It’s a strange film; it rattles fiercely along, but its relentless cynicism and nihilism leaves a sour taste and opinion may divide as to exactly how funny it is. Podalydès gives an entertainingly blase performance as the worldly image consultant, trying to seduce Alexandre over lunch.

Is this outrageous comedy sexy or revolting? Elliott proves – though this feels like the least of his achievements – that a film can be both.

There are a couple of not-quite holes exactly, but slightly threadbare patches. More importantly, the narrative isn’t really the point; this is first and foremost a tense portrait of a toxic relationship, and a brutally compelling one at that.

This Carry-On really could have leaned in more to the classic trappings.

Sightseers is funny and well made, but Wheatley could be suffering from difficult third album syndrome: this is not as mysterious and interesting as Kill List.

Every shot, every scene, every exchange from The Harder They Fall is combat-ready and garishly tensed for violence – and Samuel certainly brings the freaky mayhem, with gruesome relish and high energy. My feeling, though, is that there is a diminishing return on it, and the big reveal at the end is slightly silly and somehow retrospectively discloses that we haven’t really found out enough about Rufus Buck’s backstory.

This new movie could arguably have given Elba more to do, earlier in the picture, but it is the inter-relationship of the Enterprise’s crew which is the real source of drama. An entertaining adventure.

The recurring dependence on sexual violence as a shock tactic is, however, a desensitising misstep. Nevertheless the assured command of style situates Jabbaz as an impressive new voice in horror cinema.

Without a doubt this is easy entertainment, never dull, and it has some shrewd things to say about class and money – though the satire might have been sharper and the running time shorter by a good 20 minutes.

Equity takes us inside modern Wall Street in a unique and gripping manner.

The Hunger Games is that rarest of beasts: a Hollywood action blockbuster that is smart, taut and knotty. Ably filleted from the Suzanne Collins bestseller, it's a compelling, lightly satirical tale.

There are times when the passive, elusive quality of It Must Be Heaven, as with other Suleiman films, eluded me and felt mannered and superficial, but they are stylishly made with a distinctive signature.

What’s so funny about the film is that it shows how very little divides your early-twentysomething self from your mid-thirtysomething self – you’re never too old to be humiliated.

In the work of someone so exhaustively appreciated as Hitchcock, you wouldn't expect to find forgotten masterpieces but I Confess is one. It might never catch fire, but it smoulders gloriously.

A strange, faintly frustrating but diverting film.

Akira’s strangeness is very startling and sometimes bewildering. But there is a thanatonic rapture to its vision of a whole world ending and being reborn as something else.

Keshishian, as in Truth or Dare, works in moments which complicates Gomez’s angelic image: being short with a too-glib interviewer, refusing to listen to a friend, reacting poorly to genuine concern. My Mind & Me is strongest, and bravest, in moments like this, illustrating Gomez’s humanity through universal capacities we don’t want recorded.

When all hell breaks loose, Berg stages the action horribly well, capturing the panic and gruesome mayhem without the film ever feeling exploitative. It’s spectacularly constructed, yet it doesn’t forget about the loss of life, ensuring that, despite thin characterisation, the impact is felt.

The ending of Limbo is a disappointment, but this is a film which lingers in the mind long after the final credits.

Comedy and irony are not allowed to encroach on the film’s upbeat message, and the drama doesn’t reach out beyond a wrestling fanbase.

Mr Jones is a bold and heartfelt movie with a real Lean-ian sweep.

Despite the violence and procedural detail, this is about as gritty as Dixon of Dock Green.

This film offers something that is never in sufficiently plentiful supply: fun.

It’s perhaps less fun than you might have hoped for, though Shatner is undoubtedly charismatic, and a pretty decent raconteur. He’s often entertaining, if not always necessarily in the way he intended.

The movie is a shard of comic and cosmic spite, and the image of the malign smile carries force.

The routine is more familiar and the semi-staged stunts – which faintly undermine the credibility of all but the most spectacular moments – are more conspicuous. But there are still some real laughs and pointed political moments on the subject of antisemitism and online Holocaust denial (though I was disappointed to see the film go along with a dodgy “Karen” gag).

Chopper is a great film.

The ultimate reason why so much of this works is down to Sarandon herself. She sells the comic side as well as hitting all of the emotional beats.

One of the most fascinating, if inscrutable films of the year.

It is possibly a little bit derivative and sometimes seems to be treading water in narrative terms, but only after making us submit to a very woozy and hallucinatory experience.

It’s commendable that Perkins seems wholly uninterested in the tropes of the genre: there’s only one jump scare, hardly any gore and no final girl. The elusiveness of the narrative, however, grows weary fast.

Aguzarova is quietly phenomenal, never more so than in the sex scene where, holding her curled-up hands away from Tamik’s body, she manages to be coy, conflicted, detached, expectant and amused all at once.

Steel brings a very distinctive kind of control and restraint to his film, both in terms of its subdued colour palette and an emotional language which despite explicit scenes of both sex and homophobic tension and paranoia, has something opaque and elliptical about it.

