The film takes great pains to give both sides of the debate an equal platform, but it’s clear what side is the one of rational common sense, empathy and creativity.

While the subtextual gleanings may not be particularly illuminating or fresh, Obsession delivers everything you could want from a story that is as terrifying, maddening, and tragic all at once.

Romería is loyal to its sense of withholding almost until the very end. It is then, finally, that Simon reaches the grand apex of her journey of self-reflection, one that holds in the stunning clarity of carefully chosen words a moving encompassing of how one can only build a sturdy foundation for the future after lovingly repairing the unrectified cracks of the past.

While all the variations on A Star​’s formula are tailored to a specific moment in time, what’s most interesting about Kokuho is the way it trails through an extended period of Japanese history, embedding one in the culture without feeling the need to explain its appeal.

Make no mistake – The Devil Wears Prada 2 scratches every itch a legacy sequel ought, with callbacks and cameos and jokes galore. But if the first film is Tom Ford and Calvin Klein then this time it’s Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen – less slick, and with something darker underneath.

Running at just under 90 minutes, the film Ekner has crafted not only examines the politics and socioeconomics of each country she visits, but also channels the atmosphere of each locale via potent vistas and exhilarating revelry. The danger she speaks of early on in the film is expressed as a looming threat, yet the final result yields the same mood of a wildly passionate love affair.

As with the titular Ravel piece, this is a work that is mellifluous, melodious and mysterious in equal measure. A Sphinx-like Beer, once again, seems to connect with her director on a level which transcends the purely professional, and through her economic yet forceful use of body language and expression, she makes certain that the film adheres perfectly to Petzold’s immaculate calculations.

It is an experience as moving as it is unnerving, and as the piercing screeching of iron rods announces the Rose of Nevada is to leave port once more, it is we the audience there to wave a pained goodbye, quietly stunned by the ethereal aura of Jenkin’s striking creation.

The impressive momentum of the first hour, in spite of the inherent repetition, dissipates when the onscreen players start loitering and even sitting down to talk. In its third act, this otherwise effective thriller about getting stuck does end up spinning its own wheels.

Lowery’s got the courage of his convictions, and while it’s hard to not hunger for more of the artistry which is so evident (choreographer Dani Vitale also deserves a nod) Mother Mary represents the sort of individual, original storytelling that feels all too rare in an industry pushed more and more towards adaptations, reboots and sequels.

Jarmusch’s film thrives in acknowledging the ultimate unknowability of our parents.

While neither director nor screenwriter seem to have anything more substantial to say about female pleasure beyond the fact that it’s important, you do nevertheless find yourself cheering for Florence and Violette when they embrace their selfish side.

What’s surprising about the film is how hopeful it is, zeroing in on human creativity and resilience during the worst of times rather than wallowing in abject misery.

The Drama wants you to believe it’s outrageous, but this unnecessary posturing gets in the way of a black comedy that is otherwise well-observed and amusing about the prickly nature of relationships, both sexual and platonic.

The film is ambling, gentle and doesn’t strain too hard to force a point, but allows you to appreciate the multifarious nature of life in a city where the spectre of destruction lurks ominously in the clouds.

In showing a working-class Black girl confront a classist, racist establishment, this is also of course a political film, offering an allegorical display of both the claustrophobic power structures in which we live and strive, and the possibility of smashing it to build something better.

George MacKay is the Record Keeper, in charge of interrogating Faithfull, and she very candidly speaks about her life in her own words in order to decipher the gulf between who she really was and how she was marketed.

There’s nothing subtle about these films, from their Eat The Rich messaging to the just-go-with-it in-world lore, but in all of their schlock they strike a welcome tone between winking self-awareness and retro absurdity.

This is primary-colour, major-key storytelling. It is disarming, charming and unafraid to be sincere – especially when it comes to the sparks of inspiration, creativity and connection that are so fundamental to human existence.

It’s a crowd-pleasing package, and Gosling is likeable enough to sell even the corniest jokes.

Wheatley captures the volatility of emotions during the festive period, where every familial anxiety seems to come to a head, and does so with compassion and humour.

With such a moving ode to the symbiotic relationship between dreams and film, a nightmare would be if this is his final word on the matter.

Sirât is a truly staggering and major film, one that has to be seen to be believed – a masterful gambit of affectionate character and community building that mutates into a work that deals with the primal instincts of human survival and the idea that we create our own gods through the things that we chose to worship.

It’s Fastvold who somehow makes all these elements coalesce with such brio and eccentricity, expanding the possibilities of filmed biography while also making a film that manages to land direct hits to the head, the heart and the gut.

