Wielding an ambitious visual strategy and volatile political commentary, Athena explodes but then fizzles, its often arresting images slowly undone by fuzzy ideas and a self-important air.

This new instalment stands on its own unsettlingly odd merits.

By the end, loving and eating, wanting and devouring are made to converge in ways that are both gruesome and fascinating, thought-provoking and oddly touching.

Given that it’s about a tequila factory, Mexican drama Dos Estaciones is as sobering as they come – but it’s also a bracingly potent distillation of drama, psychological portraiture and passionate flouting of clichés, both national and sexual.

TÁR’s engrossing spell starts to dissipate over its final third, and yet this is that rare film about a creative person that feels neither self-pitying nor self-aggrandising. Indeed, one of the picture’s great strengths is that it’s never entirely clear what Field thinks of his complicated heroine.

Visually inventive, wryly satirical, White Noise the film leaves viewers to apply DeLillo’s sometimes prescient visions of a morally and physically diseased America to post-pandemic 2022 as they see fit. But it still has a lot going for it, much of it entertaining.

Although Sierra Pettengill’s film will perhaps be most notable for its inclusion of startling scenes from Riotsvilles, model towns built by the US Army to train for actual riots, there’s much here to consider about the American worship of law enforcement and demonisation of dissent.

A pleasant and sometimes stimulating viewing experience.

There’s much here, or in everything we see - which is essentially the film’s subtext - that is hilariously open to interpretation. See how you get on.

Everest director Baltasar Kormakur crafts his man-versus-wild-animal drama with some niftily tense suspense sequences that split the difference between compelling and cheesy. But whether it’s the so-so CGI or the threadbare character development, Beast frustratingly refuses to aspire to be more than a competent, disposable actioner.

It’s a tragedy of sorts, one that at times is almost too dark to bear. But there are moments too when Hold Me Tight achieves something quite remarkable, blurring the line between reality and imaginings to burrow into the heart of grief and loss in ways that are also life-affirming.

It’s a small miracle that such a stylistic pick and mix should cohere into something satisfying, but it does.

Howard honours the collective heroism above all else, resulting in a well-crafted procedural that’s a little impersonal. Like the brave men who ultimately saved the day, Thirteen Lives gets the job done.

Director Dan Trachtenberg delivers gripping suspense sequences, complete with agreeably gruesome kills, which juxtapose the landscape’s rugged beauty with this extraterrestrial hunter’s brute savagery. Amber Midthunder gives this sometimes cheesy affair welcome grit, staring down the Predator with compelling ferocity.

This tale of repression and injustice is potent enough to overcome the inevitable distancing that occurs because of the animation process.

The Magician has an intensity and power many conventionally budgeted thrillers miss. Robustly funny, X-rated dialogue delivered with laid-back confidence and stomach-turning nonchalance also help.

Sluggish pacing slightly undermines the film’s main assets — the strong performances from Kelli Garner as Mary and a suitably ravaged-looking Nick Stahl as Eli.

The Blue Caftan is a keenly tuned, non-judgmental exploration of an enduring relationship that has thrived despite the stresses of conflicting desires and the pressures of social norms.

Juliette Binoche may play a seasoned truck driver with a firm grip on the wheel, but Paradise Highway proves to be an unsteady ride, guided by intriguing ideas but hampered by generic tendencies.

Bullet Train has no shortage of giddy, madcap gusto, hoping to satiate hardcore genre fans with its bloody, over-the-top violence and rising body count. But this lumbering locomotive proves to be neither hilariously amoral nor liberatingly violent — it makes quite a commotion, but mostly just spins its wheels.

Plays like an unnecessary revival of the provocative cat and mouse thrillers that were once a speciality of screenwriter Joe Ezterhas.

The winning performances and Haapasalo’s careful attention to them help to compensate for the sometimes frustratingly fragmented nature of the storytelling.

It’s a trip, and then some.

British director Joe Hunting has made a tender, affecting documentary about love, friendship and people finding a place where they can be themselves.

Luca Guadagnino’s lush documentary may be traditional in its use of talking head interviews and evocative archive footage, but it works a treat when the subject is this fascinating.

Some adorable animals and a snarky sense of humour about superheroes aren’t quite enough to save the day with DC League Of Super-Pets, an intermittently amusing and touching animation.

