This is a mostly gripping film where no one ever knows where they truly stand, but everyone eagerly and stubbornly pretends otherwise. Smartly, Yu lets that juxtaposition guide much of the story, and the movie’s tone.

This striking drama vividly captures the sense of uncertainty of transient lives, but loses power in a final act which gets somewhat mired in hallucinatory dream logic.

It makes for a demanding, overlong two hours but the intensity of the approach and some provocative moments sustain interest as good intentions pave the way to a kind of hell.

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 enjoyable star vehicle that provides the beloved comic with one of his most substantial roles.

The film crafts a framework of superstition and ritual, onto which is hung a vividly realised, if somewhat enigmatic portrait of a child’s life.

The second installment of the Divergent series shows some symptoms of middle chapter-itis but in the end makes the most of a strong returning cast led by Shailene Woodley, slick direction from Robert Schwentke, impressive effects and a closely guarded plot twist.

The latest instalment in the DC Extended Universe too often succumbs to the conventions of its genre — it’s a film suffused with hokey punchlines and predictably gaudy action set pieces — but some compelling performances and director Jaume Collet-Serra’s ebullient B-movie flourishes prove to be sufficient compensation.

A striking first feature steeped in allegory, dust and despair, The Penultimate brings a blend of absurdity and theatricality to a stylised tale of humanity unravelling.

Several emotionally attuned performances help paper over Boy Erased’s storytelling weaknesses.

The film has much to say about peer pressure and male rites of passage, although Polinger’s points can become repetitive and his insights not especially deep. Still, this uneven mixture of coming-of-age drama and psychological horror suggests a filmmaker with a flair for unsettling atmosphere.

The Northman is often bloody smart entertainment, although, essentially, it is also the good time that doesn’t realise that the fun has stopped.

While it may struggle to satisfy diehard Orwell purists, the film still takes a political stance and delivers an emphatic message celebrating equality and the power of the collective – albeit one which permits us a little more hope than was present in Orwell’s 1945 novella.

Corin Hardy makes a slick, confident debut with supernatural horror The Hallow. Demonstrating a facility with storytelling almost as skilful as his nimble orchestration of animatronics and visual effects.

Coup de Chance is not a major reinvention, but it does have more spirit and joie de vivre than anything Allen has done in a while. A sharp, lively cast shows that he is actually rather good at directing in French, and the stars seem accordingly to be having a good time in this light comedy that takes an unexpectedly dark turn.

Entertaining, wide-ranging and insightful, Lady Boss leaves you with admiration for Collins and even a sneaking inclination to read her books.

Dead for a Dollar is a revisionist western served up in a traditional twine-tied package.

A sequel in name only to Wilson Yip’s 2005 film, Soi Cheang’s SPL2: A Time For Consequences nevertheless recaptures the exhilarating energy of the original.

Hewson, gifted with a wealth of elaborately profane dialogue, is a force of nature.

Examining a post-apocalypse through the eyes of a few souls left to carry on the human race, The Midnight Sky is an uneven but ultimately thoughtful and moving survival story.

In the end, there’s something just a little too neatly constructed about Monster, something just a little trite about the message delivered after so many narrative twists and turns. Yet there is an emotional delicacy here too that keeps sentiment at bay, at least most of the time.

The storytelling in Sex is ho-hum, but the sincerity of the undertaking — and the issues at the film’s centre — make it hard to resist, no matter what objections might be raised.

If nothing else, this intimate, well-observed drama should prove to be a nice calling card for its first-time feature filmmaker.

Directed with brisk efficiency by Philip Noyce, the mix of adrenaline-rush emotion, manipulative melodrama and moralising is surprisingly entertaining in the moment.

As much as her camera patiently and sensitively observes Gabriel and Maya, they still feel a bit distant, their unspoken hopes and fears just out of reach — for us and perhaps for them, too.

Nimbly edited and directed with brio, this portrait of the legendary Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin represents a sure-footed leap for director Matthew Heineman from documentary to factually-based drama.

