Working from a libretto by the cult band Sparks, cult director Leos Carax’s English-language debut is unlikely to please mayonnaise mainstream tastes. But for those seeking surprises, spectacle, and shadows, Annette is a marvel like no other.

Co-written with Blomkamp’s District 9 collaborator Terri Tatchell, the film has agreeably creepy blurred ideas about the human experience and the simulated experience. And it’s never dull.

Jude Law channels swaggering disquiet, resembling both the tormentor and tormented of a Harold Pinter play.

Here is a film clawed up from the damp soil and smeared imaginatively across the screen. It is unlikely to be confused with Wild Mountain Thyme.

Nia DaCosta, young director of the fine Little Woods, is behind the camera and she shows a real gift for gruesome showboating.

The film built around the actor’s affecting turn works equally hard at upending expectations.

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

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

Too often this feels like a project that insists on delivering poor facsimiles of iconic scenes.

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.

It remains a fascinating, stylish, uncompromising thriller for all its repugnant prejudices: punk rock movie-making for the ruling elite.

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

There is a fair degree of fun to be had before the script gets too caught up in its own mythology.

The big narrative rug-pull isn’t quite as smooth as it ought to be, but there’s plenty to admire here, including Monáe’s expressive eyes, Pedro Luque Briozzo’s unsettling camerawork, and a thrillingly vicious turn by Jena Malone.

Time will tell if the social media thread is set to become the epic poem of the new millennium. For now, Zola feels like a triumphant lunge into fresh territory.

The unreal feels real. The real feels even more real. A decidedly decent slice of bog horror.

It’s certainly not the film we were expecting from the talented Augustine Frizzell, writer-director of the giddy stoner-girl comedy Never Goin’ Back and the pilot episode of Euphoria. It is, rather, a moneyed, sumptuous diptych of temporal-jumping love stories.

This is a wonderful comedy that savours its remote environment while keeping its subjects at the centre of the story. There are always new ways of telling the era’s most unavoidable sad stories. Not to be missed.

Hardcore fans will rejoice in telling us it is not for children. It’s not really for adults either. But the eternal inner adolescent that lives within us all will almost certainly have a swell time.

It shouldn’t work, but it’s infectious fun for all of its not inconsiderable run time. The eccentric format double-jobs as a Sparks primer for the novice, and as a greatest hits package for the hardcore fan.

Collet-Serra, who directed The Shallows and the Liam Neeson thrillers Unknown, Non-Stop, and The Commuter, keeps up a lively pace. That, and the capable cast, ensure that Jungle Cruise passes the time, much like the old-fashioned, uneventful ride that inspired it.

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

Arriving as part of the recent vogue for historical lesbian romances, The World to Come is better than Ammonite and rather more carnal than the chilly Carol, if not nearly as swooning as Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, nor as fascinating as Fastvold’s own writing.

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.

For all the mad adventure, it feels like a Twilight Zone episode stretched out thinly to feature length.

The Croods: New Age remains a sequel that no one was crying out for. It’s busy. It’s well-staffed. It passes the time.

LeBron has charm to burn, even if his performance is unlikely to keep Denzel awake at night. It’s a shame this messy film can’t keep pace with his likability or mad skills.

Dupieux is flogging no message. He’s inviting us to take risks on a ride that is as unpredictable as it is spooky. And it’s all done in under 80 minutes. There is nothing else like it out there.