A quietly thoughtful and impressively acted drama.

Union is a solid work about an important subject. Yet, while the observational approach gives the picture an urgency and immediacy, it’s a film that might have benefitted from the addition of more contextual background information about Amazon’s labour practices.

If the film cannot entirely shake the suspicion that the creative peaks of this franchise are in the past, the depth of feeling in the performances suggests Marvel still has compelling tales to tell.

There is no shortage of drama to feed House Of Z.

A Ciambra may be a conventional tale of a young man trying to find himself, but the writer-director’s attention to detail enriches that setup.

In the end, there’s perhaps just too much sheen to this heartfelt portrait for it to really bite. But it remains a touching tribute to a woman who, von Trotta suggests, pitted a radical desire to question everything against the comfortable certainties of the men who surrounded her.

Aster’s bold flourishes occasionally fall flat, but Florence Pugh holds the film together — especially when its plotting stumbles or its shocks grow predictable.

Sama’s film captures the quicksilver sparks of an artistic moment – the point at which a loose bohemian community collectively finds its voice and forces the mainstream to take notice.

A melancholy character piece about a man who senses his run is nearly over, Jockey rides Clifton Collins Jr.’s gentle central performance to modest glory.

It’s all glossily camped-up nonsense with an amusingly inappropriate title, but luridly – and ludicrously – entertaining nonetheless.

If the film exasperates and exhausts, which it does, there is also the knowledge that before too long there will also be moments of surreal comedy, freewheeling invention and genuine tenderness.

Although a touch too precious and slight, 20th Century Women is lit from within by its endless curiosity about its evolving characters.

Despite its vaguely-generic title, this well-crafted close-quarters suspense from British-Iranian director Babak Anvari is firmly-written, -shot and -acted.

Lucy And Desi benefits greatly from a raft of archival footage ... Repeated montages and a schmaltzy score can lessen their effect, but Poehler has strong sense of the couple’s contribution to the entertainment industry, and nobody watching her documentary will emerge anything less than convinced of how outstanding that was.

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.

The sci-fi horror-thriller Ash makes the most of a minimal budget, casting Eiza Gonzalez as the lone survivor on a distant planet whois unsure how she got there or who she is. With Aaron Paul playing a fellow astronaut trying to help jog her memory about a massacre that occurred at the base, the film quickly establishes an aura of paranoia and bad vibes, paving the way for deft twists and an appreciably gory finale.

Singer-songwriter Ben Dickey is affecting as Foley, assisted ably by a supporting cast that fights to transcend the drunken-angel clichés of the man’s legacy.

This intriguing feature debut from Bafta-nominated Scottish short filmmaker Louis Paxton makes effective use of its striking location and a trio of strong performances from Domhnall Gleeson, Gayle Rankin and Grant O’Rourke.

Mudbound is full of strong performances, singular moments, and a heavy heart, but it’s an over-ambitious affair that struggles to find the right balance between its many characters.

If the film didn’t rest on such composed performances, it might have conjured melodramatic disbelief, but the excellent Fehling and Montgomery play their pivotal figures with the requisite nuance.

No matter how melodramatic the story becomes, and how much the emotions boil, What Will People Say at least tries to understand both sides of this cultural and generational divide.

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.

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.

Writer-director Elijah Bynum’s second feature is often riveting, its heartbreak and pain amplified by Jonathan Majors’ brilliantly anguished performance. But just as its subject risks imploding at any moment, this confident drama eventually starts to unravel, fumbling its final third while trying to find the right ending for such a damaged, raging soul.

Ultimately, it works as both a character study and welcome example of an LGBTQ film in which none of the characters are defined by their sexuality or gender, but by their individual choices — both good, and bad.

Tenet is as generous as any Bond when it comes to a big-buck opening sequence and regularly-scheduled, muscular set pieces. If anything, it showers the viewer with too much, over-balancing a ticking-time-clock finale which is only saved by Elizabeth Debicki’s raw acting talent.

For all the gambits that end up feeling like gimmicks, My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock never stops churning with ideas and ambition. The film pays Hitch the highest compliment by trying to follow his example and never do the expected thing.

Ice Mother handles the lives of its older protagonists with sensitivity and admirable candour.

Tell It To The Bees can seem a little too respectable for its own good but there are moments of pain and heartbreak that rise to the surface, especially in a tense climax that puts the fates of several characters in the balance.

Co-writers Julian Barratt and Simon Farnaby fly the flag for a rare original idea with the goofy, genial, fitfully inspired Mindhorn.

Francois Ozon’s adaptation is at its best when it sticks to the letter and tone of Camus’ enduring, enigmatic novella.

Anchored by a funny, foul-mouthed performance from McDormand, McDonagh’s daringly-structured dark comedy is rich and layered and often laugh-out-loud funny but trips over constant tonal shifts.

Sink Or Swim works because of a screenplay with some genuinely funny moments and a jaunty, confident approach from Lellouche that displays his sure comic timing and faith in the performers.

