It's in between the lines that this movingly perceptive film scores a TKO.

In combining video, surveillance footage and her own 8mm family memories, Heart of a Dog quickly accesses a realm of ideas that vault it far higher than mere sentiment would allow.

Sure, Juror #2 appears to be yet another polished, predictable courtroom drama; the kind we got a lot of during the ’90s. But thanks to Eastwood and first-time screenwriter Jonathan A Abrams, it’s a deeply involving and thought-provoking new spin on the genre, which serves up a ripe moral quandary that goes deeper than anything John Grisham ever managed.

American Sniper is a superbly subtle critique made by an especially young 84-year-old.

Never has the thrum of distant lawnmowers taken on such inherent menace as their wasp-like buzzing in director Justin Kurzel’s latest Australian nightmare, Nitram.

Barely 17 when she had Thomas, she's more like a peer than a parent, enough so that their uncomfortable relationship starts to take on a smattering of sexual tension. There's a nagging vagueness to this aspect of the movie, one that's difficult to square with the opening claim that it's based on real events; at a certain point, you may wonder which events they mean.

Into the Inferno may be relatively minor Herzog — it’s sweet and rambling rather than laser-bolt intense like "Fitzcarraldo" or "Grizzly Man." But it is enormously satisfying, filled with wisdom, insight and molten lava.

The movie does have an air of cautiousness about it, trying so hard to be a respectful, definitive statement on WWII (and often succeeding) that it sometimes feels cadaverous.

It’s a quiet tragedy that’s rendered close to uplifting by its gentle grace and compassion.

The recreation of the murder and the subsequent investigation uses the techniques of an American thriller to gripping effect, though conspiracies are so commonplace nowadays that it's hard to imagine the impact it made at the time.

The movie exemplifies everything that was great and grating about the filmmaker’s artistry: his impeccable physical slapstick (see the boxing match) and his overreliance on embarrassing sentimentality; his intuitive understanding of the medium and frequent displays of the mammoth martyr complex that informed the comedian’s every move.

With his energised 2021 breakthrough Sweat, von Horn followed a young influencer grappling with the dark side of online life. This period piece offers a very different kind of female odyssey through a lonely and forbidding world. The result is harrowing but seriously impressive.

Serenity, wonderment and worry mix in this awe-inspiring, musical tour of the Earth’s waterways.

What makes Always Shine transcend, though, is its long-telegraphed yet still unexplained switcheroo — not exactly new to fans of "Mulholland Drive" (or even "Freaky Friday") but near-experimental in its implications, given the context of two women struggling to make their professional marks.

Cheaply made, disreputable, and blatantly anti-authority, it's a winner all the way, what with a stunningly laconic performance from Mitchum, white-hot night-time road scenes, and an affectionate but unsentimental vision of backwoods America rarely seen in cinema to this day.

Humane to the last, Earth Mama is a vital but all-too-rare exploration of Black motherhood struggling on the margins of American society. Hopefully, there’ll be many more to come.

It's easy to think of comics, especially time-tested ones like Rivers, as mechanical laugh-generators. Stern and Sundberg allow her to reveal the deep-rooted humanity of those ever-present quips, and the effect is humbling.

A punk call-to-arms about being yourself, this Joan Jett documentary vibrates with attitude and a true spirit of independence.

It’s a testament to the deftness and love with which Brian and Charles is made that its sweetness never becomes saccharine, and the eccentricity never feels forced. The result is a total delight – the surprise package of the year.

‘My problem is how to communicate better,’ Paik notes and this documentary might have dug a little deeper to communicate who this endearing man was beyond his artistic legacy. Still, it does an impressive job of showing why Nam June Paik was a brilliant artist who remains worth listening to

By the end of this most ominous lullaby, it’s clear that the film isn’t a puzzle meant to be solved—it’s an oblique return to childhood, to a time when there was no clear boundary between imagination and reality, when everything you didn’t understand was beautiful and terrifying in equal measure.

Eighth Grade is lovely work, lifted up by a timeless piece of indie wisdom: Keep it real, as cringe-inducing as that can be.

