The beauty in Schrader’s work has always been in the relationship between penance and absolution, which feels noticeably absent here. It’s a shame because the trio of Edgerton, Swindell, and Weaver deliver strong performances, and Devonte Hynes’ romantic score with a slight edge of sombreness is nicely atmospheric, but the film’s third act feels too neat and unconvincing, particularly given the sharpness of the conclusion in Schrader’s last two films.

One thing that lifts this above the type of hospital-based docu-drama that are ten-a-penny on the small screen is that Paravel and Castaing-Taylor locate a uniquely cinematic quality to the footage.

Halle Bailey is fantastic as Ariel, and Daveed Diggs delightful as Sebastian the crab, but it’s still a late-stage capitalism slog.

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

Surprisingly, Fast X emerges as not only Leterrier’s best film but one of the most enjoyable entries in the entire series. A great deal of this can be attributed to the fact that this film, to an extent heretofore unseen, acknowledges and embraces just how absurd this franchise is.

Hopkins eschews spectacle and sentimentality while also doing away with inventive storytelling devices. A character-driven, verité approach provides a deft-enough framework to handle historical sweep and intimate moments between the club members with equal steadiness.

The subtext behind the pilgrimage is that an act of kindness from decades ago can stay with a person and compel them to shake off the shackles of shame. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is about the lengths that even skeptical people will go to for each other, a length that defies all logic.

This tale of a tough loner forced to test his mettle certainly has political resonance beyond its intimate telling here.

Menkes is in such a rush to get through the history of cinema to point a finger of blame at everyone except herself, ending with her own films as examples of a negation of the gaze. Nobody’s perfect.

A film of haunting unease, but not perhaps the complete package.

In this years-long dance between the two, The Eight Mountains plays as a gentle epic, equally accomplished in its minimalistic approach to intimacy as in its grandiose portrayal of landscapes, an immersive visual experience that needs not sacrifice the arcs of its characters to succeed in building arresting contemplation.

The rightful rage of its commentary is articulated with such clarity and specificity that it circumvents any accusations of ‘misery porn’.

Touzani steers clear of easy clichés and pitfalls that the film’s premise might suggest, giving a masterclass in restraint. and it’s Azabal’s exceptional portrayal of Mina, rather than Bakri’s Hamil, that emerges as the film’s beating heart.

The film isn’t inconclusive but its time and continent-sweeping structure is anything but conventional: and that’s what makes the mercurial Return to Seoul, in the end, so remarkable.

A beautifully intimate yet open-ended interrogation of the spaces its characters are forced to navigate, Sadiq’s intricate debut is a haunting elegy that mourns the deadly suffocation of desire, elegantly tracing how the liberation of men, women, cis, and trans people is always entangled.

For all his puerile instincts, Gunn is able to create stakes in this film that feel real and meaningful – perhaps because of the care that has gone into fleshing out this group of characters over the course of three films (and all their supplementary appearances).

The film rarely lets up thanks to a combination of Ledru’s dynamic turn, kinetic camerawork with breathless tracking shots along open roads and impressively choreographed action sequences packed full of thrilling bike and quad stunts.

It’s refreshing to see a film like this which opts for an editorial line that’s not just wall-to-wall celebration, and actually attempts to dismantle and dissect its subject rather than merely lionise him to the hilt.

A fiery, confrontational missive from one of the finest dramatic writers in the business.

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.

A Thousand And One is a powerful ode to resilience and community, as well as a passionate rebuke against the forces that produce devastating consequences for those they sweep aside.

It offers a spitefully funny takedown of a culture which sees no differences between the acts of soul-bearing and self-abasement, and just when you think Borgli couldn’t twist the knife any further, he does just that.

Unfortunately the film piles on twist after twist until it ends up in dark territory it doesn’t feel equipped to handle, and the mood sours due to the deployment of a serious subject matter as simply a shocking twist.

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.

In River, the waters soon turn murky as context is largely omitted in favour of exquisite yet repetitive aerial imagery depicting astonishing natural landscapes, tidal currents, and elemental forces.

