Some of the credit must go to the stellar casting and performances. It’s difficult to single out one of the six actors in this alternative family unit as it’s a true ensemble display. But Kore-eda’s deft command of tone is a key factor too.

There are three superb performances at the picture’s centre, but none is more radiant than that of Greta Lee, gracefully capturing the spirit of a searching soul who seems to understand things about the nuances of love that are beyond the grasp of the rest of us.

Like the distinctive artwork made by Showing Up’s sculptor protagonist, Kelly Reichardt’s eighth feature is beautifully crafted, a modest gem that grows in impact the more one examines it.

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.

Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson has crafted a period drama of startling tonal fluidity, and Daniel Day-Lewis and Vicky Krieps deliver reserved performances that slowly reveal significant depth, transcending the material’s potential plight-of-the-artist clichés to hit at something far richer and more mysterious about desire, ambition and control.

Thrillingly inventive, satisfyingly textured and infused with warmth and humanity, this is a triumph.

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

This is a remarkable debut feature; provocative, absorbing and mysterious. There are no easy answers to the big existential questions, just a desire to seek them out with a kind heart and good intentions. In the end you just have to have faith.

Filled with both spectacle and strikingly intimate moments, The Eras Tour is almost too much of a good thing — so many hits, so many memorable set pieces, so many peaks.

Into what might have been an alienating, hard-edged setting, human warmth comes from some relishably muted performances.

A stirring follow-up that tops the formidable original, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse draws us deeper into Miles Morales’ saga while offering the same stunning animation, dazzling set pieces and irreverent humour.

What’s certain is that Sound Of Falling, the striking second feature from German director Mascha Schilinski, is a work of thrilling ambition realised by an assured directorial vision.

Surprising, awkward, refreshing and, at times, downright hilarious, German director Maren Ade’s dazzlingly original follow-up to her 2009 Berlinale Silver Bear winner Everyone Else is that rarest of things: a nearly three-hour-long German-Austrian arthouse comedy-drama that (almost) never drags.

It’s a distinctive world that Decker and her team have created. Among this year’s coming-of-age films, it’s got to be one of the most original. But it’s also one of the more perplexing.

This portrait of the artist as a young film-maker will certainly stand the test of time.

The funniest of his films to date, it’s a fully realised, immaculately tailored creation which conceals a slow-burning sense of mischief under its deliberate oddness and ornately deadpan dialogue.

Darren Aronofsky’s churning fever dream mother! is a devouring and restless experience: a creative surge that’s like the lancing of a boil, releasing a torrent of despair and disgust for the greedy chaos of society today as well as a self-loathing portrait of the artist as an emotional succubus.

Guillermo del Toro channels all the streams that make him unique into The Shape Of Water, pouring his heart, soul and considerable craft into an exquisite creature fable.

Thanks to a sterling lead performance from Oscar Isaac, the Coen brothers have once again delivered an impressively nuanced character study — one that has much to say about art, compromise and all the aspiring hopefuls who never got their moment in the sun.

It is an absorbing film of quiet power.

Cameraperson is about process and aesthetics, images and rules but it is also about empathy and ethical dilemmas.

A sympathetic but clear-eyed character study transforms into something more insidious, sobering and infuriating in (T)error, a superb documentary that personalises the US War on Terror in ways that make the human toll intimate and unmistakable.

Writer-director Jim Jarmusch often explores existential themes, but they’ve perhaps never been so beautifully unadorned as they are in Paterson, a deceptively modest character piece that’s profound and moving while remaining grounded in the everyday.

The sixth film in the series is among the most outstanding, delivering a near-exhausting amount of stupendous action sequences paired with deft character drama and the requisite life-or-death stakes. Fallout is a testament to writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, who gives the proceedings a witty, sophisticated grandeur, and yet the film belongs to Cruise and his seemingly limitless passion for putting himself and his audience through the wringer.

A challenging narrative structure - withholding key information and skipping between several time frames - makes this film a daunting watch overall. But Wang’s ambition and seriousness, aided by strong ensemble performances, ensure it is a formidable and, for the most part, involving work of novelistic scope.

It’s this adoption not only of Minnie’s point of view but the voice and narrative style of her half girlish, half womanly outlook on life that makes The Diary of a Teenage Girl such a vibrant, hopeful film.

This is, quite simply, thoughtful and ultimately moving animation at its best.

The latest from the Safdie brothers is a cracking follow up to Good Time: a jangling panic attack of a movie and a timely reminder that, when he puts his mind to it, Adam Sandler can be one of the finest actors currently working.