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.

The visuals are compelling but something is missing. The tone is too flat and the world-building too smooth for this film to ever come fully to life.

The relentless pace of the dialogue is at times exhausting, and the tone never really varies, yet this is forgiven when, hours after viewing, you find yourself grinning into the ether, remembering standout hoots from the cornucopia of Meyerowitz tales.

Gerwig nails how mothers and daughters argue – always at each other’s throat. Because of the tonal breadth of the film, different shades of feeling are found in each grudge match. Love as a combative war of words is an energising force.

Selma Blair is sympathetically naturalistic as a woman who gave up her career to be a mother and now wonders what her options are. This is offset at every turn by Cage, whose line reading is unpredictable and whose movement is flamboyantly deranged.

This is a Serious Movie that engages the intellect with compelling depictions of place, time and people. The ensemble cast is full of small characters with personalities that reveal themselves through political quirks and related creativity.

Big budget superhero flicks are a dime a dozen. Woman at War takes a sidelong glance at what it means to look, sound and act like a fighter – one hellbent on serving the world’s greater good.

A painfully real portrait of racism in Australia.

A memoir writ in moving image, the film returns to her favourite motifs, such as family, feminism and feeling (in the corporeal sense), to unite Varda’s bountiful output across myriad artforms.

Relic is an exercise in control and denial.

Some Kind of Heaven gently prods at the incompatibility of two cherished American narcotics: freedom and comfort. Though the latter can be purchased, it comes at the cost of one’s individuality.

It gets under your skin, with the audacious and cunning mystique of a magician who always has one more trick prepared. Bonello leaves us hypnotised and hungrily begging for more.

Every woman’s uphill battle will look different, and here is one fleshed out admirably.

While scant on plot and somewhat unfocused tonally, Zhao nevertheless manages to construct a vivid portrait of a community on the fringes without frills or fuss.

There’s some familiar moral teachings, but Vinterberg at his most meditative and earnest is a joy to watch. Man isn’t cured of all ills – but he is acutely aware of just how many more rounds are worth having.

A luxe, rather ridiculous look at the uber-rich.

An uplifting tale aided by an incredible soundtrack and captivating subject.

There is pain worth immortalising in the stories of the past, and endless sadness found in a lonely woman’s quiet existence. Yet Mothering Sunday fails to look beyond what the outside world can see, in order to really excavate a truth to be remembered once the holiday has passed.

It might sell tickets, but only because people recognise the name. Any interest in artistry is all but dead and gone in the age of the IP blockbuster.

Garbus never tries to conceal Cousteau’s flaws. For her, in order to understand where we are now, we first need to understand where we came from, and Cousteau represents that touchpoint.

At times it’s a little too ponderous, and sometimes struggles to bring variation and surprise to its runtime. Yet this laconic, meditative drama muses on the nature of time and the revelation that, even though Muzamil’s predicament seems highly unlikely to the rational onlooker, the knowledge he accrues is pertinent to all mortals.

It’s a throwback to the exhilarating, ferocious Hong Kong action filmmaking of yore, capping off a muscular actioner that marries old-school bravado with contemporary technique.