Chung’s desire to add a touch of realism runs counter to what is, essentially, a low-nutrition entertainment about massive storms wreaking havoc on small towns and scooping up anything in their path. The more Twisters aims for gravitas, the more hot air it generates.

Myriad horror films create a sense of dread, but few manage to evoke the palpable evil that emanates from Longlegs.

Cottontail does not hold any great surprises and, while understanted and full of grace, also lacks bite.

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.

Despite some initial swagger, this 1980s-set picture lacks the ingenuity of the previous two chapters – a disappointment made worse by West’s wan attempts to satirise the film industry’s shallowness.

This Quebecois romantic comedy is as sharp and perceptive as it is funny.

A suffocating slipknot drama, it embeds violence and extortion in a destructive ecosystem, showing that every favour is loaded, every gift poisoned, every debt unpayable. Brutality never cleanses in Kim’s impressive debut; it simply engenders more brutality.

It’s a little rough around the edges but there’s no denying the film’s unflinching potency.

It is a small film, but one whose subtle touch and generous spirit proves captivating.

The result is a vibrant, infectious and surprisingly hopeful portrait of a divided America, fuelled not by idealism but dogged determination.

This adaptation of A.F. Harrold’s 2014 children’s book is an appealing, emotionally engaging fantasy; the art direction is intricate and exquisite.

Despicable Me 4 may not reinvent the wheel (even if it does soup up a wheelchair with monster-truck-sized tyres at one point). What it does deliver is a brisk, fan-friendly romp which may be a little thin on actual plot but is stuffed to the gills with jokes.

As Gena attempts to live an authentic life in a place which is dangerously prejudiced against her, so Queendom takes shape as a damning portrait of state-sanctioned intolerance and suppression.

Inside Out 2 is strongest when harnessing the essence of how our emotions define us and, occasionally, lead us astray. But Mann never condemns any of Riley’s feelings, recognising that each has its place.

It’s delightfully batty in parts, groan-worthy in others, but overall the ethos is to just keep firing – and some shots land even as others could clearly have been finessed further.

It’s a quietly profound film, one that encourages appreciation of the world through exultant widescreen landscape shots, macro close-ups and textured field recordings of skittering bugs and crunching ice. It also preaches acceptance of the inevitable cycles of nature – cycles that we, as humans, should learn to embrace rather than fight against.

There is a bruising authenticity to the picture that comes, in no small part, from a lengthy and meticulous casting process.

Viet And Nam may studiously occupy a certain world cinema niche, but Truong’s flourishes ensure that it offers a richly personal blend of the authentic and the abstract.

Nastase is a compelling, complex character.

The sour taste of colonialism is pungently evoked in Sweet Dreams, a largely accomplished second feature by Bosnian-Dutch writer-director Ena Sendijarevic.

Ultraman: Rising lacks sophistication in its storytelling, but the film nevertheless achieves a quiet poignancy.

If Starve Acre seems to walk on well-trodden ground, Kokotajlo is nevertheless adept at inhabiting and revitalising the material. Familiar themes and moods haunt the film with their own uncanny insistence.

Anchored by a lived-in performance from Wanlop Rungkumjad as a bedraggled migrant caregiver striving to maintain his humanity despite being exploited by his employer, this is a deeply sobering expansion of Chiang’s thematic focus.

Arrestingly plotted and bracingly acted, this story about the biting hardships faced by refugees who have left the danger of their homeland only to be left nationless could hardly be more relevant.

All Will Be Well is undoubtedly an old-fashioned drama, but it is no less effective for that classic structure.

While Wilson stays resolutely — and perhaps for some frustratingly — neutral about whether that link is forged by lived experience or spiritual ability, her film can be read as a celebration of human empathy and the power of shared connection.

Ultimately, it’s a bit of a mess, but it has luridly entertaining moments nonetheless.

Ultimately, Ride Or Die is such a relentless bombardment of bombastic effects whipped up by a pounding soundtrack, rapid-fire editing and frenzied camerawork — which, at times, emulates a first-person video game — that it becomes exhausting, rather than exhilarating.

The documentary is a work of earnest advocacy, pleading with viewers to see their stake in Taiwan’s fight. The results may not be gripping cinema, but the passion behind the project is undeniable.

Writer/director Corey Sherman’s understated screenplay, inspired by his own experiences as a young gay man, favours nuanced realism over high drama.

This earnest drama wears its politics very much on its sleeve — and makes no apologies for doing so — although its intimate take on an overwhelming moment in history can make for some compelling drama.

