Robot Dreams is Berger’s first fling with animation, and he takes to the new artform with evident and infectious enthusiasm.

Anchored by four very strong performances, Murina is a taut psychodrama that makes subtle but impactful statements about misogyny and personal choice.

Drive-Away Dolls revels in ridiculousness, allowing nothing serious get in the way of a good joke.

Dillane is a remarkable discovery.

Not only does The Creator work as a good time at the movies, but it is also a reminder that mid-budget, (somewhat) original, crowd-pleasing stories can be told with aplomb.

The film’s tender emotional core is its greatest asset, which is enhanced by inventive tonal shifts and complemented by incredibly fleshed-out characters, a uniformly brilliant cast and naturalistic dialogue that keeps it from lurching into the terrain of sterile realism.

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.

Inu-Oh plays out as if it is a modern version of a song by an itinerant musician, relating a blend of history and folklore to us in terms we can understand.

There are many hallmarks of the psychological horror at play (a creepy killer, a traumatised survivor, a parent with dark secrets) but under Perkins’ careful hand, the familiar feels unnerving all the same, a puzzle box dripping with bright red blood.

Formally, the film seldom takes its foot off the gas.

The trio’s company is so embracing that it is hard to say goodbye. The benefit of the Yuletide setting is that Payne has gifted us a film intended to be watched every year. It feels like finding an unwatched classic under the tree on Christmas morning.

Blending courtroom drama and claustrophobic tech-tinged nightmare, Red Rooms is a striking and austere examination of the true-crime industrial complex that benefits from its formality and disturbingly removed protagonist.

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 rare bird indeed in that it’s a work of art that actively practices what it preaches, a celebration of unfettered creativity and farsightedness that offers a volcanic fusion of hand-crafted neo-classicism while running through a script of toe-tapping word-jazz that merrily dances between the raindrops of logic and coherence.

Where The Wedding Banquet really shines is in its characters, not only in its two romantic pairings that feel profoundly real, but also in subverting our expectations of its intergenerational relationships.

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

How we deal with death in the absolute moment is a fascinating subject, and one that His Three Daughters has many original thoughts about. In the end, it tackles the howling messiness with an earned measure of levity and wisdom.

Vibrant, wicked and welcoming, [Baker] is putting these people on the map like nobody else.

Where Favoriten differentiates itself from the aforementioned films is in its combination of formal and emotional complexity.

The director is an expert in this precise kind of world-building, one intricately related to yearning – for another, for belonging, for redemption.

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.

It’s as minimal as a drama can get, softening the highs and lows of narrative into a meditation on memory, purpose and recreation. Don’t be put off by its ambling form, for its function effectively probes political topics behind a gauze of cinematic serenity.

The Harder They Fall is a thrilling feature debut from Jeymes Samuels, redefining the movie western for a modern age. These. People. Existed. And we want more.

A brilliant and tense allegory on the human paradoxes of violent conflict.

The Humans won’t work for many – it’s a slow burn with a mean ending. Some may insist that the story lacks cogency offstage, but it’s those frenetic, intimate and often senseless moments that justify its title.

In the authentic way is captures this unique world, Jockey shares similarities with Chloé Zhao’s The Rider, another quietly meditative and poignant tale of life on the fringes.

While other men move through then out of the picture, Rogowski holds everything together with an exquisite deftness that is often emotionally overwhelming.

This is a film that has been double dipped in lavish spectacle and then generously sprinkled with all the charm, silliness and wit found in Roald Dahl’s source novel.

The boldness, nuance and humour with which Lighton navigates BDSM dynamics as well as Colin and Ray’s personal and joint complexities results in a film that’s frequently touching and surprising, less of an adaptation and more of a reimagining that compliments the source material rather than replicates it.

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.

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.

Hadaway paints a deep portrait of mental struggles that soon overflow onto the main character’s body, from the peeling bloody skin of her hands to her slashed ribs.

It’s not so much a study of corruption as it is lethargy and the difficulty of feeling compassion towards someone who just looks like he makes mischief.

Even though the film is packed with belly laughs, it is never spiteful or denigratory, and always appears thankful for the fact that pampered artists can produce miracles if they’re given the time and resources to do so.

