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.