The film certainly invites fists to be pumped in celebration. It is less certain Air offers any meaningful critique of the society that gave us the sacred gutty.

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.

There is much rushing to little purpose. Too many dull contractual glitches get in the way of the enthusiastic performances.

Honour Among Thieves could have tidied away its plot more economically, but the leisurely pacing does allow us to connect with the surprisingly fleshy characters. It is no mean feat to make something so funny from such unpromising material. It is more impressive still to end on a genuinely moving note. A welcome surprise.

It’s not for everyone. Please Baby Please often forgets that it’s a musical, and the action is increasingly chaotic.

A terrific, gripping drama that will cross cultural borders with ease. Every nation has such stories.

Léa Mysius’s accomplished second feature is the time-travelling, olfactory-driven LGBTQ romance and family melodrama you couldn’t possibly have seen coming.

Extravagant horrors and psychological torments ensue. James Vandewater’s edits and Karim Hussain’s phantasmagoric visuals add to the anxiety and chaos.

It’s not world-building; it’s world-sprawling. Imagine Harry Potter. But with head-stomping.

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.

With its lurid libidinous action and over-the-top murders, Pearl is a jokey spin-off of a jokey film. Imagine – and we mean this as a compliment – the slasher equivalent of The Naked Gun 2. Offsetting the self-indulgence, Goth sinks her teeth into the goose-killing heroine and spits out all the feathers.

No other British film has, in a generation, done such imaginative work in restructuring romantic comedy. It is one of those rare films the audience didn’t know it really, really needed.

The kind of kids who hide behind the couch during Scooby-Doo may well feel emboldened by the fuzzy feelings, silly quips and toothless villains. But it all feels rather pointless for the non-meek community.

Neeson is, of course, perfectly capable of chewing through the quips while carrying the city’s sins on his broad shoulders. But he needs more help from a rigid script to make sense of a character that seems defined by archetype alone.

It is often argued that The Strokes are the last rock stars and that their Manhattan peers are the last great bohemians. It’s an Americentric view, but it’s gospel truth for this appealing if impressionistic time capsule.

It seems churlish to complain that a film about a global serial killer is unnecessarily brutal and nasty. But between blackmail victims splatting on the pavements of Piccadilly Circus to bodies frozen under snowy lakes, Luther: The Fallen Sun is as distasteful as it is silly.

The film fights hard to draw humour from the players’ often eccentric demeanours without holding them up to ridicule. For the most part it succeeds.

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.

Michael B Jordan, who bossed the previous two rounds as Adonis Creed, shuffles behind the camera for a film that intersperses soapy sentiment with first-class acting duels.

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

Mostly, Joyland is a film of huge heart and empathy. Mirroring the hapless hero’s journey, it’s an unexpected romance.

Khan, like her documentarist heroine, clearly seeks to offer a balanced take on arranged marriage – opening non-Muslim viewers up to their own prejudices while admitting the restrictions. That balance proves, however, difficult to sustain in a genre that relies on a desperate, final rush to the airport (or whatever) as soul mates admit their attraction.

The thing is fun but, if we may be allowed an oxymoron, it is genuinely ersatz from ear to claw.

The powerful current Palme d’Or favourite features terrific performances from youthful leads Eden Dambrine and Gustav De Waele, claustrophobic cinematography from Frank van den Eeden, weepie-worthy orchestrations from Valentin Hadjadj, and meaningful musings on how we hide behind small-talk, and internalise pain and gender norms.

Playwright Florian Zeller’s third instalment – and second film – in a cycle that includes The Father is a muscular, devastating drama that ought to have featured more prominently in the protracted “awards conversation”.

Imagine a Roger Corman film made with the combined budgets of every Roger Corman film and you are halfway there.

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.

Last Dance is frightfully indulgent, but, this being Soderbergh, it is also studded with delightful outbreaks of invention.