Another director might have fashioned Basic Instinct from such voyeuristic clay. Park dances with the material. Eschewing sex in favour of simmering sensuality, Decision to Leave coalesces into an intricate ballet between the main characters, Park’s careful choreography and Kim Ji-yong’s acrobatic camerawork.

Amulet has been billed as a feminist revenge horror. It’s a savage one, powered along by the same metaphorical heft that made The Babadook such a sensation.

Parallel Mothers wears its heart on its beautifully styled sleeve. Even the dark excavation at the heart of the enterprise is delivered with wit, warmth and eye-popping colours. It is difficult to think of another filmmaker who could so effortlessly juggle tones and seemingly disparate elements.

The many textures and mysteries don’t always fit together. Indeed, the movie is better when it trades in real-world patriarchal controls and abuses rather than things that go bump in the night. But this remarkable debut feature will keep you hooked until the final reveal.

Mackey, in particular, is a powerhouse. The young star is matched well with O’Connor’s carefully calibrated, appealingly earnest script, which approximates a modern sensibility without striking a false note or straying from Emily’s contemporaneous moors.

The parallel father-and-son storylines may feel a bit too tidy, but Nabulsi’s film is powered along by terrific performances and palpable fury.

What we have here is a humanist matrix that spins calculations in good and ill from all sides. And then it is something else. The film looks to be heading to a place of reassuring compromise when it dramatically veers into something tonally and emotionally distinct.

The deadpan tone recalls the drollery of Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive and What We Do in the Shadows. Montpetit channels the teen angst of a young Winona Ryder. The effect reframes this dark comedy as a species-swapped, harder-edged, very French Edward Scissorhands.

Mirrored and paired scenes abound in Cleary’s clever screenplay.

The two flawless performances, presented in the polite shades of prestige British cinema, make a winning case for the virtues of seasoned affection. An irresistible treat.

What we end up with is both a rigorous commentary for the Hitch enthusiast and a useful primer for the newcomer. And we also get a character study. But of whom? The real man or the persona he invented for the public? Hitchcock would be delighted we are still asking that question.

Coda is an unqualified success in its relaxed, almost matter-of-fact treatment of how deaf families move through a largely uncomprehending society.

Aisha is a portrait of unassailable dignity in the face of cruel happenstance.

“If you had the chance to talk to someone that died, that you love, would you take it?” asks Christi Angel in this apprehensive documentary portrait of dead-raising digital capitalism.

It would be wrong to describe A New Generation as a mere coda to The Story of Film. Clocking in at a weighty 160 minutes, the documentary travels to every corner of cinemaspace.

Beneath the zany antics and pastiche aesthetics – Ken Seng’s cinematography knows all the fly moves – the satire has plenty of bite.

Blue Giant is as improbably close to watching a live performance as animation can get. A swooning big-screen experience.

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

Most contemporary westerns end up mourning a vanished era of compromised freedom. The Bikeriders doesn’t quite believe in that myth, but it still finds time to dampen a handkerchief as its shadow recedes. A flawed, fascinating film.

Mind you, everyone here is suffering. That overbearing mass of existential angst almost certainly contributes to the many negative responses, but few will endure its attack without admitting they’ve sat through something out of the ordinary.

[Peele] may never again make a film so elegantly structured as Get Out (who has?), but the ferment of interlocking ideas here is so diverting it hardly matters that the film is more at home to a meander than steady ascent.

The pacing can be too stately, but an impressive ensemble working through a surfeit of good ideas compensates for the lack of jump scares.

A welcome oddity.

The convention of jumping between time periods can make the plot a little cluttered but the film’s worth as an educational tool for pre-teen audiences is inarguable.

The idiosyncratic Beasts of the Southern Wild is a tough act to follow, but Wendy’s similarly anthropological approach reinvigorates its overworked source material where others have floundered.

Swelling the running time close to three hours, the story, though well worked, has ideas above its humble station. One longs for the strings to be tightened. One yearns for just a smidgeon of levity.

Yes, the pulpy mythologies sometimes overshadow that carefully maintained mood. But it remains quite a mood. Hokum as high art.

The set-ups are every bit as tense as before. The cast continue to throw themselves at the material with admirable gusto.

Powered along by youthful exuberance, earthy sex scenes and keen naturalism, Holy Cow is a box-office sensation in France, where it outperformed Anora and The Brutalist. The cinematographer Elio Balezeaux finds winning tableaux in dung, well-used farm equipment and sun-dappled pastures. An auspicious debut for everyone involved.

All You Need Is Death, craggy and rough-edged, may be in constant conversation with the distant past, but it also puts up signposts to the future for Irish horror cinema. It’s about time somebody found a name for this artistic movement (if it is yet that).

Never mind the plot. Written and directed by Rich Peppiatt, a former journalist who created the salty 2014 satire One Rogue Reporter, Kneecap works best as a collage of digs at contemporary Northern/North of Ireland woven in with a touching treatise on why the Irish language matters.

The set pieces are well handled, but this prequel stands out most for its commitment to fleshy humanity.