Tommy Lee Jones shows some true storytelling grit in this superbly watchable frontier western; he has a muscular and confident command of narrative, driving the plot onward with a real whip-crack, and easily handles the tonal swings between brutal shock, black comedy and sentimentality.

The physicality of this picture is exciting.

Another type of drama would put the issue-led handwringing at the centre of things. Not this film. It is just the hinge on which the family drama turns, and the performances from Dussollier and Marceau are quietly outstanding.

Thunderbolts can be messy, sure. Pugh is the kind of star who can thrive in such mess.

It’s not as focused as its predecessor, but its best sequences rehydrate the mind.

It’s impossible not to laugh at the inspired silliness and charm of Park’s universe. Early Man is a family film that doesn’t just provide gags for adults and gags for children: it locates the adult’s inner child and the child’s inner adult. It’s a treat.

The East – a sleek thriller clogged by its noble message – heads south. It becomes sanctimonious, makes you contrary. I left craving a Big Mac.

From a horror fan’s point of view, this is an absolutely fascinating experiment with form.

Scott Cooper’s Black Mass is a big, brash, horribly watchable gangster picture taken from an extraordinary true story and conceived on familiar generic lines.

Even though The Wave is fiction, there comes a point where it ceases to be nail-biting fun and just an exercise in voyeuristic cruelty.

Director Hugh Hartford does not patronise his stars, although perhaps there is something too gently celebratory and obviously feelgood about the film. These dynamic table-tennis stars put the rest of us to shame.

As the indignation rises, the outcome of this battle cannot entirely be guessed, although one closing credit appears to address Big Pharma directly: "Help prevent a sequel."

Tarantino has created another breathtakingly stylish and clever film, a Jacobean western, intimate yet somehow weirdly colossal, once again releasing his own kind of unwholesome crazy-funny-violent nitrous oxide into the cinema auditorium for us all to inhale.

The frozen landscapes are undeniably gorgeous and the empty school halls are chilling. There are crafty moments here and there, glimpses of the midnight movie that could have been. February’s big villain is precisely what the film is lacking: a devilish spirit.

Once you settle into your bewilderment, however, Barbara an oddly alluring film that does a double backflip on hokey showbiz-bio convention: not an informative introduction to the singer by any means, but a suitably eccentric evocation of her creative essence.

Monge has created a satisfying drama of doomed obsession, the gambler’s thrill that staves off, for a few moments, a weariness with life. It’s a film with, as they say, something of the night about it.

McKellen occasionally slips into the part of twinkly super-cool gay uncle that he tends to play in interviews these days. But mostly he’s thoughtful and self-reflective (and not at all gossipy about his theatrical chums, disappointingly).

The richness and strangeness of the comedy is somehow simply down to Dujardin’s frowningly serious and haughty face.

Sometimes a seemingly unprepossessing genre film comes along that has finer qualities than you would expect. Such is the case here.

With less gripping subject matter, this might have been a so-so bit of club memorabilia. As it is, it can’t help but be gripping.

An interesting feature, almost a B-side to The Graduate in its way, without the predatory older characters.

New Life makes the most of Jessica’s fraught interactions on the road, with spasmodic bursts of bubo-popping horror.

Here is a toothless, aimless dramedy from Canada, a lo-fi excursion into nothing very interesting; it’s what would happen if Harry met Sally and maybe they weren’t meant to be lovers or even friends and were both a bit bland.

Like an unusually designed coat featuring quirky details and an interesting fabric choice from a young designer’s first collection, Swedish writer-director Mika Gustafson’s feature debut has raw edges and some sloppy stitching in places, but the whole is fresh, directional and beautifully cut.

The ploddingly unvaried pace and undirected, underpowered performances make this an exasperating experience: a directionless, shallow movie which seems bafflingly unconvincing and inauthentic at every turn.

Here is a frustrating film that tries to tell two stories at once, and succeeds with neither.

Ten years on, it’s moving to hear Visconti, his lifelong friend and collaborator, talking about recording in secret what they all knew would be his last project. It would be wrong to call it going out on a high, under the circumstances, but it’s heartening that Bowie could craft such a poignant, defiant, dignified exit.

Where some might praise an Eric Rohmer-style lightness of touch, others might see a certain slightness. And at barely 70 minutes, this is a fleeting affair in every sense. Perhaps that’s the point.

Queen and Country is an entertaining and sympathetic guide to a lost world: a rite of passage that Britain was to find it could do without.

True Things is not a bad film, exactly. The actors play it like they mean it, while the drama itself carries a natural dry charge. But it’s unambitious, sometimes clunky and doesn’t wrong-foot us once.

As well as showcasing the blandest and most tasteful three-way sex scene in history, this movie spreads an odd pall of sentimentality and period-glow nostalgia over a fascinating real-life story.

Falardeau draws exceptional character work from his cast.

Premiering as one of the more proudly mainstream offerings at this year’s Toronto film festival, David Oyelowo’s sweet-natured family adventure The Water Man gives us our first look at a commercial conductor in training, aiming to excite and thrill with adventure while making an unashamed appeal to our emotions shortly after, a Spielbergian combination that many have tried and failed to perfect.

