The risky focus that Leigh Whannell, the film’s director, puts on the psychological over the physical may alienate some gorehounds, but it makes for an original shocker with subtexts that linger.

Fans of the playful meandering of the Romanian auteur Radu Jude will likely enjoy the haphazard storytelling and epic travelling shots.

The ever-reliable Dyrholm is both charismatic and curdling as the grubby matriarch. But most of the film is writ large and affectingly in Sonne’s agonised face.

The final reveal is as unnecessary as it is predictable, and the pace can be as glacial as the setting. No matter. The Damned is powered along by suspicion, atmospherics and an unforgettable landscape.

A small film about great matters.

Risk and bondage are seldom as playful as they are in Babygirl.

Many worse horror titles will make it to cinemas throughout the coming year. This is pulp as pulp should be.

The first half of the film is spellbinding; Eggers and his cinematographer, Jarin Blaschke, brilliantly redeploy the grammar of German expressionism to make Dracula (or thereabouts) scary again.

A series of indelible images coalesce into a powerful chronicle of institutional abuse and racial inequality.

Many will be won over by the emotional surge of the closing moments. Others will wonder if there is a word for a manipulative drama that fails to satisfactorily manipulate.

This is a Terrifier movie: everything is bigger and scarier, including the psychological damage.

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, the debut feature from the writer and director Pat Boonnitipat, is a warm, witty tear-jerker improbably rooted in elder exploitation.

The monkey conceit is a success on several levels. It presses home that sense of Williams being an agent of chaos in any environment.

Adam Arkapaw’s dynamic cinematography, the pulsing electronica of the director’s regular composer (and brother) Jed Kurzel, and a snarling script make for a taut and gritty thriller that could pass for a moody, rediscovered early-1970s classic originally shot sometime between The French Connection and Death Wish.

Carrey’s antic madness – elsewhere often too much to digest – is just what the Sonic films needed to balance out the digital gloss.

There is little character, no visible emotion, just endless show-offy technical competence.

The misused music and hollow visuals set the tone for a vacuous film that frequently feels like an overstyled catalogue shoot.

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

There is nothing here to win over those habitually ill disposed to sword and sorcery, but anybody half on board should have a decent time. It is certainly a heck of a lot better than the over-extended Hobbit trilogy.

For all the richness of the tales told, So This Is Christmas remains an enormously peculiar project.

With the cinematographer David Gallego, the sound designer Olivier Dandré and a superb ensemble cast, Nyoni has crafted indelible tableaux, powered by dark survivors’ humour, blistering originality and retaliatory fury.

The film is at its best when incorporating text from the play with oddly appropriate gameplay.

More analysis of the films would have enriched this entertaining chronicle, but it remains a rollicking account of the most important movie partnership since Powell and Pressburger.

Adams, as usual, gives it her all, but it’s as if Kafka’s Metamorphosis had been adapted as frivolous comic operetta.

Beautifully shot by Ranabir Das, a cinematographer who apparently revels in the variety of artificial light sources, those scenes welcome us into the last act with a warm, satisfying hug. It is, however, Kapadia’s generous polyphonic engagement with Mumbai that sits most memorably in the brain.

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”.

This dull-witted, soundstage-bound Christmas romance has festive trimmings and a clockwork plot.

Fair play to Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear, the songwriters drafted in to replace Lin-Manuel Miranda: Moana 2 can’t quite match the showstopping highs of the original film’s How Far I’ll Go, but the songs are consistently, toe-tappingly good.