If it thematically bites off more than it can chew, Random Acts Of Violence is a full-on, visually arresting horror. What it lacks in chills, it makes up for in ambition and style.

Successfully mining the awkward humour of the adolescent experience, Karen Maine’s coming-of-age feature makes the most of a strong central performance from Natalia Dyer.

Part political drama, part history lesson, part gripping spy thriller, Coup 53 gives what has been relegated to a small footnote in Iran’s story the big, expansive, dramatic treatment it deserves.

Once again seizing control of the medium, Nolan attempts to alter the fabric of reality, or at least blow the roof off the multiplexes. Big, bold, baffling and bonkers.

Project Power has considerable style yet a disappointing lack of substance — but an attention-grabbing performance from Dominique Fishback and an intriguing twist on superpowers give it just enough juice.

In a concrete Russian military facility, no-one can hear you scream. Sputnik offers obvious time-honoured sci-fi/horror shenanigans with a few fun tweaks to the formula.

A forced, over-ripe satire on the hunger for social media, bolstered by an engaging performance by Joe Keery. But if you really want to feel the real-life impact of the ’Gram on a young psyche, stick with Eighth Grade.

Shannon Murphy’s debut film is a refreshing take on a familiar subgenre, offering a nuanced depiction of a family dealing with the worst-case scenario with humanity and sweetness.

A committed performance by Thorne along with some moments of directorial flair can’t offset the frustratingly dumb characters and shallow analysis.

A return to form for indie darling Drake Doremus, who brings his nuance, sensitivities and homespun feel to a formulaic love-triangle set-up. Jamie Dornan, Sebastian Stan and especially Shailene Woodley make it very watchable.

Young Ahmed might be major filmmakers in a minor mode, but it is still a riveting, beautifully made character study that provokes compassion and controversy in equal measures.

Part time-travelling family drama, part idiosyncratic immigrant-adventure comedy, An American Pickle’s gags underwhelm, but its emotion and originality will surprise you. One of oddest films of 2020 so far, buoyed by two superb turns from Rogen.

An adrenaline-spiking fresh take on a well-worn horror format, Host transcends its high-concept premise to deliver original ideas — and scream-worthy surprises.

In spite of what may seem like a direct-to-VOD vibe, this is a slick, nasty thriller with a throwback quality, neither too self-serious nor too self-aware. While it’s not especially fresh, it’s still solid genre filmmaking.

Just as she did with Lemonade, Beyoncé proves herself a master of the visual album once again with a timely and vivid meditation on Black pride. The film it’s born out of may be forgettable, but this is quite the opposite.

Wisely focusing on four key cases, The Fight is a worthy attempt to document the ACLU’s seemingly endless struggle to challenge the many constitutional violations of the Trump administration.

Claire Oakley has created a vivid sensory experience out of limited means. Make Up is anything but cosmetic — it gets right under the skin.

An unconventional and imperfect first work of a career that would have been fascinating to watch unfold, Jóhannsson’s images are just as strong as his typically excellent, haunting musical composition.

Another Glum Space Mum, but one who feels complex and real. While the film depicts extraordinary circumstances, it always keeps the hearts (and heads) of its mother and daughter in focus.

Arterton triumphs again and Swale marks herself as a director to watch. Summerland successfully combines an intelligent feminist fable and a lesbian love story with a slick period tearjerker.

Featuring strong performances and excellent effects work, The Vigil is a genuinely creepy debut which explores the ways in which our psychological demons can get their claws into our entire lives.

Jacki Weaver is excellent in this colourful culture-clash comedy which, despite an uneven tone, offers a welcome message about the power of love and acceptance.

If it fails to mine the deeper themes in this story about a working-class writer fighting to find her footing in the music industry, How To Build A Girl is a resounding success as a showcase of Feldstein’s capabilities in a leading role.

Fresh, funny and frank, Saint Frances is a welcome shake-up of tired genre clichés; a messy, uplifting story about a woman who may not have everything figured out, but is fully in charge of her own fate.

