It’s the casting of Moore, though, and her willingness to denude herself at 61 – emotionally, as well as physically – that gives The Substance a startling connection with its themes. Not for 30 years has she owned a film with anything like this certitude. Watching her confront the Demi Moore in the mirror, and do it so mercilessly, is extraordinary.

The film’s comedy is loose and generous, and its esprit de corps sneaks up on you with a soft tread.

Denis has made a spellbindingly mysterious object – as nonsensical as existence, maybe, until you give it a quarter-turn, and look again.

While Bill Skarsgård only fitfully impresses as Count Orlok in Robert Eggers’s chilling remake, Lily-Rose Depp proves she’s one to watch.

Deadwyler does magnificent work in it, making bold, risky choices to communicate a near-operatic range of emotion.

Gibney’s problem here, in a way, is his main point: the very lack of transparency about these missions, which operate in ill-defined spheres of international law, obstructs informed public discussion.

For Hollywood’s armies of unsung craftsfolk, Nope turns the blockbuster rules on their head: an expansive science-fiction thriller whose heroes rise up and claim their heroism from behind the scenes. For the rest of us, it’s an outrageously good time.

What a multiple swansong and beautiful accident The Misfits is.

The Shootist is a fitting memorial to a great star – and leaves his image indelibly fixed on our imagination.

Navigates tricky emotional territory with a perceptiveness and tact that isn’t just great storytelling, but could be a real comfort to parents and children alike who unexpectedly see themselves in Dory’s plight.

Human Flow makes a virtue of its vastness, creating an epic tapestry of souls that stretch from as far away as Syria, Kenya and Burma to the Calais ‘Jungle’ encampment on Britain’s doorstep.

With a dearth of psychoanalysis, the jazzy pace barely lets up, but the result - essentially an Allen stand-up show that just happens to be set in the middle of a fascistic, architecturally stunning future society - is no less seminal for its slapstick ebullience: a lesson that the pursuits of making art and making a complete idiot out of yourself are not mutually exclusive.

Only about once every two or three years does a horror-thriller as good as Longlegs lope into view. It crackles with eerie dread. Nested away is perhaps the most terrifying performance of Nicolas Cage’s career – among the funniest, too.

Robertson gives himself and his actors time to ponder the board and build convincing relationships and tensions: he’s especially deft around his younger performers, allowing them to register as distinct, often defiant personalities.

All his usual strengths fail him in a different culture here, perhaps because the veneer of venal cynicism that ought to be the film’s top layer is so easy to scratch through. Digging for the pathos hardly takes us long, especially with one of the director’s most cloying scores handing over a shovel.

Serious as Paddington is about meaning something, it’s even more serious about the business of having fun.

Despite a morose colour palette that can feel a little eat-your-vegetables at times, the film is beautifully performed and gripping in a chewy, nuanced, contemplative way – as its title suggests, the talking, as well as the thinking it kindles, is the point.

From its unshowy script on down, Mississippi Grind is content to rumble along as a character piece, keeping its storytelling loose and unpredictable, like a repeat flick of the dice.

Director Bob Clark, fresh (if that's the word) from the juvenile high jinks of Porky's and Porky's II, oversees a rather more family-friendly outing with this charmingly nostalgic, Forties-set comedy in which nine-year-old Ralphie (Peter Billingsley) is very specific - in a believably nine-year-old way - about what he wants for Christmas. [01 Dec 2012, p.36]

Vengeance has powered countless movies over the years, but rarely can it have been given such a thorough – and thoroughly entertaining – showcase as it gets in Wild Tales.

Other directors might have escalated this into the zone of outright horror, with gory payback awaiting. Not Green, who has the level intent of keeping it chillingly real.

The chase sequences with government agents are tame but the film builds to a tense (and witty) conclusion at the Cheyenne Mountain nuclear bunker in Colorado Springs.

The film depends on a performance from Stewart in which she’s virtually never off-screen or less than riveting.

Favreau’s film is a sincere and full-hearted adaptation that returns to Kipling for fresh inspiration, but also knows which elements of the animation are basically now gospel, and comes up with a respectful reconciliation of the two.

It may not be truthful – but, my God, the result is thrilling.

Baumbach packs his film with the wit and vigour of a polished one-act play, right down to a climax which wants us to notice how much juggling he’s doing with his ideas.

The scenario is so familiar it could have been the same old story, but the texture of all this street life gives it rather a special shine.