What could have been a charming odd couple film about a supernatural break-up is tonally mismatched, not quite a comedy, not quite a horror, not quite a crime caper, not quite a romance.

It is tempting to want people to be one thing or the other: the murderer or the victim. This film reminds us: Highsmith was both.

Seydoux is once again marvellous and a collaboration such as this seems long overdue.

For a director whose career has centered human connection at every turn to create some of the most vulnerable and emotional stories on romance and human connection within the field of Japanese animation, it feels like a rare misfire.

While there’s a loving homage element to the film, Cronin isn’t merely attempting to ape the hysterical dynamics and acrobatic camera moves that Raimi made his trademark.

It’s not an entirely unpleasant journey, but the film does have a jarring, unfinished feel to it, and while the detail-oriented might find it novel to unpack its myriad cinematic homages, and Aster’s ambitious execution is worthy of celebration, ultimately it’s an uneven ride, particularly given the incredible talent involved.

Western media has trained us to brace for the worst in works engaging with the fanatical corners of Islam, and so the ground-level sobriety in Saleh’s treatment lands as a blessing all its own.

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.

Crowe is pleasingly game, affecting a questionable Italian accent and bearing a striking resemblance to Orson Welles as he cuts about on his scooter, and Amorth – who was the subject of a 2017 documentary by William Friedkin – is undoubtedly a fascinating character worthy of a schlocky B-movie outing. But the stilted script takes a long time to deliver on its scintillating premise, and Avery can’t seem to strike a balance between the absurd and the disturbing, with the elaborate climax coming too late to really have an impact.

Escobar’s go-for-broke handling of the material favours fun outtakes, flip humour and nostalgic hat-tips to the days when the Philippines had real gravitational pull as a hub for maverick genre enthusiasts wanted to parlay the beautiful/desolate surroundings into their scuzzy opus. And just when you reach the point where you think that Escobar has finally lost the plot, she crops up on camera and admits just that.

If that first hour or so is where the film resembles debilitating wilderness trek tales such as Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff or Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (in both content and quality), the claustrophobic second half is where valid comparisons to something like Shūsaku Endō’s Silence – though especially Martin Scorsese’s 2016 screen adaptation – come to the fore; where colonial arrogance and perceived enlightenment make for combustible mix ready to blow at the slightest provocation.

Since the 1980s, Nintendo has built its reputation on gleeful, ingenious entertainment that delights in design. Conversely, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is empty-calorie, time-filling amusement for the school holidays. In other words, a licence to print money.

So it’s not the Michael Jordan story, or a two-hour lesson about the science of sneaker design. Instead Air is an engaging Hollywood fairytale, about extraordinary people and the scope of their ambition, and the importance of advocating not only for your own worth, but for the worth of those around you.

Haslett writes that the riotsvilles were the places, “where the state assembles its fears.” Pettengill’s film is an invigorating indictment of these constructed falsehoods – their fears, their riotsvilles, their scapegoats and their reasons for destruction.

The performances at the core of the film are stellar, and it comes as a surprise to no one that Andrea Riseborough gives a pure dynamite turn, contorting every inch of her face and body as the carnivalesque Suze.

It’s a satisfying film, even though it lacks closure. Nothing is unnecessary or over the top – so Moll doesn’t push the boat out.

There’s no real moral centre to the film – it’s a depth-free caper which only demonstrates negligible interest in any wider ramifications of these types of big money boardroom IP raids.

Although the script does have a zippy, wisecracking feel, there’s also an earnestness at play: the characters embrace the strangeness of their world without ever feeling the need to remark on it. In short, this is a film that is fun while also taking its premise somewhat seriously.

Perhaps diehard football fans will have a little more fun with the premise, but the stars have to do some heavy lifting, and as charming as they are together, one can’t help but wonder if this is the best we can do for actresses of their calibre.

The film does well to capture the probing literary spirit of Murakami, even if it doesn’t quite manage to channel the intense emotional aspect of its work, instead coming across as dryly ironic and detached.

