If some viewers can still cling onto The West Wing as a comfort watch even now, there’s something to be said for the appeal of a text offering the total flip side in its portrayal of centrism’s capabilities, especially one as full of punkish spirit as this.

The film’s spontaneous spirit is muddied by a sense that some ideas are retroactively staged . . . but what ultimately stays with you is the actor duo’s commendable ability to find inspiration and poetic gravitas in silliness, horseplay and tomfoolery, even (and especially) in the darkest of times.

While it would be unfair to suggest Hausner is condoning Novak’s actions, there is a sort of nihilistic glibness about the film which leaves a sour taste.

Anchored by Susan Chardy’s restrained performance, On Becoming A Guinea Fowl might touch on hot-button themes of sexual violence, misogyny and familial cycles of abuse, but Rungano Nyoni finds her own intriguing language to explore them.

Heller skillfully portrays the repeated routines of motherhood – breakfast, lunch, dinner, bath time, bedtime – as both meaningful and exhausting.

It’s all competently performed and executed, with loud booms of sound cued to each scene change as an attempt to ramp up the tension, and lots of behind-the-head tracking shots of cardinals anxiously pacing through corridors and stairways.

The filmmaker’s renderings of desi girlhood are subtle but powerful, coming through in small details: the claw clips and medicine strips strewn about the apartment, tiny tattoos and even tinier, heart-shaped lingerie hardware, stolen moments under cover of darkness.

This is not guilt-free viewing, closer instead to a doomscrolling spiral into despondence.

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.

Bilal Hasna shines as Layla, delivering a magnetic performance, but unfortunately the same can’t be said for the rest of the cast, who fall victim to the contrivances of a script that was maybe taken out of the oven before it was fully cooked.

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.

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

On a moment-by-moment basis, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat is as exhilarating and illuminating a history lesson as you’ll ever have.

It’s a film with an affection for the past, but one that also acknowledges you can never go back to how things were when you were younger – and that while everything about the holidays seems perfectly exciting and straightforward as a kid, the older you get, the more the fault lines start to appear.

Tension between characters seems to evaporate all too easily, meaning it’s hard to really see any weight in their words or actions. This, combined with the flimsy conceit that a fundamentally corrupt institution can be changed from the inside out with a few good men, means that Gladiator II lacks both the gravitas and simple but satisfying narrative arc which made its foundation such a refreshing epic.

No Other Land exemplifies the bravery and patience of activists and journalists. The occupation started over 70 years ago, and together, this unlikely pair capture its inhumanity with humanity.

Much like what the film’s themes speak to, this debut alludes to a brighter future, and serves best as the foundation upon which Malcolm Washington’s greatness will be built upon rather than a monument to it.

While there are passages of uncertainty and twists that take their good sweet time to arrive, things come together beautifully, and a finale that combines a series of clever emotional call-backs and another heartening plea for human empathy that’s worthy of only the finest John Lewis ad.

This is no kitchen sink drama; those most marginalised by years of British austerity are making do, and they’re as entitled to magic as the rest.

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.

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.

Heretic may seek to rock your faith in the divine, but it truly fortifies one’s belief in Hugh Grant.

As slipshot and lazy as it all is, it passes the time as air-headed escapism, and does manage to save all its vaguely-original moves for a bulky final act that delivers some decent spectacle.

If you’re able to make peace with the faecal smears on the wall painted by a cackling Olivier winner known for her physical performances, The Front Room is an entertaining, morbidly funny slice of perverse B-movie exploitation horror.

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

Even if it wasn’t a regressive picture masquerading as progressive, or completely out-of-touch with the sociopolitical reality of Mexico, Emilia Pérez would simply be a boring one and that’s just as much a crime.

The film avoids polemic and instead presents itself as informed and inquisitive blueprint for the ways in which we discuss anti-colonialist action.

It’s an elegant film, reckoning empathetically with an extremely complex topic, but there’s a slight sense that something is missing, keeping The Room Next Door from ever really becoming truly great.

Tereszkiewicz and Marder delight as a double act, but it’s Huppert who steals the show with a cunning smile.

By halfway, Trump gets more flagrantly cruel, delusional, thin- skinned and aggressive. It’s the kind of charismatic antihero’s journey that might fly in a Scorsese film – arguably the ultimate Trump film is The Wolf of Wall Street – but Abassi and Sherman’s take on the material is largely dutiful.

Gripping and full of tension, The Teacher not only makes for a wonderful cinematic experience, but poses some all-important questions the wider world has seemingly avoided answering for too long.

As a writer, Lowe is someone who can elicit a laugh from the deadpan line reading of a single word, yet the impression that the film leaves is quite different: a confessional, self-lacerating howl into the void; an expression of confusion and disappointment; a film which refuses to explain its heroine’s literal generational trauma with self-help platitudes.

It’s a moving ecological parable, and its visuals are an encouraging continuation of the general trend in 3D animation towards graphic textures and away from the restraints of realism, even if it’s something as small as a leaf being represented by an abstract splotch of paint.

