The film offers an engrossing overview of the painstaking, insightful investigations carried out over the years by Lewis and associates.

The restrained, austere filmmaking of the latest picture from Wayne Wang belies the emotional depth of this sober picture.

All of this is familiar but still surprisingly effective, and it’s highlighted by Baron Cohen’s onscreen partner Maria Bakalova, who ends up providing some of this mockumentary’s finest moments.

The director doesn’t draw well-rounded performances from Bruno or Eastick, failing to capture the awe or confusion of youth. What we get instead are adrenalised chase scenes and needlessly showy special effects that lack charm.

It’s an impressive debut feature from writer/director Byrne who spills blood, boils brains and cannibalises naked teens with wicked energy.

I’m Your Woman benefits greatly from its off-kilter rhythms and intuitive digressions, even if it can be tonally uneven and a little obvious thematically at times.

Given the recent debates about British identity and the spike in race hatred and racially motivated crime – all as a result of Brexit – the timing of White Riot couldn’t be more apt.

Evan Morgan’s sometimes weird, sometimes whimsical thriller delivers a grown-up blend of film-noir tropes and deadpan humor, for a comedy-drama which starts off lighthearted and then deftly darkens.

Visually glorious, frequently very funny and genuinely profound, this is a picture which cries out to be seen on the big screen.

Impressively for a piece of foundation-stage universe building, Jiang Ziya manages to hint at a world beyond the frame without mitigating its individual pleasures.

Despite a potentially daring twist at the mid-mark, though, the film lacks sufficient chills, or a satisfactory payoff.

Audiences familiar with this kind of story — and the inevitable complications that ensue once characters try to hide a brutal crime — will be ahead of the overheated storytelling.

Perhaps the most impressive element is the way that the picture so deftly juggles its tonal shifts. Rocks is as mercurial and complex as any moody teenager can be, veering from hilarity to misery and back again in seconds.

Education is everything, and Mangrove, conventional though it may be, is still a radical step on the way to societal self-examination.

Well written, -acted, -cast and -produced, this wholly entertaining yet stingingly relevant story of the 1970 Miss World finals should have been a smash hit when it opened in UK theatres on March 13, but events overtook its release.

This courtroom drama has its florid excesses, but a fine cast (combined with Sorkin’s indefatigable enthusiasm for electric, shamelessly proselytising entertainment) sell the commentary at this still-relevant story’s centre.

It’s a familiar watch and a pallid reminder of better days we’ve had with the director.

Spun mostly of sugar and air, this film is a lightweight, but mostly sweet, treat – and a lovely reminder of when pictures could just be low-key amusements, and the pandemic hadn’t yet turned cities into ghost towns.

Not so much bleeding edge as screeching edge, Gia Coppola’s Mainstream is a frenetic piece of pop-art social satire that strives to be super-current but feels oddly traditional beneath its eye-searing, pixel-popping surface.

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.

Because Good Joe Bell spends so much time wondering how this father will change and grow, it doesn’t concentrate enough on his son, who is actually experiencing the bullying.

Wiseman’s true subject here is arguably off-screen, shamed by example, guilty in absentia: the erosion of democratic values and civil, civic debate in an increasingly divided country.

What comes across strongest is the sheer uncertainty gripping both the caregivers and the infected — no one has experienced anything like this, and no one knows what could happen next.

Theatrical, both in its single-location setting and its tone, the film manages to be simultaneously laboured but also oddly opaque.

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

It’s a musical and a piece of time and a feeling that’s a privilege to share.

Finding its genial, quirky groove early, John Sheedy’s family film flirts with tweeness but ultimately bubbles with the same spark as its can-do protagonist.

This is storytelling which is as enigmatic as it is compelling. Not surprisingly, the use of music throughout is superb.

An unapologetic old-school exploiter going full on for thrills and suspense, it’s undeniably polished and energetic, and features a couple of strong performances from young stars Isabel May and Eli Brown – but it feels fundamentally tasteless, indeed just plain wrong.

Once that narrative path becomes clear, Penguin Bloom never really surprises, delivering a series of heartfelt but predictable story beats.

Access is all in Rosi’s documentaries, and the access he achieves, winning the confidence of his subjects so that it’s as if he isn’t there while filming their most intimate moments, is astonishing. But access has its limits. While our hearts open up to these traumatised kids, being there with them in the room at this delicate moment doesn’t feel quite right.

