The Hateful Eight’s impact expands and grows richer the further away you are from the experience of watching it.

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.

Many making-of documentaries focus on the preparations that go into a film and the response after its release. But what makes this one so unique is that it’s something of a corrective to the original work.

Like the fleeting highs and crushing lows experienced by gambling addicts, Treat Me Like Fire (Joueurs) starts off with energy and confidence, only to slowly succumb to cliché and implausibility once the initial adrenaline rush subsides.

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.

Conventional to a fault but about as solid an indictment of corporate greed as could be wished for.

It’s not a showy piece of filmmaking, but it is one which earns its emotional authenticity with a perceptive eye for detail and a sure directorial hand guiding the cast of non-actors.

The film crackles with energy every time Erradi opens her mouth to sing.

Matt and Mara is one of those films in which very little concrete happens, but the tingling possibility that something might makes it compelling.

This is pungent filmmaking which creates a world steeped in superstition, ritual and folk-magic.

Lindon creates a portrait of first love which is fresh, honest and engaging.

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.

Writer-director Angela Robinson chronicles a complex love story that investigates kinkiness, social mores and the impetus for art, resulting in a drama that’s far more intellectually intriguing than emotionally engaging.

The ‘I could have been a contender’ brand of sports movie gets a twist in this tasty, if minor-key, biopic.

The Childhood Of A Leader is as relentlessly sombre and compelling as the film’s remarkable, full-volume orchestral soundtrack by musician’s musician Scott Walker.

The directorial debut from David Oyelowo is a rewarding, (older) family-friendly adventure which packs some crisply executed moments of nail-biting peril into a moving story which deals with grief, loss and newly forged friendships.

Thankfully, Eastwood’s sure grasp of this inherently compelling story mostly overcomes his sentimental propensities.

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

American Animals requires many cuts and perspectives which are second-nature to an accomplished documentarian, yet the drama here also seems effortless and seamlessly integrated.

No one says too much in this film’s underdeveloped dialogue, yet Ryan’s steely demeanor reflects the jumbled toughness and vulnerability of people dependant on land that isn’t giving them much.

Leave The World Behind draws from familiar elements, but this adaptation of Rumaan Alam’s 2020 novel stands apart thanks to its excellent performances and slow, superb escalation of tension.

A superbly silly sendup of the modern musical landscape, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is as thimble-deep as the throwaway hits it’s satirising, but also just as lively.

Making fine use of a top-flight Spanish-speaking cast, Asghar Farhadi deftly inserts love, resentment, class, money and family ties into a propulsive narrative replete with doubts, accusations, intimations, red herrings and other welcome ingredients from the suspenseful-drama arsenal.

A smart if broad comedy that is exposition-heavy in places, it boasts a strong ensemble cast who give it a shot in the arm.

Kore-Eda, writer, director and editor, an auteur in the full sense of the word, tunes his approach to the genre, but only up to a certain point.

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 may not qualify as a movie entertainment in the full sense of the word, but it is most certainly an edifying picture of social stagnation at its saddest.

The subject matter may be familiar — despairingly so — but writer-director Jason Hall (who previously wrote American Sniper) imbues it with specificity and no-nonsense drama that make the plight of physically and emotionally wounded soldiers sting all over again.

One of the most astute aspects of Morales and Duplass’ script is how it captures the twists and turns of a new friendship that is buoyed by excitement and yet remains tentative, and how it navigates the constant shifts that come with both fresh and established relationships.

Essentially, for all its sci-fi/disaster/zombie movie trimmings, at its heart the film is a mismatched buddy movie that celebrates the bond from birth between Porky and Daffy.

The film boasts plenty of comic-book action while also making room for a darker tone and emotional resonance rarely matched in previous installments. In a cinematic world stuffed with big-budget movies, Infinity War is a genuine blockbuster.

I’m Fine isn’t dour about its protagonist’s dilemma — nor is it disingenuously upbeat. Kali’s performance is full of attitude and quiet desperation, as if Danny stops rollerskating her anxieties will finally catch up with her.

Here, however, his bravura conducting of relatively conventional melodrama material doesn’t affect us as much as his best earlier works. In any case, it’s the actual music that often does the heavy lifting here – with selections from Chopin, Bartok and Bruch, not to mention Grégoire Hetzel’s score, spiralling saxophone capturing the vertiginous register of the whole affair.