Grief and tragedy naturally co-exist with gentle comedy; and Adalsteins leans into both the eccentricity and philosophical density of the source material, with the village itself serving as a somewhat enigmatic narrator.

The Woman King doesn’t always successfully juggle its myriad narrative ambitions, but director Gina Prince-Bythewood has crafted battle sequences that are exciting and moving at the same time.

Agnus Dei’s filmmakers ultimately embrace the sin of over-simplification. And audiences, grabbing for their tissues, will likely forgive them of it.

The prickly protagonists of Funny Pages would not be pleasant company in real life, but writer-director Owen Kline’s proudly dyspeptic feature debut gives his characters a scruffy integrity that makes them perversely fascinating.

If the intimate frame and dour, matter-of-fact aesthetic suggest a return to the raw territory of La Promesse or The Son, what is new here is a flirtation with genre that lends an extra dose of resonance to a finely-scripted story.

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.

There are touching moments...that could only have come from real life, and the film is all the better for them.

It’s tribute to Mungiu’s bravura as a writer and director that, despite the fact that he never quite finishes unpacking a suitcase full of themes and ideas, R.M.N. is never less than an absorbing watch.

The measured pacing and an overly generous running time might work against the picture, but for the most part, it’s a rich, rewarding and fully fleshed-out drama.

The scenes that Chastain and Elba share are enormously enjoyable. There’s a crackling, almost screwball quality to their rapid-fire banter. You rather wish they had more screen time together. But there’s a lot of backstory to explore and many fools to be parted from their money.

This initially subdued, superbly acted story of an unlikely connection takes a savage and unsettling tonal swerve in the final act. The latest from Paul Andrew Williams will not be for everyone, but it is a chokingly tense commentary on the precarious nature of community.

Key to the film’s appeal is the way that the friendship between the four girls, Dina, Lola, Daisy (Lisa Barnett), and Mari (Eden Grace Redfield), is persuasively brought to life.

Offering little in terms of exposition and even less when it comes to dialogue, Fischer’s sophomore effort develops character and, eventually, unsettling moral questions entirely through action, playing as a more consciously political companion piece to J.C. Chandor’s similarly taciturn All is Lost.

Like its appealing main character, I Feel Pretty is a smart, funny comedy that isn’t always confident enough in its potential greatness.

A sober, thoughtful documentary that combines a lament for a lost Eden with a rousing call to action.

Wang’s film has a grass roots, on-the-ground urgency: nervy, paranoid camerawork gives a sense of the realities of life on the sharp edge of activism.

What might have been a bleak account of not quite trying and therefore never really failing actually becomes an unlikely and engaging missive of hope and of choice, albeit steeped in reality.

A little too jaunty and picaresque at times, Bye Bye Germany is nevertheless, when it hits its stride, an entertaining, watchable take on the oppressed-minority-comeback genre (“We’re the Jewish revenge”, as one of the salesmen bitterly quips), shadowed at every turn by an unspeakable horror.

Taken on its own terms as an unashamedly anachronistic attempt to muster the emotional intensity of the Hollywood melodrama tradition, Cooper’s film must be at least grudgingly acknowledged as a success.

It takes more than simply celebrating rural life and marveling at nature to make someone the next David Gordon Green, let alone the next Terrence Malick. While Yeomans inarguably finds something significant in the slow pace of small towns, the power of narration and the jolt of handheld cinematography, exactly what that is isn’t always clear. In fact, sometimes it’s literally unclear; shots slip out of focus, and some close-ups are so poorly lit the characters’ features disappear.

For all its empathy, Haroun’s latest can be dramatically stiff. The dialogue of his script often sounds like exegesis, with key events bursting into the story like dramatic illustrations of what seems foreordained. Yet this stolid narrative approach feels appropriate for a film that is as much testimony as it is drama.

It is silkily persuasive in its own hot-sleuthy way.

Driven by a powerhouse performance by mesmerising transgender actress Vega, the fifth feature from Sebastián Lelio combines urgent naturalism with occasional flickers of fantasy to impressive, and wrenchingly emotional effect.