Engaging to watch and edifying about just how close Paris came to having rubble at its heart instead of the iconic gothic structure Victor Hugo’s hunchback called home, this thoughtful and meticulous re-creation of 24 incredibly dicey hours is mostly thrilling, despite the occasional groan-worthy line of dialogue or borderline dopey secondary character.

Bardem’s performance, as a man who has spent a lifetime hiding his unethical behaviour behind the veneer of patrician affability and who seems to have lost his feel for what’s right and wrong, has a depth and complexity that seems to come from somewhere else.

The film is adrenalised but familiar, sporting a sarcastic sense of humour in an attempt to mitigate what’s so threadbare about the premise and increasingly over-the-top fight sequences.

This doc/animation hybrid is an eccentric little gem of a story, a tall tale told with irreverent cheer and considerable charm. Chief amongst its many attractions is the actor Alan Cumming, lip-syncing to an audio tape and delivering a performance that is quite uncanny.

It would be unsporting to say more but, simply put, there are moments of unalloyed terror (juxtaposed with a crowd-pleasing giddiness) that make Nope worth not just seeing on the big screen but with as huge a crowd as possible.

The film expertly blends satirical social commentary and disturbing horror tropes to shine a light on the appalling racial and economic divides that still shape the country 30 years after the end of apartheid.

It fields such a disorientating mix of styles and symbols and tonal swerves (Rupert Everett going full fruit, for example), that it’s quite a surprise that Colbert has managed to weave a structured story throughout She Will. But she has.

This adaptation of the Delia Owens bestseller proves to be an unconvincing, melodramatic affair that only occasionally locates the story’s mournful heart.

While the first two acts are more engaging and accessible than the third – the picture does get a little bogged down in its effects and ideas – there’s no question that this is an imaginative and original debut from director Jake Wachtel.

Lit from within by the sunny disposition of its main character, Mrs Harris Goes To Paris is a lovely, modest ode to kindness, anchored by Lesley Manville’s considered performance as a housekeeper who is tired of feeling invisible.

It’s not hard to figure out the recipe that resulted in Netflix’s Persuasion arriving half-baked from the streamer’s busy oven. Take one measure from Clueless. Cast an American actor as the lead (Dakota Johnson). Turn Jane Austen’s most mature heroine into a Bridget Jones, slugging red wine from the bottle and winking at the camera. Filter it all through a Regency Britain that comes straight from Bridgerton. Shake, too hard, and try not to cringe as the cake collapses.

Love And Thunder doesn’t always gracefully execute its balance of light and dark but when the film focuses on the unshakeable bond between Thor and Jane, the results can be mighty moving.

By the time we reach a genuinely unnerving climax, Alper has pulled off something special – a film that works at once as a highly-charged suspenser, a savvy piece of tightly-enclosed world-building and a sharp critique of machismo, populism and their very tangible dangers.

Tigers is a rare and refreshing entry into the sports movie genre. Rather than follow the well-worn narrative trajectory of struggle followed by success, the picture looks instead at the considerable cost of excellence.

It’s a grimly efficient character study of a flawed and damaged man who is intent on visiting harm to those he perceives as wrongdoers, and an indictment of the system that protects him. Bleak, but grubbily effective.

In the end, this is a film that is more emotionally than sexually voyeuristic.

The controversy might be Accepted’s secret weapon, but much of its power comes from an astute choice of central characters.

The latest animation from Chris Williams, his first for Netflix, is a rambunctious triumph; an old-fashioned ripping yarn which pays tribute to generations of monster movies past, showcasing some genuinely dazzling animation while also delivering an unexpectedly sophisticated message.

The results are both engaging and disposable, offering game viewers an exercise in suspense and off-kilter atmosphere.

[Quivoron] emerges as a formidably kinetic director, who could easily have a career making pedal-to-the-metal action movies - although her way with character and deep-dive exploration of working-class subculture suggest that she is way too individual to take a straight generic path.

One of Pixar’s most beloved characters gets an origin story with Lightyear, a lacklustre sci-fi adventure which misses the wit and wonder that have been the studio’s hallmarks for decades.

There’s much to admire here, but perhaps the film’s main achievement is the delicate balance struck with the central character.

It’s a shame that Giannoli’s film, while ambitious, confidently executed and more than honourable, nevertheless feels like something of a relic.

The result is a picture with gripping sequences and clever byplay, even if there’s a sense that it’s merely repeating past strengths, only not quite as ingeniously.