As a follow-up to her exceptional – and sadly underseen – An Easy Girl from 2019, Other People’s Children could and should finally cement Zlotowski’s place in the top class of European auteurs.

The story focuses on the mutual gratification the protagonists provide each other, and how two imperfect humans meeting can prove a shared antidote for worldly ills.

Grab a summer dress, listen to Bette Davis Eyes, and set your heart on the attractive woman dancing in front of you – within is a sure hit of seductive satisfaction.

It’s a wonderfully observed and extremely witty film about the faith we have in a higher power and each other, and its uncertain conclusion mirrors the apprehension both Ben and Carla have about where they’re going in life.

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.

This is uncompromising horror that perceptively taps into contemporary life with visual flair and smarts.

Rolling with Margaret’s ups-and-downs, Fortson captures every subtlety of growing up with emotional intelligence and versatility.

Kaluuya and Tavares are bold in presenting gentrification as the cultural murder that it is while also celebrating, with clear eyes, the regular person who lives on in spite of it.

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.

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.

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.

Notorious in its time for its copious profanity, Robert Towne’s screenplay now seems far less shocking. But its naturalism, embodied by a very fine cast, still rings true.

Short yet elliptical and haunting, and keeping its secrets, this is an assured calling card announcing Godwin’s arrival in the horror family.

The naturalistic camerawork and performances ground the film in realism, creating a wry dramedy that refuses to placate us with easy answers or condescension.

While the film extends a certain empathy towards its subject’s mighty fall from grace, it does not let him off the hook, and it ends as a multi-dimensional study of a man who has lived a life of such extreme entitlement that sincere contrition simply does not compute with him.

What distinguishes Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s newest interpretation from its predecessors is its deft, mature understanding of what makes both Lady Chatterley and her lover tick.

It’s a realistic, sensitive but never cloying call for kindness and empathy – something that shouldn’t feel novel in this day and age, but sadly does – and encourages viewers to reconsider how they view fatness, and in turn, fat bodies.

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

Occupied City is a staggeringly ambitious feat of emotional stamina and in the unrelenting litany of horror stories presented here, one thing is clear: he wants us to remember something, anything.

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.

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.

Not only does the film succeed as a tense heist movie, it’s a sharp reminder of what we stand to lose when we allow ourselves to be taken in by capitalist propaganda or become numb to impending climate disaster.

Chukwu directs a compelling tribute to what Mamie endured and achieved, yet for anyone familiar with the history, new insight is perhaps lacking.

The power of Alcarràs lies in the filmmaker’s care for and understanding of her subject which, as with Summer 1993, is a story taken from her own life and examined on screen with a deceiving charm that gives way to a deeply emotional narrative.

Fast becoming one of the most exciting filmmakers in Japanese animation, Hosoda continues to build on an impressive body of work, dealing with heavy themes in a sensitive and artistic manner.

Silver Haze is a hacked-away crosscut of life on the social fringes, a Molotov soap opera powered by committed performances and containing characters who are, to a man, sculpted with genuine depth and humanity.

There is a persistent tension in the film between the history of those who were forcibly displaced, and Hiam, who made the autonomous choice to leave.

Here the island’s geography and the natives’ mythology merge into an overlapping mystery which will ultimately bring about the young woman’s emergent self-knowledge, as she metamorphoses into a very different kind of adult.

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.

From a formal vantage, the fast-paced editing and hilarious zooms contribute to a sense of amusing anarchy, and as the graphic-novel-esque chapters unfold, Priya levels up like a classic video game character.

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.

Hoskins performance shows a man who clearly believes that he’s on the right side of history, and once this big, good deal is done, he will have atoned for past sins. The film is brutal in the way it conclusively proves him wrong, right down to its iconic final shot in which Shand sits in the back of a car struggling to settle on the emotion that would amply capture his frazzled state.

Chapter 4 is an overwhelming undertaking, but also a welcome doubling-down on everything fun about this series, a thrilling counter-point to its dehumanised, big budget Hollywood contemporaries, that also serves as a welcome ode to martial artists and stunt performers.

As chaotic and unpredictable as the bands themselves, but that isn't all that surprising. There’s a lot to pack in.

Infinity Pool is a visually engrossing slice of nightmare fuel that’s heavier on vibes than plot – an atmospheric, grubby little downer holiday movie that takes on dark tourism and even darker desire with seductive, sickening style.

