Superficially, it plays like an indie buddy comedy. But this film walks lightly and comes at its subject matter so obliquely, that it never aims to overwhelm the viewer. It’s about a multitude of deep emotional things, including grief, intergenerational trauma, and the complexities of love.

A magic realist fantasy, a ghost story, a love story and political allegory, Atlantics packs a deceptive amount of complexity in a gauzy, slender film.

Are audiences, who are used to having their heroic stories delivered to them in fantastically exciting packages, ready for this reined-in version of the wounded hero? In spite of its flaws, Lowery’s The Green Knight makes a case for a different sort of hero whose time may have come.

It’s hard to imagine a lovelier fly-on-the-wall experience than Nothing Like A Dame – a documentary that basically intrudes on a regular, wickedly-funny get-together of four octogenarians who’ve been friends since they were barely more than precocious schoolgirls.

In a sense, Dahomey, which runs just over an hour, is also a ghost story as well as a creative conversation between the past and present.

This West Side Story retains its ‘50s feel, while polishing this venerable gem of a musical to a greater gleam.

Ash Is Purest White — constantly dislocating and unpredictable moment by moment — feels all of its 135-minute running time but long after, the individual sequences hang in the memory.

Charm, humanity and a passel of filmmaking insights are all here, rewarding both the dedicated fans and newcomers to Varda, who achieved a new level of public profile in her last decade.

It’s an oddly funny journey, punctuated by some deliciously inventive camerawork (including the longest dissolve I’ve ever seen), a jazz-inflected score, and a treasured piece of vinyl that will have you searching out ’70s Argentine rock/blues band Pappo’s Blues.

Burnham’s debut is a little gem that feels true and is surprisingly tender.

It's a very easy story to accept, but the ease of the storytelling allows the message to penetrate and gives rise to thoughtfulness about how we can be better to those around us. Quite simply, this film allows us to want to be better than who we are.

One of the pleasures of Support the Girls is that it explores the constant fender-benders of sex, race, class, and age without ever coming off as preachy or lecturing.

Hale County, in the best sense, is the kind of film that asks more questions than it provides answers for.

The Taste of Things is rare, with a depth and maturity we don’t often see on screens anymore. It charts the connection of two mature adults who are at peace with themselves and each other. There’s a calm restraint to their relationship, and that adds to the film’s sensuality.

While the characters and events are real, the artful design of this film and its allegorical resonances seem to put Honeyland in its own genre – that of a real-life fable.

There is not much more you can ask of a film than that it provides you with another perspective, a new angle to look at old problems. The Beasts does that.

What it took to put together one of the most highly acclaimed exhibits ever on the art world calendar is captured in Close to Vermeer, a documentary brimming with passion, intrigue, history and beauty from director Suzanne Raes.

Historical hindsight lets us predict where this kind of train ride inevitably ends.

Both rudely funny and soppy in a terribly English way, Pillion is a rough-sex romance that will be relatable to anyone who has fallen hard for an emotionally distant lover.

There are not many films on the release schedule with good writing and plotting, wit and solid acting. That’s an exceptional combination in a quick bite of the spy movie genre.

Beautifully shot and terribly sad, with a wildly twitchy score ratcheting up the tension, the Mexican drama Identifying Features is a profound statement about maternal love, brutal inequality, and institutional corruption.

Despite the participation of the traveler’s wife and biographer, Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin is as much about Herzog as it is about his subject. You can be a fan of either and enjoy the film and its voice, so seamlessly did they apparently share a vision of the world.

If Decision to Leave is indeed intended as an homage to a genre, mission accomplished.

Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, which won the coveted People’s Choice award at the most recent Toronto International Film Festival, is a warm and easygoing family drama and coming-of-age story based on the director’s life. But you’re out of luck if you’re looking for deep insights into how a boy seized by movies, grew up to be one of the most successful directors in Hollywood.

Such tales never get stale, and the ones in Beyond Utopia are almost beyond belief.

Beanpole makes you feel its two-hour-plus running time, with drawn-out scenes full of off-centre framing and claustrophobic close-ups, but there’s an exhilaration in the audacity of the filmmaking, as the boldness of its portrayal of the survival drive.

