Meyer, who also acts as the film’s editor, is a likeable, informative and honest guide through his extreme experience.

Occasionally schematic, albeit only in the service of pricking our consciences, Petra Volpe’s tense drama is a shot in the arm of undiluted empathy for the over-stretched, under-valued nursing profession.

Split is a highly effective, nerve-shredding horror movie that makes the most of its claustrophobic setting, familiar setup and psychological gimmicks

Like Kore-eda’s 2008 family drama Still Walking, this is a film which is interested in the architecture, both emotional and physical, of the family home.

An instantly engaging tale of a young male dancer’s sexual awakening in contemporary Tbilisi, And Then We Danced is personal and political, romantic and educational.

The movie radiates considerable compassion, sensitively addressing issues including addiction, recovery and forgiveness. Joaquin Phoenix’s raw, wiry performance never strives for greatness, which only makes it all the more affecting.

The festering resentment of things left unsaid fuels this play, and David Lindsay-Abaire’s unflinching, brisk screenplay traces the growing fissures in the family.

A lovely, satisfying saga, Wolfwalkers has the feel of an instant classic.

Thoughtful, moving, overreaching and uncompromising, First Reformed is a tremendously tormented work from writer-director Paul Schrader.

With its looming, angular and alienating architecture, and thoroughly considered technological and ethical future landscape, this is a phenomenal and inventive piece of world-building from Prague-based director Robert Hloz.

It may be modest in scale but the film is assured in both intention and execution, building successfully towards a quietly moving climax.

It is both a passionate exposé of a serious injustice and a big emotional ride that is also prepared to take some interesting risks in its journey towards a old-school tear-jerker finale.

Jude makes us think and makes us feel and succeeds in making Blecher a presence in the film.

This is not just a visual treat, it’s a rewarding and unexpectedly engrossing piece of female-led storytelling.

Like its magnetic central character, the entertaining latest from Luis Ortega is fascinating: a playful, shape-shifting, questioning journey that refuses to be neatly pinned down.

Mandibles is far from derivative, and Dupieux goes beyond the usual “Love you bro!” buddy-film clichés to draw something genuine, even heartwarming, out of the friendship between these two idiots.

It’s clear that waters need to be calmed or someone will be hurt, but The Librarians also shows that won’t happen unless people stand up and take action. So it’s a call to arms, then. But, be warned: a horror story too.

It’s a bold, gothic, compelling study of the cult of fame, the creative impulse, the fragile threads that bind. Every aspect of the film is carefully crafted and calibrated in service of Lowery’s distinctive vision, and, while it may prove divisive, it casts a hallucinatory spell.

Strong performances across the board and a propulsive sense of mounting desperation makes for a compelling piece of storytelling.

The debut feature from actress Lisa Brühlmann, Blue My Mind brings a surreal spin to the coming of age story, and is an effective showcase for a striking cast of young performers.

As led by Daveed Diggs’ impassioned, tormented performance, Blindspotting is hard to shake, despite its on-the-nose plot points and melodramatic flourishes.

The radiant, heartfelt performances from Izia Higelin and Cecile De France make you care about the final outcome even when you feel you know exactly where Summertime might be headed.

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

For a while, Fury Road’s complete disinterest in screenwriting fundamentals feels liberating, as the director keeps upping the ante on this desperate chase through the desert. But what feels liberating at first can become monotonous, and Fury Road starts to drag once the frenetic sameness of Miller’s strategy takes hold.

The film isn’t particularly electric in its presentation, but it serves as a sombre reminder of how much white supremacy is woven into the country’s fabric — and also how relevant King’s causes remain today.

This debut feature by French director Clément Cogitore has a highly suggestive philosophical agenda, but at the same time functions as a gripping, subtly eerie drama which keeps you guessing even while it maintains its supernatural (or theological) undertow simmering beneath the surface.

A compelling drama that transcends its generic roots.

This heartfelt picture can be overly familiar, but Poulter’s intensely interior performance lends the proceedings sufficient edge and fascination.

If tenderness is deployed to ease Shmuel’s grieving, those are not the scenes which give To Dust its special pungency, or what make you laugh. This film is at its best when it goes for the gut.

Olivia Munn is quite touching as the title character, and the picture cleverly dramatises the conflicting thoughts that bounce around inside us and, often, dictate our lives.

The movie’s arresting visual conceit has enough flexibility to sustain interest, even if the story’s twists and turns sometimes feel excessively fiendish.

It would be easy to paint him as a tragic figure but Tcheng’s film is more of a celebration than a lamentation, saluting a superstar designer whose life was a triumph of style and substance.

Bouzid’s film is also warm, passionate and sexy in a well-read kind of way – a surefire route to wider arthouse acceptance.

