This French and English-language drama is a film about taking ownership over the end of life; about dying personally and, if necessary, selfishly.

This one almost makes it, but a boggy script slows it down.

It’s visually striking, and at times somewhat overwhelming. Expect numerous sword-based battles, ogres, dragons, ancient curses, distractingly voluptuous supporting characters and, of course, slime.

The genius of Todd Field’s superb Tár comes from the way the film-making echoes the treacherously seductive and mercurial nature of its central character.

An awards-worthy performance from Danielle Deadwyler (who stole the show in 2021’s The Harder They Fall) lends a passionate heart to this solidly engrossing and still contemporary historical drama set in 1955 and dedicated “to the life and legacy of Mamie Till-Mobley”.

A Man Called Otto taps into a seemingly unquenchable audience appetite for stories of cantankerous grumps redeemed by the healing embrace of community.

This is the first film that Mendes has directed from his own screenplay (he had a co-writing credit on 1917), and for all its visual flair, courtesy of veteran cinematographer Roger Deakins, there’s little to suggest that Mendes has the writing chops to match his directing skill.

There’s an atmospheric, unsavoury oiliness to the cinematography and an uncomfortable tussle of sympathies – director Carlota Pereda shows real promise as a genre film-maker.

It’s thuddingly predictable stuff that limps through a plot involving nefarious sex traffickers, treachery and a liberal smearing of Miami sleaze.

At moments, however, the pacing treads a fine line between stately and somnolent. What consistently mesmerises, however, is the lead performance by Krieps.

While the picture looks wonderfully atmospheric throughout, with its frostbitten monochromes and consumptive colour palette, the story disintegrates into a lurid and rather silly final act.

France is watchable, if not subtle, but the picture labours its message with an overstretched running time and an oddly anticlimactic structure.

It should be stressed that the problem doesn’t lie with Ackie necessarily, but rather with a leaden, by-numbers screenplay from Anthony McCarten, who brings to this film the same box-ticking approach he employed with Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody.

Filtering his immense contribution to cinema through a deceptively incidental lens, he once again reminds us that movie-making can be a profoundly humane endeavour; at once comedic, tragic and truthful.

In a chase picture that evolves into a war movie, the storytelling is propulsive, but it’s cheapened by crude and manipulative film-making choices.

There’s a sparseness and stillness to Max Walker-Silverman’s storytelling that is filled by Dickey’s terrific, lived-in performance and the brief spark of connection between two lonely people.

It’s an investment in time, certainly, but this profound and hopeful picture justifies every second of its three hours and 38 minute running time.

While the film is not particularly groundbreaking in its approach to the music documentary, it’s unusually candid and open in what it reveals about the cost of the creative process.

It’s enjoyable enough, but Peter von Kant is a curiously insubstantial adjunct that trades some of the swirling, savage currents of melodrama of the original – which placed a female fashion designer rather than a male film-maker at the centre of the intrigue – for a frothy, flippant archness.

A lumbering, humourless, tech-driven damp squib of a movie, this long-awaited (or dreaded?) sequel to one of the highest grossing films of all time builds upon the mighty flaws of its predecessor, delivering a patience-testing fantasy dirge that is longer, uglier and (amazingly) even more clumsily scripted than its predecessor, blending trite characterisation with sub-Roger Dean 70s album-cover designs and thunderously underwhelming action sequences. In water.

It’s one of the most exquisitely realised films of the year.

Ultimately, it’s the film’s sheer strangeness – that peculiarly magical, lapsed-Catholic sensibility that runs throughout all of Del Toro’s most personal works – that makes this sing and fly.

Schrader’s sensitive, unshowy approach to the directing choices is a smart decision; this is a film that is respectful of and in service to the stories of the women.

This is immensely enjoyable stuff.

There’s a languid kind of magic to Koberidze’s approach, which, with its enchanting score, digressive montages and sparse dialogue, has roots in silent cinema but also feels refreshingly and genuinely original.

There’s a feverish wildness to Corrin’s performance, while O’Connell unleashes the full force of his considerable charisma.

In the elegant balance of these seemingly incongruous elements, Guadagnino has outdone himself.

The real star? Johnson’s crisply mischievous screenplay, which crams in so many laughs you almost don’t notice the occasional plot holes.