Eighteen years after The Matrix Revolutions, Lana Wachowski goes back down the rabbit hole, only to get lost in a sequel that lacks the visionary flair and zeitgeist-y profundity that once made this franchise such a game-changer for blockbuster cinema.

Both homage and critique, Peter von Kant astutely gets under the skin of the lesbian-themed original, ekes out new resonances and proves both authentically Fassbinderian and altogether Ozonesque in its ironic sensibilities.

Timoner’s often-compelling documentary, which is neither an apology nor a hagiography, is an intriguing personal take on a man who turns out to be endlessly intriguing, no matter what you think of his antics.

The film is undoubtedly a tour de force, not least by the two actors, who essentially play several characters - or at least, multiple aspects of the two lovers - and who both audaciously shed inhibitions in a film that is at times as exposing sexually as it is psychologically.

Burke — perhaps best-known as the grown-up version of the scary baby in the last films in the Twilight saga — is outstanding as the fragile, yet determined heroine who is terrorised beyond the bounds of sanity but has to remember that she might be doing all this to herself.

Regardless of where it lands politically, Dying to Survive is a rousing piece of torn-from-the-headlines storytelling that delivers laughs and tears in equal measure.

Hers’s stamp as a contemplative miniaturist with an eye for the inner life is unmistakeably on display in this involving, typically graceful piece.

Tove has great charm, craft and a warming glow.

Ukrainian director Maksym Nakonechnyi’s debut feature is a sensitive, nuanced meditation on war and its effects on the psyche of individuals and nations.

This charming story . . . has a deft, audience-friendly lightness of touch, focusing on Armenia’s people rather than its difficult history. Nevertheless, it firmly makes its points about displacement, cultural cleansing and the difficulties of returning home.

Writer/director Anthony Maras largely sticks to the dramatisation playbook, but does so in an effective, affecting and empathetic fashion.

A spry romp through the seven years leading up to the drafting of the Communist Manifesto, Raoul Peck’s biopic of Karl Marx’s early years feels like a mix between a prestige BBC drama and a Marx For Dummies primer.

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.

The first feature film from cinematographer Ellen Kuras is a satisfyingly textured portrait of a remarkable and unusual woman, who had an almost Zelig-like gift for bearing witness to key moments in history.

The action ultimately takes second place to the fun moments linking the spin-off to the main Star Wars saga

Talia Ryder gives a magnetic performance, providing an anchor for a film that is amusing and electric but mostly uneven.

Ma’ Rosa is atmospheric and involving to a degree but also feels as if we are in familiar territory.

A restrained production favours story over splatter but eventually delivers a fair amount of gloopy, tentacled creatures and exploding host bodies. That should be enough to satisfy Adams aficionados.

Director Phyllis Nagy has crafted a subdued but affecting portrait of that time, strengthened by deft performances from Elizabeth Banks as a sheltered suburban mother whose eyes are opened and Sigourney Weaver as the leader of an underground abortion-facilitation service.

As a viewing experience, The Good House is capable if unexciting, as tastefully waspish as its millieu, with a damped-down pace and a muted score. As an acting masterclass from Sigourney Weaver as a smart woman in denial, though, it’s impressive.

Karen Gillan is the main selling point of the latest film from Riley Stearns (The Art of Self-Defence) – an odd mix of deadpan satire and high concept sci-fi that some may find off-putting – so it’s handy for him that she offers not one but two intense and stripped-back performances.

Although there’s nothing about Charlie McDowell’s interpretation that doesn’t aim for similar excellence, the very act of embodying the book lessens its magic.

The picture has been worked out on a visual level — the immaculately sterile images evoke a future in which life’s pleasures, like having a family, have been wiped clean — but the script never explores those deeper themes.

Along with its arresting visual sense – the film is handsomely shot on 35mm – it can boast a robust resistance to the cinematic cliches of portrayal of disability.

By shying away from demonstrating the degree of hardship Ederle underwent to make history, the film shortchanges the catharsis it seeks in its final passages.

The result is a fascinating but also in some ways frustrating film, a game of tag that looks resoundingly cinematic but feels like more of a cable or VOD prospect - not least because it lacks the killer punch, the Bannon stumble or revelation that would make American Dharma newsworthy.

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

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

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.

The film simmers with rage at the cruelty of one nation toward another, although the plotting grows increasingly convoluted, undermining the story’s righteous anger.

Strong, committed performances and the upsetting ring of reality anchor a highly-personal film which cycles through addiction, relapse and rehab in an episodic way, each high as inevitable as the low which follows.

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.

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.

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.

This doesn’t entirely work as a self contained entity; the interest and value to audiences is mainly in the background detail it gives to the story of Grey Gardens.