This small, engaging film doesn’t offer much in the way of introduction to Birkin for non-initiates - there’s nothing about her acting career, for example. But for the devoted audience of a star who can – for once – genuinely be called an icon, the film offers a tender and quite illuminating portrait of a mother-daughter relationship seen both within, and far away from, the public sphere of celebrity.

The Assistant is inspired by potentially scandalous material but subverts expectations, asking the audience to consider the broader societal implications of the crime.

Though perhaps lacking in a real sense of dramatic tension; veering towards the schmaltzy at times and needing a far tighter ending, Woman In Gold is still a thoroughly enjoyable story, engagingly told and with a nice line in gentle humour to balance the legal battle structure which can veer to dryness at times.

Resurgence doles out the action and effects work in carefully calculated, incremental doses, which give the film a cumulative tension. Even if it’s hokey and jokey, this is a loud, effects-driven piece, with a driving score. For fans of Roland Emmerich disaster movies, this both hits all the marks, while delivering nothing new.

The film’s magnetic centre is a strong performance from Vysotskaya, working from a base line of initial testiness to rising anxiety and terror in face of the oppression that she realises she has been enabling.

Federico Veiroj’s love of anti-heroes continues with this fifth feature, an enjoyably offbeat period character study wrapped in a thriller and laced with bone-dry humour that charts the rise of a conscience-free money launderer during the 1970s Uruguayan military dictatorship.

The film is led by Maika Monroe’s fragile performance, which grounds the story even when the proceedings start to become formulaic.

Sometimes the convoluted story forces its emotional beats, but Hoppers is a largely successful animation that introduces a refreshingly darker strain of humour alongside its paeans to the natural world.

It’s a jolting race against time when the wave gathers steam far away, as implacable as the tsunami in Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter, minus the pop metaphysics .

Feel free to ignore the nonsensical plot and tortured musings on honour, revenge, loyalty and destiny. All that matters is how director Chad Stahelski concocts his usual litany of flinty fight scenes, and how Keanu Reeves invests the material with his wonderfully spacey stoicism.

Glassland is impressive, although Barrett struggles to give this carefully crafted narrative a coherent resolution.

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.

A stripped-down drama built around a powerful and sometimes troubling performance by Christopher Plummer.

This sprawling, meandering compendium of dispossessed people in transit is a profoundly human film, a heartfelt call to empathy, but also something of a politicised nature documentary.

Together Together makes for comfortable viewing elevated by Harrison’s sparky presence.

The Settlers is captivating viewing for the most part. But it’s also muddled in its combination of historical and contemporary storytelling.

An intriguing and absorbing delve into almost alien parts of the United States.

It Is In Us All demonstrates a sure directorial hand when it comes to evoking a sense of place and community, but falters slightly in the writing and the characterisation – for all Jarvis’s intriguingly complex work, the increasingly nihilistic character he plays remains something of a conundrum throughout.

When Raimi is allowed to indulge his weird streak — especially during an audacious third act — the picture pushes past the franchise’s predictably polished sheen to arrive at sequences that are livelier and odder than Marvel normally permits.

Scottish director John Maclean’s ambitious second feature is an intriguing blend of Western and samurai actioner — always close bedfellows — which makes the most of its untamed setting.

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.

What emerges is a history lesson but also a personal journey of sorts for Koch and Schachmann, grandchildren of Jewish immigrants who discover an emotional connection to their cultural roots along the way.

Gabriel and the Mountain offers a moving look at the transformative nature of travel, both on those hopping around the world in search of a new perspective and those they encounter along the way.

Despite the congested narrative, there is much to keep audiences entertained including the compelling performances by the entire cast.

While the narrative’s dramas feel paper-thin, even as they touch upon timely themes of equality, multiculturalism and the treatment of refugees, the feature’s optimism always shines.

The latest film from Chris Renaud (Despicable Me) and his team is a madcap caper full of densely-packed sight gags, dizzying action set pieces and a healthy side-helping of Renaud trademark silliness.

What is so compelling is the picture I Am Greta pieces together of Thunberg herself.

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 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.

What’s most interesting, although it gets slightly buried under a few too many almost identical musical performances, is the film’s account of the fractious symbiosis of the guru-disciple relationship.

My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea is slight and uneven, but its quirky, handmade aesthetic nicely conveys its characters’ adolescent vulnerability and restless spirit.

There’s real magic here, and nothing fake about the emotions which guide it.

Klondike is both despairing – sometimes in a blackly comic vein – and empathetic in the way it sees the incident from the ground up rather than from the sky down.

It’s a work of undeniable historical significance.

[An] absorbing and eye-opening, if somewhat dense, documentary.