Scintillating on the track but not as agile away from the races, F1 is a thrilling sports film susceptible to every cliché of its genre, confident that its expert setpieces will outrun all that is otherwise derivative about this underdog story.

Though audiences may have heard this one before, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power preaches effectively to its choir, with a decade of fresh data and increasing cataclysms...to persuasively make its case.

A film that is a small delight, a perfect cinematic short story.

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

Mon Roi’s melodrama glossiness grates more than it convinces.

This likeable, terribly contrived charmer is helped by a game cast that almost gets away clean, ultimately hampered by a script that impishly (but not always confidently) switches between tones.

The notion that lives and loves are forged and defined in everyday moments isn’t unique; however it feels both accurate and earned here.

This earnest tale succeeds thanks to its potent themes — including the tension between old traditions and new ways of thinking — and Ejiofor locates the story’s emotional underpinnings without succumbing to cheap manipulation or mawkishness.

Meyers’s drama depends mostly on what it doesn’t show you, and it works.

The film imaginatively uses a presumably tight budget to claustrophobic advantage.

Day One never reaches the inspired heights of what came before, but Lupita Nyong’o and Joseph Quinn are compelling as strangers forced to work together in a devastated New York.

The film stands in the shadow of Michael Mann’s influential Southern California pictures, but a cast led by Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo add extra crackle to a story that salutes characters who are very good at their job – no matter what side of the law they are on.

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.

Ne Zha 2 is a distinct fantasy epic and a technical achievement that stands up to the best that Disney, DreamWorks, Aardman or Studio Ghibli can offer, even if it frequently gives in to the same proclivities for excess as its peers.

Even those with little interest in the beautiful game should be entertained by Saipan, a breezily engaging narrative.

Charismatic performances by Samantha Mugatsia and Sheila Munyiva make you believe in the characters and invest in the romance. When harsh reality inevitably intrudes on their dream love, the emotional impact is all the deeper.

Swedish director Jonatan Etzler, making his English-language debut, cannot keep this daring story plausible enough to offer meaningful insights into our broken education system.

Although conventional in its approach, the film is a forceful reckoning of a broken legal system.

A feature that might not always surprise in its story, but succeeds in its authenticity.

The film’s freewheeling dynamism and stylistic elasticity allow Fabian to shake off the stuffier tropes of historical drama.

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.

The film’s second act is near spot-on comedy of discomfort.

Although overstuffed and uneven, at its best Gunn’s Superman combines the most admirable attributes of both character and director, resulting in an ambitious, occasionally stirring film that is weirder, nervier and more thoughtful than most blockbusters.

Underneath the entertaining horror, this is ultimately a story of the toxic trappings of masculinity; a world in which keeping a stiff upper lip and resolutely burying your demons can summon the most terrifying of consequences.

It is, in essence, the celebrated ‘cosmic’ sequence from the Tree of Life expanded into a full-length feature, and many of the audio-visual tableaux it weaves are astonishing, mesmerising, delightful. The problem is that they are not also informative.

Never Look Away is an often moving, thoughtful drama about the correlations between personal experience, politics and art.

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.

A satire of Hollywood ego, a loving tribute to Cage’s hair-trigger intensity and a consistently funny bromance, Massive Talent doesn’t overstay its welcome or ever get too pleased with its premise, finding humour and sweetness in the notion that sometimes even Nicolas Cage can’t live up to being Nicolas Cage.

Ascher may be a better media analyst, or mythologist, than chronicler of the human condition. With The Nightmare’s foregrounding of the paranormal and refusal to acknowledge the psychological, the project sometimes feels disingenuous.

Despite the size of the spectacle, the picture feels minor by the standards of the franchise, placing Natasha in a James Bond-style spy thriller that proves diverting rather than truly gripping.

The wider themes of the film grow more evident through individual elements in which nobody is prepared to listen to the other side of the story, or try to understand a different point of view.

While Frank & Louis is narratively unsurprising, its strong performances and emotional authenticity give it undeniable power.

Z For Zachariah’s beauty is its simplicity, Zobel telling the story with a minimum of fuss and resisting easy explanations for his characters’ actions.

