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.