Even if it hits well-worn beats, Come As You Are still shines a light on the oft-ignored sexual wants and needs of the disabled community, with humour, empathy and poignancy.

Alfre Woodard gives an unforgettably moving performance in Chinonye Chukwu’s slow-burning, perfectly observed drama about the repercussions of state-sanctioned violence, in which the stakes could hardly be higher.

Part film industry satire, part winning love story, Benjamin is low-key and shambling but emerges funny, bittersweet and affecting.

A forgettable fantasy cheapie whose gruff earnestness feels hollow thanks to the unforgiveable thinness of its story and the weakness of its grip on its source material. Oh, and a note to whoever came up with the title: neither Arthur nor Merlin are knights of Camelot.

What Above Suspicion lacks in flashy direction, it makes up for in strong performances and gripping true-life material to draw from.

Feeling like a relic from the wave of ’90s crime ensembles that followed in Tarantino’s wake, Arkansas not only squanders some good talent, it’s a tragic waste of a fine book.

It cleaves closely to the familiar, but Finding The Way Back scores points by finding different beats within the formula and from a great Ben Affleck performance.

Zoinks! The Great Dane’s big-screen return has murderous robot bowling pins, escapades in abandoned amusement parks and exciting airborne chase sequences — but nowhere near the joke-rate an enduring character like Scoob demands.

A serious, well-intentioned slice of WWII naval history full of compelling detail and good action but lacking the dimensions and dynamics to make you truly feel it.

Despite some solid action beats and a story that skips from Sudan to Afghanistan, Paris and, finally, Guildford, The Old Guard is a trite revenge/conspiracy yarn, clumsily told (“That woman has forgotten more ways to kill than entire armies will ever learn”), and squanders a potentially engaging conceit.

A compelling curio from Werner Herzog, who investigates a strange real-life phenomenon through a fictional lens. It's worth watching, especially if you enjoy Herzog's lateral take on life, but it's hard not to wish he'd just made it as a straight documentary.

Clouzot achieves an analysis of the human condition at least as bleak as Huston's The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre but without the grandstanding speeches and with more subtle performances.

It was always going to be hit-and-miss, but Homemade flits between creativity and indulgence in documenting the current crisis. If you want to cherry-pick, Larraín, Lello, Nyoni and Sorrentino’s efforts are top of the class.

Entertaining, energetic and unfailingly smart, this is theatre at the highest level, performed by a cast without a weak link. You can’t say no to this.

Lost Transmissions is a clear-eyed view of schizophrenia, aided by a powerful Simon Pegg performance yet hamstrung by some woolly filmmaking and a whiff of pretension.

Unputdownable documentary that evokes the thrill of reading preloved pages and reveals that a passion for collecting is not just a hoarding instinct, but a way to preserve and share culture. 

The votes are in, and it’s official: this largely unfunny paean to Eurovision is a waste of some serious talent. At least some of the songs are decent.

A captivating and comprehensive overview of trans representations in the media that everyone should add to their Netflix watchlist.

Scabrous, watchable and deceptively provocative, Jon Stewart’s political parable may be slightly out of step with the political reality of 2020 — but Carell and Byrne do enough to earn your VOD vote.

Inmate #1 might lack depths and dimensions, but for fans, this documentary is a machete-sharp glimpse into the life of a cult icon.

Resistance fails to commit to anything: too confused to honour its hero, too generic to shine a new light on a crucial moment in history. Somehow, such a remarkable story is here made forgettable.

It’s a potentially mid-’90s B-movie premise, but director Patrick Vollrath and star Joseph Gordon-Levitt keep it taut, tense and classy. Just a shame it doesn’t stick the landing.

An overqualified adult cast and some fun moments can’t entirely compensate for a defanged protagonist and too-static plot. This fantasy desperately needed a little more magic.

Though sometimes messy and freewheeling, Da 5 Bloods is a fascinating, frequently gripping and powerful interrogation of the connection between American imperialism, anti-Black racism, and the widespread trauma of the country’s war-making.

With The King Of Staten Island, Apatow goes for the heart — but with lesser yuks than usual and a subdued lead, it all kind of drifts by. Within it, though, are moments of real vigour and fragility.

