Like Pride Rock itself, this remake seems a spectacle to behold afar, but when you step closer all you can see are its monotonous shades of grey.

After all the awards Varda has received, and the tomes of literature that others have written on her, Varda by Agnès, aptly titled, is a carefree, bold and resounding attempt to self-define and articulate the themes, concerns and intentions of her work.

Aster has concocted a weird mixture of dread, black humour and pathos, conjuring sympathy for the devil in a feverish hallucination.

Vita and Virginia is a remarkably chaste and safe film given its wealthy subject matter.

The film is a compelling, concerning artefact which shows demagoguery in action, without coming across as heavy-handed.

In drawing on a melange of influences, Ho’s film succeeds in using fractured time as way of puzzling together the essential drives that move a city and its inhabitants.

Taking its cues from the cinema of Dario Argento and Italian horror, In Fabric, gives audiences the best British horror film since Don’t Look Now.

Far From Home nails its characters, chemistry and sense of humour, while fumbling the action and visuals.

Apollo 11 exceeds all expectations of a seemingly rudimentary documentary on a well-trodden subject. Sitting at a neat 93 minutes, its balance of wonder towards our scientific achievements, whilst maintaining a present tense format, leaves one feeling you have witnessed it all in a wondrous experience.

While the film rarely approaches the existential gut punch of Toy Story 3’s conclusion, the various answers each of our heroes arrive at are among the most moving of the quartet.

It is dull, cynical and utterly mirthless.

Ultimately, Diego Maradona is about the corrupting influence of exceptionalism – swept into the game and made financially responsible for his family at 15, the arrested development Maradona suffers is writ large and ultimately leads to his downfall.

Serving as nothing more than a guileful show, Tcheng’s approach delivers a catwalk of clips and interviewees that becomes rather long, even in its 105-minute runtime.

The whole affair feels perfectly adequate – nothing more or nothing less. As always, Moore delivers a nuanced portrayal of a middle-aged woman that is as sumptuous to watch as her graceful ageing on screen over decades worth of work.

While not entirely successful, the film’s sense of finality gives the main players space to grow, unhampered by the usual carousel of upcoming sequels and spin-offs.

This is a powerful and beautifully shot film of love and survival.

Too Late to Die Young is Castillo’s remarkable endeavour to relive memories, sensations and lived moments from a time and place she has long since left behind.

Whether one can get on board with such nonsense determines the subjective success or failure of King of the Monsters.

For all its heart and warmth, the desire to offer as many contrasting viewpoints as possible leads to a sense that the biggest elephant in the room isn’t really being dealt with. Support the Girls, ultimately, is a film about an industry built on sexism, that prefers not to dwell too long on the question of sexism itself.

A hugely accomplished debut, and an innovative approach to filmmaking, Cummings will be one to watch for sure.

Efira is a dominant and compelling presence and Sibyl is frequently funny. Ultimately, it never quite squares the circle of the comedy and the pain, but Triet is a sophisticated filmmaker and this – her third feature – is further proof of great talent.

Covino’s brilliant comedy is original and smartly entertaining: a celebration of male friendship in all its ups and downs.

Hawkins smartly keeps the details of Mannings’ leaks – both in their content and the manner of their distribution – to a tight segment at the film’s mid-point. The effect is to create space for the film to explore something altogether messier and contentious – Manning’s identities as a trans woman and a political activist, and the problematic, even dangerous, ways that her private self and public persona relate.

Booksmart has its undeniably crowd-pleasing moments, but it doesn’t stray as far from the status quo of the genre as it possibly could have.

Zombi Child is a stirring and highly peculiar piece of work.

Some actors can play anything, but asking super-posh and glamourous Seydoux to play dirt poor is an ask too far.

It’s just Huppert on autopilot and like that dry white wine, you can have too much of it.

Told respectfully and far from tarring an entire religion with the same brush, Young Ahmed is an exceptionally crafted and intelligent film.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is bold, beautiful and brutal. It’s Tarantino’s best film since Kill Bill, perhaps even since Pulp Fiction.

The editing might be unexpected, unconventional, a bit annoying, but it is also very smart. Creating as it does a vital tension between plot and theme, pushing the two characters unrelentingly towards an event horizon and black hole denouement.