Between the extensive VFX creature work – led by Mike Stillwell and Andrew Simmonds - the performances, the tone, and the life-or-death subject matter, experienced shorts director Pusic has given her debut her all, and observers will take note.

This is a solid and often uncomfortably tense domestic drama.

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.

This might suggest that Misericordia is ultimately a film with a message, and a more solemn one than we’re used to with Guiraudie. But any apparent clarity should be taken with a pinch of salt, the film’s meanings shifting as constantly as the erotic drives between the various male (and occasionally female) characters.

Non-professional Sangare is magnetic throughout, whether on the saddle or an interview hot seat.

It’s a terrific feature debut from British-Indian documentary filmmaker Sandhya Suri – a propulsive neo-noir that holds up a mirror to contemporary India.

Filmlovers! is a beguiling, bittersweet celebration of a life-long love affair with the movies.

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

Plotwise, the film is a little ragged, particularly in the third act, but star Eddie Peng is impressive.

You could call it whimsical. Absurdist. Contrived. Or an unexpectedly unusual concept album that doesn’t quite come off but was worth the effort. And you would be correct every time.

The perpetual undercurrent of tension between them always feels plausible and is well-rendered by Arana and Sanz, who co-wrote the script. Amongst all the glancing ironies and wit, time also is thankfully also found for a little old-fashioned tenderness.

In the film’s favour, it is not afraid of telling bitter truths about violence, hatred and death.

The film is uneven: gripping when it maps out psychological stresses in a claustrophobic domestic setting, less so in the final stretches when it incongruously morphs into a women-in-peril thriller.

Drag is a form of self-expression, an act of political defiance and a means of reinvention in Solo.

Adele Exarchopoulos and Francois Civil may be top-billed, but this unapologetically sentimental drama actually works better in its first half when their adolescent counterparts take centre stage, seizing on the irrepressible excitement of first love.

Two strong performances root the film. Prabha’s role is to be the anchor to Anu’s flightiness; they modulate their performances well together, but are equally strong apart.

By turns flippant and poetic, demystifying and just a touch reverent, the film thrives on whole-hearted collaboration from Deneuve and the other luminaries playing themselves.

Motel Destino may not make a profound impact, but it does make an impact nonetheless.

A hypnotic and inventive Asian odyssey ... The viewer may not know exactly where Gomes and his characters are headed, but the journey is pursued with wit, imagination and intelligence, and delivers oblique insights about the way we see the world and history.

Rumours doesn’t quite maximise the potential of its incongruous encounter between the living dead and the great and good, or between urbane boardroom satire and psychotropic freakiness. What sustains it, though, are the performances, performed with relish by an ensemble cheerfully riffing on national stereotypes.

Certainly the film comes across in its revved-up, fragmented, ramshackle way as a modern Russian epic – with Limonov as a unique anomalous individual, yet at the same time somehow exemplifying the contradictions and neuroses of a tormented modern nation. He also comes across as a human, flawed figure, self-aggrandising, self-pitying, sometimes helplessly romantic.

Baseball is just a game, but Lund recognises why some need it so badly. On the diamond, these ageing men feel young again – if only for a few hours.

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.

Nicole, Ruby and Elise are powerfully defiant just by refusing to be intimidated or shaped by patriarchal forces: an idea which rises above the outlandish events unfolding on screen to strike a universal, cathartic chord.

There is no faulting the radiant performance of Celeste Dalla Porta in her feature debut. It’s the objectification of her character that’s the issue – plus Sorrentino’s trick, here indulged even more flagrantly than in The Great Beauty, of privileging flashy audio-visual tableaux over narrative coherence.

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.

A wildly entertaining, modern-day screwball comedy ... Baker continually ups the ante on the picture’s unruly humour and propulsive pacing.

Its sly irony is muffled by a convoluted, fatally tedious plot.

By striving for realism, The Apprentice ends up dramatically flat, the recitation of Trump’s most infamous incidents ... playing out perfunctorily.

It’s a modern melodrama that dances through a moral maze, sometimes uncomfortably so. Yet, coming from a filmmaker who has always been preoccupied with the roots and the dynamics of male violence, it poses an intriguing central question.

This potent body horror is executed with skill and compassion, bringing fresh insights alongside generous helpings of graphic gore.

Beautifully shot, with a deft command of period detail and a starry ensemble cast, Costner’s Civil-war set epic offers an old-fashioned celebration of the pioneer spirit – and a clutch of storylines that never quite have time to engage before the film moves on.

An expression of his career-long preoccupations, Jia Zhang-ke’s odyssey through China since the turn of the century has an epic sense within a homespun feel.