In I’m Still Here, Walter Salles’ first feature film in a dozen years, the Brazilian director manages an impressive feat of teleporting, placing the viewer inside the cheerful chaos of a large Brazilian family.

Sure, The Eternal Memory is tough and occasionally relentless, but it is also affirming in ways unexpected. Significant and intense indeed, but the excursion is far from weary.

What draws us in is the inventive and luminous cinematography from Michal Dymek (with additional footage by Pawel Edelman and Michal Englert), using drone shots, fish-eye lenses and red and blue filters. Accompanied by an unsettling electronic score, the donkey-in-a-disco effect is trippy, a hallucinogenic projection of what it might be like to live in an animal’s consciousness, including its dreams and flashbacks.

When the creepy conflux of the title occurs, it’s terrifying because its conclusion is unforeseeable. Like life you might say: impossible to predict but nevertheless captivating.

The film adaptation of this treasured novel is absolutely delightful. Written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig (The Edge of Seventeen), it’s honest, realistic, heartfelt and captures the emotions of Margaret and her young friends perfectly.

Featuring terrific performances from Get Out alumnus, Daniel Kaluuya as the young revolutionary Hampton, and LaKeith Stanfield as FBI informant, William O’Neal, the film is a revelation from King, a director, who until now, was known for his television work and the 2013 comedy, Newlyweeds.

Wistful, funny and complicated in interesting ways, Quentin Tarantino’s new movie, Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, may be his warmest film since Jackie Brown - which may not be what you expected to hear about a movie set against the background of the 1969 Manson murders.

The President’s Cake remains a lovely tale, with some sweeping, almost touristic views of Baghdad, and a slightly ambiguous downbeat ending.

Sinners, the new film directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Michael B. Jordan, needs no more than a one-word review; Stunning. Magical also works. So does unforgettable.

The high school rite-of-passage film canon may have been raided here but its thieves — screenwriters Susanna Fogel, Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, and Katie Silberman, doubtless abetted by producers Will Ferrell and Adam McKay — have wrung every drop of weird, contradictory, and squeamish fun out of the teenage experience.

To a Land Unknown is unquestionably topical. It’s also rooted in a well-known movie tradition, films that are empathetic portraits of low-level urban criminals struggling for survival and dignity.

The focus on Woody means that Toy Story 4 is less of a metaphor about the things we leave behind as we leave childhood, which means emotionally it's the lightest of the series. That may mean fewer hankies for those of us sitting together in the dark falling in love all over again with a box of animated toys. But the sweetness persists.

Seagrass is a small Canadian film that delivers a huge emotional impact.

All this is big, busy fun and while one might wish for some a bit more grit in the charm offensive, the catchwords here are feel-good and broad appeal.

Although Fire of Love isn’t about the ins and outs of [the Kraffts'] marriage or relationship, in this film, they do seem to have found an almost magical connection - to each other, to their work, and to volcanoes which they found endlessly fascinating.

Hamnet is a sensitively told, beautifully realized pastoral tale, driven by Buckley’s magnetism, and a well-placed cast.

In spite of all the talent, in the end, the success of a heist movie is in whether you buy the movie’s twists and turns. In this case, it’s an enjoyable ride, but some of the story’s weaknesses make it less than it might have been.

A wildly funny film for all fans with a refined sense of nerd-humour, this is a must-see.

Synonyms free-wheeling episodic structure can grow a tad wearying, but Mercier’s aggressively kinetic performance and Lapid’s take-no-prisoners dismantling of the Israeli macho mystique — or French hypocritical superiority — are, in the best way, outrageous.

Therapy Dogs is fuelled by adolescent angst, fears of mortality, unruly energy, and frustration.

The Rescue will take your breath away. It’s an incredible chronicle of a true impossible mission, of how the world can come together to save life.

In short, Universal Language is something of bag of mixed nuts, a Frankenfilm, a cinematic turducken, with comic non-sequiturs and sight gags linked by three narrative strands.

A day in the life of Zeytin is, for the most part, an agreeable experience that doubles as a dog’s-eye-view of humans.

Both a film and an obituary, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, is a dark, unique document of the Gaza war focusing on a 25-year-old Palestinian photojournalist and poet, Fatma Hassona (sometimes spelled Fatima Hassouna).