Miron’s cinema vérité approach still finds time for contemplation and appealing images of the countryside through the changing seasons. His very promising feature debut remains consistently engrossing through unexpected developments. He even surprises us with the sense of renewal and hope that suddenly blossoms from Kathy’s darkest hours.

What Does That Nature Say To You may be a touch disappointing for lovers of the director’s wry understatement, as certain themes feel uncharacteristically emphatic and even, in a last-act discussion scene, too explicitly stated. Otherwise, a group of regular Hong players mesh with seemingly effortless grace in a way that is bound to click with fans and with the director’s regular international outlets.

Homegrown never makes excuses for its subjects — there’s no blaming their ugly views on economic disparity — but the disturbing ordinariness of these men is chilling.

It feels like a gorgeous, decidedly dewy-eyed heritage hagiography.

Lacking some of the simplicity and elegance of the first instalment, The Conjuring 2 is nonetheless a smoothly efficient horror movie, building to a powerhouse finale rooted in our emotional connection to the film’s well-drawn main characters.

With its restrained tone and measured performances, The Sun Rises creates a fragile world populated by characters who don’t know how to move forward — either separately or, perhaps, together.

Viewers are in good hands — if they’re not too demanding — as Zhang Yimou puts the easily distinguishable characters through their paces.

What it lacks in substance is compensated for by Lee’s entertaining performance.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice may not be that fresh or substantial – it’s basically comfort food for long-term Burton fans – but it’ll be hard for viewers to repress a pleased smile, or graveyard rictus.

Sluggish pacing slightly undermines the film’s main assets — the strong performances from Kelli Garner as Mary and a suitably ravaged-looking Nick Stahl as Eli.

Following up her Sundance prizewinner Clemency, director Chinonye Chukwu brings intelligence, sorrow and rage to what eventually becomes a courtroom drama, but the film is most effective when it pushes against its conventionality, locating the psychic scars within this woman and the nation.

A Gentle Creature is a grim state-of-the-nation fable, a bitter mix of tragedy, farce and road movie soaked in the bleak sardonic spirit of Gogol and Dostoyevsky, not to mention gallons of vodka.

Sometimes Shults’ reach exceeds his grasp, resulting in a self-conscious epic that wants to hammer home its characters’ emotional wreckage. Nevertheless, Waves is also powerfully immersive, investing so passionately in these individuals that it’s hard not to do the same.

Hitchcock Truffaut is of undeniable appeal to those with even a passing interest in the history of cinema. There’s nothing rarified about the air the project breathes, either – this features passionate people who have made their own iconic cinema talking about two giants of our film age with an enthusiasm which is infectious.

There’s pleasingly little sentimentality and much honesty to be found in Hirayanagi’s screenplay, particularly in its acknowledgement that new experiences can make you lose, as much as broaden, your mind.

With superb understatement, Marceau communicates Emmanuele’s seemingly inexhaustible patience, while hinting at all the unresolved feelings she has about this impossible man.

Although the premise is undoubtedly far-fetched, Malaysian director Sam Quah succeeds in constructing the kind of tightly wound suspense piece for which disbelief can be suspended.

There’s a slight lack of dramatic tension in much of the lead-up to its harrowing finale, with too much weight placed on the capable shoulders of the French-Romanian actress Anamaria Vartolomei.

A strangely-compelling, unpredictable and manipulative piece of work.

Mixing often horrifying war footage with testimonies from a wide range of Ukrainians of varying ages, Freedom on Fire is an urgent, somewhat hectic, at times cluttered film – but that’s partly explained by the fact that Afineevsky has been able to assemble it so rapidly, only six months after the invasion began.

The multiple scenes featuring family fights feel raw and authentic, sometimes painfully so, because they seem part-improvised: but at times they drag on too long, a sign of a larger problem with pacing and rhythm. What brings it all back from the edge are the performances.

Newcomer Jelly Lin brings a delightfully quirky demeanour to her literal fish out of water.

Visually inventive, wryly satirical, White Noise the film leaves viewers to apply DeLillo’s sometimes prescient visions of a morally and physically diseased America to post-pandemic 2022 as they see fit. But it still has a lot going for it, much of it entertaining.

