The Promised Land is visually splendid and utterly absorbing, a rags-to-riches/vengeance/love story packed with action and heartbreak.

It’s a ghost story, a minor entry in Soderbergh’s oeuvre but still worthy of attention.

That core idea here, the pole in the middle of the merry-go-round, is that the stuffy, secretive King, as Robertson Davies suggests, is the embodiment of Canada’s locked-down colonial psychology. The Twentieth Century is a strange creation, though but there’s nothing unusual in the notion that Canadian blandness may be a form of camouflage. Anyone who has read history, or for that matter, watched a hockey game, knows that.

For this viewer, the movie felt stagey and entirely devoid of emotion, You never forget you’re watching a film — a beautifully made film, but still.

Project Hail Mary, the latest cinematic adaptation of an Andy Weir novel, is a crowd-pleaser loaded with humour, charm, and tropes galore. In the best tradition of sci-fi, there’s also a lesson in being the best a human can be, as shown by an alien teacher.

3 ½ Minutes, 10 Bullets, as well as being a compelling real-life courtroom drama, offers some clarity about race and injustice in the pre-Trump era.

Irena’s Vow is beautifully filmed, with careful attention to period detail.

Thelma is really entertaining. The cast (which includes Malcolm McDowell) is very strong. The performance from Squibb, a 70-year vet of the industry and Oscar-nominated for her work in Nebraska, is fantastic, and Roundtree is likewise magnetic.

Love Lies Bleeding is bent in the most unexpected ways, filling the screen with the impossible while refusing to make excuses.

Greek director Christos Nikou makes an impressive feature film debut with Apples, a subtle, offbeat and quietly affecting movie about amnesia, identify and grief.

Quiet, understated and unforgettable, The Mustang is a winner by five lengths.

The Scottish green hills and forests make for an intriguing change of scenery for the series, with nighttime given that added edge of dread that comes with unseen menace and glowing eyes.

Kneecap is one of the most likeable films this year. Turn up the volume and enjoy.

It’s very easy to forgive this film for what it lacks, such as being shot on a minimal budget at dull locations. Some of the performances seem amateurish at times but because the story is one that has a universal appeal, they are overlooked in light of how relatable the whole concept is.

Awash in colour and sunlight, the doc The Last Resort is both a modern cultural history of the confounding should-be-paradise that is Miami Beach, and a loving bio of a young, short-lived photographer who froze one of its moments in time.

Both a horror story about domestic abuse and a love-letter to the mother-daughter relationship, Shayda is an award-winning first feature about female agency from writer-director Noora Niasari.

Though the subject of immigrants from persecuted minorities fleeing their homelands is topical, what elevates I Carry You With Me above most social dramas is its finespun, artisanal quality.

Frothy, but deceptively dense, Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story focuses on Liza’s psychology and her friendships and teachers through the 1960s and 1970s.

Baker has pitched this as a dark comedy. And thanks to the relentless energy of Simon Rex, the film feels like a comedy.

There’s nothing new in noting that crime and dirty politics are fast tracks to success. (“Is it the same in your country?” Balram asks the viewer). What’s more interesting here is how The White Tiger explores the paradoxes of the master-servant dynamic. Singer-actor Gourav is marvelous in capturing the duality.

For a film where not a lot happens, and what does happen happens very slowly, Islands is strangely gripping. That could be the hypnotic effect of its endlessly sun-drenched Canary Island setting, as writer-director Jan-Ole Gerster dips his audience in the languorous pace of a holiday destination in this low-boil psychological drama.

Led by Reisman’s deadpan, uningratiating performance, Retrograde is a funny, uncomfortable portrait of young millennial, struggling with her loss of status and clinging to the wreckage of her past aspirations.

All Quiet on the Western Front exists to make the viewer uncomfortable – infinitely preferable to what the characters endure.

Given The Trial of the Chicago 7’s snapshot of an era of an almost hopelessly divided America, and Kafka-esque and monstrous misuse of power by a bullying President, the timing for its release couldn’t be better.

There are plot turns, double crosses and, appropriately for the online world, threats of live streaming torture and echoes of video battle games. But there’s at least a half-hour too much of it.

A solid, if not revelatory portrait of contemporary Russia through the story of exiled oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Jay Sebring… Cutting to the Truth works on a level beyond simply the director giving props to his all-but-forgotten uncle. Its more visceral message is that, “the dead have no rights.”

This coming-of-age film captures the exuberance of childhood even as it shows the gradual encroachment of outside social pressures.