It’s all exceptionally silly, and fans of the first film might find the first hour little more than a rehash of Smile, but there’s still something admirable about Parker Finn’s gusto.

There’s something curious and pure about the way Leone disassembles bodies, like a child breaking open an old VCR not to see how it works, but to survey and play with the complicated stuff inside.

Reflecting on McQueen’s oeuvre, Blitz is a clear culmination of his greatest passions, the film itself feeling at once fresh and well-trodden.

Although A Different Man slightly runs out of steam in its second half, it’s an effectively atmospheric and idiosyncratic thriller, deftly examining the patronising attitudes that prevail regarding difference and disability, and the knotty topics of authorship and entitlement to other peoples’ stories.

This is a film of half-measures, lacking ambition in a way that is at least mildly more entertaining than its predecessor, but that’s down to the pleasures of songs written half a century ago rather than any talent Phillips has to offer as a filmmaker. Send in the clowns indeed.

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.

While the mysterious finer details of Clooney and Pitt’s characters are willfully obscured on account of their guarded professionalism, it’s a shame that the film paints in such broad strokes more widely, as this doesn’t leave much room for substantial character development or emotional investment.

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.

It’s a compelling and immersive drama which attains a contemporary relevance without ever really trying too hard.

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.

The Substance’s presentation is as shallow as the very thing it’s critiquing. There’s no compassion, and certainly no catharsis – just more hagsploitation and a sense of déjà vu.

My Favourite Cake is a slice-of-life film with considered dialogue and heartfelt performances that unravels a culturally specific repression, one that got the Iranian filmmakers banned from France and Germany to edit and promote this film, but also the more universal loneliness of the elderly who still have more life to live.

Girls Will Be Girls is a sensitive and quiet addition to the coming-of-age genre that is relatable whether you’re a young teen going through love for the first time, or looking back on those exciting yet heartbreaking years of so many firsts.

Watkins’ slick direction and McAvoy’s frankly terrifying performance make this an effective, worthy if not essential entry into the “If you go out to the woods today…” creepy canon.

It’s just floating in a no-man’s land, a charming but impersonal film about a deeply personal journey.

What lifts Mirza’s film above the pack is that it is alive with colour and music, her characters are endearing and, while a little fragmented towards the end, the writer/director at least makes sure it’s a pleasure to reach that point.

Better overambitious than the opposite, and hopefully In Camera provides plenty more opportunities for Khalid and Rizwan, who so richly deserve them based on the strength of this feature.

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.

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.

Starve Acre is an undeniably impressive addition to this mini-movement, but it’s perhaps one that works better as a slow-burning aesthetic exercise than as either a nerve-rattling horror or an excavation of national myth, history, or identity.

Chaotic and intimate, Gustafson captures the balancing act of sisterhood which at once encompasses brutality and tenderness.

Often sharing the screen with Domingo, Maclin makes an even more powerful impression; the scenes in which these two circle each other, gradually lowering their defences and letting themselves become vulnerable, are gorgeously tender and dramatically vibrant.

Although Beetlejuice Beetlejuice suffers a little from an overabundance of ideas leading to a bit of a third-act scramble, and its plot points are sign-posted so large you can see them a mile away, it’s a much better-executed and enjoyable film than it has any right to be, charmingly reverent and referential to the point that even its cliche story beats can be mostly excused.

Hussain’s film deftly explores the emotional toll of existing as a modern man who feels out of step with the world around him.

Wei maintains a highly individual, slippery and fascinating artistic sensibility all his own.

The film may not be lacking in emotion – Tengarrinha’s emotions are portrayed through the combination of realism and surrealism – but this ultimately comes across as disconnected due to the lack of political contextualisation, leaving an emotional weight missing from the film.

It’s a fascinating, chilling, if limited study of how the endless cycle of global warfare plays out.

It’s an unhurried story, one which drinks in the details of existential ennui suffered by kids who are supremely aware of the fact that they’ll probably have to take a bullet very soon. The question that remains is which direction will it come from.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Blink Twice is that its message of female solidarity feels sincere without being cynically corporate. Rather than patting itself on the back for highlighting the importance of women’s relationships, there’s an understanding that women are not a monolith, and embracing each other’s complexities enables us to fight structural inequality better.

The humour is merciless.

While Hunter Schafer makes for a great Final Girl and Dan Stevens is on top form leaning into his knack for playing offputting weirdos, Cuckoo suffers from an ambiguity that hinders the story, unable to reconcile the comedic elements of the plot with the unsettling.

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.

It’s superior to the stuffy, lore-obsessed recent Scott films, yet doesn’t hold an atmospherically flickering candle to the original or its sequel. It also doesn’t have the rough-and-ready, overreaching character of Fincher’s famous folly. Yet it makes for a decent time at the pictures, and the grinding first half is worth enduring for a pleasantly rip-snorting finale.