Refusing to take itself too seriously, this spirited contemporary period piece captures some of the insanity that was brat summer – but crucially reminds us there’s something to be said for knowing when to leave the party.

Sitting in the crux between comedy and horror, it presents both a stark reappraisal of conditional acceptance and a needle precision critique of mental health awareness.

Wasteman doesn’t imply that either of these men is more or less deserving of being inside or that we should be rooting for one of them over the other. Both men are troubled, sad, selfish and violent, mired in trauma that Dee expresses through bravado and physical domination, which manifests more inwardly in Taylor.

The Secret Agent is, of course, a film of its own, and feasibly Mendonça Filho’s most refined, outright-auteurist work yet. Moura anchors this tale of history as an afterlife with a terrific encapsulation of the kind of hopelessness that masks itself as resilience, his gaze infused with the aching longing of a future condemned to remain possibility.

The director has described his film as a poem, but its rhythms feel more abstract, like recalling the best concert of your life in a dream. Brilliantly forgoing nostalgia to frame Elvis in the present, Luhrmann offers the closest experience of a live Elvis show that we may ever see. And like the Vegas residency, EPiC deserves a standing ovation when Luhrmann’s curtain falls.

With its vibrant use of colour, expressive character design and flights of expressionist fancy, Little Amélie offers a lyrical vision of early-years development and so much more.

The direction by Davies Jr is top-notch, not just in how he is able to capture the fine nuances of the actors on camera, but also in how they are immersed in the chaotic mêlée of Lagos at this powder-keg moment.

Using interviews with friends and collaborators alongside a rich cache of archival footage, Berg showcases Buckley’s complex personality, and goes some way to argue for his music as radical and experimental.

Despite a two and a half hour runtime, All That’s Left Of You feels incredibly compact. There is much owed to Amine Bouhafa (who also scored The Voice of Hind Rajab) and his kaleidoscopic score that prevents us from losing ourselves to a simple sadness.

The story unfolds at breakneck speed, with never a dull moment.

There’s a potent earnestness about The Chronology of Water – Stewart shows a deep empathy for her subject, and Yuknavitch’s memoir is transformed with an unapologetic confidence.

Raimi uses Send Help as an opportunity to flex his patented formal dynamism, and while the camera is a little more sedate than the elasticised excesses of films like Evil Dead II or the underrated Darkman, he’s still a master of of using movement and framing to create emphasis and draw us closer to the characters and their heightened emotions.

With lots of appealing wildlife and landscape photography to keep things lively, there’s much to cherish in this charming little film.

Even as the death roll of capitalism continues to clutch Hollywood in its jaws, No Other Choice proves that, in the hands of a master, there’s still fertile ground to be found. His biting, incendiary dramedy calls into question how much we’re willing to accept – and how far we’re willing to go – in the name of preserving our own comfort.

The actors’ effervescent chemistry powers the film along wonderfully.

The performances too somehow emulates the game’s awkward, unnatural voice acting, a key contributor to both works’ uncanny dreamlike ambience. Rarely has a film better evoked a PlayStation 2 game.

Fiume o morte! explores the dangerous, empowering nature of fascism, and how certain forms of aggression would seem fair game under a régime that rules by such inhumane edict.

The Bone Temple offers a heady mix of stomach-churning violence, absurdist humour and surprising glimmers of tenderness.

Even setting aside its subject matter, it is an astounding feat of dramatising real events with an eye on the cinematic, yet it delivers such a punch to the heart that one hesitates to recommend it without qualification.

An American impulse for neat endings and recognisable stories gets in the way, but Rental Family is still beautifully written and gives little windows into Japanese life, from a Monster Cat festival to a rural diversion with breathtaking scenery, with Fraser’s endearing everyman as an emotional linchpin that viewers will love.

In concept and design, Sachs channels The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, with its thick, polar white rug, heavy-gloom atmosphere, mosaicked lounging, chamber setting and never-ending exposition; Kiarostami in its tasteful docudrama-crew reveals; and Warhol in its high-concept simplicity. It’s Sachs’ best film yet.

In Hamnet, art is presented as a two-way whisper, as a codeword for connectivity and as a way to unlock doors to the future, and living.

Although the third act sags a little under the weight of Marty’s hubris, it’s impossible to deny Safdie is working at a remarkable technical level. Just as Good Time and Uncut Gems played to the strengths of their stars while also transforming them, Marty Supreme challenges Chalamet and he meets the play with fleet footwork.