The Last Days Of American Crime takes a potentially entertaining, if silly, premise and drains it of any reason to get invested. You can just imagine a John Carpenter would have doubled the thrills in half the time.

If the film never completely coheres into a satisfying whole, Days Of The Bagnold Summer has a lot going for it: a nicely judged sense of character, an eye for detail and strong performances, especially from Dolan. It also suggests Simon Bird is a filmmaker worth watching.

A Rainy Day In New York hits all of Allen’s touchstones, has a few good one-liners and is well played, but it sorely lacks the wit, vitality and veracity of his ’70s/’80s heyday.

Boasting a powerhouse cast, The Last Full Measure has the best of intentions, to celebrate servicemen without condoning war, but winds up with little else.

The Vast Of Night is a modest film about small-town dreamers that delivers big-time rewards and announces a singular, exciting talent in director Andrew Patterson.

Tracee Ellis Ross kills it as a believable soul diva in a harmonious pairing with Dakota Johnson — a shame, then, that a distracting romcom plot ends up so high in the mix.

The plot is insubstantial in the extreme, but Rae and Nanjiani are so cool, and their loose, free-flowing improv so winning, that you probably won’t care.

The Wrong Missy is a little hit-and-miss, but it’s funny and inventive, and Lapkus is good enough to make the word “zany” tolerable again.

It’s not an easy watch, but Never Rarely Sometimes Always is a necessary, unflinching portrait of young women trying to do right by themselves in a world seemingly against them at every turn.

The musical interludes in which Rapman narrates significant plot points offer a welcome change of pace, but the subject matter at play here is a little too common to truly stand out from the pack.

A stirring, sober examination of an ongoing injustice, The Assistant speaks to women whose discomfort is ignored, and bravely says that they matter, their feelings have been noticed. Now is the time for us to act on them.

A rip-roaring, bloody slice of Russian genre cinema that combines a tightly plotted narrative with a stylish command of craft to hugely entertaining, immersive effect.

Following Jackie, Pablo Larraín offers another powerful examination of grief, capturing all of the confusing and fascinating layers of human relationships. Despite the heavy subject matter, it’s intoxicating.

Powered by the charisma and physicality of its star, this often gruelling action flick does more than enough to suggest that Hemsworth has found his genre, once he hangs up a certain hammer.

A filmed stage show with barely any bells and whistles, this is an endearing trip through time, via a band who constantly changed the game. And the music is immense.

Selah And The Spades showcases Simone’s star power and suggests a promising future for Poe, but ultimately fails to keep up the pace needed to make it the slick, cutting teen drama that it clearly wants to be.

It’s Sliding Doors with place settings, but Love Wedding Repeat can’t make its time-loop conceit work (stick with About Time). Bouquets to the cast and production values; a quickie divorce from everything else.

The kids and Caine are good, but this lacks the magic of its source novel(s). Younger children may enjoy it, but its attempts to entertain older viewers mostly fall flat.

It could have been a tantalising coming-together of two icons of action cinema. Instead, The Iron Mask feels oddly anemic.

If you thought the first Trolls movie was fine, you’ll probably find this fine too. It completely lives up to the watchable mediocrity of its predecessor.

It’s not hard to tell that this Big Lebowski spin-off involved neither Coen Brother. Fair play to Turturro for going in such a strange direction, and assembling a pretty killer cast, but it’s unlikely to satisfy even the most ardent Quintana enthusiast.

One’s a cop who can’t shoot straight! One’s a kid with a nose for trouble! Together… they lack the wit, thrills and rapport to deliver fun genre times.

The Occupant is a slow burn of a thriller that never catches fire. Looking to skewer the pursuit of perfection during late capitalism, it misses both its satiric targets and a sense of kitsch fun.

A fun diversion for the kids, but you feel Attenborough could have packaged these often beautifully produced images with more rigour and insight in under an hour.