Although he’s no stranger to IP-based films (his last two were adaptations) Trap is a reminder that Shyamalan is one of the few A-List directors who still seems dedicated to original storytelling, and even when the scripts don’t quite fully deliver on their elaborate premises, his knack for creating interesting characters and casting the right actors to play them picks up the slack.

There is no joy to be found in the way that Roth parades out his actors in bad cosplay of characters from the series and strips them of any humanity.

This is a moving and compassionate fable that honours both the dying and those being left behind, while personifying, without ever demonising, death itself.

The result is a visual headache, overcrowding every frame with colour, texture and patterns, rather than building to some carefully orchestrated tension.

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

Remaining loyal to the source material, Boyle’s Kensuke’s Kingdom greets fans of the novel with a safe cinematic counterpart, using an animated format to re-explore Morpurgo’s environmental literature, remaining within the boundaries of the original narrative, arriving at set expectations and nothing more.

There’s a breezy panache to Wang’s direction, and he’s very good at capturing the comic skulduggery of, say, early instant messaging apps. It’s a shame, then, that it doesn’t have an original bone in its gangly, hunched frame.

Celiloglu’s carefully calibrated performance, combined with a screenplay which never descents to scurrilous signposting, makes Samet a person of endless literary intrigue – a monster and a martyr trapped inside the same body.

I Saw The TV Glow creeps up on you, holding your focus so intently you hardly notice when it begins to fray at the margins.

Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine is a mixed (ball) bag indeed, definitely not unendurable, and even boasting a couple of nuggets of misty-eyed nostalgia that aren’t instantly undercut by playground irony, but for the most part it does boast the hit-and-miss qualities of polytechnic sketch comedy.

It’s a harrowing and powerful film that navigates the intricate terrain of going against tradition and longing for freedom, one that aims to extend the personal confines of cultural conflict beyond the fictional characters it portrays.

Sweet without being cloying, it’s a love letter to the commonalities between Georgian and Turkish culture; one that encourages empathy and reminds us it’s never too late to change for the better.

To the End isn’t unentertaining – Albarn in particular was born to be a silly gremlin in front of a camera – but it never adequately justifies its existence even as brand maintenance.

That emotional core is missing in Twisters, even with a few stabs at highlighting the human cost of America’s inadequate tornado warning and damage mitigation systems.

The film is underscored by endearing and comedic moments that keep it from falling flat, but it’s ultimately challenging to see beyond the structurally rote contrivances on display.

There’s no doubting June Squibb’s charisma, and it’s refreshing to see her in a lead role at the grand age of 94.

The film’s final scene is also a chilling subversion of normal expectations for the climax of a campground slasher, but the lacklustre 90 minutes that precede it mean that by the time we trudge to the forest’s boundaries, there’s little reason to care who comes out of the blood bath on top.

Hundreds of Beavers is an immaculately constructed, gloriously bizarre, wholly unique tribute to that basest of comedy pleasures, made by people whose imagination seemingly knows no bounds.

If the spectacle of a film high-fiving itself from across the decades makes you feel physically nauseous, and one that opts for minor variations on a tried-and-tested formula over doing and saying something, anything even vaguely interesting, then hop into your busted blue Chevy Nova, hightail it past the Beverly Hills city limits and never look back.

Despite sleepiness being part of its premise, the pacing of Yu’s film is propulsive, and the deft detours into dark comedy – especially a reveal involving PowerPoint slides – are a highlight. But it’s Jung and Lee’s work that lingers the most, their thoroughly charming, lively performances enhancing the tragedy and dread of something awful happening to them.

At only 84 minutes and light on plot, at times this film feels so slight that it might just slip through your fingers. And yet its ethereality is what makes it enchanting.

What makes Sasquatch Sunset a cut above what some might perceive to be an extended Funny or Die sketch is that it’s crafted with such care and with a sense of cinematic grandeur, achieved via Mike Gioulakis’ gorgeous, mussy cinematography and the gentle pastoral sounds of The Octopus Project on the soundtrack.

The mixed media technique cuts through the film’s naturalism to bring forth something felt and ineffable, akin to the rich, vivid worlds within children’s imaginations, as well as the haziness with which we recall childhood memories.

As a piece of compelling and coherent narrative filmmaking, Hounds is unfortunately a fun beginning, a silly ending and with a mid-section that’s missing in action.

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.

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.

It is ecstatically violent, both celebrating and interrogating its own killing spree, as it races towards its final destination.

Orlando: My Political Biography is a dive into the collective trans consciousness, a discussion between Orlandos across time and place, an attempt to discover new ways to understand and express ourselves.

Playful in its blocking and heavy on Altmanesque zooms, the movie’s textured visual language complements the script’s comedic and dramatic concerns, enhancing their impact rather than being an excessive distraction.

This time around it’s the same characters, the same gags, the same minions, the same wacky yet bland animation style, yet all with massively diminishing returns.

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.

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.