It won't be for everyone by any means, but Captain Underpants: The First Movie would be easy to overlook as another kids-only waste of money. But that's not the case. The film subverts this every step of the way and constantly turns in new, unexpected directions in order to surprise and entertain its audience from the start to the end.

Predestination bends genre like it bends time. Simply put, it's a character study filtered through a science fiction lens.

The master of cerebral action cinema is back, and whatever lessons were learnt about the triumph of the human spirit during the making of Dunkirk, they were swiftly forgotten for this new piece of filmic flimflammery.

It’s full of epic bombast, (he even claims that it is based on a true story) jolting you out of complacency with shock, colour and music.

Cult of Chucky is by and large a gory hoot, with Jennifer Tilly stealing every scene she’s in.

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

It's hokey as hell in parts, and the director sometimes shows an uncertainty in tone (resulting in some performances which are pitched a little too broadly) but those imperfections lend an endearing quality to the film.

Hard Times may not have grown in stature to the extent where it will be mentioned by fans in the same breath as the director’s more revered titles, but it’s certainly worth a punt and is an absolute must for Hill completists.

The editing, too, is rough around the edges, but it all adds to the sense of madness that pervades El Salvador – a sense that only grows the more intense the further that Boyle journeys into this Central American heart of darkness.

His scattershot approach means that the film frequently wanders off topic, in pursuit of a litany of social, economic and political injustices.

Doff, who acts as both writer and director, establishes an offbeat, ridiculous tone from the start that solidifies itself with visual humour and sharp dialogue that pay off in riches further down the line.

A mood piece first and foremost, Abbasi takes the intense feelings of early adolescence, and watches how tragedy transforms them.

It’s a mesmerising watch for fans of Cohen’s music, a fitting portrait sewn artfully together, and given a greater intimacy by dint of the fact Broomfield himself spent time in Hydra in his twenties and befriended Marianne whilst there. The only glaring absence is the lack of commentary from Cohen himself on their relationship.

The first forty minutes or so are – as you would expect – a harrowing recreation of the bombing and the crime.

Rooted in the mundane, but told with an imaginative vision, flair and real composure, The Pink Cloud announces Iuli Gerbase as a new creative talent and filmmaker to watch out for.

If you go out into the furthest reaches of Star Trek's filmography today, you're in for an unsettling discovery: the final frontier looks oddly familiar. It's brightly coloured eye-bait, Jim, exactly as we know it - outpacing your visual field in an attempt to convince you that something exciting is going on.

For a debut feature, it’s impressive and thoroughly committed to its vision of Hell on Earth. The atrocities, bleak tension and stomach-churning imagery are unstoppable, the director deeming them necessary for maximum impact.

Its spontaneity and uncertain evolution are both gripping and slightly terrifying given that what becomes a quest for truth could just as likely see its subjects killed or imprisoned as set free.

The Hunger Games looks poised to usher in a brand new hit franchise and deserves all the credit it gets for its confrontational subject matter, delicately-orchestrated fight sequences and sci-fi sensibilities. For teen audiences, films don't get much darker - or smarter - than this.

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

Sharing its name with a 1950 Joan Crawford film, The Damned Don’t Cry has thematic resonance with its namesake as a study of women’s vulnerability in a patriarchal society and the criminalising of marginalised lives.

Herzog doesn’t quite hit the mark here: Family Romance’s denouement is certainly moving but its depiction of Ishii’s emotional conflict is undercooked and perhaps even a little trite. Nevertheless, on a formal level, it’s a fascinating study of the artifice of the genre, a deconstruction of the comforting contract between artist and viewer that guides us towards a particular kind of emotional or intellectual engagement.

The film as a whole is neither scary nor particularly interested in the nature of its ‘monster’, though it is undoubtedly strange and often unsettling.

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

No doubt many will find German’s approach pretentious and overly repetitive.

Scafaria is writing from personal experience and it shows in some of the understated but utterly credible scenes which illuminate the grieving process.

The vision of the black American experience might be grim, but it is never miserablist or despairing. The songs, the traditions, the love and the community are still there, even if the world seems to be undeniably on fire.

With The Homesman, Jones has produced an original and cantankerously offbeat western which becomes increasingly beguiling as the road stretches on.