hardwired into the entertainment industry and wider culture of the time, both of which are shown to be minefields of fragile male egos and potential violence.

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.

It’s sentimental stuff, certainly, but the picture’s unexpectedly dark humour outweighs any maudlin tendencies.

Most intriguing is Strong’s slippery portrayal of Cohn – a man full of sharp edges and wide, swinging contradictions.

It’s a fun premise, but Lowe’s follow-up to her deliciously nasty 2016 debut, Prevenge, is disappointingly underpowered and slapdash.

This is subtle, unshowy film-making that is entirely in the service of the screenplay and the performances – and what performances.

The sickening facts of the case are presented with a respectful restraint but it’s impossible to watch this and not feel a cold, hard rage on behalf of the victims.

As an account of a notable moment in French legal history, it’s undeniably compelling stuff.

The teasing, tricky structure adds intrigue to a fairly rudimentary horror premise and the cinematography – actor Giovanni Ribisi steps behind the camera as the DOP – is suitably strident, with reds and yellows screaming from the screen.

This impressive first feature from Indian director Shuchi Talati burrows into the skin of its high-achieving, ambitious central character.

The vampire genre is, like its toothy protagonists, notoriously difficult to kill outright, but this flat and uninspired film could be a nail in its coffin.

One of the aspects that makes this an unexpectedly satisfying piece of storytelling (aside from the obvious improvements in the joke quality) is the way that the film digs into the structure of Autobot society.

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.

Leaning heavily on a wealth of breathtaking slow-motion surf footage, Stephanie Johnes’s crowd-pleasing documentary tracks Gabeira’s triumph over industry sexism and a catastrophic wipeout that nearly cost her career and her life. Stirring stuff.

There are a lot of ideas churning around in this intriguing but scattershot picture, which veers into the surreal and macabre in its quest to explore themes of identity, authenticity and the nature of beauty. Not all of it lands successfully, particularly in the increasingly agitated and fragmented second half.

While the title seems to promise a dual focus and fresh blood in the form of Gaga’s Lee Quinzel, in practice, she is very much a secondary character who earns next to no screen time on her own and suffers from thin writing and cursory characterisation. It’s a testament to Gaga’s weapons-grade charisma and star quality that despite all this, Lee’s scenes are electrifying and she lands every last line like a punch.

The Substance not only offers a female perspective on women’s bodies, but also argues that things only start to get properly messy once fertility is a dim memory.

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

For all its big-hitting visual ambition, philosophical window dressing and pick-and-mix literary references, this is a work of screaming emptiness.

It’s a fun, silly premise, but while there’s no shortage of stoner humour, the film is deeper and considerably more satisfying than the drug-baked adolescent wisecracking might initially suggest.

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.

A film that erases itself so thoroughly from your memory, it’s almost as if Pitt and Clooney had performed one of their bespoke clean-up services on your brain.

This kind of horror storytelling is only as successful as its final act. And, unfortunately, Never Let Go drops the ball, along with the bloodstained machete, just when it should be ramping up the tension.

Grief and tragedy naturally co-exist with gentle comedy; and Adalsteins leans into both the eccentricity and philosophical density of the source material, with the village itself serving as a somewhat enigmatic narrator.

Perhaps more radical than the censor-bating, though, is the fact that My Favourite Cake trains its lens on lonely, ordinary older people – a demographic all too frequently invisible to film-makers the world over. A rare delight.

It’s affecting enough, with both Harris and Stevenson capturing the wrenching, protracted grief of not knowing, but I found myself wishing that the film had maintained a sense of mystery rather than dumping a chunk of inelegant exposition at the end.

Flashbacks to Mariam’s technicolour youth in 1969 Karachi are gorgeously realised, and the design department (in particular wardrobe) gets to revel in an eye-popping kaleidoscope of primary hues.

Despite reported reshoots and a fresh edit after the film’s coolly received premiere last year, its sour spirit and a cluttered, clumsy third act remain a problem.

Not surprisingly given Kuras’s background as a cinematographer, Lee is largely visually driven.

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

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

Films about dementia don’t tend to figure on audience’s good time viewing lists, but Familiar Touch is rather special – it shows the ravages of the disease but maintains the dignity of the sufferer.

Realistically, it was never going to match the instant cult appeal of the original, but it has a lot of fun trying.

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.

Familiarity doesn’t lessen the impact of this excellent documentary by Peter Middleton, directing solo here, having previously collaborated with James Spinney on the acclaimed Notes on Blindness.