Skarsgård is the best he’s been in years as a father fundamentally unable to articulate himself in any way other than his work, and oblivious as to why his daughters feel such frustration with him for a lifetime of distance, and there’s keen wisdom in Sentimental Value’s observation of the gulf between who our parents are and who we wish they were.

Some will find the earnest silliness which ties a lot of Fire and Ash​’s beats together tiresome, but – along with the work of some very gifted digital artists – it’s what keeps them feeling real and not just empty capitalisation on a billion dollar box office.

It’s a tender and warm film about missed connections and ships that, for whatever reason, end up passing in the night.

Lurker is an excellent showcase for the talents of Théodore Pellerin (quietly marvellous in every role he takes) and an intriguing first step as a feature filmmaker for Alex Russell.

It’s a love story for our time and for all time.

Poitras questions him on the less glorious moments of his career, too, so that he emerges as a flawed human rather than a bastion of perfect judgement. This is not a perfect documentary either, with the breathless dash through his post My Lai journalism sometimes feeling overwhelming. Yet perfection is not the point when something impossible has been bottled: it’s something called the truth.

It’s a beautifully written and executed work, one of Panahi’s most formally straightforward yet powerful, gripping and generous.

In an entertainment landscape saturated with whodunnits, it’s impressive to see Johnson maintain his topical observations and satirical jabs while confidently recalibrating to provide a mystery that shows the genre still has something meaningful to say.

While there’s a sense that the thesis here lacks originality, there are enough audiovisual flights of fancy to keep the cheeky intellectual jiggery-pokery ticking along nicely.

In what is essentially a long, barrelling chase movie, the action is relentless, and has little respect for the limits of physiological suffering let alone physical laws.

The Ice Tower is as fragile and delicate as a snowflake, as disorientating and mysterious as adolescence, and as dark as a winter’s night. For it is a shadowy frío-noir, complete with femme fatale, even as its elusive, edgy narrative is passed down, like keepsake beads or diffracting crystals, from generation to generation.

It’s uncomfortable and often disturbing viewing, but Osit’s unsentimental, self-critical and refreshingly thoughtful approach makes Predators one of the most valuable entries into a saturated genre, prioritising ethics over emotion.

Alpha is as thorny as her previous two features, but there’s something lonely and longing here too.

It’s a testament to the smartness of this casting that Jay Kelly works as well as it does, even if the echos of Hollywood mythmaking are unavoidable.

Fonzi doesn’t sugarcoat this tale, nor does she attempt to make it feel entirely like a piece of activist filmmaking that’s entirely serving a political cause (even if, in many aspects, it is). Yet through her canny pacing and shot choices, she elevates this material far above what might have been expected of it.

The result is a melancholic, Terrence Malick-ian vision of a place that is brutal, beautiful and forever lost to time.

Even to a viewer who’s not particularly taken by their idiosyncratic and knowingly difficult sound, it’s a pleasure to be in the company of two people who are so proficient at articulating their inner feelings.

Ramsay articulates the inarticulate, here through her saturated blues, yellows, browns and greens, the colours of grief and sickness and rot…but also new life, summer skies, and hope.

It’s a film that is firmly grounded in the geopolitical specificity of Cluj, exploring ethnic tensions, economic inequalities, legacies of totalitarianism, the brutality of capitalism and the destructiveness of real estate – yet it’s through this local context that Jude gets to dig deep into the contradictions of our globalised, neoliberal world as the all-pervasive cultural and moral rot continues to spread.

Perhaps it’s his fidelity to this team of collaborators that creates such a fluid vision; much like the honey bees that Teddy lovingly tends to in his garden, every artist moves in service of a grand design.

Even if it does eventually crumble to pieces, it’s a really strong thriller for the large majority of its runtime.

At its heart is Tessa Thompson, giving a performance so commanding that it seems to reshape the molecules around her. Her Hedda is poised and sensual with a magnetism that affects virtually every interaction. The glance is a seduction and the lightest curled lip becomes a threat, with DaCosta trusting her leading lady to convey the power of this woman in silent, lingering close-ups.

The smart, keenly observed and undoubtedly thorny power play of After the Hunt make it an arresting psychodrama, confronting our willingness to swallow our own suffering in the name of self-preservation as well as what we owe to ourselves and each other in an imperfect, cheerfully cutthroat society.

It’s a film that understands there’s nothing to be gained from making oneself an island, but remains stoic and unsentimental in its vision of the past.

While other horror directors are busy chasing their tails trying to create genre defining moments, Ben Leonberg has succeeded creating a thrilling mid-budget horror that goes beyond pandering to animal lovers or tugging at our heartstrings.

