Die My Love is uncompromising, hypnotic, brave and often indelible looking, even when the theatricality and fractured structure erode any emotional weight. The result is an impressively punishing, intermittently brilliant bad trip that may be the worst date movie ever made.

This remains a careering exercise in mid-ranking Yorgosia that just about justifies its many indulgences. We should remain grateful that a talent so odd remains somewhere adjacent to the mainstream.

The Palestinian submission for international picture at the incoming Academy Awards is a handsome, old-fashioned production that, even when it is telling us things we didn’t know, confirms all our worst suspicions about the British colonial experience in the Holy Land.

In common with Jude’s scathing attack on the gig economy and toxic online culture in Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Kontinental ’25 takes a scattershot approach to various targets: anti-Semitism, capitalism, nationalism and religious hypocrisy. The incomparable writer-director’s dark comedy doesn’t care to resolve its heroine’s quandary; it’s out to poke with ethical heft and barbed wit.

This is a cinema of introversion, concealment and evasion. Nothing is given up easily.

With looming grace and the fluffy heart of a Golden Labrador, Elordi, standing in for a departing Andrew Garfield, turns out to be the most swooning Goth heart-throb since Edward Scissorhands emerged from Vincent Price’s laboratory.

Despite the best efforts of Graham, menacing in monochrome flashbacks, the sanitised script never truly pins whatever unprocessed trauma is eating at the rising star.

Hoover fans will know that, early on, a catastrophe looks to upset the order. Nothing in the film-making suggests, however, this dilemma will not be tidied away by the time of senior prom. Who would want to live in so dull a fantasy?

Conveniently set against the fraught contemporary environs of Yale University’s philosophy department, After the Hunt offers a dull retread of the PC-gone-mad arguments that have dominated the culture wars since the 1990s.

A classy film that doesn’t entirely make sense.

This is a nervy study of how poverty wears people down, eroded by uncertainty and the grinding effort to stay afloat.

This excellent debut feature from Ben Leonberg may be unique among horror films in fairly attracting the compound adjectives “deeply unsettling” and “utterly adorable”.

Thankfully, Tron: Ares is less ponderous than Tron: Legacy, and the music is turned up to 11 in the hope you won’t notice all the shortcomings.

Blunt works hard to flesh out an underwritten role, but Safdie seems more interested in Kerr’s silences than his partner’s complaints. The relationship is too ill-defined to land an emotional punch.

Dickinson plays a small role as Mike’s antagonistic friend, but everything rests on Dillane’s powerhouse turn and the writer-director’s compassionate, daring script.

With its fast-paced walking, talking and shouting into telephones, A House of Dynamite is a nervy, timely thriller that goes down like Coca-Cola while another US brand – its military – takes centre stage.

Hassan and Ingar deliver compelling, complementary performances: Hassan is as quiet and vulnerable as Ingar is fiery and charismatic. Clarissa Cappellani’s fluid cinematography and Fiona DeSouza’s stylish edits and inserts keep pace with the youthful exuberance. Judicious use of flashback sets up a gut-punch coda.

Anderson and his fine cast layer all these pyrotechnics with a palpable sadness for their characters and for the country. There are few explicit arguments here about the state of the US, but one can imagine endless such arguments being projected upon it.

McConaughey and Ferrera prove the most delightful endangered bus companions since Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock in Speed, exhibiting just the right balance between tension and comradeship.

This messy romantic phantasmagoria is a hinterland for no one: a musical without musical numbers, a romcom without comedy. Sincerity saves it from collapse.

For all the bustle, flow and noise, there is little here we haven’t seen before.

For all the good work, however, the film fails to fully capture the madness of the response at home.

Forming a Greek chorus, the films are only as disjointed as their context: the obliteration of normal life and the stubborn, miraculous act of carrying on.

None of which is to suggest the film backs away from great gags that, as it was in 1984, continue deep into hilarious improvisation over the end credits.

Anne Robbins’s costumes are dazzling. The production designer Donal Woods makes a dull country-fair storyline look magical. But for all the nostalgic gibberish about passing the baton, this latest instalment stalls and curdles.

Allegories are unavoidable. The walk is American capitalism. The walk is life itself. It requires, however, no such connections to enjoy the best King adaptations in many years.

The film is never boring, but, once that delightful opening winds down, the action clunks where it should purr.

Trashy stories need plots and character development, too.

The Cut is ultimately too broad, cliched and preposterous to take the belt. Still, it was brave to go where it went.

In his impressive feature-length debut, the Irish documentarian Gar O’Rourke offers an immersive and mesmerising portrait of life in a still recognisably Soviet institution.

The extravagance of Fastvold’s techniques can sometimes get in the way of the characters. Strong supporting actors such as Lewis Pullman, Thomasin McKenzie and Christopher Abbott don’t quite succeed in making personalities heard over Blumberg’s bewitching arrangements. But, as cinema of melodic effect, The Testament of Ann Lee could hardly be bettered.

Sudan, Remember Us gives voice to the ordinary revolutionaries it portrays.