Although the sparse dialogue and gradual build requires an investment on the part of the audience, this is an accomplished work.

The film can sometimes be dramatically simplistic, relying on perfunctory montages and creaky expositional dialogue, but Domingo ensures that Rustin is a layered and vibrant character, pushing Rustin to be bolder than it otherwise is.

The flimsy narrative just about holds together but the jokes, while plentiful, often feel like rehashes of something the Zucker Brothers did better decades ago.

What’s both intriguing and enraging about the film is the fact that it so defiantly rejects the language of cinematic storytelling; this is a film which is intended to upend audience expectations.

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

A gentle, unassuming picture, it does have a satisfying, feelgood trajectory and empathetic central performance from Marie Leuenberger.

Last Days In The Desert possesses the attributes that have been the hallmark of writer-director Rodrigo García’s best films: It’s emotionally uncluttered while being narratively ambitious.

It’s a powerful, profoundly uncomfortable watch.

Director Gus Van Sant turns this fascinating true crime story into both an entertaining period drama and an evergreen tale of ordinary men pushed into desperate acts.

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

The Way Of Water’s resplendent presentation couldn’t be more breathtaking — the drama unfolding inside that world isn’t always as masterfully rendered.

The film refuses to go in predictable directions, unveiling bizarre side characters and travelling down odd narrative backroads. But that occasional bagginess also allows for a richly textured picture bursting with energy.

Even when the jokes occasionally fall flat, the ideas are killer.

A superb performance by Affleck, who constructs a touching and believable rapport with his 11 year-old co-star, grounds his low-key directorial and feature-writing debut.

While it nearly wears out its welcome with a repetitive cycle of encounter, flashback, reflection and fight, its mix of vibrant visuals, melodrama and low-key comedy kick the story into gear in the final hour.

Small moment by small moment, Other People turns Kelly’s own experiences caring for his mother into something touchingly universal.

Vox Lux is intellectually charged spectacle, with one foot in the Euro-art tradition and the other ankle-deep in the pop zeitgeist.

Gradually, the movie becomes a compassionate but constructive commentary on the danger of nostalgia — how it seduces us into sticking with worn-out pleasures at the expense of new experiences and challenges.

As a screenwriter, Ford has made some brave choices in a difficult, complex adaptation. As a director, though, he veers between delivering far too much, and yet not quite enough.

The film is hugely impressive in the scope of those interviewed.

The tonal shift in the sequel compared to the original means that, although there are plenty of moments of savage humour, the highs are just not quite so high any more. There’s a melancholy maturity, however, which is satisfying in its own way.

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.

A film to respect for its audacity, admire for its lead female performance perhaps, but also view as dramatically contrived.

This sequel can’t compare to John Carpenter’s ingenious 1978 original, but director David Gordon Green delivers a crowd-pleasing chiller that doubles as an existential commentary on horror itself, both on the screen and in our lives.

How much a viewer will enjoy the convincingly cringe-making portrait on display here will depend on whether one feels empathy for Sophia’s inability-come-reluctance to access the ramp to adulthood or would prefer to reach into the screen and shake her.

While the film doesn’t quite work as a horror, and can stumble as a character piece, Abrahamson has pulled together a sumptuous production which is more than sufficient to keep viewers engaged throughout.

Chris Rossi built Meadowland’s screenplay on short, punchy scenes, and he deserves credit for crafting moments of quotidian ordinariness... that are also charged with tension.

This romcom offers a heady slice of appealing escapism fuelled by the chemistry between its two leads.

Ultimately, it’s difficult to say what A Private Life is trying to say, but remarriage comedies don’t really need to be anything more than that – and the ending is winsome enough to make up for that second-act wobble.

Films about dysfunctional families are as common as families themselves. But for most of its running time, The Family Fang impressively negotiates around the familiar trappings, finding a relatively new way to discuss familiar themes.

As predictable as their tale may be, Chaplin, Tena and Verdaguer serve their characters well, with the former and latter particularly impressing with the material.

Whether it’s the sheer weight of the narrative repetition - which involves rewatching a brutal rape - or the two-men/one-woman perspective, which results in an underwritten character and a strained performance from Comer, The Last Duel is crushed by the weight of its own armour.