As each subsection gains steam, the film rises to full intensity before letting the pressure regulate, and so goes the cycle. The unconventional momentum keeps things fresh without overstuffing the narrative with too many moving parts at any one given time.

Ultimately, for all the focus on horrific ​‘cold cases’ from the past, this plays too nice with its characters in the present. Great horror is meaner-spirited and less happy-clappy.

Watching Tatum flex both his comedic muscles (especially when it comes to slapstick) and dramatic chops is utterly endearing and he deserves kudos for this performance. Cianfrance takes a daring swerve away from his usual melancholic working- class love stories, such as the powerful anti-romance Blue Valentine, to deliver a comedy that delivers big laughs and the occasional thrill.

The tight framing ensures we never lose focus of the anxiety gnawing away at him, while small gestures of humanity are balanced against the harshest measures our punitive society can impose.

Jacob Elordi, Oscar Isaac and Mia Goth rise to the extraordinary demands of the material, which asks them to access the deepest parts of their humanity.

Dillane is a remarkable discovery.

It’s a film that feels gloriously alive, earnest in its depiction of masculinity that is fragile rather than toxic while still grappling with the question of why anyone would choose to make a living in such a barbaric way.

Operating on a grander scale, Kogonada still retains his singular, warm sensibility – and if you can succumb to the film’s heart-on-its-sleeve sentimentality, it’s a journey worth taking.

Happyend strikes a remarkable balance between social satire and adolescent drama, finding points of alignment between the humour of everyday teen life and the absurdity of the bureaucracies that shape it.

This is another slam-dunk for Anderson, who has made a film that is a very rare beast indeed: one that is incredibly fun without ever once straining to be. And if you’re reading these words, it’s your god-given duty to go see this in a cinema on the biggest, loudest screen you’re able to access.

From Ground Zero is a heartbreaking snapshot of an unforgivable moment in history, and as this tapestry of Palestinian life unfolds on our screens, we must heed the call of the artists who made it. Enjoy life, yes, but do something, anything, to ensure that they might enjoy life too.

Delightfully, Islands doesn’t patronise viewers. The film refuses to confirm or deny suspicions. It’s an exhilarating feast from co-writers Gerster, Blaž Kutin and Lawrie Doran who pen this winding tale with sharp subtlety.

The film offers no explicit commentary or context, but instead allows the images to speak for themselves.

It may fall prey to the odd awkward joke or saccharine moment, but Crazy Rich Asians is a blast from start to finish.

If the film doesn’t radically deepen the conversation around the gender politics or financial intricacies of marriage, it does find new textures in the way ambition corrodes intimacy.

While some of Aronofsky’s auteurist stamp gets lost restaging some of Gotham’s greatest cinematic hits, Caught Stealing hardly feels like director-for-hire work.

All we can do is refuse to look away. In bearing witness, we can regard the pain of others as our own.

The film certainly is rare in actually offering an authentic depiction of social media and its noxious capabilities, even if its insistence on proving there’s no righteous moral that can’t be swiftly liquidated does become a little tiresome by the home stretch.

The handmade qualities of this world amplify the sense of devastation. The characters, whose designs resemble Barras’s work on My Life as a Courgette, each have distinct personality in their design as well as a visible human touch on their surface which creates a level of immersion.

It’s the banality of enduring a sexual assault that Victor captures so well in her film; how the trauma lingers long in the body, even when you keep insisting to everyone (including yourself) that you’re fine.

Nearly every character in Bring Her Back is drowning in the depths of despair and desperately clinging on for dear life. Some flail and give into their worst instincts, some sink into oblivion, and others break the waves of grief and cruelty, albeit emerging with terrible scars.

The by-any-means-necessary bit barrage crams sight gags into the corners of frames, the credits, the infinitesimal space within edits. In a film that nobly aspires to everything being funny at all times, anything can be, the chief benefit of director Akiva Schaffer’s attention to and appreciation for the elements of cinematic form. You’ve got to be smart to be this stupid.

The Bad Guys 2 wipes the floor with the original which, in hindsight, looks like a scrappy work in progress.

Friendship arguably is a horror movie, evident in more than just its score and high wire tension between characters. The excruciating act of being vulnerable with another human being and the sweaty discomfort of realising a new friend is a bit off are mundane but relatable terrors, after all.

The constant blurring of the lines makes for a fascinating, often hilarious, watch.

With his rumi­na­tive lat­est, The Shrouds, Cro­nen­berg once more makes a play for the heart­strings in what must be one of the most naked­ly mov­ing and rev­e­la­to­ry films with­in his canon.