Diallo has a lot of things to say here. Yet sometimes words aren’t enough: a straight-up drama won’t bring audiences to the place where Diallo wants to take them. Rest assured she makes her points crystal clear within the genre trappings: the only question left is where next for this talented new director.

Sometimes the comedy is too broad, sometimes the targets are too easy, but this acting duo repeatedly reach for something deeper in the material, leaving the viewer uncertain if their characters are manipulators or true believers.

Probing issues of motherhood, adolescence and identity with a delicate dramatic touch while expertly harnessing some outre genre elements, Hatching is a bold, arresting feature debut from Finnish director Hanna Bergholm.

Despite a sterling effort from Thompson, neither the comedy nor the character arcs are fully satisfying.

Karen Gillan is the main selling point of the latest film from Riley Stearns (The Art of Self-Defence) – an odd mix of deadpan satire and high concept sci-fi that some may find off-putting – so it’s handy for him that she offers not one but two intense and stripped-back performances.

Director Phyllis Nagy has crafted a subdued but affecting portrait of that time, strengthened by deft performances from Elizabeth Banks as a sheltered suburban mother whose eyes are opened and Sigourney Weaver as the leader of an underground abortion-facilitation service.

Bill Nighy brings a quiet dignity to the role of Mr Williams, an anchor of buttoned-up solidity in an old-fashioned weepie which captures the lush sentimental swirl of the original while also evoking a distinctive sense of backdrop and period.

On the periphery of the film – in the very interesting dynamics of Sarah Jo’s family, in the tart sarcasm of some of the character details – there is much to admire. While much of this picture misfires, it would be premature to write Dunham off just yet.

There’s a slightness to this tale, and also a nagging familiarity in its exploration of twenty-something restlessness, but Raiff’s compassionate eye — paired with Dakota Johnson’s melancholy turn — results in a touching, understated affair.

Superb performances from Boyega and the late Michael Kenneth Williams highlight this sombre, character-driven tale.

The central performances give the film its conviction and keep you intrigued about the twisted, see-sawing power dynamics between captor and captive.

The Seer And The Unseen director Sara Dosa has fashioned this documentary with modesty and sensitivity, in some ways as awed by the strange beauty and destructive power of the volcanos as she is by the nonchalant willingness of the Kraffts to put themselves at risk in the name of science.

This is pretty much exactly the kind of film that anyone familiar with Eisenberg’s body of acting work might imagine he would make: it’s sharp, challenging and wry, but as insistent and uncomfortable as a splinter.

[A] subdued but affecting drama which showcases both a stark and striking backdrop and a pair of lovely, intimate performances from character actors Dale Dickey and Wes Studi.

One can feel Williams’ anger at an America that imperils young Black and Latino men, viewing them only as potential threats, but the picture never fully gets a handle on its mixture of satire and seriousness.

As truths are shared, revelations uncovered and reunions achieved, Memory Box becomes a warming tale of truth and reconciliation.

Courage becomes not so much a study of a brave political theatre troupe but a portrait of a country at the crossroads, one that is likely to resonate with audiences worldwide.

This clever, heavily meta picture has fun both mocking its own existence and trying to find enough twists to justify itself. The result is a film which is superficially appealing even if it is ultimately undone by the contortions necessary to keep the irreverent sleight-of-hand going.

Gerbase’s insightful, quietly unsettling picture may, right now, be too close to the bone to attract viewers desperate for hard times distraction; but it deserves exposure, and should attract niche sales both on the strength of newsworthiness and on its considerable cinematic achievement.

Despite the keep-it-open ending, it seems clear that Chastain has an idea, and not a franchise; that Simon Kinberg (X-Men) works better as a producer than a director.

Bellocchio’s motives for making the film are in part to make sense of the events, in part, one suspects, to exorcise a lingering sense of survivor’s guilt. Yet for all the laudable intentions, Camillo still gets slightly lost in the rambling anecdotes, padding and extraneous details.

What The Whaler Boy lacks in story complexity and character depth, it more than makes up in its bone-deep immersion in Lyoshka’s world.

Eighteen years after The Matrix Revolutions, Lana Wachowski goes back down the rabbit hole, only to get lost in a sequel that lacks the visionary flair and zeitgeist-y profundity that once made this franchise such a game-changer for blockbuster cinema.