This is an atmospherically shot film about African oral culture, about riots, street musicians and storytellers. But it also uses the space and denizens of the prison as a metaphor for the divisions and tensions within Ivorian society.

The audience brings to this film a set of expectations born from a lifetime of watching romantic fiction. That Monday skewers them so pointedly and thoroughly is what makes it such an entertainingly subversive spin on the genre.

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.

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.

Personal and committed as the film clearly is, it won’t come across as a revelation for adepts of this pensive brand of slow-burning visual poetry - of which this seems a reticent and somewhat old-fashioned example.

The escalating cat-and-mouse game between Pike’s schemer and Peter Dinklage’s Russian mobster has its pulpy pleasures, but the script’s arch cleverness and heavy-handed message about the corruption of the American dream make it hard to care as much as we should about who ends up on top.

While this is essentially a fireside chat atmospherically shot, Hopper/Welles is recommended viewing for anyone remotely interested in either personality, or in the history of American cinema.

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

Final Account is shocking footage which hasn’t quite made the leap into being a forensic film.

This is a documentary that carefully, meticulously builds a case and then blindsides the viewer with revelations, second thoughts and fresh evidence that makes you reconsider everything you thought was certain.

Another Round (Druk) is a funny film which is also desperately sad, a superficially amusing indictment of drinking culture which is much more bitter than sweet.

Michell’s film is as defiantly traditional as the wallpaper which decorates the Bunton’s house.

A heartfelt but ultimately hobbled coming-of-age drama.

It is the film’s ever pertinent call for objectivity and humanity in the daily news cycle which makes it stirringly relevant.

A meditation on memory, identity, grief and loss, with the narrative device of a global pandemic thrown in for good measure: Apples might initially sound like a tough sell. But this hugely accomplished, satisfyingly textured first feature is really something special.

A political thriller charged with anger and sexual tension, this is as timely as it is bracingly entertaining.

Scripted with heightened literary cadences by Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard, the film is well crafted in every respect, and marks an acting career high for Katherine Waterston, as well as a fine showcase for the ever more impressive Vanessa Kirby.

A film of sober elegance and control, Wife Of A Spy never quite delivers on the tautness of its build-up, but it is beautifully executed and features a number of teasingly ambivalent performances, notably from lead Yu Aoi.

Its old-school charm shades into tired plotting more than once, and the moral lesson concealed in the film’s central story about a gang of tykes’ search for buried treasure can feel a little preachy.

Despite this riveting premise, Padrenostro goes the way of 1970s cuisine in being over-cooked to the level of boil-in-a-bag.

New Order may split audiences who require a more conventional approach, but this is dynamic cinema which takes no prisoners outside the hostages on screen: loud and violent, it lures the viewer into a place where there can be no bystanders. In that way, it’s quite magnificent – an outlet for those boiling in our times.

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.

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.

As fragmented as its title suggests, Pieces of a Woman contains parts of a good film, possibly a great one.

King’s debut makes attempts to widen out the stage play, but there’s no denying the fact that this is an exchange of ideas as opposed to a narrative, or that dialogue is often pitched as monologue. What ideas, though, and what a night.

It’s extraordinary how a work like Nomadland can hold a mirror to society and refract back to the audience the light of their own lives.

Some may be frustrated that Kaufman leaves viewers to figure out his ultimately puzzling narrative, but this film’s entrancing strangeness begins to assert a hallucinogenic hold. Even if the roads are sometimes treacherous, they’re well worth exploring.

Antonio Campos introduces us to a world in which murder, violence, and suicide are commonplace, but he fails to find much new to say about this bleak thematic terrain.

Diving deep into dark material yet always remaining afloat, it’s a potent feature debut from Australian filmmaker Rodd Rathjen.

Our Time Machine is very carefully balanced between the personal and the professional. An elegant, focused piece of storytelling finds the space to explore the family history revealing the way in which these lives are inextricably linked with the history of China itself.

Byrne pops around the stage like a man rejuvenated, or perhaps one who has never aged, without as much as breaking a sweat. How wonderful for it all to be the same as it ever was.

The Truffle Hunters is a film as distinctive and lingering as the scent of the rare tuber that inspires it.

Ireland and Hill have crafted a layered Shakespearean adaptation that is intricate and immersive — a description that applies to the performances, including Winter in a role which was originally earmarked for Hill.

Full of interesting concepts and accomplished animation, Children Of The Sea is less than the sum of its many parts and just seems to lose its way after a very promising beginning.

