There is nothing that resonates below the surface here; this is a half-remembered story dressed in a beautiful gown that seems destined for TikTok fan edits and Pinterest mood boards rather than soul-stirring emotional catharsis. We are guided by the hand, instructed on how to feel at every moment, and trusted with nothing.

A couple of really random and contrived twists in the fourth quarter make it hard to invest emotionally in the climactic, must-win game, though there’s just enough humour and heart to scrape a last-second win.

Despite a two and a half hour runtime, All That’s Left Of You feels incredibly compact. There is much owed to Amine Bouhafa (who also scored The Voice of Hind Rajab) and his kaleidoscopic score that prevents us from losing ourselves to a simple sadness.

The story unfolds at breakneck speed, with never a dull moment.

There’s a potent earnestness about The Chronology of Water – Stewart shows a deep empathy for her subject, and Yuknavitch’s memoir is transformed with an unapologetic confidence.

Raimi uses Send Help as an opportunity to flex his patented formal dynamism, and while the camera is a little more sedate than the elasticised excesses of films like Evil Dead II or the underrated Darkman, he’s still a master of of using movement and framing to create emphasis and draw us closer to the characters and their heightened emotions.

As a writer and director, Sweeney shows much promise, at times demonstrating the swaggering confidence of the Canadian upstart, Xavier Dolan – the pair even look quite similar. Yet the film works best as a showcase for exemplary range of O’Brien.

A horror film about the brazen folly of attempting to domesticate a chimpanzee, or even about the terrifying reality of rabies (which is almost always fatal once a patient is symptomatic) should work. Unfortunately Primate has little interest in its own subject matter – technical plot holes and interchangeable characters aside, there’s no consideration given to Ben’s role within the Pinborough family, let alone the macabre history of domestic chimp attacks in America.

With lots of appealing wildlife and landscape photography to keep things lively, there’s much to cherish in this charming little film.

Even as the death roll of capitalism continues to clutch Hollywood in its jaws, No Other Choice proves that, in the hands of a master, there’s still fertile ground to be found. His biting, incendiary dramedy calls into question how much we’re willing to accept – and how far we’re willing to go – in the name of preserving our own comfort.

If you’re being generous, you might chalk this up as being increments above some of Statham’s more overtly schlocky outings, but if anything, it offers up less of what you want if you’re going to see a Jason Statham movie.

It is ironic that Richard Linklater has chosen to homage a film carved out of spontaneous new techniques with one so mired in contrivances that it is impossible for it to breathe.

The actors’ effervescent chemistry powers the film along wonderfully.

The performances too somehow emulates the game’s awkward, unnatural voice acting, a key contributor to both works’ uncanny dreamlike ambience. Rarely has a film better evoked a PlayStation 2 game.

If the film occasionally falters with its relative lack of incident across nearly two hours, Foy’s performance – especially in the transfixing training scenes captured in long, unbroken takes – tells several stories on its own.

Fiume o morte! explores the dangerous, empowering nature of fascism, and how certain forms of aggression would seem fair game under a régime that rules by such inhumane edict.

Bulk is a self-unravelling noir sci-fi which gleefully ties its various threads into impressive granny knots of self-referrential absurdity.

The Bone Temple offers a heady mix of stomach-churning violence, absurdist humour and surprising glimmers of tenderness.

Even setting aside its subject matter, it is an astounding feat of dramatising real events with an eye on the cinematic, yet it delivers such a punch to the heart that one hesitates to recommend it without qualification.

An American impulse for neat endings and recognisable stories gets in the way, but Rental Family is still beautifully written and gives little windows into Japanese life, from a Monster Cat festival to a rural diversion with breathtaking scenery, with Fraser’s endearing everyman as an emotional linchpin that viewers will love.

It’s well meaning and all done with the best of intentions, but it doesn’t really say or do much more than the BBC documentary did nearly 40 years ago.

In concept and design, Sachs channels The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, with its thick, polar white rug, heavy-gloom atmosphere, mosaicked lounging, chamber setting and never-ending exposition; Kiarostami in its tasteful docudrama-crew reveals; and Warhol in its high-concept simplicity. It’s Sachs’ best film yet.

The leads, at least, give individual scenes a little character.

Dreamers is slight but effective, and perhaps doesn’t quite come back from a twist that occurs about two thirds of the way in when Isio’s situation suddenly changes.

It’s a creative and admirably earnest endeavour, but one that will most certainly live or die on your tolerance for Torrini’s winsome warbling.

In Hamnet, art is presented as a two-way whisper, as a codeword for connectivity and as a way to unlock doors to the future, and living.

Visually, the film favours documentary orthodoxy over the formal risk that Bowie himself represented. For an artist who treated identity as performance and disappearance as strategy, the film’s restraint feels curiously conservative. But The Final Act is not attempting reinvention so much as consolidation.

The Housemaid lacks the guile to transform its flaws into future camp classic material – it feels like a sign of the times: a film which holds the audience’s hand at every turn while gesturing at the very real issue of domestic violence, yet keeping things just light and sexy enough that no one will be bummed out this holiday season.