The film runs out of momentum, finding itself ensnared in a needlessly complicated web of intrigue and administrative shenanigans.

Law is phenomenal – a petulant, powerful and vengeful man who has the court balanced on the knife-edge of his mercurial favour. Vikander is magnetic as Katherine, but, as with the depiction of Josephine (played by Vanessa Kirby) in Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, the screenplay creates a strong woman of today rather than a credible figure from history.

Plante’s measured pacing and cool, dispassionate storytelling burrow into the skin of the character. It’s not a comfortable place in which to spend time.

April is a formidable, defiantly esoteric work. It demands considerable investment from the audience, but does repay it.

And Their Children After Them is a big, sweeping melodrama which, although undeniably cinematic, struggles to sustain audience engagement throughout its overly generous running time.

Seedily handsome cinematography captures a city full of secrets and simmering violence.

It’s powerful and profoundly moving stuff.

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.

It’s clearly a passion project for Page, so why then does his performance feel so lifeless and inert?

This is a devilishly handsome old-school tale of treachery and intrigue that zips through its nearly three hours in a blur of swordplay, glorious costumes and prosthetic rubber facial disguises.

A film of two halves, Cloud’s excessive, bullet-strafed second section is more effective than the restrained and sluggish first part. The themes it explores are uncomfortably of the moment.

Plotwise, the film is a little ragged, particularly in the third act, but star Eddie Peng is impressive.

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.

This is a film that is precision-engineered to hit the commercial sweet spot between extreme-sports mountain-climbing adventure docs such as Free Solo, The Alpinist and Touching the Void and feelgood tales of overcoming adversity. And as such, it works.

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.

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.

For a film that dips its Manolo-clad toe into the murky waters of domestic abuse, it’s unexpectedly aspirational, almost frothy in tone. But perhaps that’s the point the film is labouring: spousal violence in a relationship is rarely broadcast to the wider world.

It should be pulpy fun powered by car chases and zippy repartee, but The Instigators is a dispiriting and predictable drag of a movie.

The effects are so shoddy, you wonder if the entire post-production budget was blown on fine-tuning Cate Blanchett’s cheekbones. It’s so incoherent, you half expect to see the notorious director Uwe Boll’s name on the credits.

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.

The dance is the picture’s climax, a glimpse of joy and optimism. But the film’s coda, shot three years later, shows the cost of prolonged separation. Hope is a spark that can be easily extinguished.

[A] fascinating, chilling film.

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.

Enthusiastic mugging and gurning from the cast can’t hide a feeble, flailing screenplay that clings to its single idea like a lifebelt.

While Alien: Romulus leans into the grislier elements of its horror heritage – at the expense of much in the way of deeper story development – it fails to assert itself as a particularly distinctive addition to the series, formally, tonally or thematically.

Sirocco And The Kingdom Of The Air Streams is a beguiling and surreal story of sisterhood and survival.

Set in the murkily atmospheric underworld of 1980s Hong Kong, wildly entertaining, eye-poppingly violent triad martial arts flick is an old-school throwback to the action cinema heyday of the territory.

About Dry Grasses tiptoes around the edge of being suffocatingly verbose, and there are scenes that could stand a tighter edit. Still, the meaty, novelistic writing and exceptional quality of the performances make for a rich and engrossing viewing experience.

To call it horror seems reductive. With its shapeshifting disquiet, I Saw the TV Glow is too languidly weird, too unmoored from genre conventions to be neatly categorised. But there’s not a frame in Jane Schoenbrun’s suffocating second feature that isn’t drenched in dread and unease.

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.

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

Roquet’s intimately textured filmmaking captures not just the hot and cold currents of sentiment between the girls, but how all-consuming and all-important it feels to the sheltered Nora.

What is particularly striking, however, uniting most critics so far, is how elegantly the film flows; there is a curious, intuitive logic weaving together these randomly chosen scenes and clips. It’s an outstanding achievement.

There’s an unexpected elegance to this window into unimaginable evil.

Part of the problem is that while Johansson is deliciously minxy and manipulative as Kelly, the usually likable Tatum has all the charisma of a carpet tile in this clenched-jawed, buttoned-up role.

Despicable Me 4 may not reinvent the wheel (even if it does soup up a wheelchair with monster-truck-sized tyres at one point). What it does deliver is a brisk, fan-friendly romp which may be a little thin on actual plot but is stuffed to the gills with jokes.