If you’re an admirer of Malick’s poetic investigations into the mysteries of existence, faith and our tragic disconnection to the natural world, A Hidden Life will leave you enraptured and profoundly moved.

Precision, energy, and innovation move the components of John Wick, but the synergy that comes from their singular motion transcends mechanistic clockwork into vital, aesthetic flow.

It doesn’t quite click, is too weird, leads to a lurch from one cinematic style to the other and fails to gel as a satisfying whole. Yet the director’s imaginative intention is apparent in the first shot.

This might not be the film you’re quite expecting from the director of arthouse dramas focused on modern life in Brazil, but it fits right in as a variation and continuation of Mendonça Filho’s pet themes.

This film is not just about Franklin, but also the communities that have inspired, guided and celebrated her music.

The film’s doggedly chronological structure – at odds with its ostensible privileging of psychology over history – sometimes leaves its personal observations feeling superficial.

Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego’s depiction of their native country is compelling, one that weaves its magic to leave a rather impressionably wonderous film.

Drawing from the style of Chinese ink brush paintings, and aided by the rain that pours constantly, the film has a watery, fluid look and texture, each exquisite frame a moving painting.

Sure, Detective Pikachu is messy and predictable, but the fact that director Rob Letterman and his team embrace the inherent absurdity of the Pokémon franchise as a whole means it’s a hoot.

An epic yet deeply relatable human drama, Blue Is the Warmest Colour offers far greater riches than its public notoriety would have you believe.

There are moments in Bel Canto that stretch credibility but the tension never lets up.

Ash Is Purest White’s is an epic spanning decades and vast geography that ultimately gives way to the intimate and personal.

An imagined biography of a fictional pop star, the film is ambitious in its structure but only occasionally flickers into life.

Herzog has a knack for extracting pithy, poetic responses from his subjects, but here he outdoes himself.

This is fan service elevated into an art form, transcending winking self-aggrandisement to become something of a reflection on the past eleven years, a chugging, tooting, spectacular train of a franchise, careering indefinitely forward.

Ultimately, Sorrentino’s sympathies lie with Berlusconi because – in their vacuity and their need to impress – they have something in common.

Dragged Across Concrete is a unique take on ultraviolence in an age whether the production of films is becoming increasingly polarising. Imbued with a particular stand out performance by Gibson breathes life into Zahler’s mature approach to genre filmmaking.

Red Joan is unlikely to appeal to younger audiences and many may find the wartime plot, setting and slow-paced romance old-fashioned, but it will win fans because there is much to admire: The solid acting, Lindsay Shapero’s deft screen adaptation, Zac Nicholson’s evocative cinematography, accompanied by George Fenton’s original score.

The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot is a thoroughly enjoyable and sneakily touching oddity which is entirely worthy of a big screen outing.

In the end, Mid90s is harmless and, at times, funny and charmingly nostalgic. But unless you’ve spent the last 25 years lamenting the loss of VHS, Super Nintendo and Nirvana – or are a manic Katherine Waterston completist – then there’s no real need to see this film.

Wild Rose fits the bill for a British indie, yet apart from Buckley’s radiance it sadly does not offer anything more or less. Comparable to Lady Macbeth and Florence Pugh’s break out performance, this really does feel like the moment the world stands up and recognises Buckley’s talents.

Shazam!’s candy-floss sweetness rarely fails to hit the spot.

Us is a true genre flick, polished to a fine degree, a pure distillation of the essence of horror cinema.

Uncovering the man behind the mask, Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story is a deeply compassionate documentary. Created thanks to the tireless efforts of its filmmakers in sourcing crowdfunding to produce the feature, a communal spirit lingers over the film.

An urgent and moving plea for action against the illegal trade in shark fins and more generally for the conservation of marine life in our rapidly dirtier and emptier oceans.

Chronicling the lives of himself and two friends from teenage years to young adulthood, director Bing Liu has crafted a rich coming-of-age odyssey which is, in turn, illuminating, sobering and ultimately uplifting.

An evocative portrait ... Fiennes utilises a good balance of biography and ballet; emphasising how much Nureyev loved to dance and why, when forced, he chose artistic freedom over love of country.

A super sweet, affecting comedy with a magical premise and a terrific central performance from Larson herself.

Aside from its unremarkable presentation, Ben Is Back’s major hurdle, and the one that it never manages to clear, is that it’s yet another story of a rich, white young man wasting his future.

