It is a brash, funny, extravagant spectacle about sex and death, pain and pleasure, and – most of all – fashion. Milkmaid corsets, vintage Chanel, latex wedding dresses. Move over, Kate Bush. There’s a new Wuthering Heights look in town.

Crucially, the film is very funny, but like Alex (and Bishop), in a gentle, unprepared sort of way that feels like having good mates over for dinner.

It is a story of family and relationships, of life’s inevitabilities, and the surprises we can nonetheless carve from those. Its gut-wrenching despair is matched by a strange optimism, a powerful embrace of the possibilities of life and love that stays with you long after the end credits roll.

The film’s very last moments are perhaps a little saccharine, but honestly, by this point, you’ll forgive it anything. Supremely confident and stylish film-making that markets itself as big yet feels somehow small, in the sense that extraordinary care is paid to each scene, each modest conversation. Marty’s self-belief may sometimes be unearned, but this film’s absolutely isn’t.

This film has the conversational dexterity and comedy of early Woody Allen films, the sadness of Lost in Translation, and the appealingly self-referential celebrity heft of Notting Hill. It is Baumbach, Sandler and Clooney at the top of their games, in a game where the audience is very much invited to play.

Melodramatic to the end, it’s difficult to imagine a more perfect home-watch film for cosy winter nights. Knives Out die-hards: we are back.

It doesn’t quite reach the heights of Part One, but this is still a highly entertaining display of what musical theatre can do on screen with top level performances and a true affection for the world-building.

Die My Love is simply too odd to appeal to everyone – but anyone familiar with the despair induced by listening on repeat to “I like to eat apples and bananas”, while wondering where their life, identity and bodily autonomy have gone, will find truth, if not solace, in its singularity.

Tár is a film of rare and wild excellence.

Glazer’s uncompromising and chilling vision of evil is unlike any other film about Nazism.

What the film does so well, though, is bring enormous compassion to a story that initially seems to despair for the world.

Oscar Isaac is ideal as Dr Victor Frankenstein, a fevered, charismatic, and darkly obsessive oddball. He’s passionate and intense, driving the plot forward with powerful force.

It manages to avoid cliché, making Kerr tender in one moment and dubious the next, smashing in doors and, at his worst in the throes of addiction, collapsing into sobs

One Battle After Another is a film about legacy, about fathers and daughters, about the fight against an all-too-real American government hellbent on white supremacy, militarism, and oppression. Yet it also manages to be one of the most touching and absorbing thrillers of the year. Make no mistake: Paul Thomas Anderson is a genius.

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues may not have the brown M&M joke or cultish appeal of its original, but it gets great and lovable mileage out of just how good those first jokes were – mini-Stonehenge replica included. You’d have to be a curmudgeon not to think it was fantastic fun.

Song’s point about the impact of class, economics, and the insidious, algorithmic approach to finding a partner feels like an accurate one. Love should be about risk-taking, not box-ticking; Lucy learns that soon enough, and seeing it play out is compelling.

With its well-observed, often darkly hilarious details of oddball inhabitants and chilling deployment of the chaotic overwhelm of social media in our lives, Eddington walks a thin line between dread and comedy.

There’s nothing new here and also a palpable reliance on enduring goodwill from the franchise’s existing fanbase, but honestly it doesn’t really matter. This is all such undemanding, carefree fun, delivering exactly what it promised, and simple without ever becoming simplistic.

It is a convincing, emotionally arresting, and visually appealing antidote to the complex muddle of so many recent superhero films.

Whether you’re a racing fan, have watched Netflix’s F1: Drive to Survive, or are a newcomer to the sport altogether, F1 uses old-fashioned, engine-revving storytelling.

The fact is that the restrictions and judgements around single motherhood are only compounded by the harsh reality of class and privilege. Surrounded by more bureaucratic red tape than common-sense empathy, Molly often struggles – but through grit and determination, she reaches a foothold for her family that promises a better future.

Ballerina is actually great fun, a propulsive, pulpy gun-fu joy that revels in the things the early John Wick did so well: stunts and absurd world-building.

Made with Anderson’s typically droll tone, it’s often very funny and continually surprising.

The Friend is a film that tells us that the only way out of heartache like this really is through. It may jump all over your bed and make you sleep on the floor, but weathering the hard part has its own kind of rewards.

Sinners is one of the most satisfying and fun blockbusters I’ve seen so far this year.

It’s great fun to watch two actors of such calibre play these wicked games of mistrust and deception – it’s even more fun to see Soderbergh handle his story so deftly.

Mickey 17 is a highly entertaining absurdist ride that embraces nihilism right up until the moment it tenderly skewers it.

Mad About the Boy is just enormously good fun.