It’s an understatement to say that The King’s Man has a weird, unsettling, tone.

Once No Way Home finds its rhythm, the picture builds to a thoughtful, touching final act that does justice to the heroism and self-sacrifice that has always been central to Spider-Man’s appeal.

Clearly a commentary on global warming, which folds neatly into a treatise on our ongoing Covid-19 crisis, Don’t Look Up takes aim at plenty of ills — especially the scourge of science-deniers. But a smug, self-satisfied approach proves insufficient at addressing the legitimate woes at core of this picture.

As much a biopic of the show as of its stars, Being The Ricardos has a few good performances, and a cleverly structured (if factually challenged) script. But star Nicole Kidman’s performance is shaky, and Sorkin relies too heavily on an overbearing score to deliver the emotions.

Has value as a cultural document as well as a riotously entertaining film.

Everyone commits to Pirates as if it’s the first time this story has been told, and in a way, that’s true. A joyous feature film centring around British Black and Asian male teenagers whose problems are exactly the same as every other teenager in the country makes it revolutionary within that familiar framework.

The message of selflessness, generosity and loyalty is by-the-numbers stuff, but embellish it with moss, pinecones and twigs, and it takes on a certain magic.

A solidly entertaining remake peppered with a few transcendent moments, Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story emphasises the musical’s most beloved elements without trying to radically reinterpret the source material.

The period details are impeccable, the look and feel are seductive, but the muddled script lacks the killer instinct of its central figures.

A frustrating drama that struggles to be either a thoughtful character study or a slow-burn thriller.

The choice of characters is strong enough to ensure a broad and insightful overview of the subject, which is explored in considerably more depth than might have been expected from a film which is packed to the gills with high-strength weed.

In a bid for blockbuster status, Yang strives to balance an air of reverence with increasingly ramped-up set pieces. It’s not always a seamless blend, but he certainly displays impressive technical proficiency.

House Of Gucci can switch into camp faster than you can swing a bamboo-handled handbag, and will certainly launch a thousand Gaga memes, an element which is accentuated by the random application of chart bangers in the soundtrack. But it’s also unsettling, entertaining, and really quite unusual: like next year’s fashions from a more extreme house, it grows on you.

This meticulous documentary can’t quite overcome the inevitability of its rise-and-fall trajectory, the familiarity of its sad-clown hypothesis.

Huezo’s picture, which is loosely adapted from a novel by Jennifer Climent, is distinctive in its child’s-eye-view of this most abnormal of normalities.

The film is most effective in simply conveying the agonising practical realities of Galvez’s quest, an operation involving endless telephone calls and long down-time periods of waiting punctuated by brief flurries of frenzied activity.

With shades of Robert Altman’s freewheeling spirit embedded in this tale of politicians, Hollywood producers and waterbeds, Licorice Pizza gains momentum as its ambles along, resulting in Anderson’s gentlest, most endearing picture to date.

Underneath the percussive, buoyant tunes and the colourful, breezy animation is a story about understanding that people who seem better off than we are may be carrying private pain that they keep bottled up inside.

Boosted by a warm performance from Ali’s Moonlight costar Naomie Harris, Swan Song proves to be a rather straightforward tearjerker, but it earns its sentiment thanks to the thoughtful approach from its cast and crew.

For a film that aspires to be a frank look at a middle-aged fighter’s hard road back to glory, Bruised too easily indulges in sports-film fantasy, undercutting the story’s inherent bleakness.

Swab’s strong suit, conversely, lies in the selection and handling of his performers.

Strenuously heartfelt, Tick,Tick…Boom! belts it out like a pro, but increasingly feels as if it’s raising the volume to an emptying room.

There is a blunt-weapon approach to the film’s themes – the eventual revelation about Amira’s paternity strikes at the very core of her cultural identity, but the film misses the opportunity to interrogate the idea of what actually constitutes this identity.

Thurber spends so much time referencing films he loves that Red Notice feels more like an elaborate game of dress-up than a worthy heir to their greatness.