Accessible to newbies and satisfying to fans, it’s way past time that brilliant performers like Larson were given their time in the spotlight. But Marvel, please, can we sort out the colour?

The Kindergarten Teacher evokes sadness and horror in equal measure, but not always a great deal of understanding.

A symphony of cinema, Ray & Liz possesses an undeniable level of artistic expression on memory. Capturing space and time in a manner that only film can create in every single image there is a deep-rooted emotive quality.

Foxtrot is a cinematic delight with a profound message at its heart and many striking shots that resonate long after the final credits roll.

The script by Cronin and Stephen Shields blends the familiar with the eerie well and never allows silliness to take over. The performances all round are superb and Seána Kerslake creates a credible heroine – a woman on the edge but who is by no means fragile.

Powerfully conveying a longing for escape from ordinary life, Hu Bo’s An Elephant Sitting Still is a strangely alluring, four-hour portrait of the disillusionment and hollow sense of emptiness experienced by those living in a society marked by violent individualism.

In another director’s hands this might all have been a bit of a slog but there is a quiet humor and lightness of touch to Schanelec’s direction and a self-effacing irony to Aistrid’s rambling that saves it from pure maudlinism.

Holland’s film is particularly taken with that old image of the heroic journalist in a deceitful world.

The topic of who can participate in the arts often ignores society’s racial prejudices and class assumptions, thankfully The Plagiarists’ perfectly judged mimicry of independent cinema illustrates the profound effect a lack of diversity has on the type of art that gets made.

Despite a few sentimental missteps and a second-act move away from horror that will upset some hoping for more slashing, Happy Death Day 2U is a fluffy and surprisingly smart, if shallow, tumble through genre tropes.

Moland is telling a tale of paradise lost but Horses is perhaps less remarkable for its plot than it is for its style.

Were it not for these overwrought provocations The Golden Glove could have been Akin’s most accomplished work in years. Aesthetically speaking it remains a marvel.

With God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunya, Mitevska has fashioned yet another bleak satire about Hegemonic masculinity in the Balkans.

Inviting mystery, ambiguity, and a pervasive sense of unease, Ghost Town Anthology is an entrancing yet unsettling allegory that builds like the pressure of an approaching storm that never quite arrives.

Rich with scenes of affection and reconciliation, the most charming thing about Fourteen is the degree to which Sallitt finds a balance between his own brand of independent filmmaking and the kind of French middle-class realism he’s clearly influenced by.

The script, credited to no more than three screenwriters (one of which being Vanessa Davies, who came up with the idea), is predictable and innocuous, yet peppered with comedic moments that are deserving of a chuckle or two, if only for the way they’re played by the talented cast.

Nothing short of an aesthete’s dream, a film crammed with visual bravado that at various times echoes Kubrick, Malick, and Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.

Heineman himself has said he feels an “enormous kinship” with Colvin’s commitment to revealing the human cost of conflict. And that, despite all her personal flaws, is what makes Colvin’s story so profoundly moving.

This is vital filmmaking; Blindspotting is undoubtedly part of a new moment in American cinema and is a fierce, complex satire in it own right.

It may not be what everyone expects from a sequel to The Lego Movie, but in some ways that’s the best thing about The Lego Movie 2. It presents something different, wrapped in a familiar outer core.

Not without flaws, but nothing to get too worked up about, Alita: Battle Angel is cynicism-free, first-class popcorn entertainment spearheaded by a knockout performance from Salazar. A star is born.

Even with admirable acting, and such a crowd-pleasing, inspirational story, Green Book essentially feels like civil-rights lip-service for a white audience, and given the background to the script, it’s a disappointing portrayal of historical systemic racism, whilst ignoring its continuation in modern-day America.

Director Marielle Heller takes viewers on a hilarious tour of New York’s memorabilia dealers, blending a mixture of heist comedy with a sensitive character study of Israel herself: “bitter as a root”, to use her own expression, but not without a certain irascible charm.

Largely uninterested in the humanity of its characters, too often Sigurðsson is content to skewer his subjects without trying to understand them.

As much a repudiation of auteur theory as a tribute to the imperfect process of creation, One Cut of the Dead is a thrilling reminder that of the beautiful, vital lie that is cinema.