We salute the costume and continuity departments (Betty Austin) on Iris’s consistently bloody frills as she runs, fights and reasons for her “life”. We are with her every step of the way.

Adaptations of Ivanhoe have imagined the past less romantically.

Ignore the unassuming title: Ordinary Love is a love story that is extraordinary.

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.

Jalmari Helander, who previously scored an international hit with his Santa-themed horror, Rare Exports, mines every gory set piece for squeals of delight and revulsion. Styled as a midnight movie, Sisu makes terrific use of limited military hardware and a forbidding Lapland landscape.

Every scene, every ride and every development feels dangerous and combustible.

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

This compelling, acutely observed and deeply affecting film is imbued with tenderness and humanity. [11 Mar 2000, p.77]

This is a bold, brassy entertainment that breaks new ground as it hugs venerable genres to its chest.

Dunne’s script, co-written with Malcolm Campbell, packs too much plot in its final 10 minutes, but it hits the emotional beats with gusto throughout. It was, when it was shot two years ago, an effective comment on an absurd crisis. Sadly, it is still that.

Mortensen’s script tussles between feminist revision and old-school male showdowns, imagining Vivienne as a Joan of Arc-inspired frontierswoman yet subject to the degradations of the era.

Production designer Tamara Deverell and costume designer Luis Sequeira make for an arresting spectacle, one that is, ultimately, too luxurious for the sleazy travelling show and 1940s hoboism at the heart of the movie.

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.

Under the satire, there’s an authentic sense of emotional uncertainty.

In Swan Song, feathers, synchronicity and sheer graft define the world’s most popular ballet.

This is a deliberately puzzling, oblique affair that never runs when it can sneak.

An absorbing peek behind the pop-star curtain from the veteran documentarian RJ Cutler, maker of The War Room and The September Issue.

An anecdote concerning the “amusing, bright, and always very vinegary” Gore Vidal being caught by a woman police officer breaking into Williams’s New York apartment would, alone, make Truman & Tennessee required viewing.

Sadly, the film itself is not quite as silly as it should be (something of an achievement given what you’ve just read). Everyone is taking it very seriously. We don’t get enough characters pulling their limbs together after being hacked to pieces by combine harvester. Some very good actors have been cast in the wrong roles. No matter. Theron makes it work.

A jigsaw puzzle, dream sequences and continuous snatches of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata build towards an uneasy denouement that will leave the viewer guessing and obsessing long after the final credits roll.

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

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

Working with Gammell, Keough, a granddaughter of Elvis Presley and the compelling star of The House that Jack Built and Daisy Jones & the Six, successfully transitions to the other side of the camera with this respectful take on a community under pressure.

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

Though the final act regains some manic energy with ambitious, large-scale action, the composer Michael Abels’s relentless strings, overly extended gunplay and an unkillable creature become exhausting. And that’s before we are promised a sequel. It’s fun. But make the fun stop.

God’s Creatures doesn’t quite manage its daring blend of maritime realism and Greek catastrophe. The huge final gesture feels just a little too heightened for this otherwise everyday world. The effort was, however, worth making. A bitter, unforgiving entertainment.

Few will complain about the delicious perplexities of the opening hour. The film’s focus on the sadness of remote lives – everyone here seems alone – adds satisfactory emotional ballast.

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