Mackenzie’s film works best when it believes in its audience. And it feels tantalisingly close to greatness when it allows the relationship between Ash and Sarah to simmer. The pacing is so unhurried, and the script has such deliberate mechanics that the film remains enthralling, despite an overbearing score.

Il Buco proves that cinema still has the capacity to astonish in a very innocent, childlike way as a medium in which light illuminates a black screen and creates beauty.

Sporadically very funny, always entertaining, tonally, it’s a blend of The League of Gentlemen and Deliverance, but with beatboxing rather than banjos, and considerably more drug use.

Jean Dujardin is quietly excellent as the French officer whose growing conviction that Alfred Dreyfus (Louis Garrel) is innocent of treason puts him on a collision course with his superiors. The Oscar-winning actor provides the film with its soulful centre, despite the familiarity of the material and its procedural tone.

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.

Visually spectacular and consistently entertaining, Ridley Scott’s space rescue procedural The Martian suffers only from a failure to hit its emotional beats with the amount of force and feeling usually required to make this kind of life-and-death adventure really take off.

Amidst an orgy of cameos and spiked with more than a few stinging gags, the further travails of Patsy and Edina as they battle irrelevancy is bright, light entertainment, even though it never quite makes a convincing case for itself cinematically.

Not every emotional beat lands, and some action scenes merely repeat past strengths. But between Brolin’s continued excellence as Thanos, a moral monster who believes in the righteousness of his cause, and the filmmakers’ effortless popcorn-movie poetry, Endgame is a muscular send-off to this series of comic-book extravaganzas.

The approach is scrupulously even-handed. The film is just as interested in mild-mannered Sue’s journey as it is in Daniel’s coming of age. The screenplay, adapted by Lisa Owens (Bird’s wife) from an award winning graphic novel by Joff Winterhart, is wryly low key, with a keen eye for the subtle stabs and small daily humiliations that gradually mount.

Overall, it’s as cheesy and just as hard to resist as a Mamma Mia! with smoother production values and a LGBTQ+ heart. The fact that Meryl Streep connects the two is a delight: at 71, this is an actress who still knows how to have a good time in her craft, and the viewer can feel the joy in it.

Delgado keeps us invested in the fate of these two girls without tipping the film towards overt melodrama or sentimentality.

Tibetan road movie Jinpa is a playful, gently perplexing and distinctly stylish fifth feature from director Pema Tseden.

It is the resilience of individuals that seems to reflect a melancholy Cuba acutely aware of its past but curious about its future. There are times when Epicentro seems to lack focus but no matter where it roams, it always returns to its central concerns of colonisation, mythmaking and the way the true spirit of Cuba resides in its people.

The film moves at a languid pace, with long periods of silence, and there’s not a great deal of action until a final cathartic orgy of violence. Yet this world is richly drawn.

In its unassuming way, the film is a celebration of creativity and of emotional connections forged through art. But Nagi Notes is unassertive in its themes and, at times, gentle almost to a fault.

This comic melodrama wrings every last drop of drama from the set up.

The film is called, and certainly contains, cries from Syria but in itself Afineevsky’s documentary is more of a shout, a piercing scream.

There’s an oddball intrigue and a dry absurdist humour to this journey which largely transcends the uneven pacing

What The Daughter lacks in narrative surprises, however, it works hard to make up for in its confident approach.

Unavoidably uneven but fairly engaging throughout, Manifesto is a cavalcade of provocative ideas, arresting visuals and fabulous wigs.

The modest running time ... means that it does feel a little slight and underdeveloped in places. However, there are enough sparks of originality and comic invention throughout to capture those in search of something winningly offbeat and unexpected.

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

It is a testimony to the film’s careful construction and honest intentions that you have become so engaged in the fate of the characters.

Rolf de Heer’s wordless allegorical drama explores its themes in savage, boundless landscapes; in stark images of hate and violence; and in disease and blood.

An air of wistfulness imbues the proceedings, building to a resonant climax that’s hard to resist, despite some legitimate reservations about this uneven sequel.

Shaun exists simply to entertain children and he fulfils his brief.

Although Wakefield’s ending leaves open the possibility for multiple interpretations, the filmmaker removes the sting from her story’s tale, which keeps its insights from cutting as deep.

If ultimately Maudie doesn’t have much new to say about love or art, at least its two misfits provide an insight into something deeply true about long-term commitment.

It’s very much its own thing, intelligent and inventive if somewhat ragged round the edges

Markees Christmas is an appealing, sensitive find as Morris, with Robinson striking all the rights notes as his struggling father.

It’s undeniably powerful stuff, but a more straightforward piece of storytelling, lacking the slippery, shape-shifting quality of his debut.

Elstree 1976 entertainingly explores the world of the character actor and bit-part player.