The Children Act is a cerebral piece, for sure, and a disturbing one by the end, but Thompson’s performance brings life to the complex moral questions it attempts to examine.

If the film belongs to anyone, it’s creature designer Carlos Huante. Kong is expressive and impressive, both in hair and full-body movement, and his interaction – with water, humans, other animals – is consistently fluid.

Rather than bring anything new to the genre, director Ben Younger settles for adding a distinctive bracing energy to the somewhat timeworn tropes.

Its impact comes not only from the real-life events it’s depicting, but also the way in which it frames this now-familiar tale; a triumph of human – and particularly female – will against adversity and a celebration of those who would seek a better life, despite the costs.

For over an hour, Permission unfolds as a mildly amusing romcom about two modern Brooklyn couples facing commitment crises. Toward the end, the main plot, about a straight pair experimenting with polyamory, takes a dramatic turn.

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

Although the film sometimes dips into muddled melodrama, those occasional setbacks can’t derail a story filled with warm, resonant characters trying to fathom their own hearts.

It is, however, creepy, suspenseful and nerve-wracking - and marks Gillespie and Kostanski as genre auteurs in the making.

With Spurlock and Takal throwing every horror trope on the screen, Rats is a delectably awful experience which, grimly fun though it may be to watch, hopefully won’t lead to a Cockroach sequel.

The film starts by promising a bourgeois social drama about secrets and lies, suspicions and rivalries, and the troubled waters of juvenile and adult sexuality. What it ultimately becomes is much harder to define, but the result is resonant and haunting – and should spark plenty of post-screening discussions.

In theory there’s plenty here to engage: a critique of Little England philistinism, the arrival of provocative literature into a sleepy backwater that barely reads, the revolt of a courageous woman against the establishment. Yet none of that comes to life.

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.

Often laugh-out-loud funny, even (or rather especially) as the silliness escalates in the final half hour, this is a cult cineaste’s treat which rampages gleefully through a china shop of genre conventions. Only killjoys who demand narrative coherence will fail to respond.

Ryan Reynolds is endearingly wholesome as this likeable digital nonentity, but once the story’s initial burst of cleverness fades, director Shawn Levy becomes bogged down in convoluted plotting and the overfamiliarity of his seize-the-day message.

Those in the ‘for’ camp are likely to find Garrel’s The Salt of Tears one of the most finely tuned and richly achieved of his recent works .

The craftsmanship on display in Let The Corpses Tan is flawless.

A simple story told with abundant gentleness, Yomeddine looks at a group of outcasts with such compassion and generosity that it has the good manners not to artificially inflate their tale with phony uplift.

Mendelsohn makes Ray plausibly remorseful, yet the suspicion remains that he’s as creepily self-serving as Humbert Humbert in Nabokov’s Lolita. Mara, meanwhile, is like a seared, broken Alice groping for a way out of a psychic labyrinth - hers is a fearsome performance.

As a brief, brightly-coloured, virtual babysitter – lasting just long enough to keep the children diverted while you check in and out of that last Zoom meeting, and get dinner on the table – it dutifully fulfills its obligations. But anyone looking for much beyond that in this tale of a flying squirrel – well, they’d have to be nuts.

With its impressive array of hundreds of film clips, frenetic editing and whip-smart narrators, Lynch/Oz offers an exciting prism through which to view Lynch’s oeuvre.

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.

Sure, the motorcycle wheelies are cool, but there’s nothing more intense than the raw emotion that comes from a mother trying to protect her child.

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

There are far too many secrets and lies for one film, to the extent that what could have been a simmering tale of political complicity, greed and family disorder becomes just winds up feeling a bit silly.

It’s inventive enough to surprise, while still bringing with it fond memories of everything from Hammer to The Innocents, Dracula to creepy country house Gothic horror.

Michôd’s film is a determinedly solemn and violent affair, which makes a sober political point at the end – but not before it has treated us to two hours of bleakly realistic historical reconstruction and some lugubrious drama.

Fascinating, mind-expanding, infuriating and bewildering, this is a bracingly ambitious documentary which embraces the artificiality of the computer generated animation which constitutes a large part of its approach.

As diverting and gleefully disgusting as it can be, Abigail ultimately has more gore than brains, its funhouse escapism fleeting rather than ferocious.

Buried in makeup that accentuates her character’s hard-luck existence, Nicole Kidman brings such compelling conviction to her role as a tormented detective that she single handedly imbues the film with urgency and authenticity. That proves crucial, since director Karyn Kusama often miscalculates Destroyer’s sense of its own profundity.

It has plenty of heart and lots of fighting, but could use a little more magic.

Even with author Ian McEwan adapting his own novel for the screen, this somewhat stilted picture struggles to convey the deft emotional complexity of the source material.