Hustle lives up to its title by going all out — especially Sandler, who brings some heart to his predictable character, and director Jeremiah Zagar, who fights against the story’s cliched elements.

It’s an accomplished, ambitious work which has a Herzogian fascination with vast, unforgiving landscapes, hubris and madness.

The result has a definite voice – even when its protagonists struggle to find their own.

This decision to seek out the sun rather than just the clouds, to focus on resilience and healing won’t be for everyone, nor will it represent the experience of all victims of terrorism.

Emily Watson leads the cast delivering, yet again, a stinging reminder of her talent.

Coen draws from existing interviews and performance footage to create a portrait that is far from definitive, and yet the film’s snapshot quality manages to amplify what is so mythic about the 86-year-old legend — and also what remains so vexing.

The prickly protagonists of Funny Pages would not be pleasant company in real life, but writer-director Owen Kline’s proudly dyspeptic feature debut gives his characters a scruffy integrity that makes them perversely fascinating.

If Sick of Myself runs out of narrative road towards the end, there’s still a decent quotient of dark humour along the way.

The Worst Ones is trying to be both a kind of documentary about its own making and a drama about a guy making another film. Unfortunately, the two don’t mesh.

Featuring superb turns from Vicky Krieps and the late Gaspard Ulliel - in his final role - as a couple facing the most difficult of choices, More Than Ever persuades, rather than forces, its audience to stare death in the face, and proves surprisingly life affirming in the process.

Along with its arresting visual sense – the film is handsomely shot on 35mm – it can boast a robust resistance to the cinematic cliches of portrayal of disability.

Buoyed by two outstanding performances – from Adèle Exarchopoulos and first-time child actress Sally Dramé – and shot in ravishing 35mm, The Five Devils is a finely-crafted drama-genre hybrid, let down only by the fact that the story is a lot less interesting than the themes it carries.

Like the distinctive artwork made by Showing Up’s sculptor protagonist, Kelly Reichardt’s eighth feature is beautifully crafted, a modest gem that grows in impact the more one examines it.

For resilient audiences, it provides a truly original cinematic experience. ‘Cinematic’ is a key word: the film was lavishly shot using three 4K Canon Black Magic Pocket cameras and comes with a rich soundscape that pushes the oneiric envelope and takes certain scenes into paranoid-thriller genre territory.

Although Mother And Son loses some of its energy as it unfolds, it is still a sensitive and complex examination of the shifting tensions in a migrant family.

The combination of knock out performances, in particular from newcomer Eden Dambrine as Léo, and direction of uncommon sensitivity from Dhont makes for a picture which is intimate in scope but which packs a considerable emotional wallop.

As often with Kore-eda’s pictures, Broker is about family, but it extends beyond that theme to talk about fundamental aspects of life — the need to belong, the hope of connecting with likeminded souls, and the desire to find a place called home.

A gripping crime thriller that also makes a sharp political statement, Just 6.5 paints a bleak picture of Iranian law enforcement’s attempts to deal with the country’s flourishing narcotics trade.

Couched in fondness and gentle irreverence, his impressionistic archive footage documentary offers whimsical reflections on a lifetime of duty and service.

The plotting may sometimes be convoluted, but the picture rolls along so forcefully that its familiar genre trappings hardly hamper the proceedings.

The film’s slight scattershot structure actually works in its favour, keeping the pace at a full-tilt sprint, the energy sparking and the story moving whenever there’s a risk of it tipping into the realms of the overwrought.

Martone crafts a passionate, angry film that is full of atmosphere and great performances, but never fully convincing or compelling as a drama

Thanks to the director’s command of his material, the entanglements we witness may be unbelievably challenging and yet do not require any suspension of disbelief. This subtle, convincing emotional tour-de-force doesn’t feel as long as its generous running time.

Moving, politically committed and with an absolute ring of hard-researched reality, this is at the very least their finest since 2011’s The Kid With The Bike, and arguably one of their very best.

Abbasi has made an Iranian noir which, even though it dares to poke around the spiritual capital of Iran with its largest mosque in the world, isn’t an assault on the Iranian government per se, but a crime thriller which shows how far fundamentalist morality can be twisted and how banal the face of evil really is.

