Maybe Lord and Miller knew what they were doing when they went for such a bright and breezy tone. They've crafted a sci-fi epic which is more than two-and-a-half hours long, and which is a one-man show for much of that time. They have filled it not with action, but with mind-stretching concepts, painstaking laboratory research and knotty technical puzzles. To do all that and keep things zippily entertaining throughout is an extraordinary achievement.

At times it's as if the film itself was stitched together from the parts of other movies, but collecting all those bits and pieces is a sign of Gyllenhaal's huge scope and ambition.

It's undoubtedly true that with its highly privileged social milieu and chic interiors, At the Sea could be caricatured as another "rich people have problems too" drama. But the depth of feeling in Adams' characterisation of Laura taps into something much more universal.

Starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, Emerald Fennell's new take on the classic romance is far from faithful to the original book – but it is "utterly absorbing" in its own right.

The strange thing is that, while the first Avatar seemed exhilaratingly futuristic, the third film seems like a relic of an earlier era.

Marty Supreme has such scope, ambition and humour that its flaws, as with those off-screen Timmy exploits, are easy to overlook.

It's true that many viewers have already fallen under its spell, but Zhao and O'Farrell have stripped away so much of what makes the novel magical – the time-travelling structure, the hypnotic prose rhythms, the internal monologues and the tiny, tangible details – that what's left is no more profound or authentic than any other costume drama set in ye olde days.

This film is as slick and shiny as Glinda's lip gloss, but it may also be just what its many fans want.

The Lost Bus doesn't have to bludgeon viewers with a message or with its timely resonance. Greengrass lets us feel it.

American society, in all its strengths and missteps, has been a major theme for both Pynchon and Anderson, and it grounds Anderson's dazzler of a film, giving it an emphatic, unmistakable political charge.

No other film this year will get more people talking, or more people crying.

With its Gothic atmosphere and deeper themes, Wake Up Dead Man has a darker tone than the previous Knives Out films. Yet it is also the funniest and most playful so far.

For now, Sweeney's celebrity still overshadows her acting.

More riveting than most thrillers, and more terrifying than most horror films.

It's touching to see this icon of athleticism and positivity in a melancholy film which asks whether training for a championship is really worth the effort.

No Other Choice isn't just Park's funniest film, but his most humane, too – and that's quite something for a comedy as violent as this one.

It's refreshing to see a grown-up Hollywood film that takes on contemporary issues: feminism, cancel culture, identity politics, and the generation gap. But After the Hunt is more of an admirable project than an engaging drama, because it never stops reminding you of how clever it wants to be.

Throughout, Colman and Cumberbatch's performances make the dialogue much funnier than it sounds in print.

The best superhero movies let you ignore how ludicrous the plots are, but the silliness of The Fantastic Four is always in your face.

The first in DC's new cinematic universe starring David Corenswet is "glib and flimsy". Comic fans will love it, but this curio feels like "an eccentric sci-fi B-movie".

If you can't improve on Spielberg – and really, when it comes to this kind of film, who can? – better to try something bold to prevent any waning dino-interest.

This comedy gem features some of [Chaplin's] funniest scenes, including him eating his boot.

But it takes on a quieter, more psychological tone and becomes infinitely better when Fiennes arrives.

Formula One enthusiasts may disagree, and they may be delighted that their beloved motorsport has been put on the big screen in such a laudatory fashion. Everyone else: this is not where you want to be.

Moving on from its cynical beginning, Materialists takes the long way around to an ending that is decidedly hopeful. It offers an unblinkered, earned romanticism that suits this moment, and bolsters Song's reputation as one of our most astute observers of relationships.

Mountainhead may seem to be an argument for fast-turnaround films, but few writers and directors could do it with Armstrong's sharp eye and intelligence, as he entertains us with these heartless, all-too-convincing megalomaniacs.

Set in the military dictatorship of 1970s Brazil, this buzzy crime drama, which has premiered in Cannes, "makes up in pulpy excitement what it lacks in subtlety", and "bursts with sex, shoot-outs and sleazy hitmen".

Mescal and O'Connor are nuanced and charismatic, and it's amazing that an Irish actor and English actor should play these most American of roles so flawlessly, but The History of Sound doesn't probe beneath the attractive surface of its star-crossed lovers.

