Hostiles demands patience and concentration but rewards that with an assured, thought-provoking window into a past whose legacy is still being felt to this day.

All the micro-motivations and manipulations of life are present, from the desire to be loved and look after others to the urge to tear down a carefully constructed emotional wall.

There are some fun moments in Sharper, not to mention its attractive production and costume design, and Moore is clearly having a blast with a character who is sexy and smart in equal measure. But with the story broken down into obvious individual character-focused jigsaw pieces, viewers won’t need many of their own wits about them to guess where this tale is headed.

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 may play a little flatly, but its sincerity of purpose remains affecting throughout.

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.

If human resilience remains paramount in zombie films, Cargo goes a step further; here, recognising and redressing the divisive mistakes of the past is more important than merely surviving.

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

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.

The Phantom Of The Open is an amiable little picture which might be dramatically as flat as Mark Rylance’s vowels but still packs a considerable helping of crowd-pleasing charm into its cap and golfing slacks.

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.

The Smashing Machine may not always transcend genre conventions, but is a consistently idiosyncratic and candid look at a working-class athlete with a complicated romantic relationship and a crippling opioid addiction. Despite his hulking physique, Dwayne Johnson plays Kerr with real vulnerability as his championship aspirations slip away.

Carefully made and perfectly acted.

Viewers are left with some likeable, grounded performances from Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby and Ebon Moss-Bachrach — and a gnawing sense that this visually appealing sci-fi adventure is a missed opportunity.

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.

Using the Great Hunger as a backdrop for a revenge western is an interesting way to exorcise old ghosts, but the end result drains pathos from the tragedy while muting The Proposition-style genre elements.

Slow, deliberate and often unexpectedly funny, Michael Tully’s (Ping Pong Summer) contribution to the ever-growing Irish horror catalogue is refreshingly original even if it lacks the jump scare pay off to its heavily-signposted creepiness.

The visual textures of The Lovers and the Despot, edited by Jim Hession — and the Kim audio tapes — make for vibrant cinema.

The film does praiseworthy work when it comes to challenging accepted assumptions about what constitutes beauty and sexuality. It does so, however, through a degree of physical and emotional oversharing which some audiences will find deeply off-putting.

Any film which features Demi Moore breathily vamping her way through an appreciation for her dishwasher and which permits Andrea Riseborough to deliver a performance as gloriously OTT as this one has plenty to recommend it.

Photograph’s deliberate pace does bring some rich rewards for the patient viewer, while a lovely ending feels like a throwback to the old-fashioned big screen romances of yore.

Last Breath honours the constant possibility in work like this that the worst could happen at any moment — and that the line between living and dying is always frighteningly slender.

This is an idiosyncratic hop around Fassbinder’s life by his Danish film historian friend Thomsen.

Filmmaker Julia Jackman’s droll fantasy feminist fable is a true original.

Hanging By a Wire may have all the urgency of a Hollywood disaster movie from the 1970s, but also incorporates an undercurrent of commentary on the neglect of poor rural communities in Pakistan.

An elegant, absorbing piece of storytelling.

Suffragette’s strength lies in the fact that, even though some of the characters and events depicted seem archetypal, and they’re certainly composites, they turn out to be more than that.

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.