The Conjuring by way of The Cornetto Trilogy, there’s little ordinary about Extra Ordinary – an unfalteringly funny, ectoplasm-drenched horror-comedy that deserves the cult status it’s destined for.

Released at any time, The Platform, packed with ideas and moments to be endlessly debated, would have all the makings of a cult classic. Released in 2020, it is an astonishingly apt metaphor for our times.

This Tramp doesn’t really stamp a fresh personality on a story already told well. But it also doesn’t embarrass itself compared to the original and it’s got a shaggy charm of its own.

Togo is in a slightly more sombre register than Call Of The Wild but delivers similar sturdy pleasures; exciting dog-in-peril action and striking landscapes, all anchored by Dafoe’s grounded performance.

A frothy fantasy about a boy and his bear that makes up for in style what it lacks in substance.

At a time when teen outsiders are having their time in the spotlight, Stargirl feels like a relic, and a prompt for Disney to do a better job at capturing contemporary high-school culture.

The vital story of a singular trailblazer is brought to life with surprising ambition and a committed Rosamund Pike, but such inventive methods confuse the crux of Marie Curie’s intelligence, with alienating storytelling rendering her humanity impenetrable.

Astronaut doesn’t have the budget or cinematic ambition to deliver on its premise. Despite the best efforts of Richard Dreyfuss, it reaches for the stars and misses by a mile.

Well played and well shot, Run’s idea of relocating Springsteen’s America to a rain-swept Scottish fishing town is interesting, but sadly it runs out of gas and road before it hits the horizon. Less baby we were born to run, more baby we were born to drive around in circles for a bit.

Despite the odd strong moment, this Bloodshot is anaemic.

This big-spy-meets-little-kid comedy isn’t funny enough for teens, but not really suitable for younger viewers either.

And Then We Danced is a well-made love story, anchored by a mesmerizing Levan Gelbakhiani and enlivened by electrifying dance numbers.

A political football that arrives punctured and sputtering, this toothless class satire — an equal-opportunity offender — shouldn’t have pre-enraged anyone. It’s hardly the Hollywood takedown the MAGA crowd feared.

The revolutionary visuals find endless ways to honour the mind of an innovator – but simultaneously risk an overwhelm of aesthetic information, rather than a lucid insight into the anatomy of contemporary dance.

Not as good as The Full Monty or Brassed Off but better than Swimming With Men and Fisherman’s Friends, Military Wives is a familiar, entertaining hymn to the power of people coming together in adversity.

Unlikely to win over those who remember the lush vistas and Montalban-powered original, nor appeal much to teens looking for a horror-filled night at the movies, Fantasy Island is distinctly sub-par filmmaking full of clichés and lacking in real entertainment value. No one would call this their ultimate fantasy.

Despite an inherently cinematic story and some effective sequences, Escape From Pretoria struggles to transcend a clunky, one-dimensional script.

A celebratory portrait of author Toni Morrison painted by those who knew her, this compelling documentary also explores how her work gives such a powerful voice to the African American experience.

Unbearably tense and thematically rich, this feels like an entirely fresh take on a 123-year-old story.

It’s not as effective as Mandy or The Mist, both of which it evokes at points. But Color Out Of Space is still an audacious and admirably out-there attempt at cosmic horror.

A compelling, grubby outback Western revealing the ragged reality behind a folk hero. Terrific performances, incredible visuals, and a reassertion of Justin Kurzel as a bold filmmaker most comfortable dealing with discomfort.

A bizarrely strait-laced project for Todd Haynes, Dark Waters lacks dramatic oomph but compensates via a well-mounted telling of a terrifying story, driven by still contemporary concerns and a convincing central turn by Mark Ruffalo.

There are theme-park rides; there is cinema; there are sacred love poems to take with you for the rest of your life. Thank you for giving us the last one, Céline Sciamma.

Like a lot of remakes, Downhill doesn’t quite make the argument for its existence. But career-topping performances from Ferrell and Louis-Dreyfus and an unusually frosty comedic tone make this a mostly rewarding day on the slopes.

Pixar returns with a great big power-chord of a movie — heart-pumping, resonant, and positively harmonious.