The challenge, such as it is, of watching a Mike Leigh movie is simply the challenge of being a person in the world – the challenge of paying sustained attention to others – and Pansy is among his most demanding and rewarding tests.

Soderbergh’s enjoyably swift chiller demonstrates genuine curiosity towards its occupiers and the choices they make through difficult circumstances.

It is, like those beautiful concrete monstrosities which are revered and reviled in equal measure, a film that towers across the Venice line-up this year, tragic and wry and gorgeous and disturbing – any number of hyperbolic terms might apply to the beast that Corbet has created in The Brutalist.

The film’s thesis is often a little obvious, yearning for a return to a brand of architecture whose half-life isn’t so slim, but ignoring the arduous and exploitative construction methods that were used to produce those grandiose structures of yore.

Where Gump managed to steal a nation’s heart with its hokey aphorisms and up with people outlook, Here actively repels with its generic insights into the evolution of family, society, civilisation, the whole bit.

It’s a hushed yet effectively emotive drama that’s bolstered with the addition of Mikhail Krichman’s stunning cinematography. Yet sadly, it’s hard to overcome the film’s biggest weakness – the ripple effect that comes from its overcomplicated characterisations.

The film is not wanting for alluring, dramatic situations, but the filmmakers seem at best haplessly blind and at worst blithely dismissive of their potential.

With the emotional stakes having been spelled out in giant, razor-sharp claw marks, all that’s left to do is squirm at Blake’s slow, agonising change and wait for the inevitable to happen.

It’s Sonne’s remarkable, multifarious performance that really lifts this one above the pack. She uses her face with the expressiveness of a silent film actress, so when the big emotions eventually come they hit especially hard.

There’s an ethereal quality to Jolie’s performance that matches Callas’ legendary persona, and despite the deep sense of melancholy that pervades the film like a ghostly veil, this is still a love story – and one where the heroine lives forever.

Babygirl joins a limited canon of films that takes the much-maligned subsect of female sexual desire seriously, while also serving as a compelling psychodrama about the intricacies of trust and understanding, even in a long-standing relationship.

Despite its refusal to lean into the visceral imagery it sets out with, The Damned still succeeds in creating a haunting atmosphere, which is aided by the deserted Icelandic landscape that seems to stretch on forever.

This is simply a generic and brutally efficient tearjerker – like its title, it aspires to archetypal grandeur and lands somewhere blander.

A Real Pain may set out its stall as an empathetic tour of pain, effortlessly exposing the quiet and chaos of the human condition through its multiple characters and the places they visit, but it is also distinctly a film about the boundaries and limits of love.

It’s a cosy, classic Aardman treat, perfect for Wallace and Gromit fans of any age – and Feathers McGraw remains as menacing as ever.

Alongside beautifully-judged performances and management of a tricky tone, Boonnitipat and Thodsapon Thiptinnakorn’s sentimental but never saccharine screenplay nails something true and relatable about all the complicated responses we can have to the likely death of family.

The horror comes from seeing seismic consequences closer to newspaper headlines than history books. Figureheads die, but words live on, with grifters always waiting in the wings, spouting the same hate.

Its entwined torrents of pain and pleasure chart the boundaries of sensation in a buttoned-up age, and allow us back in the present to be scandalized by its raw, visceral (in the definitional, from-the-guts sense) hungers as if for the very first time.

Better Man works because it is that rare biopic which acknowledges its inherent ridiculousness, poking fun not only at the star machine but Williams himself (who, regardless of your opinion of his music, has always been quite open about his shortcomings).

Nickel Boys is a masterpiece – moreover, it is a miracle.

It was an exciting prospect to see what someone like Jenkins would do while up against the Hollywood machine, but it unfortunately feels like the machine won this bout, if not by knockout, then definitely on points.

It’s as minimal as a drama can get, softening the highs and lows of narrative into a meditation on memory, purpose and recreation. Don’t be put off by its ambling form, for its function effectively probes political topics behind a gauze of cinematic serenity.

Where Favoriten differentiates itself from the aforementioned films is in its combination of formal and emotional complexity.

Burroughs believed in magic, and watching Queer, one has an inkling that Guadagnino does too.

Gilford’s tale of chosen family awash with bright blues and reds maintains a bold sense of hopefulness at a time when America’s LGBTQ+ population is bracing for the worst.

It’s all desperately silly.

The duo’s Indian collaborators are largely absent though, and it all comes together in a rather shallow, often frustrating attempt to bottle up a significant piece of late 20th century film history, devoid of that touch of Merchant Ivory movie magic.

It’s predictably rousing, and Tolkien heads will probably enjoy many of the callbacks to the original trilogy, but as a film in its own right, it’s all a little overblown and unnecessary.