Bad Luck Banging may appear to be deeply cynical of human nature, but in fact its real targets are the flimsy discourses that we build to obscure and justify our baser urges, couched in illusions of history and morality.

The First Wave stands as an honest, hard-hitting and compassionate reminder of loving thy neighbour wherever and whoever they may be.

Drive My Car is not most films, its story told in minute, passing details that cannot help but grip the attention to the point that the emotional tension and catharsis feel so effortless that hours seem to pass in an instant. That very little happens in the way of narrative action speaks to how brilliantly Hamaguchi harnesses the emotions of his characters into compelling drama.

Striking visual metaphors may be as blunt as stakes in the hard ground, as brutal as rusty, bloodied blades or as free-flowing and poetic as waterways and the wind through tall blades of grass, but Campion’s direction is measured, patient and captivating.

In the cyclical, ethereal narrative of this inventive, tender story of love and loss, one of the finest filmmakers of our time spins a spellbinding magical web.

Natural Light illuminates the fading glow of humanity amidst horror.

Eternals should be commended for the positive creative decisions it has taken and in allowing at least some of Zhao’s directorial vision to creep in. For all its flaws, it is far from the worst entry in the MCU, but it is, perhaps, the first of Marvel’s films to be less than the sum of its parts.

Exploring the powerlessness an exasperated Diana (Kristen Stewart) must confront when faced with Windsor tradition, expectation and hypocrisy, a single weekend in the country is the epicentre of a far broader story, the shockwaves of which ripple through space, time, mind and soul.

Conceptually, Azor, is brilliant and its dreamlike editing that joins one meeting to the next with little connective tissue is often intriguing. But as a viewing experience, it is roundly obtuse with a repetitious, meandering narrative.

Only the Animals remains a highly satisfying and gripping thriller that, like the best of them, finds the time to properly contemplate the depths of its dominoes as they are arranged before the capricious hand of chance gleefully knocks them down, one by one.

Corbine Jr.’s debut is a lean, disconcerting and impressively shot character study. Hovering on a glimmering knife edge, there are flashes of brilliance here.

Constructed with his trademark panache, it is bold, bracing and stylish in both its aesthetics and an outstanding retro soundtrack, but as its parallel leading ladies will discover to their peril, not all that glitters is gold.

Though its 60s-inspired, Gilliam-esque animation style is certainly awkward enough to draw the notice of the arthouse and indie crowds, Cryptozoo’s storytelling and themes fail to come up to the complexity of even a middling Pixar effort.

Grander in scope than any of Villeneuve’s work yet, Dune is proper, ambitious blockbuster filmmaking for grown-ups.

As fuzzy and reassuring as a multi-coloured Pringle sweater-vest, The Phantom of the Open is a good, old-fashioned crowd-pleaser.

While Duarte and Stockler’s deeply-felt turns anchor the film from drifting into simplistic sentimentality, Hélène Louvart’s sumptuous cinematography elevates the script’s high-flung emotion with spaces that are often dreamlike; light is tangible like a haze, colours deep and tactile, and characters are glimpsed and doubled through screens, glass and mirrors, and Benedikt Schiefer’s classical score tenderly fills out and gives detail to the broader emotional brushstrokes.

The haunting supernatural forces at work in Never Gonna Snow Again are elusive, inexplicable and yet perfectly in sync with reality.

Luzzu is a slender, rather bleak but tough, rough-cut little jewel that deserves your time and attention.

Following in the footsteps of legendary documentary Paris Is Burning, Pier Kids is a poignant and chaotic study of the community of young black gay men and trans women who congregate at the piers of Hudson River Park, New York City.

Actor Daniel Brühl makes his directorial debut with this delightfully taut, blackly comic satire.

The horror in Knocking isn’t supernatural or down to mental illness: it’s societal. The clever switch in perspective leaves a haunting impression and makes Kempff’s segue into fiction a triumph.

Balloon never uses its characters as proxies for political discussion; Tseden’s concern is firmly with his characters as human beings. His method is rooted in realism, favouring intimate, often handheld camera work whose immediacy is juxtaposed against often stunningly beautiful compositions and dreamlike landscapes.

It will keep you guessing, thoroughly entertained and engaged for the best part of three hours.

The footage of Leclerc ascending sheer, near-featureless sheets of rock is so defiant of physics that it is easy to forget just how mind-bogglingly dangerous it is.

The Lost Leonardo is about obsession, ego, power and greed. For almost all of the film’s characters, Salvator Mundi represents nothing more than opportunity.

Visually arresting and well-acted, Dogs shows promise but one would have hoped for some new tricks.

The film uses the Troubles and Brexit to frame its understanding of the past and the present. Brady suggests a liminal psychological space – much like the liminal political space that Brexit created – through which Lauren and Kelly’s traumas move and, perhaps, can be understood.

The Vatican using VR technology to seek out victims of the demonically possessed is an intriguing and weirdly logical progression for the 21st century (move over exorcists, now we have techxorcists), but what generally lets the movie down is its bland dialogue, bland casting, and routine approach to frights.