Moana 2 is one of those few exceptions where it doesn’t quite soar to the heights achieved by the first story but still stands tall in its own right.

As entertainment Napoleon delivers without glorifying his military record or painting the man as a hero. It’s a story about power, obsession and exploitation – which arguably is the story of history itself.

Audacious as it is, The Five Devils is a remarkably sedate and ominous film which captures the way that the worlds of adults and children harmoniously orbit around one another while always remaining distant, beautiful, unreachable.

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

It has been a long production journey, but reaching the end of this winding yellow brick road has yielded movie gold.

There’s an unde­ni­able charm to this film that makes it easy to be daz­zled by. From its deeply lov­able lead char­ac­ters, who you can’t help but root for, to delight­ful sur­pris­es like a per­fect­ly timed Talk­ing Heads nee­dle drop and effort­less moments of humor. But what makes it tru­ly spe­cial is its heart­felt explo­ration of uni­ver­sal themes like grief, lone­li­ness, and the deep human desire to belong.

While it’s absolutely a blast at the cinema, the dizzying heights that Miller drove us back in 2015 aren’t quite matched a second time around. But all is not lost: Furiosa is still miles better than the dreck Hollywood usually treats us to over the summer, and provided it doesn’t take another decade to get the Fury Road sequel that Miller has been promising, perhaps we’ll reach Valhalla yet.

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.

The actors’ effervescent chemistry powers the film along wonderfully.

The film mutates a little bit from playful essay to necessary advocacy doc, yet in its final passages Sankey also manages to ingeniously thread the needle between her two subjects.

What translates well from the novel is the specificity of the setting. All the details about birds, nature and Celtic mythology of the islands are either narrated by a spellbinding Ronan or portrayed creatively through animation. Fingscheidt also balances the cliché associated with films about addiction with humour and magnificent detail.

The thorny nuances of multiethnic relationships are deeply understood by Celine Song’s directorial debut, Past Lives.

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.

It’s an amazing, hypermodern concept for a film, one which operates as a brutal critique of the class system, while also acting as a metaphor for geopolitical relationships and the moral and ethical lapses we sometimes overlook in the name of making rent.

By capturing the culture of fetish, party and riot, feminism, sex and politics, this unique blend of styles offers a fitting representation of a punk subculture that gave ’80s queer and feminist activism its vibrancy.

What’s most important here is how Philibert captures the patience of the nurses and attendants, who never ever interrupt or talk down to the people whose conditions and wellbeing are L’Adamant’s raison d’être.

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.

In his idyllic city symphony, Koberidze celebrates the serendipity of fate and the rhythms of daily life that bring together what is meant to be.

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.

A riveting and awe-inspiring tribute to one of mankind’s great achievements.

Pacifiction is by far Serra’s most serious and sombre film to date, an epic of neutered power and human expendability – a death-knell for humanity rendered as a tropical daydream.

Altogether, the Innocent is a relatively low stakes story of ordinary people doing humbly ridiculous if fairly illegal things – and all the more charming for it.

The most shocking element of Bring Them Down is the emotional truth at its core; Andrews’ observation of how difficult the cycles of abuse are to break is astute, and even the most sensational elements of the plot have a grim plausibility to them. But this is balanced by the empathy that Andrews and his cast show.

Bones & All gets at the fragility and futility of human existence, and the fleeting moments of joy we find between birth and death. It’s an imperfect but effortlessly charming film, one that feels lived-in and loved (shout out to the eclectic, youthful soundtrack and Elettra Simos’ expressive costume design) and speaks to the human desire to love and be loved, in spite of our flaws. Bones and all.

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.

Rebel Ridge feels like the film all his previous ones were all building to, evidence of the lessons taken on from Saulnier’s previous work: dancing between tense standoffs in tight spaces; the terror of being followed up the open road. He moves purposefully between these confrontations with the film’s angry unspooling of a broken political system.

Farhadi never misses a beat, taking his tale into increasingly gripping territory.

The performances sell everything unique and special about Torres’ approach to this story, and they bring his characters, who already feel so vibrant through their words, alive.

Even in the most crass jokes, where fluid pours out of orifices, Babes is a delightful and profound study in growth.