It’s about the steps towards healing, challenging Western viewers to allow images of beauty and normalcy to play a part in that journey.

If you believe cinema’s job is to ask the questions rather than offer the answers, then this will usefully challenge you. A dirty fingernail stuck right into the open wound of our unspoken social anxieties.

Sono has flow to spare, but samples heavily from icky fanboy culture.

Wiseman shows us the “how” of art appreciation, from politics to philosophy, in a film vast in scope, and richly suggestive in insight.

Mizrahi films one-on-one interviews with a shallow depth of field, so that her subjects appear with the occluded intensity of their own remembrances.

The Mule is a beautiful, troubling film. It is a pearl formed around a grit of unease in the oyster of our nostalgia.

A timely story of broken trust in institutions.

Rich, mysterious, rigorous and generous.

Chukwu is a master of show don’t tell, and the deft emotional performances she elicits from Woodard and Hodge make this heavy experience completely worth it.

Gavron has used her clout to pull together an inclusive team that goes beyond representational box ticking. She has made a film powered by real empathy and joy. Bakray isn’t a black face in a white story – there is space for cultural nuance.

There is always an issue of sensitivity with documentary filmmaking, but the final film is wanting. Wanting more Marion, and wanting more interrogation of the role public news plays in American life. But that doesn’t mean this documentary isn’t worth your time, Marion was an actionable inspiration and contradictory genius.

Mangrove is a necessary and exhilarating illustration of the staying power of Black Britons.

While the beautiful directorial flourishes are still there – the fluid cinematography, striking performances and airtight soundtrack – Alex Wheatle is the first Small Axe film where the blend between the informative and the pointedly artistic feels a little unsettled.

Essential, infuriating viewing.

A few laughs accrued from Bugs Bunny, but mostly a depressing slog

Balance is everything, though – this isn’t a saccharine rewriting of history, nor a fully-fledged “fuck you” to those who deserve it. Both Rasmussen and Amin remain aware of tone, opening up about how hard it can be to trust people when your life is spent being “adjusted, retained and suppressed” to fit an image others have created for you.

This is breathtaking filmmaking, but would be a little hard to take for two-and-a-half hours. Thankfully, Serebrennikov has more tricks up his sleeve.

The soulless, offensively pedestrian Death on the Nile offers not even pleasure of the ‘so bad it’s good’ variety. It’s simply a waste of everyone’s time, cast, crew and audience alike.

An absorbing set of vignettes, though the third section definitely ups the emotional ante.

Whether you laugh with or at Marry Me, the odds are you will laugh. So that’s a win.

No matter what we might think of her, it’s clear that Tammy Faye was one of a kind. Chastain’s mannered plague of tics does right by her in that respect, but she’s been inserted into a template now worn from overuse.

It’s all very stupid, if only sometimes in an amusing way.

It’s a beguiling work from a master of her craft that holds the art of filmmaking in its piercing gaze, and speaks to an uncompromising vision of what cinema can be with a little faith and imagination.

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.

This comforting, crass blast from the past confirms the Jackass gang as modern-day legends. Pandemics come and go. The tides turn and pop culture trends live and die on the whim of social media. But Jackass? Baby, Jackass is Forever.

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.

With Lingui, Haroun has created a quiet ode to the women who honour their sacred bonds to one another. By centering a mother and daughter united, instead of characters in opposition, he is able to underline the ways we can support each other in the face of patriarchal tyranny.

Every shot, every narrative beat, every decision exudes not merely confidence, but the touch of a master.

The scenes of Jennifer’s childhood are endless montages, with repetitive blown-out happy-families memories and blatant Terrence Malick ripoffs of the same hand caressing the same strands of wheat from several different angles, and the whole thing is tied together with pretentious and solecistic voiceover delivered by Dylan Penn and surely written by her father as they laboured to salvage the movie in the edit.

A wildly ambitious, idiosyncratic and very English domestic horror story baked in the mould of Clive Barker’s seminal S&M gore wig-out, Hellraiser, from 1987.

While it would be hard to argue that none of this film’s two hours, 20 minute runtime could be trimmed, its final minutes are well worth the wait, with Cooper selling the intense darkness with everything he’s got.

It struggles to find nuance in its storytelling approach.

In spite of its trite predictability and overlong running time, it’s clearly a loving tribute with its heart in the right place, but the source material was perhaps treated with so much respect that the portrayal of the relationship fails to generate any heat or emotional intensity.

We may never fully know who Brian Wilson is, but in his resistance of that knowing, we gain clarity on a crucial plank of his latter-day persona.

