Yomeddine is an accomplished appeal for empathy and an entertaining journey of discovery.

Serebrennikov...has a great eye for composition and crafting a set piece, but the meandering pace and loose approach to storytelling makes his second feature akin to an album front loaded with banging tunes and the rest is filler.

Everything seems designed to disturb or perhaps infuriate the viewer.

Husson’s film is first and foremost an appalling account of stomach-churning misogyny and the sickening horrors Kurdish women met at the hands of their vile captors.

Girl is an extraordinarily moving film.

The film’s displays of humour give away to harsher scenes of brutality and intense moments where rural calm is suddenly disrupted by mortar explosions and transformed landscapes dotted with corpses.

Border is a piece of modern gothic, a far out midnight movie which delivers on the WTF-ery while maintaining a surprisingly big and generous heart.

The final moments veer too far towards the melodramatic, especially when the rest of the movie has exhibited a preference for the intellectual powers of argument, logic and reason, however the sense of desperation and accompanying symbolism is tragically potent.

Mitchell’s third film feels like a script that was locked in a drawer after numerous rejections but now can be brought out and pushed through with clout earned from the success of It Follows.

Put simply, the adaptation doesn’t work and the movie is instantly forgettable.

Involving and well made, rather than something flat-out great and essential.

After all is said and done, ‘The House that Lars Built’ is an impressive construction for an obnoxious purpose. In fact, the best criticism comes from Talking Heads and their song Psycho Killer: “You’re talking a lot but you’re not really saying anything.”

Infinity War will likely be first choice for the summer season crowd, but Deadpool 2 wins hands down in terms of personal stakes and visual flair.

Panahi keeps everything as softly spoken as his own onscreen presence and yet some of those quiet observations are devastating.

Birds of Passage is an enthralling, powerful statement and lamentation on the drugs trade’s inevitable encroachment upon on indigenous peoples and how gangsters casually destroyed them.

Ash Is Purest White is a fascinating chapter in Jia’s ongoing chronicle of ordinary lives affected by unprecedented change in China.

Far from breaking the mould of the survival drama genre, Arctic nonetheless offers thrilling moments and entertains throughout, mainly thanks to Mikkelsen’s muscular performance as the grizzled Overgård.

The art direction, cinematography and costume design are superb.

Arguably, this is the Iranian’s most mainstream film to date, and lacks the subtlety of his early work, yet he still shows he has the ability to deliver devastating blows that leave you stunned. While not on top form, Faradhi demonstrates he is still a master craftsman, albeit in a more conventional mould.

Racer and the Jailbird is a stylish, often promising film, but sadly one that never coheres into genuine drama.

Beast is rough around the edges but as a feature debut marks out its director as one of the most intriguing new talents in British filmmaking.

Journeyman is not a pleasurable watch, but as a quietly devastating and heartfelt approach to trauma and those affected by it, it’s a winner.

Ghost Stories is uncomfortably timely, reminding us the haunted past is always haunting the present.

It’s the impeccable performances of its central quartet and delicious premise that makes A Quiet Place such an exhilarating watch.

Sweet Country is a hoarsely angry film, a powerful denunciation of the racism and violence on which modern Australia was eventually founded.

Spielberg asks audiences to fondly remember their childhood, and to fall back in love with characters, songs and stories long forgotten. At the same time, there is a didactic notion that reality is always better than a synthetic replication. You can’t comfortably have both.

Fiennes doesn’t do anything radical in her handling of the footage or the approach, but with a subject like Grace Jones a simple approach is still spellbinding.

Despite paying no attention to events beyond the trenches, Journey’s End is nonetheless deeply political in its depiction of the class tensions that characterised the war.