Critical Thinking has plenty of heart, which unfortunately can’t make up for its fairly uninspired design and predictable trajectory.

If this Mulan can be faulted for excessive earnestness, the movie’s sweeping visuals and inspirational tone are hard to resist.

What begins as a bit of a lark blossoms into a moving reflection on old age and loneliness that should strike a chord across the generations.

The New Mutants’ greatest failing is that, even as a spinoff, its drama is puny and its spectacle nonexistent.

Thanks to Thea Sharrock’s graceful direction, this live-action movie never feels heavy-handed, speaking to its young audience without talking down to them.

This fitfully funny comedy — in which they must come up with the perfect song to stop reality from folding in on itself — offers little beyond nostalgia for an onscreen friendship that was once far more excellent.

This meditative piece sidesteps ponderousness thanks to its modesty and inquisitiveness.

The shared experience between the filmmaker and the subject of the film allows for a character study of depth and intimacy. However, the story itself – a slightly soapy ‘romance against the odds’ narrative – presents few surprises.

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.

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.

Riveting from start to finish.

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.

Atmosphere alone is not enough. Abramenko fails to generate much in the way of empathy with the characters, resulting in tension being diffused by the fact that it’s hard to care very much for their outcomes.

Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman have crafted a knowingly cheesy action movie that flaunts its adrenalised excessiveness, while Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, playing two very different men in search of the pills, never manage to transcend the project’s fundamentally generic, cartoonish design.

This taut, accomplished film recounts a dark episode in Guatemala’s history as a suspense-laden ghost story based on a myth deeply rooted in indigenous Latin American culture.

The collection of quirks, emotional connections, whimsy and humanity makes for poignant viewing.

The sliver of a plot sees An American Pickle stumble in its attempt to be a timely commentary, although its emotional underpinnings give the film a modest charm to relish.

A robustly old-fashioned production, it’s a tasteful film which reverberates with the feeling of a vastly different age. As such, it’s gentle escapism for the old, the young, and the nostalgic. Even Thorne can’t give it sufficient dramatic tension to thrill, but a lovely performance from lead Dixie Egerickx, plus stalwart support from old hands Colin Firth and Julie Walters, compensates.

It’s a picture of love that has led first to desperation and incarceration, and now to a sort of suspended grief, as the girls and mothers face an uncertain future, unsure whether they will ever be reunited, hope mixing with fear to the last.

Stuffed with gorgeous costumes, vivid choreography and deft tunes, Black Is King doesn’t have the depth or anguish that made Lemonade so epochal, but its more inspirational tenor and consistently high artistry make this a feast for eyes and ears.

And as a statement of intent, it’s unequivocal: Rowland combines striking visual flair with razor-wire character studies.

The car chases should be the escapist, high-octane fun part of the movie. But fun is in short supply in a picture which is fuelled by a full tank of ill-will and fury.

She Dies Tomorrow is both cheeky and disconcerting — and unlike life, it ends right when it should.

An intense and touching tale of first love set over a six-week period, Summer Of 85 blends the energy of youth with the curveballs of fate in a pleasant, keenly acted package that, despite a tragic core, will send all but the most strait-laced curmudgeon out of the cinema smiling.

Amulet is deeply, deliberately mysterious, and all the more fun for it; the less viewers know going in, the more ferocious the ride.

A deft and absorbing multi-pronged tale about a kind, hard-working woman whose life becomes a morass of collateral damage, A Girl Missing is satisfying slow-burn drama expertly told.

Fitfully-entertaining, the film says many things in many different ways about one subject – the de-sensitising effect of the have-it-all media age on young people. Prolonged exposure to it will certainly reawaken the senses, although not in a way that’s always welcome.

Freud aside, this is a fairly straightforward boy-to-man narrative, but that it plays out during such a turbulent time in Austrian history brings additional texture.

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.

Better Days may slide into somewhat hollow artfulness, but it’s hard not to be moved by its genuine concerns.

If it never quite delivers on its promise of cheesy scares, neither does it really try for true psychological thrills with enough conviction.

This accomplished and satisfyingly hard-edged drama harnesses the monetised narcissism of influencer culture and looks beneath the gloss to find an ache of emptiness.

Gagarine’s increasingly wayward trajectory demands of its audience not just a leap of faith but a vault into the stratosphere, and its tone of naïve romanticism could rankle with more jaded viewers. Still, conviction and chutzpah, plus often dazzling execution, will chime with younger adult audiences.