This story about growing up amid the onset of The Troubles should be more emotionally and politically potent than it is. Instead, it’s a careful, uncontroversial (and thereby unremarkable) film that fails to exert any lasting impact after the credits roll.

Despite a prioritisation of visual effects over story, Memory Box makes a compelling case for chronicling the big and small parts of your life, if only to share with generations to come.

Its observational mode keeps it from being didactic or manipulative in any way, and it adopts an intimacy that evokes the deepest empathy. Luma’s pain is never spectacle.

Even if the dry wit and cherrypickable allusions may be absent, the technical virtuosity on display marks this as the work of a master. Visceral, haunted, and severe, Coen’s vision coaxes out not just the intensity in the play – every “gritty” take has done this, from Roman Polanski to Justin Kurzel – but in its older renderings.

Like the best of the director’s work, Memoria lulls you into its rhythms, gives you the sparse outlines of an intellectual framework, then hits you with the full weight of accumulated lyricism that must be pure cinema.

This is certainly the most stylishly directed of all the sequels. But still, its ironic self-consciousness about how tired its material has become does not ultimately make it any less tired.

Licorice Pizza is a slow-release product, something that creeps up on you, inveigles its way into your conscience. It’s silky-smooth filmmaking perfection, bolstered by a full hand of remarkably charismatic star supporting turns.

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

Despite the strong performances by Cumberbatch and Foy, the complex weaving together of symbolic strands feels contrived; they hang loosely together by a precarious thread.

Director Christian Schwochow’s staging is unostentatious to the point of coming across as pedestrian, but the film is ultimately engaging thanks to the dilemmas wrestled with by the script.

Amir Jadidi’s haunted-behind-the-eyes performance stays with you, whether or not you want it to.

In Kent’s beautifully balanced and exquisitely shot film, this is the best you can do for someone without negating their experience or agency. The Nightingale similarly does not ask its audience to identify with, root for, or relate to any of its characters. It only tells us to watch and to listen.

Eggers understands that fairy tales and superstitions don’t persist because they are true or because they are absolute fantasies, but because they are both at the same time.

A winning adaptation that never condescends its audience.

That is why, as over-the-top and broad as it sometimes is, Summer of 85 is also one of Ozon’s most moving films to date.

Far from a humiliating and cruel character assassination, this film is a study of the limits of perception that is tender and unsettling in equal measure.

By exploring his passions and drives, Schible has given meaning beyond the surface to Sakamoto’s music. It makes for fascinating viewing, and even more beautiful listening.

It is undeniably a magnum opus, but one that has been refined to the briskness of a novella.

Nothing much happens in Summer 1993, and yet everything changes.

Moments of real desperation in human faces reveal why journalists risk death to report in Syria and beyond, providing a timely reflection on the power of documentary footage. A pity, then, that Martin does not leave their story to stand for itself.

Perhaps we are never driven to indignation at Lisa’s actions because the film exudes a refreshing state of calm, boasting a visual style that is awash with turquoise hues.

Brief and to the point, Honeyland proves more meditative than its premise suggests.

While its success outside Italy remains to be seen, del Toro and Zemeckis will have to pull a lot of strings to better Garrone.

It’s the greatest asset of Papicha that it condemns without being dogmatic, showing its central conflict to be more complicated than Western audiences might otherwise believe.

An Easy Girl reads not as the male sexual frustration of the Nouvelle Vague, but as a celebration of women’s sexual agency.

It’s not a journey for the faint of heart.

Hope Gap doesn’t go as deep into questions of love and loss as Nicholson’s 1993 screenplay for the CS Lewis biopic Shadowlands, but it benefits from the focus on an adult son, for whom the end of his parents’ marriage is shown to be just as hard to accept as it would be for a young child.

Sasha’s parents are inspiring in their determination to give their daughter the childhood every girl her age deserves.

Maybe not quite enough to warm a sceptic’s heart, but certainly a pleasant enough outing for your nan.

Rather than critiquing practices it purports to condemn, The Other Lamb becomes party to the evils it depicts.

Doing his part to keep his father’s work alive and relevant, Gorō Miyazaki steers the Ghibli ship even further away than Yonebayashi dared, resulting in the studio’s most cheerily radical film to date.

The Suicide Squad is crass, noisy and brash – a disturbing glimpse inside the mind of James Gunn.

Reeves and Moss are magnificent at resurrecting Neo and Trinity, and they blend exquisitely into Lana Wachowski’s matured style of filmmaking.

Titane is a genuinely weird, sweet thing, even in a time where those descriptors get thrown around far too much. There has not been a more surprising motion picture in years.

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.

No Way Home feels like a greatest hits package specifically designed to hit every fan service button. It doesn’t give us any indication of where this story is going, or why we should care.

