It’s sometimes clumsily communicated but there’s something affecting about the reminder that it’s all worth the risk, or maybe it’s just that this writer has attended four weddings this summer.

It goes without saying, but the film dazzles with its trompe-l’oeil-like worldbuilding, which inhabits the fairy tale reality of Anderson’s mind without ever giving over to the wayward indulgence of dream logic.

Even if it does eventually crumble to pieces, it’s a really strong thriller for the large majority of its runtime.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Throughout, Dragonfly plays with perspective, fascinated by the potential of others and what people are capable of. However, the film’s final note is deeply cynical, as if it is embarrassed by the sincerity of its genuine and vital message.

Alone Together invites us into this community and gives fans some insight into Charli’s psychology, although perhaps the most evocative work chronicling this period in the artist’s career is the album itself.

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.

If Sorrentino has a special power as a filmmaker, it’s his ability to draw the very best out of Servillo in any type of terrain, and it’s this wholly committed and natural lead performance which holds together an otherwise slipshod and fatally schematic tale how the cold realities of life and death can feed into the process of politics.

It’s passable as a mildly amusing twist on the slasher genre, but its lack of strong identity or coherent thesis means there’s little that sticks in the mind after the credits role, and ultimately does a disservice to its crop of talented stars.

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.

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.

Co-writers/co-directors Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz confound life and art, reality and dreams, sanity and madness in their surreal vision of conservative America succumbing to – or biting back against – the encroaching counterculture.

Playing out as part psychological chiller and part supernatural horror, it navigates parental fears and family secrets in a sinister liminal space.

The filmmaker draws some arresting audiovisual cues into the patchwork of images, but the film lacks some of the goofy wit of British documentarian Adam Curtis, whose own provocative essays at least offer some element of surprise (even when they don’t work themselves).

The layering of material is done carefully, with narrative embedded within the images.

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

There’s clearly a lot at play: guilt, grief, purgation, conformity, electoral fraud, and the prison industrial complex to cap it all off. What may have been appropriately lolled out on paper feels distending within a 105-minute runtime, where big, salient ideas are brought only to a simmer.

It’s a rosy, adoring view of pubs and clubs as explicitly, perfectly Marxist – a coal country – accented chorus rising in a single voice to inspire us all to a more perfect union.

This is also a film that benefits from occasional glimmers of lightness, which contribute to a more rounded sense of who Winton was as a person while providing some respite from the weighty subject matter.

A chamber piece with a small, charismatic cast, in a location made vivid thanks to strong production design, would seem an ideal model for lower-budget counter-programming efforts, should audiences show up. And with Dick Pope on cinematography duty, the visual realisation tends to avoid staginess.

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.

British-Moroccan filmmaker Fyzal Boulifa’s second feature borrows the title of this Crawford vehicle and retains its melodrama, only to portray an otherwise entirely distinct, compassionately-crafted survival tale.

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.

Slipping into insanity right alongside its protagonist, Smile is an uncommonly sharp movie deviously disguising itself as more of the same. Lowering our defences with the appearance of the commonplace may be its most wicked move of all.