So Three Days is no great shakes, but it is rarely embarrassing either.

The strain of absent fathers, generational addiction and the cycle of poverty are carefully countered by resilience, love and the flicker of youthful possibility.

Like all the director’s films, it never allows a boring shot when an unusual one is possible. It has compelling momentum. It features charismatic actors. What a shame it is so tonally chaotic.

One good reason we all have to remain upright is this clever, original, warm cinematic balm.

Full of sound and fury, signifying something. If only we knew what that was.

That first (third) act functions effectively as a bewitching enigmatic short that gets away with its downbeat denouement. The audience can fill the gaps in whatever enigmatic way they see fit. Unfortunately the movie continues backwards into increasingly mawkish territory.

Despite valiant efforts from Stephen James and Michael Kelly – playing an ill-defined hoodlum and a procurer, respectively – Lynette’s low-income hinterland feels strained and inauthentic.

Horrible, silly, reprehensible, enormously good fun.

Materialists has received the odd puzzled review in its home territory, but it has the welcome oddness of a future classic.

The tragic cycle is composed of the same beats that defined such superior films as The Godfather and Animal Kingdom. But the tight focus on Lesia, and her realisation that the men she loves are also capable of monstrous things, reinvigorates the familiar form.

When the macabre does fully show itself, no concessions are made to taste or restraint. Though Weapons is lavishly shot and expensively acted – Amy Madigan is deliciously gamey in a role we won’t spoil – it ultimately settles into the rhythms of premium-brand pulp.

This old-school confection, smartly reuniting the original cast, delights in every silly scene.

What begins as a twisted riff on Hansel and Gretel spirals into a grisly meditation on trauma, punctuated by unsettling dark-web videos, gaslighting and a supernatural ritual that is never satisfactorily explained.

At its best, Dreams is intimate and contemplative, anchored by Overbye’s dreamy voiceover and performance. The second half loses some of that purpose.

It must be admitted that, against the odds, the team do a largely satisfactory job of reanimating the corpse. I’m not sure audiences will have quite as much fun watching the thing as the writers plainly had getting it on to the page. But they have certainly stuck to the brief with admirable diligence.

Lo-fi, disarmingly intense, and shot on textured 16mm by cinematographer Matheus Bastos, this impressive debut feature casts a twitchy, retro shadow over the less salubrious parts of New Jersey.

One remains puzzled as to what these films want to be. Not nearly enough is done with the animal natures of the heroes.

The script’s wandering and overlapping arcs can feel uneven and tricksy, yet there’s something utterly compelling in how Glasner stages decay not just as a biological inevitability, but a doomy familial legacy.

Coming after the exhaustingly overstuffed Superman, First Steps rattles along with a refreshing clarity of purpose.

Only a monster could object to the delightful pairing of Byrne and HBC (whose accent isn’t too bad). Get them back together in a better film as soon as possible.

At any rate, though loose in structure, Friendship offers a few minor masterpieces in the art of cringe.

Romantic comedies typically demand an easy reconciliation. The Other Way Around, although ponderous in places, is skilful enough to leave the viewer rooting for precisely the opposite. It’s a neat trick: like pulling a tablecloth from under dishes in reverse.

Like the village it depicts, the film is meticulously crafted yet oddly two-dimensional: a map, not a place.

The film, set within the bland, institutional corridors of a Norwegian primary school, chronicles a single afternoon that stretches into a surreal purgatory of suspicion, guilt and (finally) something like the compellingly demented choreography of Climax, Gaspar Noé’s dance horror.

Perry and his editor, Robert Greene (using split screens and collage techniques), build a dizzying kaleidoscope of timelines, earnestness and glee. What emerges is a film that’s as formally adventurous and oddly affecting as the soundtrack.

The cartoonish closing battles make it clear that, not for the first time, Gunn is striving for high trash, but what he achieves here is low garbage. Utterly charmless. Devoid of humanity. As funny as toothache.

Before Amongst the Wolves resolves itself into a familiar genre (I was much reminded of a particular British film from the noughties), we get a grim survey of stubborn urban discontents.

Considered as an exercise in hushed mortal contemplation, The Shrouds, sombrely scored by Howard Shore, earns a spot beside Cronenberg’s best work. This is just the sort of unclassifiable oddity that the greatest directors, now less concerned with expectations, manage late into fecund careers.

Jurassic World: Rebirth plays, nonetheless, as a refreshing blast of matinee exuberance after the pomposity of the previous three films. Yes, third best in the series. For whatever little that is worth.

The Gold Rush is a typical Chaplin film; but it is better than any of those that have been produced before. From the very first moment of the picture Chaplin strikes that curious note of sublime aloofness that sets the key of all his best work. [19 Jan 1926, p.6]

Oh no. The sequel to M3gan is absolutely t3rribl3.

F1 really is too thuddingly familiar for words. Drop a bowling ball off a cliff and you would be less sure of its trajectory.

The film has sad stories to tell about Minnelli’s marriages, but there is often grim humour in the footage.

What most sticks in the brain is the film’s incidental meditation on the mythology of England from distant past to speculated future.