It’s an enjoyably grisly good time – a film that puts both power tools and Pomeranians to gleefully suspenseful use.

Frauke Finsterwalder’s take on the Empress is a lavish production favouring an accessibly middlebrow, at times almost soapy, approach.

This Quebecois romantic comedy is as sharp and perceptive as it is funny.

Now in his 60s – not quite old enough to be a US presidential candidate but not far off – the actor lacks some of the hunger and aggression that ignited his career in the 80s, but he remains a uniquely magnetic performer. And somehow he manages to bring a degree of freshness to material that was stale several decades ago.

Weighty themes are handled with a refreshing lightness of touch.

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

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

Gore addicts will be sated – the prosthetics and makeup are robustly grisly – but the story feels rather too glib and predictable to be fully satisfying.

This adaptation of A.F. Harrold’s 2014 children’s book is an appealing, emotionally engaging fantasy; the art direction is intricate and exquisite.

It’s impossible to endure all this – the film is sporadically funny but it’s also emotionally arid, mannered, and overlong – without making a link between the power plays on screen and Lanthimos’s approach as a film-maker.

It’s not uninvolving. The picture takes its own sweet time getting going, but a satisfying momentum builds through the multiple, interlinked storylines.

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

While Fancy Dance has a tendency to labour its points a little too emphatically, Gladstone and Deroy-Olson are both phenomenal; their connection, played out in shared glances and urgent wordless messages, is palpable, persuasive and vital.

It’s a little rough around the edges but there’s no denying the film’s unflinching potency.

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.

It’s a supremely accomplished work.

Like its subject, the film is not particularly revolutionary or groundbreaking in its approach. But again, like its subject, it is a work of unmistakable quality and class.

Something in the Water is competently filmed, with lots of propulsive underwater shark’s eye shots of the flailing legs of the bridesmaids. But there’s rather too much time spent watching the girls bobbing and bickering in the middle of the ocean as they wait for the next assault from the circling fish.

Despite Crowe’s commitment to going balls-out nutso in the role, the film unravels, a casualty of slap-dash plotting, lazy directing and a reliance on tired Catholic horror tropes.

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.

Ultimately, as Agniia Galdanova’s remarkable observational documentary shows, Gena is her own extraordinary creation.

It’s a quietly profound film, one that encourages appreciation of the world through exultant widescreen landscape shots, macro close-ups and textured field recordings of skittering bugs and crunching ice. It also preaches acceptance of the inevitable cycles of nature – cycles that we, as humans, should learn to embrace rather than fight against.

There is a bruising authenticity to the picture that comes, in no small part, from a lengthy and meticulous casting process.

Ultimately, it’s a bit of a mess, but it has luridly entertaining moments nonetheless.

Hit Man takes Powell’s amiable, supporting actor appeal (Top Gun: Maverick) and hones it to a star quality of such laser-beam intensity, you start to fear for your eyesight. It breathes fresh life into the played-out hitman genre – and contains what may be one of the top five winks in movie history.

It’s a terrific feature debut from British-Indian documentary filmmaker Sandhya Suri – a propulsive neo-noir that holds up a mirror to contemporary India.

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

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

Catching Fire is more concerned with the mercurial essence of its subject than it is with the nuts and bolts of her life. We learn little, for example, about her family background.

F is an engaging kid-pleaser that celebrates the power of imagination and suggests that the key to overcoming the tough times might have been lurking in our minds all along.

The character of Magalie is so enraging that you would chuck yourself into the Aegean Sea rather than spend two weeks in her company.

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

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.

The accomplished third film from Emanuel Parvu, Three Kilometers To The End Of The World is a disaster unfolding in slow motion. Superbly acted and deliberately paced, the film is a compulsive account of the shattering of a family, and of a life changed forever.

The feisty restlessness of Agathe Riedinger’s impressive feature debut belies the profound sadness of its central theme – that for many young women, beauty and pain are one and the same.

Carmoon’s depiction of trauma, grief and mental health in crisis as a kind of putrid, repellent stench that clings to the skin, stings the eyeballs and turns the stomach makes for a queasily insalubrious viewing experience. Hoard is a film I admire, but struggle to like.

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.

While the film lacks the bravura flourishes that characterised Powell and Pressburger at their peak, it’s an engrossing celebration of two of British cinema’s most distinctive voices, and their creative harmony.