DC takes the multiverse for a spin in The Flash, an entertaining adventure that outruns its familiar narrative trappings thanks to a playful sense of humour and the arrival of an iconic character in a supporting role.

Music-video director Isaiah Saxon’s feature debut sometimes wobbles when balancing its impish sense of humour with darker tone, but ultimately, the picture’s peculiarity becomes part of its charm — as difficult to resist as that adorable titular critter.

Makala takes the observational approach to the hardships of Congolese life, charting a tough but insightful journey.

Although Jay Kelly explores familiar thematic terrain of an ageing man wrestling with regret, this tender film is mildly radical in its insistence that celebrities were once just everyday people — and might still be during unguarded moments.

The first half of Age of Shadows feels muddy as momentum builds; the latter stages boast a cinetic energy - cutting a violent melee to classical music (in this case Ravel’s Bolero), may be a tribute to John Woo, but it’s stunning nonetheless.

Director Euros Lyn overdoes the feel-good trappings, but it’s hard to deny the genuine sentiment that the movie stirs up.

The visual textures of The Lovers and the Despot, edited by Jim Hession — and the Kim audio tapes — make for vibrant cinema.

[Boden and Fleck] marry splashes of dry humour to gallons of blood, and feature every musical genre from punk to hip-hop while connecting the stories to a strange green glow in the sky. If the end result never quite achieves the style and bite of the likes of Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, it is still a lot of fun.

This heartfelt if, at times, slightly uneven drama marks the debut fiction feature from documentarian Roger Ross Williams and is a warm and celebratory film.

A Taxi Driver can over-reach towards its final chase sequences, which enter the realm of fantasy, but they’re not enough to de-rail this fine film.

Amalric, these days persuasively settling into scuffed middle-aged roles, is effective as ever, but still maintains an anxious look; while Roy’s sometimes ethereal presence strikes a forceful but delicate note as a woman who is at once facing a mystery and who is at the same time a mystery herself.

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

Editor William Goldenberg’s directorial debut is an affecting, by-the-numbers inspirational sports film, whose ripped from the headlines drama remains grounded.

Sometimes marred by plot contrivances, Boogie works best when it breaks free of cliches to deliver an honest portrait of the struggles to attain the American dream.

In addition to the obviously authentic rapport between the quietly compelling Hill and impressive first-timer Perham, populating the feature’s frames with as many non-actors as possible also adds detail and texture.

Even when The Novice stumbles, Hadaway hits on something disquieting about a culture that places such a burden on young people to be great that they put themselves through punishing extremes.

While some may find Bang Gang a calculatedly chic opening salvo for a feature career, it carries a genuine emotional charge, and overall Husson shows she means business.

Weisse puts her own, distinctive spin on this film, keeping the audience guessing about whose story this really is, feeling its way slowly towards a bracing, risky dramatic conclusion that suddenly reshuffles the cards we’ve been dealt.

This is a loving tribute not only to the late Barbara (1930-97), the inimitable singing icon of the French chanson, but also to the star of this film, Jeanne Balibar, whose brilliant performance is boosted here by her uncanny physical resemblance to the late“Dame en noir”, as Barbara used to be called by her admirers.

The trouble with a high-stakes “small” British project like this is that everyone involved tends to want to play it safe.

Cerebral and emotional, Tempestad is a road movie fuelled by the memories of unjust punishment. It’s a bumpy but illuminating ride.

While Bob does slink around some predictable narrative beats, this is still a slyly subversive film with a social point to make as it highlights James’s isolation in a cold, hard-faced London which responds better to animals than its hopeless humans.

A bravura performance from Matthew McConaughey as a schlubby, roguish mineral prospector in desperate pursuit of the American Dream is the seam that gives Gold its value.

While the dramatic destination may be signposted fom the off, this well-observed debut from actor-turned-director Prasanna Puwanarajah handles its themes lightly, leaning into dark comedy rather than melodrama, and that approach, together with strong central performances, serves it well.

Though it never gets too preachy, the film delivers its message about the dangers of stereotyping quite clearly and draws parallels with instances of everyday racial prejudice among humans.

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.

A small-scale, covert glimpse of the lives led behind the headlines.

As appealing and likeable as The BFG is, the movie doesn’t seem particularly groundbreaking or daring when it comes from Spielberg, who is revisiting his major themes here without necessarily reinventing them.

Ultraman: Rising lacks sophistication in its storytelling, but the film nevertheless achieves a quiet poignancy.

For all its showy excesses, sophomoric humour and strained gravitas, Ambulance is often riveting, the film speeding along as recklessly as that ambulance. This popcorn thriller certainly is not brainy, but its escapism has a muscular precision.