Elio is a half-formed thing. The basic story beats suggest that subplots and jokes have gone missing. Even the buddy comedy between Elio and Glordon is curiously marginalised. The candy-coloured character designs will please younger viewers, but the all-ages pleasures of peak Pixar are in short supply.

The film does occasionally struggle with getting England right. We are always aware that this is a French film-maker looking through the window at the crumpets on their doilies. But there is a mischievous intelligence at work that complements the embrace of sometimes broad misunderstandings.

Tornado will frustrate the giblets out of anyone seeking narrative momentum or emotional catharsis. But viewers willing to sit with its stark silences and oppressive atmospherics can look forward to a singular, if rarely easy, watch.

One could bang on all day about how familiar so much of this seems. But it is only fair to acknowledge that, judged as an independent entity (if such an assessment is possible), the current How to Train Your Dragon works as sleek, charming, funny entertainment.

The thing is unremittingly dull and bland (not to mention cold, apparently). If it is good for anything it is good for providing deserved paid holidays to venerable older actors and their long johns.

An appropriately monstrous hit with audiences at London’s Sundance and Dublin’s Horrorthon festivals, this is not quite a fairy tale, but it comes close enough to cast a spell.

This fine documentary on the Palestine solidarity encampments at Columbia University, in Manhattan, makes much of comparisons with student protests against the Vietnam War in the late 1960s.

Sean Byrne’s third feature is neither as gripping as The Loved Ones, his prom-night horror, nor as intriguing as The Devil’s Candy, his supernatural heavy-metal thriller, but it rattles along as effective B-movie gore.

Along Came Love (which has a deceptive title) does not torture the emotion or tax the brain, but, well acted and easy on the eye, it just about delivers on its early promise of knotty personal drama. It also has important things to say – implicitly for the most part – about the unjust expectations placed on women in French society.

Mulligan brings heart to Basden’s wistful folk compositions, and Key babbles amiably, as this crowd-pleaser salutes the redemptive power of a singsong.

Neither as fun as the early seasons of Cobra Kai nor as effective as the 2010 reboot, Karate Kid: Legends relies heavily on franchise favourites while bringing nothing new to the party.

Composed of small gestures and unspoken truths, it’s a bonsai miniature of the vastness of overwhelming grief.

The wafer-thin characterisation and over-reliance on musical recitals make it hard to buy into the film’s premise of enduring love.

Ultimately, for good or ill, one has to accept that Bono’s compunction to spill his emotional innards is, for fans, more of a feature than a bug.

The machinations find a charming focus in the thawing between Del Toro and Threapleton. Both actors bring a jouissance to the slightly jaded milieu.

Marc Evans’s film is a lovely thing.

India Donaldson’s Good One is a sneaky revelation, a low-key coming-of-age drama that deftly sidesteps familiar tropes in favour of keen cringe comedy and emotional precision.

It’s a pleasing enough vibe, nonetheless – Sevigny and Wolff channel Gen X-worthy self-deprecation. Del Campo and a wandering horse come close to delivering the magic promised by the title.

Few so economical features – 80 minutes, with only three significant characters – have had such unsettling fun in the dark, dark woods. Don’t let it slip you by.

Bloodlines, after that first-class opening section, isn’t quite so clever in its constructions as were the earlier episodes. There is more reliance on out-of-nowhere splatter than on amusingly inevitable disaster.

Too murky. Too little access to the character’s face. It takes a long, long time for the film to redeem itself with the biplane stunt you’ve seen on the poster.

Veiel structures his film with grace and guile.

It falls to the charming cast to outshine the flimsy material. Gladstone and Tran are as warm and well-worn as a much-loved bed sweater. Bowen Yang thrums with millennial angst. Joan Chen steals scenes as Angela’s loudly gay-positive mother.

The Surfer, for all its unpleasantness, offers encouraging evidence that there is still room for existential awkwardness in contemporary cinema. No better, odder man than Nicolas Cage to act that out as the catechism of surfism gains another worthy chapter.

Ardent lovers may well wish for someone to look at them the way Attenborough looks at giant kelp; at another moment, he excitedly recalls forgetting to breathe during his first snorkel.

Screamboat is no classic, but it knows its audience.

These picaresque and picturesque adventures fail to coalesce into a movie. But it’s impossible to argue with Daria D’Antonio’s ravishing cinematography and an unexpectedly moving coda featuring Stefania Sandrelli as an older Parthenope.

Thunderbolts* works best as a jokey romp at home to tolerable quips amid mounting chaos.

The Norwegian writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt roasts conventional heroines and female beauty standards in this gruesome, hilarious reworking of Cinderella.

We have a new cinematic poet in Kulumbegashvili, and she doesn’t care if the stanzas rhyme. Difficult. Abrasive. Worth persevering with.

Murray and Watts make something genuinely touching of Iris’s quest to discover what prompted the writer to end it all.

Just when you think the folk-horror vogue is all played out, along comes Aislinn Clarke’s textured delve into Celtic mythology and intergenerational trauma.