Sono throws everything at the screen – samurai battles, shootouts, Cage shouting and threatening to karate chops the locals – but it rarely provides anything but the sense you’re watching bizarre performance art in place of a good film.

No Man of God sets out to demystify serial killers and achieves its aim.

Hit the Road is damned near to being a masterpiece – if it isn’t simply one already. There are scenes of broad comedy, musical sequences and a wholly tragic episode that plays out in a long wide-shot. The wonderful cast inhabit their roles so fully it’s hard to believe this is not a bona fide family.

For Law and Coon, their performances elevate an already sharp script on class dissection, marriage and aspiration. Both actors demonstrate their capabilities on-screen with a beguiling edge, making events utterly watchable and tense.

A film that is chock full of insight, piercing ideas and visual metaphors that unfortunately are never fully realised.

Pig offers something strangely tender and even sometimes lyrical, wrapped up in the trappings of a noirish thriller that is as much a satire on the meaning of value and social status as it is a straightforward revenge film.

An ambitious, clever, and inventive psychogenic fugue, Censor is rough around the edges and shot on a shoestring, sure, however Bailey-Bond has compelling and vital comments to make on art, media consumption, politics, and society.

Capturing Neumann’s fall from grace, this film illuminates some of the most hard-hitting professional and social anxieties of our age.

Depicting a fictional uprising in an unnamed Mexican city, New Order ably depicts the terror, confusion and violence of political revolution, but stops short of offering meaningful context.

The magical realms of Justino’s stories are echoed in the real world, where spaces are enclosed but liminal, defined by uneasy boundaries that are easily breached.

There’s no revolutionary moment of success in which the meanies are ousted and hip-hop declared godly. Music is like education in this: it’s all about the movement, not the destination.

Kurzel is a master at building tension of a tragedy foretold.

Andrésen became an overnight worldwide sensation and, through the lens of documentarians Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri, an object lesson in the exploitation of children by the entertainment industry.

Sharrock’s resistance to easy answers or an easy way out is in-keeping with a tale in which the arbitrary flick of a pen, a stamp on a letter, can change someone’s life irrevocably – and yet may never come.

With Old, Shyamalan appears to have embraced a devil-may-care attitude fitting for a filmmaker known to astound and dismay audiences in equal measure. Whisper it quietly, but it may be his best work in over a decade.

In Abigail’s longing to see beyond the high valley walls with the kind of scope of an atlas gifted to her by Tallie, The World to Come envisages a future reality not yet visible over the horizon, but shown as the slightest glimmer of light.

Nowhere Special is driven by the primal emotion of its child-parent dynamic and moving performances from both its leads, while the theme of social class resonates throughout.

Iran is a complex and bureaucratic country, but it is also the role of social media and so-called ‘fake news’ that lend A Hero a contemporary relevance, even as it feels like an ancient morality tale.

Most importantly, Red Rocket is a humane comedy, a portrait of romantic douchebaggery and an America of flailing last chances.

The result is predictably crackpot and enigmatic.

The movie is a gas. It moves with, well, dispatch, clattering along in its own eccentric way.

Of the many problems the film has, it’s the different plots that never quite bounce off each other.

The performances are pitch perfect, particularly that of Marceau, who is superb in riding through the conflicts of the situation and the moments when the strong emotions riding over the niceties finally come to the fore.

After Yang is a moving, subtle and grounded piece of science fiction that doesn’t necessarily get to the core, but certainly hits the heart.

The two-part The Souvenir can be seen very much as one whole, and as such is one of the very best achievements in recent British cinema.

The delight is in the audacity and surprise of the film.

Broomfield’s triumph is in reimagining Biggie and Tupac’s murders out of their mythology and into a new context in which they are emblematic of a social malaise characterised by toxic masculinity, misogyny, racism, and police corruption.

There is a wealth of real humanity underneath The Truffle Hunters‘ polished surface; in key moments, the film’s high aesthetics fade away to reveal unvarnished, understated pathos.

The film’s strongest element and most necessary comes with Luca Marinelli’s performance.

Made with defiant conviction, this is a fearless, unflinching, but above all compassionate piece of documentary filmmaking that cares deeply about the people whose plight it tells. Enough is enough, it is time for change.

It doesn’t hit the heights of former collaborations, but there’s a lot to drink in and appreciate here, and Mikkelsen’s all-dancing finale is one of the most exultant, triumphant moments in recent cinema memory.

Structured in parts like a thriller, Sweat is truly most successful as a character study, while its representation of social media gives rise to a nuanced understanding of contemporary anxieties over isolation and intimacy.

Full to the brim with sharp wit, emotional sincerity and overflowing with love, Supernova sees the star power of Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci align.

A charming, deadpan study of national identities, an idiosyncratic love letter to his home and an unvarnished tribute to life’s universal absurdities.

Provocative, despicably playful, and consistently punishing, stitched into the skin of the writer-director’s latest film are a multitude of issues relating to Covid-19 and the anxieties of lockdown, the fragility of our environment, the brutality and arrogance of mankind, and our inability to recognise or truly understand the power of the natural world, or indeed ourselves.