The result – something like a female-fronted version of Antonioni’s The Passenger - isn’t likely to entirely satisfy anyone in either the arthouse or mainstream camps. But if taken as an oblique tropical reverie, the film definitely has pleasures to offer – not least an oddball but often riveting lead performance by Margaret Qualley.

A potent emotional charge, very contemporary eco-consciousness, and film-making that at its best fairly sizzles in its strangeness mark out EO as an animal film that stands defiantly on its own hooves.

If Elvis suffers from a familiar Luhrmann weakness — style outpacing substance — the concert sequences effortlessly illuminate why Presley remains a revered musical figure, Luhrmann and Butler delivering one euphoric set piece after another.

Enys Men is an enigmatic proposition, concerned with atmosphere rather than with story.

Boy From Heaven is an ambitiously complex story of religious espionage.

It’s a fairly conventional, risk-averse piece of filmmaking, but the film’s gentle, meandering story works its way to a conclusion which plays out in a minor key, suggesting that certain cycles are hard to break and that even a seemingly idyllic life comes at a cost.

With this seductive, serpentine neo-noir, Park Chan-wook raises the bar on the 2022 Cannes competition programme and reasserts his position as a peerless visual stylist. But there’s nothing superficial or superfluous about his style here: it’s all in the service of the film’s mercurial and at times disorientating blend of crime and passion.

Much of this film has never been seen before, and it is a true treasure trove. It feels, like Bowie’s career, though, incomplete, and certainly the period between his later-in-life marriage to Iman and death after the final, unsettling Blackstar recordings is vague and reliant on what the director/producer/editor calls ‘musical mash-ups’ which he designed and edited to have a trancey, hypnotic effect.

It’s a piece which is deliberate, but not sterile; disturbing, but too grounded in reality to be truly frightening, even though it probably should be given it attempts to blend the fears of body horror with climate change.

Although the film doesn’t always deftly balance sentiment and broad humour, it is fun to spend time with such raucous company.

It’s tribute to Mungiu’s bravura as a writer and director that, despite the fact that he never quite finishes unpacking a suitcase full of themes and ideas, R.M.N. is never less than an absorbing watch.

Krieps is terrific in a role which depicts Elisabeth as both a victim of her gilded cage circumstances and a chain-smoking self-absorbed uber-bitch.

Desplechin has a gift for examining grief and pain but often leavens the dismay with humour or irony. It is impossible to predict whether catharsis is within reach and that delicate balance is what keeps the proceedings compelling.

While attention, fairly, will go to the work’s visual and tonal acuity, Wells’ measured but relentless probing, her careful peeling away of the layers of this intimate piece, mark her out as one of the most promising new voices in British cinema in recent years.

Hansen-Love finds moments of truth in the melange, and Seydoux is transcendent, carrying a sadness inside which proves incredibly moving when the opportunity for love presents itself and she melts into it.

There are flashes of the incisive, caustic insight of his Force Majeure and Palme d’Or-winning art-world satire The Square. But this rather laborious take on the excesses of capitalism, depicted as a luxury yacht headed inexorably for farcical disaster, lacks the pitiless ironic cool that made those two films so memorable.

Digger’s loyalties always reside with Nikitas, his quest to keep his home and his devotion to the woodlands; yet Grigorakis shows an environment- and economic-fuelled tragedy, too.

Hardly lacking ambition or verve, this amped-up fairy tale comes complete with social commentary and a grownup examination of the consequences of seeking connection, but the episodic, intermittently engaging saga frustrates more than it enchants.

A sometimes mesmerisingly intense lead performance by Alena Mikhailova is the trump card of this sprawling, sumptuously mounted revisionist drama ... But for all its sometimes-crazed energies, it feels ponderous and overwrought.

Exceedingly thoughtful and self-critical rather than lazily nostalgic, this well-acted coming-of-age tale can sometimes be predictable and muddled, but is steeped in the filmmaker’s sorrow for not recognising the ways in which he and those he loved contributed to an inequitable society that shows no signs of becoming less stratified.

Fans of zombie spoofs and films-about-films should enjoy this bauble, which is elevated by the cheery ensemble.

Compelling as a tale of Cold War intrigue and fraught international relations, Castro’s Spies is equally gripping on a human level especially when the focus settles on emotional accounts of what happened to each one of the five.

Featuring a rousing finale — two of them, actually — and substantial nostalgic pleasures, the new film can’t quite balance its desire to be both wistful and escapist, knowingly cheesy and surprisingly touching.