There is a gentle, sad, sweet core to Between the Temples, though American indie director Nathan Silver seems determined to discourage any feelings of sentimentality in a movie that could easily have tipped in that direction.

If you’ve seen enough of the studio’s movies, even something this full of imagination suffers from some predictability. There is a period in Soul, where, in spite of the lovely creativity and goofy story-telling, it lags and feels a bit listless, before bouncing back.

RTA is a strictly volunteer program, with no academic requirement to enter or good-behaviour code to remain. Sing Sing, while not an advertisement for the program, does seem to capture what makes it special, and what its participants get from the experience.

Not even its rather silly ending can undermine its heart.

The Cave may be the saddest, most infuriating chronicle of the ghastly ravages of war on a country’s most vulnerable citizens —children — ever made.

The story it tells — of environmental assault, mistreatment of Indigenous people, corrupt government and business — is woefully familiar. But the brutality of it all never ceases to amaze.

It’s bonkers and a hell of a film. And even better, with The Lighthouse, Eggers establishes that he’s more than a one trick pony. He’s a true original, auteur and clever filmmaker who isn’t interested in pandering.

The film is strong enough in performance and direction to survive any discrepancies between the social drama it begins as with the revenge thriller it becomes. Still, Rose Plays Julie's sudden turn of events feels like an intrusion on a better story.

We’re gripped by the tension of Greene’s tautly calibrated performance, as a mother performing a daily high-wire act, trying to keep her family together and her children from harm.

Evil Does Not Exist, the new film from Drive My Car director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, is a slow-burning wonder, an eco-fable of meditative beauty and menace, down-to-earth realism, and mythic resonances.

Compassionate and original, Crossing is an odd couple road movie about friendship and acceptance of differences that demonstrates rather than preaches its theme.

One Night in Miami is a powerful imagining of one of the most intriguing private gatherings in contemporary history. And though we are merely a fly-on-the-wall, eavesdropping on a conversation that is likely far more electrifying than the actual discussion, it's still a remarkable experience.

The Reason I Jump is a remarkable documentary not because of what it includes but because of what it avoids.

The film is kinetic and elliptical, with clips from different eras juxtaposed in panels, moving back to a single frame of dancers’ feet, or artfully posed in instants of euphoria. This is a film that makes you want to absorb the language of dance or, at least, immerse yourself in more Merce, which makes this an exemplary introduction to a major twentieth century artist.

Unquestionably, it’s a beautiful film, shot in 16 mm, with grainy, almost tactile, images and sounds. There is an inky sky, strewn with stars; the silhouette of a horse, mane blowing in the wind, water droplets and scampering bugs, the rustling of the wind and the rumble of waves. It weaves together themes of women’s life choices, our fraught relationship to nature, the art of archiving and the power of awe.

Moments of brilliance notwithstanding, the comedy and the dark look at human nature in Misericordia never quite meld. For any student of human nature, that unreliable narrator and the gang of unlikeable characters may eventually wear thin.

Sure, there are some odd turns in the movie that I’m still trying to work out, but that didn’t diminish the fun. Even more, to the point in this COVID era, is how this theme of being trapped also speaks to anxiety, depression and that feeling that no matter what you do, you can’t escape yourself.

Souleymane’s Story immerses us in an unrepresented world of African migrants in France with a ticking clock urgency that puts most thrillers to shame.

Neptune Frost’s real triumph is the deployment of striking imagery, led by the production and costume design of Rwanda fashion designer, Cedric Mizero, mixing traditional and fashion-forward adornment with technological bric-a-brac (fairy lights on bicycle wheels, circuit boards as jewelry).

Powerful, unrelenting, and with excellent performances — especially from Song who is never less than outstanding — Memories of Murder is unforgettable and justifiably described as a masterpiece.

The filmmaking is taut and skillful and Petzold largely succeeds with his double-track gambit: As a nightmarish but somehow comfortingly familiar thriller about fear, persecution, and mistaken identity. It also disturbs as a prophecy of the consequences of Europe's resurgent neo-fascist politics and anti-immigrant politics.

The starkly lit and shot film is a gently paced family drama about a collapsing marriage which, come to think of it, merits its horror-story veneer even if it is something of a red herring.

It’s almost as if 3D was made for this.

It’s a deceptively simple movie, a lot of fun. And it doesn’t require you to do a deep dive to really enjoy it.