There is something a little boilerplate in how the film is structured which prevents it from offering anything particularly original. Were the visuals not so gorgeous, you might even see this as material primed for the small rather than big screen.

As a folkloric meditation on the relationship between human and environment, mother and child, Alegría’s film has an earthly mystical quality to it, moving through its minimal plot with fluidity and enticement.

Even as The Beasts flirts with genre, it also remains largely true to the real-life case from which it is drawn, so that the big three-cornered duel that would be the climax of a western comes here at the half-way point and allows the rest of the film to abandon masculine bluster and focus on a quieter female stoicism.

As well as boasting an all-female crew, Martelli’s film exquisitely evokes Carmen’s muted revolutionary spirit, making for an invaluable demonstration of feminine revolutionary cinema.

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.

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.

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.

Pugh’s greatest tribulation of all is delivering the tin-eared dialogue torn between the emotional sadism it heaps onto its protagonist and the adulation it lavishes on the actress playing her.

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.

Much like the candy whose corporate slogan features as one of the most prominent aspects of the script, Shazam! Fury of the Gods is a film with close-to-zero nutritional value.

There’s perhaps a kernel of a good film here, and a lead performance that’s better than it has any need to be, but shoddy execution, lazy world-building and a complete failure to capitalise on any of the potentially interesting threads that (perhaps accidentally) appear means 65 has less of an impact than the harrowing final episode of 90s sitcom The Dinosaurs.

It’s a strange and beguiling film, and I’m just going to lay down my cards and say that, on the back of her all-in collaborations with Lars von Trier and Claire Denis, Goth’s presence makes any movie a must-see.

Running at just 82 minutes, Rye Lane fills its brief time with an infectious sense of joy and hopefulness.

The film sorely lacks for surprise or tension, even while it does offer a likably earnest survey of the economic hole that many found themselves in while the world got sick.

For me, Close gets to the heart of something I know all too well: bone-deep loneliness, grief, sadness and desperation that is hard to articulate, much less as a young child. To show this so masterfully, and without an ounce of judgement, make Close a small wonder.

Blood and Honey is not a good film but it is the type of film where scenes specified to take place at 3am are filmed in obvious daylight.

Everyone’s reaching for a system of support. In most cases, allowed by Koreeda with admirable generosity, they can latch on to one another.

Hidden in Martello-White’s bold, assured calling card is a provocative allegory of black experience in white Britain, as characters get caught in an evolving conflict between estrangement and assimilation, individualism and inauthenticity, pride and self-loathing.

Undoubtedly the film means well, but its cliche, entirely predictable plot and uninspired message mean there’s not much to take away – it feels like a relic from a bygone era, and given Farrelly’s previous form, all feels a little insincere.

Scream VI is well-made, fast-moving and often painfully brutal, while peppered with the kind of sassy, savvy dialogue that has always been a hallmark of the franchise.

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

With a clear vision and understanding of the storytelling, and buoyed by Zach Baylin and Keenan Coogler’s deft screenplay, Jordan makes an ambitious debut that needs more finetuning at times but retains the best traits of the trilogy to remain a suitably introspective, yet thrilling chapter in the Creed legend.

Cocaine Bear transcends terms such as ‘good’ and instantly enters the realm of ‘beloved trash’. It will be viewed at teen sleepovers, as a romantic icebreaker, and when no one can decide what to watch for decades to come – the sort of uncomplicated, silly, surreal viewing experience that might not change your life, but will certainly enrich it.

The first half of You Resemble Me is gripping in its neorealistic, social realist approach.

The Inspection is a powerful yet unsettlingly inconclusive account of an important, haunting period in a man’s past.

Even the magnetic likes of Jackman, Dern and Kirby are wasted here, to the extent that by the time The Son reaches its miserable, cloying foregone conclusion, it’s a relief to be free of the uninspired direction and paint-by-numbers interrogation of a subject that deserves much more depth.

The feeling of nostalgia is perhaps overstressed, and the pacing is odd. But the tension created as foolish Felice drifts into a trap of his own making is magnetic.