As a piece of London social history, Scala!!! is winningly leftfield and its spirit is wildly infectious. But you could watch it without having been within a thousand miles of this once-seedy corner of King’s Cross and still get a kick out of it.

For a study of human connection at its most honest and affecting, with two remarkable lead performances, Dragonfly is a powerfully striking experience.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is full of delights, poignant, peppery and plain life-enhancing. For anyone navigating the rocky journey into young adulthood, or any parent trying to help, it’ll feel like a hand stretched out in solidarity. Just like Judy Blume intended.

A cross-pollinated mixture of Hollywood-blockbuster bombast, Asian cool and '60s Vegas ring-a-ding swing.

Along with the film’s hippy-ish musings on the relationship between humans and the elements, it gives the film a moving, supernatural touch.

Johnson may not quite have Lubitsch's lightness of touch, but he puts an excellent cast through their paces with great verve, and the charm is as potent as ever.

Although Binoche is the film’s star, her presence is smartly muted, allowing us time and space to discover the world as she does, and providing room for complexity in considering the ethics of his character’s work and of Carrère’s film itself.

If co-directors Svetlana Zill and Alexis Bloom paint a sometimes confronting picture of the price of ‘free love’, that never tarnishes their subject. You’re left with the sense that she was a butterfly neither the Stones nor any of the other men in her life could ever trap – a fitting epitaph to a mercurial life.

There are subtler, more allusive films about stormy conflicts of the heart, but A Burning Hot Summer wisely knows when and how to surgically slice directly to the bone. It's a bad romance of the highest order.

It must be noted that Wrona, a director of uncommon promise, committed suicide at a festival where this film was playing. It’s impossible to know his private pain, but it seems like he got a lot of it up onscreen.

The film's strength lies in its depiction of surfaces, lacking the visual or intellectual imagination to go beyond its shrewd social and psychological observations and its moments of absurdist humour.

To be fair, the full impact probably depends on some prior Pasolini knowledge, but even those coming in fresh will appreciate a haunting portrait of an artist destroyed by the anticommunist prejudices he fought to tear down.

By the time Sorcerer gets around to its rain-soaked, rickety-bridge set piece, you’ll either be obsessed or fully checked out. Give yourself a chance to pick sides.

Overall, there aren’t many shades of gray in Hacksaw Ridge, but it’s a movie that fulfills its purpose with vigor, confidence and swagger, and those battle scenes are impossible to take your eyes off.

Filtering the fallout of Mexico's drug wars through the eyes of one stoic security guard, documentarian Natalia Almada (El General) avoids the head-on journalistic approach and emerges with something far more impressive: a piece of lyrical, sideways social reportage that still connects an astounding number of dots.

Land Ho! avoids schmaltz to get at that rarest of male timber: rekindled hearts.

There have been better animated sequels and more epic ones, but has there ever been a fluffier follow-up than this bouncy, buoyant caper starring at least half the nature world?

While the two leads are given every opportunity to impress, it’s the ensemble behind them who give proceedings heart and soul.

It's in the periphery of this daily minutiae that Covi and Frimmel work their neorealistic magic, turning what might have been a sappy maternal-awakening melodrama into a simplistic, genuinely sweet tribute to motherhood, Italian style.

Wang’s film feels less like an exposé than an eye-opener; a portrait of a reality that feels almost otherworldly in its distance and difference.

The solid script makes the most of the dilemmas and paradoxes of the couple's predicament; Philippe Rousselot's photography manages to be lyrical without becoming too cloyingly picturesque; and surprisingly (the only surprise in this craftsmanlike but unremarkable movie), it doesn't cop out at the end.

This Nosferatu is a worthy modern addition to a classic horror lineage. Get lost in its shadows.

These beasts awaken something within the people, making them kinder and more playful. If Kedi did the same for audiences, that wouldn’t be so bad.

Last Breath depicts a workplace where instead of fabricated conflict coming from villainous colleagues, a team of people are battling with their own souls while under extreme duress. Their conscientious solidarity forms an undercurrent that breathes oxygen into the heart of this moving thriller.