Finnegan continues to demonstrate a passion for upending the banality of the everyday, but The Surfer gets as lost as its protagonist, unable to ride the wave of its own mad design.

Amid the formal fluidity, the forceful acting keeps us hooked.

At times the film feels almost subversive in its resolute lack of dramatic tension. And yet, as a melancholy mood piece, there’s a haunting quality to this handsomely filmed account of the slow attrition of faith, hope and purpose.

The accomplished third film from Emanuel Parvu, Three Kilometers To The End Of The World is a disaster unfolding in slow motion. Superbly acted and deliberately paced, the film is a compulsive account of the shattering of a family, and of a life changed forever.

Newcomer Hall strikes a real presence. She’s posed a lot, it’s true – against the sun, the rust-coloured sheets of Diddi’s bedroom, the doggedly brown bar in which she works – but she’s as bright as the light of summer in Iceland, and her character seems just as likely to survive this problematic present.

On Becoming A Guinea Fowl is a formally daring picture that blends fantasy, stylised drama and elements of black comedy to explore the societal pressures that rewrite the truth.

Two unrelentingly fascinating performances from Vic Carmen Sonne and Trine Dyrholm, and an exquisite black-and-while aesthetic which moves from leering vaudeville to something filthier and shameful, command attention.

The feisty restlessness of Agathe Riedinger’s impressive feature debut belies the profound sadness of its central theme – that for many young women, beauty and pain are one and the same.

Bird spreads its wings slowly, but ends up soaring away from its dingy broken-Britain locations in a moving flight of hope and empowerment.

The spirit king of the Greek Weird Wave has produced a profoundly puzzling, dizzyingly disturbing and dark-hearted set of loosely-connected stories which manage to be discordantly amusing and strangely exhilarating – a cinematic salt-rub.

Adam Driver brings a brooding energy to the role of a tortured genius architect seeking to craft a modern utopia in a city threatened by mindless spectacle and rampant greed, but Megalopolis is stymied by arbitrary plotting and numbing excess. One can feel Coppola’s anger and sorrow over the decline of his beloved America, but narrative coherence is far less apparent.

While any narrative nuance is left in the dust by the film’s singular focus on bloody retribution at all costs, it is one hell of a ride.

The ending is as low-key as the rest of the film, but the subtle shifts in power and understanding feel like a significant coming of age.

Lea Seydoux, Vincent Lindon, Louis Garrel and Raphael Quenard commit fully to this cheeky postmodern exercise, but neither the humour nor the commentary is incisive enough to sustain such a strained bauble.

It’s not an unfamiliar story, but Frank Berry’s delicate drama is immensely moving.

Treasure is a curiously inert work, a film that feels as emotionally grey and underlit as its cinematography.

This ripping action-adventure features stellar effects and a superb lead performance from Owen Teague as a timid simian who must rescue his clan from the clutches of a warlike tribe.

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

Slow is a supremely confident piece of filmmaking that negotiates the tricky terrain of non-typical sexualities with sensitivity, humour and a refreshing lightness of touch.

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.

Nowhere Special is a tender story of a life which is ending and another which is beginning.

To a certain extent, Alam, which marks Khoury’s feature debut after a well-regarded career in shorts (in particular, Maradona’s Legs) follows some clear conventions, but there’s enough that is still raw and urgent at the film’s soul to make it stand out.

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

The result is a smirking, shallow action-comedy — a total mission failure.

A scintillating romantic triangle paired with a gripping sports drama, Challengers finds Luca Guadagnino in crowd-pleasing mode, delivering his most purely entertaining film.

What lends this film distinction is the way it evolves into a story of female empowerment, and the bond between mother and daughter as they combat the pernicious evils of a patriarchal society.

In Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Back To Black, Winehouse’s brief, brilliant life is essentially pared down to a tale of poisoned romance.

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.

Stolevski’s handling of the balance between jostling high spirits and the creeping dread of loss is supremely confident; his storytelling is fresh, authentic and genuinely exciting.

As punishing as some of The First Omen’s terrors are, they are quickly forgotten in service of answering questions about Damien (and leaving the door open for further sequels) that undercut Free’s gripping turn.

It’s an appealing little charmer of a film, captured with a pleasingly lithe and lively animation style.

An unassuming character study set to poetic rhythms makes for an empathetic study of Black life, full of resolve.

It’s a film with considerable heart and, in Nighy and Ward, the Tinker Bell sparkle of the true film-star.

While a committed Chastain and Hathaway do their utmost to inject some gravitas into proceedings there are some moments which border on the absurd, particularly as it reaches its frenzied climax. Still, there is some fun to be found in the arch campness of it all and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the film looks gorgeous.