It Was Just an Accident is a taut and twisting revenge thriller loaded with heavyweight ethical quandaries. It is heartbreakingly explicit about what the well-drawn characters have suffered, but it asks whether they can ever be justified in using the same methods – abduction, torture – as their oppressors.

A disorientating, maddening whirlwind of haunting sights, thunderous music and fiercely intense performances, Alpha confirms that Ducournau is a visionary artist. But once you've recovered from the brain-bashing experience of watching her latest film, it comes to seem a lot less satisfying and stimulating than Titane was.

It's good fun, but unless your tolerance for the director's idiosyncrasies is stratospherically high, the chances are that the story will seem too random for you to care about by the halfway point.

Ramsay's film-making flair lights up scene after scene, but as the narrative fragments, and reality and fantasy blur, you're left with the urge to read the novel to find out what's actually happening. The film may have communicated its heroine's boredom and bewilderment a little too effectively.

Its low-level strangeness jumps to surreal and gory heights – and it keeps going higher until it hits a peak of gonzo high-adrenaline fun that leaves you reeling and breathless. Many viewers will have had enough of the film long before then, but there is something heroic about Aster's uncompromising determination to go his own way.

It's just a shame that the series' farewell had to be so solemn – and so silly.

At both ends of the spectrum, Pugh delivers a performance which would win her awards if it weren't in a superhero film. She delivers her punchlines with expert timing, especially when she is bickering and bantering with Red Guardian. But she can also radiate raw emotion – and all while maintaining a decent Russian accent and cartwheeling through her acrobatic fight scenes. When it comes down to it, that's why Thunderbolts* is so much better than most of Marvel's post-Endgame films. It's not just because it's a rough-edged, big-hearted spy thriller about lovably clueless anti-heroes. It's because it has an actor as charismatic as Pugh at its centre.

Together, Garland's virtuosity and Mendoza's first-hand experience create a masterful technical achievement that is, more important, emotionally harrowing.

The story is cluttered, the tone is muddled, and the pacing is off. Again, that doesn't make the film a disaster. In some ways, the identity crisis is what makes it worth seeing. But this muddled production will be enjoyed more by politics and cinema students than by children who are hoping to be enchanted by Disney magic.

Again and again lines and scenes strain for comic effect, but fail to deliver the goods.

The worst part of the production is the dull screenplay by Jeff Nathanson, which has Mufasa plodding through Africa, bumping into various members of the supporting cast, and having tedious soul-searching conversations that sound like therapy sessions.

Chalamet gives Dylan a defiant look in his eyes and through these later scenes creates a visceral sense of his restlessness, of how important it is for him to break free of the public assumptions about him, both musically and as the spokesman of a generation. You can finally feel an energy that can't be restrained and that should have been in the film all along.

As Eggers proceeds steadily and methodically through the events in Murnau's masterpiece, you may admire the intelligence and painstaking craft that has gone into it, but you may also have the feeling that you're watching actors playing time-honoured roles rather than real people in mortal danger. Horror fans needn't worry, though: Nosferatu has its share of gruesome shocks.

Despite all this Moana moaning, though, it's still a high-quality piece of work: a hurtling Disneyland rollercoaster ride that small children, especially, are bound to enjoy. The irony is that if it had been a television series, viewers might well have gushed about how spectacular it was. But as a film, Moana 2 wouldn't be near the top of any list of Disney's finest.

As it is, I have a strong suspicion that Wicked will work much better as the first part of a double bill, with Wicked Part 2 being shown after an interval. But we'll have to wait another year to know for sure.

Under its crowd-pleasing surface, though, the film's theme of political power, of who wields it and how, is strong and purposeful, even if Scott cagily weaves it into the colourful show.

Paddington in Peru offers a fun and lively hour-and-three-quarters in the cinema, and that's not to be sniffed at, but it comes across as the solid third part of an established franchise rather than a stellar pop-cultural phenomenon in its own right

The film is interesting and informative, but all those bomb blasts don't leave you as shaken as they should.

On Swift Horses isn't a disaster, but given its stars and potential, it is a disappointment.

Coppola depicts their lives with sympathy but also with clear-eyed honesty about the dreams they never achieved and the youth that's impossible to reclaim.

The Room Next Door isn't a weighty philosophical work – as mature as it is, it still has glimmers of cheeky humour and campy melodrama. But it develops into a sweetly heartfelt reflection on ageing, dying, and whether or not it's healthy to find joy in the most desperate of circumstances.