Modest, but immensely engaging.

It gets far closer to the sights, sounds, smells and rhythms of Soweto life than an entire Attenborough of white liberal movies. Needless to say, it's banned from SA cinema screens.

Empathetic, funny and myth-busting – there are 300,000 children and adults living with TS in the UK alone whose condition will be better understood for this film – it gives you permission to laugh at the situation while feeling only compassion for the man.

This is truly De Palma–ville, and the filmmaker’s remake of Alain Corneau’s tale of corporate bloodletting, "Love Crime" (2010), is a welcome return to the carnal shockers that he does so well.

The resulting film is beautifully crafted and, despite what Hitch might say, definitely cinematic.

Apart from the confetti-cannon finale, this isn’t the hackneyed stereoscopic where things burst through the screen, but an immersive front row and on-stage spot at Billie Eilish’s 2025 world tour.

This enjoyably mean-spirited black comedy set in a grand country house will have you wondering who your real friends are – and what they really think of you.

Uniquely weird, subtly macabre, and utterly compelling.

You can easily see why Ichikawa's vision of the 20th-century Japanese-lit landmark is considered definitive; the way he elevates the story's soap-operatic elements to a level of extraordinary sublimity makes the melodramatic seem positively majestic.

Sensation trumps cogitation-unsurprising in a Hollywood production-which doesn't negate the enduring allure of this beautiful bauble.

Sure, some of the plot twists are a bit labored, and there’s maybe a henchman too many—but, trust me, you’ll be too busy rooting for the superhero with a snout to care.

Admittedly, the dialogue could be sharper – a few too many zingers zonk out – but Normal goes about its carnage with such sincerity, it’s impossible to resist.

It swings with aplomb from moments of tenderness and lightness to tragedy and cruelty.

Turturro, writing and directing in a register light-years from his nebbishy turn in "Barton Fink," has a more sensual NYC indie in mind.

Yun is quite simply spectacular as a woman who holds steadfastly on to her dignity and empathy, even in the face of unspeakable tragedy.

Rather than an intrusive flashback to the most challenging aspects of the pandemic, it’s a gentle reminder to recognise the hardships we’ve overcome and appreciate the merit in nonlinear progress, even if it takes time.

Having a backstage view of the momentous trip to China adds color, but the real takeaway here is a tone of dawning tragedy, sourness sneaking into even the most innocuous of visual records.

If [it] doesn't feel quite as revelatory as Keep the Lights On (2012) or the heartbreaking Love Is Strange (2014), it still impresses you with its quiet, confident maturity.

Emotionally charged, Last Breath offers a forensic study of cold professionalism in the face of unfolding disaster. It’s deepened, too, by a rich cast of supporting characters, including Lemons’s fiancée in Scotland, the surface crew who recall the fateful night and his teary-eyed dive leader and mentor.

The film's targets multiply - workers' rights, racism, feminism - and for 1953 this is pretty amazing.

Unpacks the man's story with a dramatic flair that might be mistaken for Zoolanderiffic, if it weren't so aptly accessible.

An idiosyncratic romance, and a far lighter movie than is usual from Cassavetes. Detailing the problems that background and character bring to a relationship, he creates a captivatingly witty and sympathetic picture of a pair of misfits deciding to make a go of it together despite numerous incompatibilities and adversities.

It’s a movie that loves boldly “important” ’70s-style dust jackets, loves its own lecturing voice (courtesy of neurotic narrator Eric Bogosian) and somehow makes that mélange strangely appealing.

Notre-Dame on Fire is really good at conveying an iconic building’s place in a nation’s soul, and the grief that its potential loss can provoke. Most of its symbolism is well-earned and resonant.

Artfully lit and soundtracked by chirruping bugs and buzzing bees, the experience is so soothing that it’s easy to be caught out when the world’s distressing realities elbow in. But it speaks volumes for the power of its woozy spell that it’s so tough to see it broken.

Michael Jackson was obviously shooting for the moon right before his death, as you can tell from these stunning bits of concert spectacle.

Thank You for Your Service is as necessary as top-flight journalism.