This intense psychodrama about buried trauma and doomed romance demonstrates an unapologetic operatic flair which entrances and over-reaches in equal measure. Seyfried exudes a stark intensity that grounds the proceedings — whenever Egoyan risks losing control, she keeps the production on course.

While it is messy and frequently bewildering, Cuckoo does at least live up to its title, with a commitment to gleefully bonkers twists and a collection of entertainingly deranged supporting performances.

For all its unpredictability and nerve, the film too often feels snarky rather than subversive.

After the tense opening, coherent drama goes by the board.

Director Jeremy Sims allows this simple saga of renewal and survival to go a little broad and self-consciously crowd-pleasing, resulting in a comedy-drama without the original’s elemental grace and wisdom.

This is a film with some grace and exuberance, but a cavalier attitude to period verisimilitude only adds to the impression that, when it comes to facing ugly historical reality, Kiberlain’s approach is naïvely inadequate.

Richards is such a fun interviewee that there’s no point kvetching about the film’s superficial treatment.

Returning director Dean DeBlois (who helmed the animation alongside Chris Sanders, as well as its sequel) has retained the energetic spirit of the original, and he’s helped by some fantastic CGI and a game cast, both of which lean into the fantastical charm of this tale of a hapless young Viking who discovers he is something of a dragon whisperer.

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.

Emotionally intense and visually arresting, Evolution is rewarding viewing for those willing to enter its austere territory, but the technical virtuosity leaves it on the edge being perceived as of something of an academic exercise. It’s a film easier to admire rather than whole-heartedly engage with.

Ansari’s screenplay makes the most of the comedy talents of himself, Palmer and Rogen, with each getting their fair share of jabs and zingers. Yet Reeves is the star of the movie, givig the best comedic performance of the year.

The bleak warning of this environmental parable notwithstanding, this is arresting, frequently unsettling, cinema.

In the slim but powerful documentary He Named Me Malala Davis Guggenheim attempts to colour in a shy, yet deceptively stout-hearted schoolgirl and her symbiotically-close relationship with her father, indicated by the film’s title.

Wright’s moving performance and some genuine heart-felt and -breaking moments amid all this natural majesty make Land a journey worth taking.

This is a picture with first-rate fight choreography to match the quality of the martial arts talent involved.

he film’s unexpected narrative elements — including a few shots you’ve never seen no matter how often you go to the movies — make this a rewarding take on coupledom told with satisfying visual flair.

A solid, persuasively-acted account of the real-life mission to bring a Nazi war criminal to justice.

Tim Sutton’s idiosyncratic outsider romance contains moments of haunting oddness, but has a tendency to stab home its points and issues rather emphatically.

Spurlock again proves to be fascinated by the art of salesmanship, but too often Super Size Me 2 feels like its own hustle, peddling a slick, self-promotional investigation into a world that’s already fairly well covered.

Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson shine as these troubled souls drawn to each other as much as they are to their shared love of the venerable singer-songwriter, and the film’s musical sequences are easily its high point. But writer-director Craig Brewer stumbles when the couple step away from the stage, falling victim to an overly melodramatic approach that’s out of rhythm with the rest of the picture.

A story which might seem the stuff of high melodrama is given a very different charge by Franco’s characteristic rigour – an uninflected cleanness and clarity in Yves Cape’s cinematography, and a minimum of narrative frills, driving the narrative towards a conclusion that is one of this director’s starkest yet.

This conventional rock-doc is light on new insights — and its focus on Robertson’s viewpoint short-changes his former bandmates in this often-contentious group — but it tells its story with considerable affection.

It is as visually extraordinary as its predecessors and, while the film contains some of those earlier pictures’ weaknesses, the deficiencies are starting to feel like charming quirks in an otherwise transporting series.

Ripped from the headlines, keenly researched and carefully crafted, this fictional tale has near-universal resonance although some viewers may find it forbiddingly French in that talk, talk and more talk is as plentiful as are distinctive characters and punchy imagery.

The film takes commendable tonal chances, but too easily succumbs to easy jokes and unconvincing plot twists.

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.

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.

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.

Running over three hours, and swamped with sex, drugs and over-the-top set pieces, this swaggering drama seems infused with the impetuous energy of its characters, resulting in a film that’s drunk on its own ambition, wildly uneven but never, ever boring.

Tears may well be shed but it is the actors who are delivering the goods rather than the script.

Despite the fact that it trades in a dogged familiarity, this magical story still retains some spark.

Even for a film about time loops, everything feels overly familiar. (Note to filmmakers: Simply referencing the film you’re stealing from doesn’t excuse the theft). And unlike Mark and Margaret’s do-over day, in the end the whole thing slips by without leaving any impression at all.