Hauser is the star and he keeps the film on track: poignant, lonely and vulnerable – maintaining the tricky balance of laugh-at and laugh-with.

There are enough crafty surprises buried within The Night House to just about outweigh the elements that don’t work quite as well, mainly because it’s all delivered with such fiery conviction by Hall. The house might be built on shaky foundations but its inhabitant is utterly unshakable.

I was utterly absorbed in this teeth-clenchingly exciting story and the “heist” sequence itself stands up really well – as well as anything I’ve seen.

Undeniably uplifting, even if the string-laden score strains too hard to tweak the tear ducts, this US-made documentary tracks a running group of recovering addicts and paroled convicts who train for marathons together.

As the catastrophe escalates, the movie’s mood music of imminent horror gets gradually and continuously louder, without ever quite reaching a climax of fear – or meaning.

There are laughs found in almost every scene, though not many big ones. There’s also the problem that no amount of parody can top the real thing.

In theory, these are twentysomethings we're talking about. But they walk and talk like fortysomethings or fiftysomethings, such is their dullness and self-absorption.

Farhadi’s storytelling has overpowering force.

Tran and Gladstone keep the movie watchable, mixing prickliness and warmth in a situation that’s more common than movies often acknowledge: a partnership where one person is far more invested in parenthood than another.

The Third Murder is a captivating puzzle.

This is a glossy piece of Netflix content, but it relies very heavily on NBA fan buy-in for the drama fully to work; there is a continuous series of recognition jolts provided by the stars and legends playing themselves.

The restrained performances and luscious location photography are enough to make this a film worth exploring, though it might not be a bad idea to down a few caffeine-rich drinks before settling in to watch.

Hall’s marching in lockstep with a lengthy platoon of directors who have already blazed this same path through enemy territory. And though he’s got some upstanding troops at his disposal, his plan of attack lacks that crucial unexpected element that can take an opposing battalion – or an audience – off guard.

This documentary is an invigorating, disturbing portrait of the arrogance and sinister self-importance of rich people, bullying politicians and their battalions of lawyers.

It never provokes full-on out loud laughs, but there are wry chuckles to be had and the ferocity of the execution is pretty fun.

While The Willoughbys might not boast the slick structure or beating heart of a Pixar animation, there’s enough offbeat charm to make it an easily digestible watch and for any concerned parents, the practice of “orphaning” involves so much work, your kids will likely be scared off.

Somehow in its pure uproariousness, it works. It’s just a supremely watchable film, utterly confident in its self-created malleable mythology. And confident also in the note of apocalyptic darkness.

The more the movie explains, the less powerful it becomes – ending with a Shining-like finale in the snow that for me was a letdown.

The status-anxiety, fame-vertigo, sexual satiety and that all-encompassing fear of failure which poisons every triumph are displayed here with an icy new connoisseurship, a kind of extremism which faces down the traditional objection that films like this are secretly infatuated with their subject.

This fantastically depressing film ought to be shown in school assemblies, or wherever impressionable pre-teens gather to discuss their dreams of media stardom.

There’s a fair bit of macho silliness here, but the panache with which director Joseph Kosinski puts it together is very entertaining.

An Inconvenient Sequel is more a portrait of Gore than a call to arms. It ends with a sort of forced positivity, much of which is recycled directly from the first movie: political change is hard, but we can do it, morality demands it.

There are plenty of comic moments...But The Way, Way Back is very rarely laugh-out-loud funny. Unfortunately, neither is it very involving.

Ridley though is consistent and sort of revelatory, an actor who has struggled to find her footing post-franchise as is often the case, delivering a surprisingly nuanced and deeply felt performance.

This curious, truncated piece tells us nothing substantial about Zofia Bohdanowiczowa or Józef Wittlin – or, indeed, about anything at all.

But the storytelling is unevolved compared with the animation.

This movie gets a real gallop on, due to the sheer warmth of its performances.

Bryan’s done his homework, mapping out an elaborate network of past wrongdoings with news clippings and TV footage. If the just deserts that this film demands ever come to pass, it will almost certainly be the most copiously photographed treason in a long and illustrious American tradition.

Mon Roi, directed and co-written by Maïwenn (that is, film-maker and actor Maïwenn Le Besco) is an unendurable confection of complacent and self-admiring nonsense: shallow, narcissistic, histrionic and fake.

It is all intensely controlled, although this is a drama that goes by the book, in all senses; there are no unabsorbed events to disorder the parable’s secular/religious alignment, and the Greeneian miracle it eventually conjures is arguably a little too pat. Yet it is also strangely moving.

It’s a broad, enjoyable, lighthearted movie with a fair few not-insignificant plot holes, but a genuinely surprising storyline that keeps you guessing to the end.

Pink Wall can be a bit contrived at times, with situations that have been rather effortfully created. But there are strong, forthright performances from Maslany and Duplass as the lovers who were never meant to be.