The main body of Across the Spider-Verse is, however, so endlessly, dizzyingly imaginative that few will lose hope at the mildly disappointing denouement. There is surely more to come, and the potential is there for endless variation. Excelsior!

The wacky mythology is offset with gorgeous hyperreal visuals, as raindrops bounce off umbrellas and puddles. With more than a nod to real world climate change, Weathering With You clings to love in the face of rising oceans and environmental catastrophe.

A thrilling picture. But also a sobering one.

Polley allows bursts of weirdness and humour to punctuate deliberation that, though often abstract, never becomes alienatingly cerebral.

The Sheep Detectives, a family-friendly whodunit that marries pastoral whimsy with unexpectedly weighty themes, is a rare, woolly beast.

This is an awfully clean version of borderline anarchy. But the relationships are teased out so delightfully that few will feel it worth complaining. Even the sentimental denouement is forgivable.

The visuals are as wildly original as the script, which was co-written by Docter, Kemp Powers, and Mike Jones.

Shot in chocolatey browns amid the more comfortable suburbs of Copenhagen, Another Round underlines its later, more cautious warnings by reminding us how inexhaustibly tedious the drunk seem to the sober.

This is an exciting, surprising treatment of a story many of us have heard only in half-understood whispers. Well worth settling in for.

At its best, Laura Fairrie’s entertaining film finds parallels between its subject and her many, big-haired heroines, especially Lucky Santangelo, the leading lady of such bestsellers as Dangerous Kiss and Poor Little Bitch Girl.

In common with the director’s most-admired films – including the Academy Award winner A Separation – this new film seamlessly marries genre kicks and social injustice.

As ever, Mustaine is unmistakably himself. The tunes are good, too. Godspeed, Megadeth.

Taking place in an upmarket east London restaurant on a busy night during the Christmas season, the film gives a real sense of the frantic stress that underlies such operations. The lack of cuts presses home the real-time scenario and allows no escape from the hurtling momentum.

No sensitive viewer could deny the spirit of the original remains, but Jeremy Sims’s charming cover version reverberates with unmistakably Australian harmonies.

We end up with a philosophical comedy that is not afraid to aim the odd joke below the belt or, as resolution looms, to give in to sentimentality. It’s a little bit Capra. It’s also a little bit Beckett.

By relocating a Parisian crime to the French Alps, Moll and his cinematographer Patrick Ghiringhelli visibly stifle Yohan’s frustrated inquiries. The comings and goings among the gruff, macho unit are not particularly interesting. But The Night of the 12th, which was nominated for 10 César Awards, winning in six categories, including best picture, is otherwise absorbing.

An ambivalent, accusatory depiction of intercountry adoption, Return to Seoul mines South Korea’s controversial adoption history to craft a smart if maddening character study.

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.

If you scrunch up your eyes and tilt your head you could imagine yourself watching an avant-garde animation at a Brooklyn art house. But there is also, about it, something of the charming work that Oliver Postgate did for British children’s television in the 1970s.

Themes of imperialism and exploitation add background textures to three muscular performances and a mysterious cinematic adventure.

It is the relationship between Grace and Cian that most engages. Galligan, seen recently in the TV series The Great and Kin, exhibits a rare charisma and a gift for dry comedy that should take her far.

Taking cues from the gameplay, this compelling psyche-out is deceptively simple.

From the moment My Chemical Romance’s Welcome to the Black Parade blasts across the opening credits, this is the unexpectedly moving, nostalgia-soundtracked class reunion that you’ll enjoy despite yourself.

What an auspicious debut for Kline and what a fine showcase for all other parties.

Ery Claver, who co-wrote the screenplay with the director, provides arresting Steadicam as well as popping colours as cinematographer. In keeping with the film’s novel premise, this is like nothing you’ve seen anywhere else. Aline Frazão’s crashing, jazzy score adds a start to the ghosts in the machine.

Haarla and Borisov demonstrate impeccable timing and expertly tiny movements as they warm up to one another. It’s something like love but without either sex or romance. And it’s a joy to behold.

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady cemented their reputation for tender portraits of young people blossoming away from home with their earlier films The Boys of Baraka, Detropia and the Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp. With Folktales, the veteran documentary duo return to familiar thematic terrain with renewed compassion.

It remains, nonetheless, a pleasure to see a good yarn played out in such professional fashion. Just try not to think of the awful pun in the title.

The three leads demonstrate absolute belief in romantic absolutes as we drift towards a class of sob-heavy denouement Hollywood now rarely attempts. The Irish director’s best film yet.

The gunplay of the final act isn’t as much fun as the properly creepy build-up. No matter. This self-aware German-Hollywood coproduction atones with plenty of Teutonsploitation humour.

Directors Danny Clinch, Taryn Gould, and Colleen Hennessy have sifted through hundreds of hours of footage to fashion something that allows for a sense of the person behind the rock casualty. To this end, they do a splendid job.