Through some ingenious production design and costuming, Timestalker creates a time-hopping menagerie of madness, with Lowe centre stage and always game.

A title like that needs balls of brass to back it up. Luckily, this fiery college comedy from feature-debuting writer-director Justin Simien, loosely inspired by a series of scandalous black-face parties at all-white fraternities, is full of punchy intelligence and barely concealed anger.

Sorrentino explores these heavyweight themes with his usual wit and high style – as well as a standout soundtrack of haunting classic cues and Eurodance bangers. Surreal, comedic touches also prick the pomposity of La Grazia’s cloistered world.

You get why the pair would fall for each but you also get where the faultlines lie. Cullen maps it all out in an impressive, touching debut.

Its trick is to generate considerable suspense while withholding nothing from the audience. Its pleasures are not profound ones, but there’s enough dimensionality up on the screen to compensate. [2013 3D Release]

The story itself, a twisty, hard-to-keep-track-of tale of revenge and double and triples crosses, is not especially remarkable. But that barely matters when there’s such virtuoso image-making on display.

Quietly touching and profound, it epitomises the youthful delight Varda always shows for the tools at her disposal and her sensitive and easeful way of expressing the sways and shifts of life, love and desire.

After the self-satisfied The Gentlemen and the slick but sparkless Wrath of Man, it’s a nice reminder that at his best, Ritchie remains an accomplished teller of tall tales.

All in all, a superbly controlled exercise in the malevolent torments of despair.

Rocky is an old-fashioned fairytale brilliantly revamped to chime in with the depressed mood of the '70s. Although its plot - nonentity gets to fight the heavyweight champ - is basically fantasy, the film deftly manages to suspend disbelief by drawing back at its more implausible moments.

Nothing about The Spectacular Now feels easy or After-School Special, although it tidies up too much (the personal essay should be retired as a device).

From its mundane beginnings to its melancholy closing grace note, Microbe and Gasoline is such a wonderfully touching film because it remembers the urgency of wanting to get older without growing up.

It’s anchored by a dangerously glum performance by 21-year-old Ross Lynch, who becomes more interesting the more you watch him.

Merchant never loses our interest: He’s made a sparkly, strutting film that doesn’t apologize for or look down upon its heroes. A “soap opera in spandex” is what Hutch calls pro wrestling to his trainees, and the movie follows suit. Who doesn’t love a melodrama in tights once in a while?

It's a great package: salutary, short (74 minutes) and sweet.

Peckinpah's own control of the escalating frenzy is masterly; this is one of his coldest films, but a great thriller.

Forget the snark about him ransacking Eric Rohmer's bag of tricks; the gentle ironies and droll, bitter wit here prove Hong is the French New Waver's heir apparent.

The action scenes-blissfully easy to follow-are where Whedon makes the giant leap into the big leagues.

Breathtakingly risky but valid under scrutiny ... Jojo Rabbit isn’t perfect; sometimes it strains to reconcile Waititi’s more relaxed beats (“Let everything happen to you,” is a line from poet Rainer Maria Rilke that gets big play) with his visual fussiness. But he’s legitimately breaking new ground. It will find an audience that gets it.

Amazingly, Gere keeps it all together, via a kind of seething anti-rage that speaks reams to the character's survival instincts.

For all of its innumerable pleasures, however, The Forbidden Room can feel like too much of a good thing—premiering at Sundance, Maddin’s latest plays like a robust film festival unto itself.

It’s uncompromising. It’s disturbing. But it’s also deeply human, allowing for many glimpses of human kindness and human frailty beyond a wall of anonymity and pain.

Kalashnikov eschews submerging us in twisted metal and carnage. Instead, The Road Movie is a study of human nature under unusual circumstances, revealing the often stoic and nonchalant nature of the Russian character

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is one of those nice surprises, a so-called legacy sequel made with love and executed with flair. Think Top Gun: Maverick with better hats.

It’s a bold tilt into magical realism, but the effect is never jarring – rather, it’s a moving capstone to a film which argues that the act of remembering is itself a form of magic.