The vivid performances capably capture the humanity at the centre of a film that can sometimes be dominated by Wright’s showy excesses — in particular, his overly elaborate set pieces. But there’s no mistaking Cyrano’s sense of tragedy, its lament for soulmates destined not to get their happy ending.

Director Reinaldo Marcus Green’s drama works best when it pushes against genre conventions, focusing more on race, class and the difficulties of family rather than in the typical concerns about winning the big match.

The obligatory nature of the fan service constantly undercuts the bittersweet, occasionally tearjerking tone, with the filmmakers more concerned about extending the franchise’s commercial life than really saying anything meaningful about loss and reconciliation.

C’mon C’mon is a gentle drama, but its deep emotional wellspring is mitigated by how wise it is about what impossible little monsters kids can be when they’re acting out.

The film plays with and deconstructs the familiar repertoire of Diana myths and images, to offer an empathetic, intelligent insight into the prison of fame and privilege, with Kristen Stewart offering a lead performance that is brittle, tender, sometimes playful and not a little uncanny.

Working with Carbunariu, Jude offers a spare, visually striking evocation of the methods of Ceausescu’s secret police, the Securitate, in its pursuit and punishment of a young dissident.

Tracey Deer’s feature debut Beans vibrates with ferocious anger and righteous pride.

It’s hard to tell which of the cast is more winning, but all credit to a grizzled Hanks for sharing the screen with a scene-stealing mutt and a bucket of screws.

Perhaps the most persuasive aspect of this hopeful parable of failure is the way casting, acting, script, and camerawork conspire to usher us into an immediately believable world which is observed with a painterly eye yet never seems staged.

[Speer’s] damning answers to Birkin’s questions might have threatened to become repetitive if they didn’t paint a horrifying yet bleakly fascinating picture of a man doing something that remains thoroughly relevant today: spinning fake news.

Moll is a director who is adept when it comes to loading the screen with tension; actors swerve in from the side of the frame, silhouetted against the plateau, all playing characters who are clearly not walking a straight line mentally.

These characters may be immortal, but the studio’s assembly-line predictability drains the vitality from the proceedings.

This small-scale drama is sensitively rendered, examining two people who share a past that they’re only beginning to untangle, resulting in unhappy recriminations that offer little in the way of closure.

The Phantom Of The Open is an amiable little picture which might be dramatically as flat as Mark Rylance’s vowels but still packs a considerable helping of crowd-pleasing charm into its cap and golfing slacks.

The film makes its points — about ableism within the world of sport and broader society — as emphatically as any of Nao’s punches.

The impressive feature debut from Maltese-American writer and director Alex Camilleri manages to be both self-contained, in its depiction of an embattled community, but also unexpectedly far-reaching in its themes. The film is an exploration of masculinity in crisis, of the attrition of traditions by the forces of progress and of the agonies and uncertainties of new parenthood.

While it smoulders with indignation for the injustice that was perpetrated for so many years, Great Freedom is also a love story, a remarkable character study, and an absorbing meditation on what long-term imprisonment for a crime that is not a crime does to the soul.

Rather like the butterfly wings that are its central metaphor, Son of Monarchs is deceptively fragile-seeming, yet robust, structurally complex and vibrantly hued.

The film derives a magnetic continuity, and an unsettling range of dynamics, from Haque Badhon’s performance

Neither the milieu nor the insights are especially fresh, despite the tender tone.

Ron’s Gone Wrong transcends the familiarity of the story (there’s a thematic an overlap with Big Hero 6 and How To Train Your Dragon, to name just two) with deft writing, appealing animation and a big heart crammed into a small malfunctioning robot.

Milocco’s performance manages to walk a thin line between credibility and delusion, a line which is less successfully negotiated by other aspects of the film.

Big, bombastic and full-blooded, Jeymes Samuel’s neo-Western might tick off plenty of the tropes of the genre, but the outlaw energy he brings to the picture makes it feel, if not fresh exactly, then certainly a whole lot of fun.

Never appearing to judge any situation, Kingdon confidently allows the images to tell a fascinating, universal story of inequality and class division, revealing a country that feels more like a capitalist society than anyone’s idea of a Communist state.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage is a grander spectacle than the mediocre 2018 original, offering monster-movie mayhem with a welcome sense of humour about its own ludicrousness.