On an obvious level, it’s a character study of the artist as an insufferable young prig, a type that, as Petzold no doubt knows, is familiar to the point of cliché. But as the film unfolds, and boldly shifts tone, the character suggests the larger theme of struggling to stay humane in a broken world.

This is a story that could easily have descended into something very seamy, but Lee keeps the film's tone light. Sonny and Chester are lovely people, who are on the level and really, really like each other.

Apart from the inspired split-screen gimmick, the film works because the cast is superb, with Argento as the impatient, angry old lion holding on to his threads of power. Lebrun’s performance, though, is the heart of the film.

Despite the relationship he had with the Enaches, Ciorniciuc sticks to his roots as an investigative journalist and makes no judgements. He avoids giving easy answers.

It’s an inspiring chapter in history, beautifully conveyed on the screen.

Shapeshifting, murder, possession, gender fluidity and the lowly lot of women are all part of the arthouse horror You Won’t Be Alone, the impressive debut feature film by Macedonian-Australian writer/director Goran Stolevski.

How wonderful to see a movie that deals with the emotional and sexual life of two very different women north of 60, who are the sum of their lives, not bound by cultural cliches or perceptions.

Ultimately, Grand Theft Hamlet — again, I’m referring to both the performance and the movie — is an emotional triumph. Best of all, you don’t need to be an experienced gamer to enjoy it, though I’m sure there are in-jokes for the initiated.

Joyland is impressive, with an emotional world that feels true, and characters who feel complex and alive.

The Girl with The Needle is a harrowing drama based on real-life crimes that took place in Copenhagen around 1920. Directed by Magnus von Horn, the film is beautiful to look at but difficult to watch — this is dark, gripping, Bergman-esque fare.

Mann’s laidback, dramatized-reality approach to the subject is to treat Carmine Street Guitars, at 42 Carmine Street, as a village general store from another era, a place for friendly gossip and home-made goods.

The film, which is an economical 90 minutes, is a drama which, at times plays like a mystery, with incredible tension. Çatak gives us a satisfying film, but an unsettling one with unanswered questions.

Those ambivalent towards children may find the film positively tedious. Those in tune with its up-close storytelling and gentle pace may find much to enjoy.

Cillian Murphy follows up his Oscar-winning role in the epic Oppenheimer with another brilliant performance in a much smaller and more intimate film, but one that also deals with questions about morality and responsibility.

Knives Out is a charming and wonderfully crafted whodunnit that, despite the inevitable presence of a dead body, plays like a warm and cozy antidote to the winter chills.

It is to Costa’s credit that she provides a soothing, reflective tone to the subject, both in her poetic voiceover and a hypnotically smooth editing that movies from drone shots of crowds, congregations, rallies, and protest marches to handheld closeups of politicians clawing their ways through teeming throngs of admirers.

A masterpiece of squeamishly uneasy, nightmarish mood-making, the demonic-possession film, Sator is partly in the vein of The Blair Witch Project – though much more sure-handed and stylistically sophisticated.

Narratively, the film’s last two thirds feel somewhat scattered, or perhaps “shattered” is a better word to reflect the catastrophe at the center of the story. The key to holding these fragments together, and avoiding making the movie’s grim turn unbearable, is the deeply fascinating performance of Vicky Krieps as Clarisse.

Ernaux’s precise and thoughtful commentary connects the images to memories, discovering yet another harvest from the well-cultivated field of her autobiography.

It’s all freakin’ fantastic, a real all-night rave of a movie. But could we maybe just dial the whole thing down just a smidgeon? Could Challengers perhaps have given merely 100 per cent instead of 110?

If this seems like a bit of a deep dive when the subject is trendy restaurants in Portland, Pig is a serious movie with heady themes that just happens to come at you from oblique and unexpected angles.

The mostly non-professional cast do a credible job of depicting a family growing progressively more anxious under increasing pressure.

Add a bit of road movie misadventure, a la Payne’s Sideways, and you have a Christmas movie with spirit and wit, with a minimum of mawkish sentiment.

On the surface it’s a solid and and absorbing character study. But thanks to Marder’s script and masterful direction, and Ahmed’s beautiful performance, there are increasingly deeper layers that take this movie to a deeper place.