J.A. Bayona’s adaptation of this much-filmed story is elevated by bracingly muscular action sequences. It manages to sustain a degree of tension despite an overlong running time and the fact that the outcome of the incident is unlikely to be a surprise to anyone.

The circle of life and death may be warped and buckled in Hounds, but nobody can stop it turning.

The film’s professional polish and slick accessibility sometimes come at the expense of probing insight, but those still grieving his suicide should find comfort here.

This is a small, carefully crafted film that tries hard to pierce the protective armor of a recluse known to be difficult and domineering. In the end, Stokes still remains slightly unknowable, as she’d undoubtedly prefer. Yet the documentary’s deep dive into her extraordinary archives, and the grainy video treasures it unearths, make for fascinating viewing.

Whitney is strongest when it connects Houston to the larger history of Black America, illustrating how this glamorous performer grew up in poverty and never entirely escaped the obligation of helping to pull up her underprivileged family members.

For all its poetic charm, this is a slender work that comes across as something of a ’mindfulness movie’, in a faintly self-satisfied vein.

Effectively a chamber piece spiked with musings on the difficulty of art, the piece is by nature a little stagey as well as talky.

This pleasing, if perplexing, feature debut from Qiu Sheng takes an agile and experimental approach to structure, as two story strands glance off each other, and occasionally intersect.

Coen draws from existing interviews and performance footage to create a portrait that is far from definitive, and yet the film’s snapshot quality manages to amplify what is so mythic about the 86-year-old legend — and also what remains so vexing.

It is a sad little tale but one that manages to find notes of hope amongst the setbacks and rejections of everyday life.

This incendiary true story boasts a charismatic central performance from rising star Peters (X-Men, TV’s American Horror Story), whose everyman charm helps drive a narrative which has a tendency to get entangled in its own worthy intentions.

Challenging on practically all levels – and yoking together ideas from Chile’s history, the occult, right-wing conspiracy theory, Jungian psychology, silent film and elsewhere – directors Cristobal Leon and Joaquin Cocina pull it all together by virtue of their mastery of technique.

This is not a film which minimises the pain of depression or the impulse to end it all. Bruises, both physical and mental, are on show throughout. It’s an approach which might come at the expense of some of the humour – the comedy evokes bittersweet grimaces rather than belly laughs – but does make for a satisfying study of male friendship.

This sparse, atmospheric fable grows markedly in power in the second half, as Banel’s passion takes on an edge of violence and insanity.

Although the film doesn’t always deftly balance sentiment and broad humour, it is fun to spend time with such raucous company.

Like the sequinned, simpering erotic dancers it spotlights, Hustlers is a lot smarter than it initially looks. Given a story about a gang of larcenous strippers, audiences might expect little more than dirty jokes and steamy sex. But this slyly feminist movie pushes empowerment, too; it’s a film about being in control, not losing it.

It is a nicely-packaged, technically-proficient production that stands out due to its timing, certainly, but also for the power and personality of the female comedians interviewed by the directors.

If any colour represents the long-term impact of war, it’s the blend of beige and grey that fills The Load’s quietly powerful frames.

It’s an inspiring story, acted with heart and grit by Paige and Wood, and film directed with adroitness by Rozema in a ruin of a set in the woods.

Filling in the details of a life that touched many others is not the point of this film. Rather, the picture approaches her as a catalyst who unlocked something in the people she encountered: the emotions that pour onto the pages of letters, the creativity and inspiration that nourish Torrini’s musical project.

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.

A gentle charmer punctuated with a series of nicely judged performance and an increasing sense of magical realism.

There’s something for everyone in Downsizing - just not a full meal.

This thriller can sometimes be too mechanical — a breezy exercise if not always an emotionally satisfying one — and yet the large cast’s willingness to get on Johnson’s brainy, sprightly wavelength makes this an enjoyable romp.

By no means a conventional horror film, yet several degrees more twisted and gruesome than the average indie relationships drama, this is likely to appeal to more adventurous cult film fans.

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.