Leigh's strategy of taking us into his characters' world without prelude or explanation, letting the revelations and backstory waft out, help make his films feel authentic. He seems to have a magical ability to make the everyday captivating to watch

Depending on how you look at it, this demythologising exercise is either daring or it's irritatingly smug, but it's definitely not much fun. Phillips seems to be saying that if you fell for Fleck's Messianic self-image the last time around, then the joke's on you.

Craig's soul-baring, skin-baring turn aside, Queer is a proudly artificial curio.

This laidback crime caper doesn't have a great deal more to offer, but there is something to be said for seeing the pals from Ocean's Eleven on the same screen again.

The Order is a sombre, steadily paced, conventional drama. It's superbly acted by its charismatic cast, the locations and the period are evoked beautifully, and, best of all, the violent robberies and shoot-outs are staged with a nerve-jangling ferocity that recalls Michael Mann's Heat. But it isn't quite as gripping as the events deserve.

The lurching rhythm of their relationship keeps you on edge, but it's also moving to see how tearful and confused Romy can be, and it's darkly funny to see how she bluffs her way through her double life. Ultimately, though, Babygirl comes to seem genuinely romantic, because Romy and Samuel are fumbling their way towards a deeper understanding of each other. As uncomfortable as the film may be, it's clear that Reijn loves and respects her damaged characters, even if they're not sure of how they feel about themselves.

Throughout the film, various people draw a distinction between "Maria" the woman and "La Callas" the superhuman diva. Its title notwithstanding, Maria is definitely about "La Callas".

The nicest surprise is that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is that rare thing, a big-budget comedy which is actually funny. The screenplay by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar is packed with knock-out punchlines, and Burton's visual gags manage to be hilarious even while pushing the boundaries of how eccentric and macabre a Hollywood blockbuster can be.

As cluttered as it is, though, Blink Twice is stylish and savage enough to gain a cult following. And it is undoubtedly the work of a skilled writer-director, rather than an actor who is having a go at directing.

Bloated by two or three elements too many, it isn't a "perfect organism", to use the phrase coined by Ian Holm's android character in Alien, but it's as close to perfect as any entry in the series since Aliens in 1986.

The fights are about as sophisticated as watching kids in a playground, and they rely heavily on slow motion, as if that will instantly create tension.

It is a small movie with steep odds against it, but it is also extraordinarily accomplished.

Twisters isn't bad, but a braver film might have admitted that addressing the causes of extreme weather might be more useful than throwing nappies at it.

As an emotional journey Day One has its moments. For a supposedly scary movie, it's a little bit sloppy.

Directed by Kelsey Mann, Inside Out 2 glimmers with diamond-hard truths about the complex business of being a human being – especially a teenage human being – but it's still a fast-paced and playful comedy adventure with even more jokes and more puns than Inside Out.

The film is fun enough in its chaotic, grungy, rough and ready way. It may not propel Smith back to the top of the A-list, but it proves that he can get through a B-movie. At this stage in his career, that counts as a win.

Anora fizzes with energy and laugh-out-loud moments, but it isn't recommended for anyone with high blood pressure. It builds into the kind of hectic farce in which not just one person is stressed: everyone is stressed.

It is universal and emotional enough to hypnotise anyone who has been alone in a city, or been spellbound by a film on the subject.

For some viewers, this frenzied finale will be reason enough to treasure The Substance; for others, it will be reason enough to steer well clear. But no one who sees Fargeat's film will forget it. If she had taken it to its magnificently tasteless extreme 15 or 20 minutes sooner, it would have been a cult classic.

They're all beautifully performed, and they all sparkle with Lanthimos's deadpan genius: in his world, everything is just off-kilter enough to be funny, but just real enough to be horrifying.

Anyone fascinated by artistic follies will take an academic interest in its excesses, and it's certainly loopy enough to build a cult following. But this pretentious, portentous curio will test the patience of everyone else.

With all due respect to Miller's bonkers vision, and his incredible ability to put that vision on screen, Furiosa seems like one of those spin-off graphic novels that plug the gaps between two films in a franchise, but which don't quite match up to the films themselves.

Behind the impressive CGI, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the definition of generic, all two hours and 25 minutes of it. The ending teases a sequel that offers a more intriguing conflict ahead, but that doesn't help us now.

The actors keep the film going, at times by sheer magnetic on-screen presence even when the screenplay lets them down.