The film isn’t without hope, but it lifts the lid of an ugly truth and asks the tough questions needed.

Sabaya does not shy away from the horrendous circumstances it finds, exhibiting bitterly raw emotion, fear and heartbreak very frankly.

Shiva Baby is ostensibly a comedy yet has all the tension of a thriller. At its most emotionally fraught, it uses the visual and aural grammar of horror cinema.

Machoian has crafted an intense, moving and bleak portrait of a disintegrating marriage and fractured masculinity.

After Love is a technically proficient, sincere exploration of its thorny, complicated themes and gripping realist drama of the highest order.

It is hard to fully articulate how, but Gunda is as much a damning meditation on the human condition as it is a glowing, thought-provoking portrayal of a mother’s love for her children, a sow’s love for her piglets.

Whishaw is utterly compelling and committed to this performance, and we watch the slow-motion car crash unfurl with mouths often agape, but Surge needs more depth to really leave a lasting mark.

No matter what your allegiance, or feelings of antagonism toward the man for Fergie time and defeats doled out by championship-winning sides year after year, it’s impossible not to admire his dedication to the game he loves and the town that made him who he is.

What we are left with instead is a story of astonishing tenderness; a study of love as a tempering salve to the sublime of history’s passing.

Amid the allusions and collisions, jump scares and very close calls, the thrills and spills of A Quiet Place Part II are elevated by its strong performances and a director with a keen eye for this intelligent genre piece whose broad appeal makes for another sure-fire hit. Take a deep breath, and enjoy.

The extraordinary amount of footage, which moves from monochrome, to grainy colour, to vibrant turquoises as technology and time march on, is really a wonder to behold. If, wherever you are in the world, there’s the opportunity to see Playing with Sharks on the big screen, then you should, to fully experience this eye-opening, vivid documentary.

It seems ridiculous to call a film that is only 73-minutes long an epic, but that is what The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet feels like. Though it should be made clear, by epic there’s nothing grandiose; there is nary a special effect to be seen and hardly a cast of thousands. But at the same time, Argentine filmmaker Ana Katz’s sixth feature encompasses a life and very nearly the end of the world.

This is a good solid three star movie. Which is perhaps where Snyder should be anyway, away from the extremes of deification and vilification. When he’s not trying to be great, he can actually be quite good.

Sound of Metal is an astonishing accomplishment for both its long-nascent director and its British star, Riz Ahmed, for whom his turn as heavy metal drummer Ruben represents a career-best performance.c

An expertly handled plot, interweaving lives, coincidence, past trauma and circumstance, is concerned with far more than mere bloody vengeance. Five years since the delirious oddity that was Men & Chicken, Jensen gets members of the old band back together for a thrilling, poignant film which sees writer-director and cast on top form.

For all its misdirection and confusion, Apples reaches a conclusion of unexpected emotional weight. An intelligent and clear-sighted piece of filmmaking, it is a highly accomplished first directorial outing by Nikou.

Nomadland, with its beautiful simplicity, and wonderful performances, manages to be an elegant, profoundly moving film which shows the real value of living, rather than just surviving.

This western-tinged, visceral Icelandic drama deserves as large an audience as possible.

Behind the closed doors of this lakeside paradise it is clear that there’s trouble afoot.

This film throws toxic male aggression right back at them.

The film undoubtedly delivers, with all the monster thumping and building smashing that we could want, not to mention a not-so-surprise late appearance from a classic adversary.

Its woozy oddity does linger and the process of falling in and out of love may well feel like drowning. But as we come up for air in closing it must be said that the best is surely yet to come from this excellent leading pair and gifted director after this latest underwater outing.

Bryan Fogel’s new documentary painstakingly – and painfully – traces the moments up to and following Khashoggi’s murder.

In the end, Justine is an enjoyable and often charming British film, but a messy third act and unnecessary contrivances leave it lost in the lanes.

Notturno is a snapshot – in a patchwork of disparate vignettes – that captures the effects of trauma inflicted on and hardships lived by the civilian population.

Given its place and time, Ammonite’s coldness is perhaps apt, but its stiff upper lip may well not do enough to make yours quiver, either.

In his astonishingly assured debut feature, French playwright-turned-director Florian Zeller handles the mental decline of an elderly man with sensitivity and insight.

An affectionate labour of love, cathartic yet bitterly honest, Bell and Sng’s films paints the full, unfettered picture.

With a lot of filler and none of the killer questions that are crying out to be asked, The Lost Sons leaves a lot unsaid. Take a step back from the effect of the shocking material, and the by-the-numbers construction of the film makes it too formulaic to leave a lasting impact.

Humbling, awe-inspiring and frequently head-scratching, like a solar system mobile, Kahn’s film has a bewildering number of moving pieces.

The metaphors of colonial history, the subjugation of women and Aboriginal peoples, vicious social ills and a nation’s hidden guilty past are all alluded to. But their treatment in The Legend of Molly Johnson are not developed to the extent needed to leave the lasting gut punch, and change of consciousness, this admirable project could have achieved.