Now 85, Scott again proves there is nobody so efficient at pressing contemporary technology to the limits. He also draws heroic performances from fleshy human beings

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

I Never Cry works best as a showcase for a terrific young actor with a nuanced grasp of a complex character.

Appearing opposite Nora-Jane Noone in a film that twists the actors round each other like competing bindweed, McGuigan could hardly have delivered a more bracing final performance. So savage is her turn that you expect water drops to hiss off her broiling skin.

My Father’s Shadow, which was coproduced by Element Pictures, is not a conventional political drama. Instead it quietly marries personal and national histories, offering a deceptively sprawling portrait of Lagos, a family and the fragile, frantic ways people try to hold on against tyranny.

There are endless nuances and ironies throughout. Though stories are told, In the Shadow of Beirut is more a mosaic than a narrative tapestry.

Poitras’s biopic of Goldin is powered along by righteous fury: an engaging portrait of both the artist and her activism.

Jolie’s fragile brilliance is not to be questioned.

Trash this classy doesn’t come along often enough.

We are left with a properly entertaining drama that gets across the technical details with great efficiency. A good job of work by a reliable Hollywood professional.

Not every tweak and shave works — there is a brief, unfortunate vacuum in the closing scene — but Spielberg has given us more than most of us deserve. Here is a fitting, accidental tribute to Stephen Sondheim, whose lyrics still crackle above Leonard Bernstein’s score, a few weeks after his death.

Does it all add up? The cleaved-brow Fiennes, who does inner torture better than anyone, makes something believable of Lawrence’s battle for truth and integrity. Isabella Rossellini works magic with a minute supporting role. But few will survive the final scenes without pondering the Italian for “magnificent hokum”.

Hawke and Thames respectively give two big performances to enact a compelling cat-and-mouse game, in a film wherein even the supporting characters are richly drawn.

There is a lot here about how female sexual desire is repressed and sublimated. There is an implied, though not exactly hopeful, treatise on the promise of the later 1960s. Not every risk pays off. But all were worth taking.

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.

Theater Camp is itself shamelessly infatuated with the great American musical, but it also enjoys poking affectionate fun at the kids’ creative tunnel vision.

Rather than just pushing the characters through their familiar beats, the well-judged narrative arc takes them on something like a proper journey.

The compassionate directors of The Mission wisely let the young women do the talking. Seven credited cinematographers are there to capture every compelling moment.

A clever concept carried out with great invention and some emotional honesty.

The winner of the Ecumenical Jury Award at the 2022 Cannes Festival finds warmth and empathy in the unlikeliest and most unethical places.

A fascinating and invaluable document for all of its considerable run time, State Funeral is an occasion worthy of the title.

Though there are some clunking flaws... Cicada has the compact shape of an elegant short story – open-ended, yet not incomplete.

Raiff is brave enough to not give us all we desire from the story. He accommodates a star in the ensemble cast without allowing her to unbalance the character dynamics. But the film is a tad too obtuse to capture the attention of awards voters. Oddball here wins out over mainstream.

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

An elegantly structured film composed of clever, delicate movements, every aspect of Georgia Oakley’s debut feature – from Izabella Curry’s editing to Kirsty Halliday’s period costuming – is as restrained as Rosy McEwen’s excellent performance.

Turning Red remains a charming film that will win friends and trigger worthwhile conversations. The right sort of feel-good.

The performances, carefully calibrated characters, and the unexpected detours in the conversation ensure that the film remains an absorbing piece of cinema, one that locks the viewer in with these angry, bereaved people and their increasingly difficult confrontation.

It’s impossible to recreate the electricity of a live performance but with a musical as beloved as Hamilton, one can hear the audience swoon as Christopher Jackson’s George Washington appears, or when Daveed Diggs’s Thomas Jefferson struts onto the stage.

Kendrick proves herself a formidable talent on both sides of the camera. The timeline can be choppy, but this is as considered as it is chilling.

This charming, beautifully made drama gets about halfway (maybe a little more, maybe 60 or 70 per cent) towards confirmation as a classic of English reserve before a stunningly uninteresting subplot concerning less charismatic characters arrives to deaden the closing scenes.

The film is not as taut as Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov’s similarly themed 2015 thriller, The Lesson, but its freewheeling authenticity gives it charm and momentum.

The quietly convincing leads Elías and Bigliardi occupy very different points on the deadpan spectrum. The denouement isn’t entirely satisfactory, but with a journey this epic, who cares about the destination?

Perhaps overwhelmed by interviews, experimental movies and live footage, Winter allows few compositions to play at length. But the full man emerges in all his contradictions and confrontations.

The lively narration and rollicking pace make for favourable comparisons to Scorsese’s Goodfellas. The Bangalore backdrop and Indian social relations bring something unique to this frequently imitated (and seldom rivalled) crime movie template. Paolo Carnera’s camera has fun with dark corners and sickly neon. Adiga’s dark humour keeps abreast of the political commentary in a film that powers through its source material at breakneck speed.

A swaggering, unapologetic appearance by Yair Netanyahu, the premier’s son and presumed successor, signals a continuation of the family’s legacy.