This affectionate hoot hardly breaks new ground with its film-within-a-film structure, but the South Korean auteur attacks the material with such good cheer, populating the story with a collection of daffy dreamers, that it’s easy to root for these characters as they reshoot the ending of a picture some of them are convinced is this close to being a masterpiece.

A pleasant and sometimes stimulating viewing experience.

Whitney Can I Be Me delivers yet another tragic lesson in the toxic mix of fame and talent and children: it should be required viewing for all those who seek to follow this diva’s path to fame and fortune.

Kim successfully captures the loneliness and entrapment underneath the debris and the chaos outside.

Exceptional sound design and a superb central performance from The Handmaid’s tale star Nina Kiri, who is almost entirely alone on screen, mean the film casts a compelling spell, even when the narrative begins to succumb to genre cliché in its final reels.

Street-shot, cluttered and claustrophobic, Left-Handed Girl is both fast and slow, moving along at a relentless pace yet taking time to advance a storyline that turns out to be about the precariousness of women’s independence and the perpetuation of male privilege – sometimes by the very women that suffer under it.

There is a real sense of poignancy and heartache in random scenes with Azema or Balmer and even if the film deliberately eschews easy comprehension it remains involving and intriguing enough to keep the viewer on board.

What gives the film its emotional continuity is a commandingly downbeat performance from Servillo.

Greta is best read as tongue-in-cheek femme fun. And proof, certainly, that despite her considerable success, Huppert has not at all fallen into the trap of taking herself to seriously.

There is a big effort put into the world building, which pays off.

Mikhanovsky mixes different styles of comedy, but he binds them with a realist approach that grounds everything in an offhand, absurdist tone.

While the urgency of the message emerges powerfully, the details are often hard to absorb, as Gibney skips from political information to technical specs.

A Faithful Man seems to be content playfully ruminating on how matters of the heart consume people — and how, sometimes, pursuing someone can be more fulfilling than actually possessing them.

Michael Thomas’ imposing performance will be the hook for a film that, while executed with Seidl’s typical steely control, might strike his followers as being a touch too familiar – while non-adepts will find its darker dimensions altogether too bleak for comfort.

While Selena’s raw talent and infectious personality are a huge draw, the film’s real selling point is its access to Selena’s family, open and honest in their recollections.

Ali’s anger and frustration is the engine which gives this heartfelt drama its energy; Bessa’s terrific performance, a thunderous scowl masking his rising anguish, is a considerable asset.

Colours of Time nudges its audience a little heavily, if cheerfully so, with its historical references, and self-confessedly (as per an end title) plays fast and loose in its accuracy, but is genially inventive in messing with the codes of period cinema.

The motivations and the performances are solid in Jane Got A Gun, an attractively mounted post-Civil War revenge drama with plenty of shooting and a well-placed twist or two.

There’s a great deal of fun to be had watching Hardiman play out her cards; we know the hand she’s holding, but it’s a nice-looking deck nonetheless.

Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie are both superb in muted performances and, while the film’s palace intrigue gets a bit dense, the story never loses sight of its deep compassion for these characters and their shared plight of being held hostage by conniving, belittling, power-hungry men determined to usurp their authority.

Although at times a little overwrought in tone, and at others emphatically sentimental, the film doesn’t pull its punches when it comes to condemning a society which punishes its poor.

Strong central performances from Emily Mortimer, Robyn Nevin and Bella Heathcote, as three generations of women from one family, contribute to a sense of claustrophobic unease; a tone which is unnecessarily bludgeoned home by the over-excitable sound design.

It may be fuelled by the schmaltzy lyrics of a boy band, but this is ultimately a clear-eyed celebration of female friendship.

With strong performances, smart directorial choices and an unexpected story structure, Monsters and Men transcends its run-of-the-mill Law & Order-like premise.

It’s a nice premise, one grounded and lent empathy not only by a series of strong performances but by the script’s point-of-view shifts.

Generously mixing comedy, nostalgia, pathos and misanthropy, Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point embraces its brood’s rambunctious spirit, resisting the temptation to let any character become the central protagonist.

Ultimately, though, Everything Everywhere is best appreciated for its grandiose ambitions, bombarding the viewer with its frenetic style while telling a poignant story about an older woman trying to make peace with her not-so-wonderful life.

This overstuffed adventure-comedy barely takes a breath while bombarding the viewer with spectacle, special effects and one-liners — but what ultimately makes the film so likeable is the flirty rapport between Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt as a mismatched pair in search of a magical tree somewhere deep in the Amazon.

A strong performance from lead Pia Zemljic as an anxious, shellshocked wife and the tightly controlled mixture of mystery and moral dilemma all combine to make Nightlife intriguing and accessible.

Arab critics may lament that Israelis are telling their stories, but they won’t dispute the gritty reality on the screen.

A sufficiently motivated woman is a fearsome and unstoppable force: the central premise for this gleefully pulpy WWII horror puts a dash of feminist fury into a schlocky B movie set-up.

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.

Choe has taken a slim scenario and used to touch on universal themes and thoughts of escape and second chances in life.