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.