Delicate, yet resonant.

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

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

This is a film about the victims of abuse and, as By the Grace of God makes clear, for many victims this is a story that has no end.

While the Quantum Realm felt strange and unique in earlier, briefer views, here it quickly falls in line with much of Marvel’s recent CGI output: splashy but nondescript, all psychedelic purple clouds and gargantuan, brutalist military buildings that homogenize every location in a universe of seemingly infinite possibility.

It’s a pleasure to see Fraser given a role he can put his heart into, and his nuanced performance saves The Whale from turning into a ghoulish spectacle or a very artfully shot episode of TLC’s exploitative reality show ‘My 600lb Life’.

It’s also shot through with the outré symbolism and impulsivity that have long characterised its director’s long, strange career, particularly its late, nothing-to-prove stages. In short, Jerzy Skolimowski is 84 years young, and he is absolutely vibing.

With Saint Omer, Diop not only refreshes and expands upon the tired conventions of the courtroom drama, but she really drills down into the fundamental gaps in our understanding of human nature and the tantalising but illusive ‘why?’ of it all.

There’s still a great deal to admire, in particular the rich cinematography of Jarin Blaschke (best known for his collaborations with Robert Eggers) which creates a pleasing contrast from the sinister scenario, and the affection with which Shyamalan treats all his characters. Sure, there’s violence, but there’s a whole lot of love too.

A tightly-paced action thriller, Plane competently delivers on the deliciously formulaic tropes of the genre.

Romantic comedies are meant to be cringe-y and based on morally questionable conundrums, but James and Latif’s individual charms and dynamic is undone by the way their characters’ choices make them feel lost in a way that is completely unrelatable.

The Fabelmans clearly comes from a place of deep sincerity – while it might not be a particularly “deep” film, it is absolutely the Spielberg film about Becoming Spielberg that we’ve been waiting for, echoing the world of child-like wonder and the tenacity to manifest dreams that his whole career has centred around.

As an artefact of the invaluable intersection between artistic effort and pragmatic resistance, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is a testament to the dialectic of form and content, of artwork and social reality as a crucial, actively-engaged site of political struggle, an apt battleground in the fight against all-pervasive capitalist monoliths.

Fiori exemplifies both an excellent command over form, as well as a great affinity for poetic storytelling, using all the tools at her disposal to get to the devastating truth at the core of the film: that instead of providing the necessary support to underprivileged children trapped in generational cycles of incarceration, the Italian state chooses to criminalise their behaviour.

As demonstrated by the film’s final third, Atef evidently has a skill for crafting humane, sometimes contradictory characters and for drawing out compelling performances. And yet as interesting as the interpersonal drama should be, it might just leave you, as Monty Python would say, pining for the fjords.

The film excels in nasty generic thrills, even if there are some fictional elements of the story which undermine its apparent allyship to the victims.

The key challenge here is presenting these familiar tropes in a novel manner, and Cooper’s knowing sense of humour and her committed cast help bring life to the conventional.

In ambition, achievement and Jenkin’s future as an image-maker of esoteric esteem, this is a big step up from Bait.

It’s a hard film to despise, and it works perfectly well as a supercharged Movie of the Week for the Hallmark Channel, but the lack of attention to detail and nuance mean that much of the film comes off as maudlin fluff rather than lightly philosophical tearjerker.

As a whole, the film doesn’t really work, as Mendes is far more successful in dealing with psychological issues than he is with political ones.

Tár, Todd Field’s portrait of the artist as an abuser, is the funniest horror film of 2022.

It’s a lot more interesting and exciting to think about than it is to watch.

A child’s anxieties about what might be under the bed or in the shadows are also precisely those primal fears that fuel horror, ensuring that, with all its obfuscations, evasions and abstractions, Skinamarink strips the genre down to its most basic elements: a vulnerable individual alone in the dark.

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.

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

Writer-director Carlota Pereda has embarked on a risky debut with this horror film that addresses bullying, fatphobia and the social stigma associated with obesity while delivering on gore and shocks.