Some films can re-energise a genre, like last year's huge hit Godzilla Minus One . . . Godzilla x Kong is the opposite, a dazzling visual accomplishment that already feels old.

Like the first Road House, it's a guilty pleasure, but it's not as pleasurable as it should be.

While not the most exhilarating 80 minutes, this is a movie that will find much identification with anyone whose teenage years were remotely angst ridden, with Hausner capturing the simmering tensions of suburban life with assured ease.

Parts of Dune: Part 2 seem just as monumental, lavishly bizarre and downright disturbing as anything that Jodorowsky and Giger can have had in mind.

The one Vaughn trademark that Argylle is lacking is the director's usual adolescent offensiveness. He's taken out all the sex, gore and swearing, which may be a sign of belated maturity, but which leaves Argylle seeming all too close to Ghosted, Shotgun Wedding, Freelance, Murder Mystery, and the other sort-of action, sort-of romance, sort-of comedy films which have been dumped on streaming services over the last couple of years. They're all vapid, anonymous blocks of content, but at least the others offer something vaguely glamorous to slump in front of in your living room when you can't settle on anything more nourishing to watch. Argylle, on the other hand, is being released in cinemas, so the shoddy and derivative nature of the enterprise is harder to forgive.

There is nothing in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom that's fun or thrilling or moving enough to make you wish for any further sequels.

Haigh and his cast, including Paul Mescal as Adam's new lover, give this film about loss, enduring love and hope for the future such truth and poignance that it is easily among the best of the year.

The Color Purple is a big, brash spectacle, an extravaganza blending the styles of Broadway musicals, Hollywood studio movies and music videos, with a mix of gospel, pop, blues and ballads, all of that coming together smoothly in one exuberant film.

Nothing exciting happens. There are no challenges to meet, no obstacles to overcome, no Death Stars to destroy.

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget doesn't just reach the standards of its high-flying predecessor, but it soars above them.

The Iron Claw's shallowness and eventual treacliness are especially disappointing.

Overall, then, Wonka seems to be straining every sinew to be the best possible family entertainment at cinemas this Christmas.

Esmail's adaptation of Rumaan Alam's 2020 novel adds a playful Hitchcockian spin and the starry cast of Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke and Mahershala Ali to create a psychological thriller about family, technology and life in the 21st Century.

It feels like a tantalising trailer for the longer and presumably richer and deeper film that is still to come.

This absorbing film is likely to stay with you. It's a compliment to say that you may walk away with the off-kilter feeling that you have been in another person's dream the whole time.

Branagh has done a sterling job, full of energy and colour, and although some of them might balk at his modern interpretation of the story, his Magic Flute will no doubt attract aficionados, if not the popcorn crowd.

Foe plays to the strengths of its actors, two of the most natural and subtle on screen, and is endlessly engaging even though it eventually stumbles into head-spinning narrative problems.

If you see it as a lurid pulp fantasy rather than a penetrating satire, then Saltburn is deliriously enjoyable. It's the dialogue and the performances that clinch it.

And so it is that a film that was shaping up to be an intelligent and respectful homage to The Exorcist descends to the depths of a cheesy, straight-to-streaming rip-off. Viewers should do what Victor advises, and leave.

There is no denying that The Creator is a major new sci-fi adventure. If you're partial to such things, Edwards' ambitious, immersive film should prompt the intoxicating awe that you might have got from The Matrix and Avatar – the feeling that you're seeing a rich vision of the future unlike any that has been on the big screen before.

It's such an entertaining film that it's easy to overlook the fact that the comedy only works because it depicts structural racism in such an exaggerated black-and-white manner.

While Pain Hustlers is a perfectly fine title, the film probably should have been called Liza Drake, the name of the sales rep played by Emily Blunt, who single-handedly almost saves this tone-deaf drama from itself.

Waititi's winning, winsome film is his most accessible and mainstream movie to date, Marvel aside, one that successfully mixes in funny jokes with zeitgeisty social commentary.

The war scenes speak loudly on their own, with no need to add dramatic emphasis. Alexandre Desplat's score matches that style, with a subtle, piercing beauty. If the first half of Lee had been as dazzlingly effective as the second, it might have been a great film instead of a very good one.

It is funny, irreverent and crowd-pleasing, with a kaleidoscope of likeable characters and actors. Director Craig Gillespie (Cruella and I, Tonya) has turned a saga that ended up before a Congressional finance committee into a breezy entertainment.