Through all the accolades bestowed by colleagues, critics and even presidents, the documentary is at its strongest when it speaks to Moreno’s impact on future Latin American performers, giving them the role model she never had.

Lamb’s premise is intriguing too – a pleasing twist on the familiar horror trope of monstrous motherhood. Even so, the imaginative conceit is let down by a rather sudden and underwhelming climax.

It may not all add up but this is an ambitious and taboo-tackling debut with an atmosphere that lingers thanks to gutsy performances from Colman and Buckley.

It all feels a little toothless.

While Sorkin, Kidman and Bardem breathe life into these sitcom icons, their lives ultimately prove too big and too messy to fit within this film’s constraints.

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.

Through his infectiously likeable and talented protagonists, Yates’ rollicking dialogue captures the brilliance of youth in all its bold foolishness and earnestness.

Visually and dramatically, the film doesn’t reinvent any wheels, nor does it set out too, instead happy to splice together a satisfyingly intense period drama with some nice moments of genre pay-off.

The tone never defines the stakes in such grave terms, but that’s the key to the potency of Mills’ cinema: life’s pivotal turns come in idle moments, from inconspicuous sources. All it takes is the willingness to listen.

The dynamic of the central four is a pleasure incarnate. Equal parts funny and warm, each actor brings a specific dynamism that, when combined with the rest, crackles with life and love.

Despite an excessive 150-minute runtime, a fair share of abrupt tonal shifts and a somewhat heavy-handed execution of metaphors threatening to rob the anthology of power and cohesion, the dramatically consistent depictions of contempt, grief and rage bring an adequate sense of uniformity.

[Chon's] execution is heavy-handed, with the ending steering into a mawkish spectacle which undercuts the seriousness of the topic at hand.

It’s a deeply unpleasant and reactionary film that even compelling central performances can’t save.

It’s a rare, backwards looking misfire for this director who has always been at the vanguard of cinematic innovation. The care and attention that has gone into the making of this film is undeniable, though at times it feels misplaced and others overwrought.

Hassan doesn’t need to provide a grand framing device. You sense their powerlessness, you are embedded within it. There is no omniscient camera to take the audience away because there is no freedom of movement for the Fazilis.

Faces Places is a subtly self-reflexive documentary that swims against this tide, inviting audiences to see that filmmaking is a process of having conversations with people, and enveloping each individual and their private creativity within the wider collaborative process. Art is a form of social work or, rather, it can be with the right people at the helm.

The lure of intense mystery that beguiles you into trying to solve it again and again; the transference of an intoxication that makes you feel physically different afterwards. It sounds hyperbolic to describe art as having such power, but surely the reason we care about art is a belief that such power exists. High Life is too layered, too ambiguous, too potent to be about any one thing.

A striking portrait of Shelly’s life that will have you seeking out her work and wondering what could have been.

A Hidden Life is, underneath it all, a love story. The Jägerstätters are a private microcosm imprinted by history. The Nazi regime is almost incidental, as these people could be anywhere opposing any evil regime. The substance of the film is buoyed by unselfish, enlightened love, shaped by a couple’s faith in each other’s morality.

This is a film trying to wriggle out of the straitjacket of its own story, the better to reveal the symbiotic passions within its two leading ladies.

The BFG’s greatest strength is its simplicity. This is a film built for children that delights with fantastical details while gently pushing a heartfelt message about the power of dreams.

The set-up is fascinating and the tension is increasingly grotesque. Yet there are many plodding stretches which Corbet doesn’t succeed in concealing by inserting wild camera movements combined with Scott Walker’s bleak, juddering orchestral score. This music feels like possessed black stallions galloping to hell. It bludgeons you with loud, brash, hysterical horror.

Andrea Arnold is an exciting director who knows how to create a thick patina of realism within which female protagonists stoically pursue improvement. It’s a little crushing, therefore, that American Honey feels unmoored from anything approaching real life.

Driver embodies calmness and stillness. This performance cements his status as an actor whose physical command matches his ability to telegraph inner life. It’s a cliché to say that the greatest actors make the smallest actions magnetic, but it’s true of Driver who makes the non-demonstrative act of listening feel like it means the world.

There is too much going on in Manchester by the Sea and still it is among the best films of this or any year. It is too funny, too tragic, and too full of nods to all manner of movie genres.

The result is a gorgeous, layered portrait of a woman determined to put public image ahead of private feelings.

If there’s such a thing as conflict-sploitation, then Sean Penn has made a genre classic.

Strengths lie in this film’s commitment to understanding an extraordinary, reclusive woman, its weaknesses in a dogged fidelity to relaying the small events of each passing year.