There’s plenty to gawk at, and to argue over, in this episode - yet No Time To Die is oddly lacking in pleasure or real wit.

With standout performances by stars Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, expert imagery and striking production design, Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth is hardly a tale told by an idiot. But it could actually use a little more sound and fury – and a better idea of what it’s supposed to be signifying.

Da Silveira sets a tone that nimbly flows between comedy, mystery and discomforting satire (the Pastor generally makes the skin crawl), though her occasional wink towards horror offers fun rather than frights, to the film’s detriment.

This intriguing political thriller uses the ideological beliefs of its characters as a jumping-off point, but is most effective when it takes its own stance, and starts to unpick the tiers of exploitation within society.

A promising and emotionally mature romantic drama from British writer-director Harry Wootliff.

All in all, it’s the strength of vision which impresses — the confidence and the brio of a film-maker adapting a novel and losing herself inside it, making no apologies for her interpretation.

A brisk and efficient thriller ... This combination of moral quandary and ticking clock peril makes for a bracing, if occasionally didactic, political drama.

Costa Brava, Lebanon is a terrific feature debut from Mounia Akl which works both as a compelling domestic drama and an elegant political allegory.

It’s a handsome film, but a conventional one, rather missing the opportunity of allowing Salomon’s thrilling uninhibited style to inform the film’s aesthetic.

All seamy New Orleans sleaze, with a neon and nylon aesthetic, the film relishes its own trashiness. But the writing is not focussed enough to make this much more than a cheap thrill.

The Humans is a marvel of slight shifts in tone and rhythm, guided by a uniformly strong cast of actors who deliver naturalistic performances which show the cracks in their characters’ pleasant veneer.

As a viewing experience, The Good House is capable if unexciting, as tastefully waspish as its millieu, with a damped-down pace and a muted score. As an acting masterclass from Sigourney Weaver as a smart woman in denial, though, it’s impressive.

It’s fair to say that in this singular piece of filmmaking, with its dense deep-dive into arcane legend and mythology, selling out is certainly not on the cards for Masaaki Yuasa right now.

Haley Lu Richardson and Owen Teague are both excellent at conveying everything that remains unsaid between these estranged siblings, eschewing melodramatic flourishes for stoic insights.

Essentially a frothy bagatelle, and sometimes overworking the slightest of jokes, nevertheless this lively, sleekly executed farce from the Argentinian makers of black comedy The Distinguished Citizen offers comic and visual pleasures alike, plus crisp acting from its lead trio.

Writer-director Potsy Ponciroli has crafted a taut Western that borrows heavily from familiar themes and storylines, but it has been constructed with such confidence and precision that one can’t help but be seduced by the picture’s stripped-down spell.

The free-flowing style, aided by dreamlike editing from Isabel Freeman, is both playful and sombre, offering a captivating snapshot of a young artist trying to make sense of her complicated self.

An intense combination of apocalyptic nightmare and family psychodrama. ... A provocative, rigorously composed film that confirms Paxton as a singular talent after a string of award-winning shorts.

La Caja is a canny blend of detective story, political drama and rites of passage vignette, and is the sort of film that comes across as so simple and direct that it’s easy to miss how meticulously conceived and constructed it is.

A powerful and troubling drama about the Stalin era. ... This is a film to revel in, and to argue about – and for some, no doubt, to recoil from – but it’s one of the most original works of the year, and a stand-out of what is proving a rich spell in Russian cinema.

Garbus’s approach is respectful, never hagiographic and allows room for consideration of Cousteau’s professional regrets and personal failings.

There’s no shortage of familiar elements here, and yet one can’t deny the empathy Levinson brings to the material.

West and Cohen reflect some of Murray’s unassuming nature in a diligently assembled, absorbing film that treats its fascinating subject matter with respect.

The result is engaging, tender film-making which tugs at the heart-strings, spurred by a sympathetic cast and the young lead, newcomer Jude Hill.

Whether the pen is mightier than the sword may be up for debate, but as this engaging and hopeful documentary by Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh shows, words have the power to change things when wielded carefully.

From the film’s first moments, the audience can guess exactly how the story will pan out, and the pleasure is watching Eastwood gracefully negotiate every well-worn twist and turn.