It might manifest as a straightforward historical documentary, but the fascinating, hypnotic Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat unfolds into something much deeper – and more sinister.

As each character veers between confidence and awkwardness, it feels credible but doesn’t dig terribly deep.

You’d need an army of flying monkeys to find a Wicked fan with a grumble about this film.

But for all its flaws, it’s a colossally entertaining ride that never stints on its efforts to wow you with its scale and spectacle.

The Piano Lesson strikes a perfect balance, showing us that the past isn’t just about trauma but is laced with moments of jubilance. It’s cathartic and moving – a reminder that strength and survival go hand in hand.

Most of all, it’s a colourful journey lit up with great tunes and a deep love of music – an ingenious, infectious new spin on the music doc.

It’s a moving, challenging watch.

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.

It’s a tremendously enjoyable type of horror, full of giggle-inducing jump scares, but sending you off with some intelligent questions to gnaw on.

It’s the two characters with no dialogue at all, Gromit and Feathers, who steal the show – a pair of silent cinema-style adversaries sparring in another joyfully Aardman nostalgic caper.

A film made with cold courage by the victim of a sexual assault, this gripping Japanese documentary plays like a ’70s conspiracy thriller.

While Nightbitch accurately depicts the mundanity of motherhood, you can’t help but wish it dug a little deeper into the devaluation of women once they become parents, rather than just holding a mirror.

It’s an extremely moving and deeply affecting drama about a woman’s persistence in the face of overwhelming odds.

It’s tamer than its deeply unsettling predecessor, but still unhinged enough to keep you nicely on edge.

McQueen isn’t questioning the courage or endurance of the city and its people through these brutal days. But he is probing our relationship with this over-lionised period of our history, though, and finding it hopelessly romanticised. Maybe it’s time, his flawed but hard-hitting film suggests, to lift the curfew on looking it afresh.

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

An experienced SNL staff writer might have infused the script’s basic nostalgia with deeper knowledge. But when Reitman does take chances, it’s an exhilarating success.

Don’t expect too many boundaries to be pushed – that’s not Park’s intention here – but settle in for plenty of big laughs and relatable truths.

A mid-way twist seems like it’s going to up the ante but the film ultimately drops the ball in the final act, where there is a lot of huff and puff (Fire! Demons! Body horror!) but little in the way of a satisfying conclusion. Ironically, Never Let Go becomes less interesting the more untethered it gets.

Is Schimberg most interested in Cronenbergian horror? Psychological thrills? Darkly comic surreality? He’s gotten so much right that one more pass at the script could have pushed him to where he wants to be. But without a rock-solid core, A Different Man eventually succumbs to an insurmountable crisis of identity.

It’s consistently pretty entertaining, even if it takes a while to get going.

My Favourite Cake is radical and heartwarming. Above all, it’s a reminder that in a world where everyone is scrutinised and judged, pure love remains timeless.

It’s a story of dehumanisation, children in cages, and the blurting, vote-craving policy-making of government by id – and it’s shattering to experience.

I’m Still Here takes you right into the machinery of a repressive regime, showing just enough of its dank jail cells and casual cruelties without overwhelming its deeper story of loss.

As an argument for how urgent and powerful photography can be, and the debt we owe Miller for the lengths she went to take those images, Lee wins hands down.

Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga bring music but zero merriment to a bold and often brilliant sequel.

Queer may be flawed, but its naked approach to such a raw subject, coupled with a remarkable lead performance, makes it a trip worth taking.

The Brutalist is a major work of art that asks something from its audience but gives back in spades.

The hot Latin lovers have been replaced by pink snow, and the homoeroticism has been dialled down, but this is Almodóvar’s America and it’s a delight.

A deliciously barbed, but wise and ultimately hopeful investigation of female sexual desire, marriage and modern power dynamics that takes a hundred touchpoints, from ’80s erotic thrillers to the indie candour of Sex, Lies and Videotape and Secretary, and does something completely new with them.

A brooding, muscular FBI procedural that occasionally explodes into Point Break-y action, Aussie director Justin Kurzel’s (Snowtown) true-life thriller delves, pungently and topically, into the inner workings of white nationalism in America before deciding that squealing tyres and shootouts are a lot more fun.

It's first and foremost a teenage coming-of-age tale​, 65 electric minutes​ ​packed with financial hardship, racial demonisation and reggae.

There’s much to admire here, but with Legge’s keen eye for the technical side of cinema stronger than his narrative impulses, LOLA ultimately has to go down as an ambitious failure.

Still, powered by its own helter-skelter momentum and the wild-eyed Keaton, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice just about holds all its macabre threads together. It’s not Burton at his very best, but like its fiendish antihero, it does the trick.

This enjoyable biopic offers a loving and affectionate portrait of Callas that never airbrushes her foibles.

Savage directs with a light hand, and sometimes you wish for a little more shape to the baggier scenes.

The film is at its best when it’s sitting just with them, not doing much, not trying too hard to be eccentric; just shooting the breeze and being cheerfully weird.

Kravitz expertly flits between tension, horror, black comedy and social satire, sometimes delivering all four simultaneously. It’s a film about the abuses of power, the dangers of being a woman in a man’s world and the importance of female solidarity, but is never didactic, just gripping.

This analogue noir set in central China evokes satisfying memories of Bong Joon-ho’s great Korean crime thriller Memories of Murder.

Like its xenomorphs, Romulus is best when it’s single-minded, streamlined and ferocious. See it on IMAX and hold on tight.

It’s far from a total failure, however, and although Kokotajlo doesn’t feel entirely at home in the horror genre, he is clearly a talent to be reckoned with.

The dog of the title – a sinewy, reputedly rabid greyhound mix – offers Lang a foil and a path to rediscovering his sense of self. Their snappy early encounters give way to a deepening bond; two solitary souls forming one of the most touching on-screen relationships of the year.

Better Things creator Pamela Adlon’s directorial debut deftly juggles fast-paced anecdotal comedy with rich, moving character work, while upending pregnancy myths with the ferocity of a woman stamping on her oppressive breast pump. Scene-stealing work from the likes of Sandra Bernhard, John Carroll Lynch and Elena Ouspenskaia layer up the sense that, in the world of Babes, every life is a tiny miracle.

After the nuance of what comes before, it’s annoying that the knottiness vanishes in an ending that wraps everything up in a neat bow.

Tuesday is not a film about dying, but about the choices the living make when confronted with profound loss. It doesn't break your heart as much as help put it back together.

Can a movie leave you with a comedown? If it’s as raucous and unruly as Kneecap, a nonstop blizzard of beats, bumps of white powder and punky defiance of the British and Belfast’s sectarian past, the answer’s a firm ‘yes’.

Kensuke’s Kingdom feels like a throwback – for better and worse. While some of its classical animation is pleasant, the story of a young boy bonding with a former Japanese soldier can feel schmaltzy and obvious.

There are strong shades of Bo Burnham’s 2018 movie Eighth Grade here. That’s not to call Dídi derivative at all, but to say that it nails that high-school yearning to be cool and complete lack of any idea how to get there, making things worse for yourself with every attempt.

Still, cumbersome plotting aside, there’s enough gory mayhem and genuine zingers to make Deadpool & Wolverine a fun ride in a packed and up-for-it cinema.

Crossing takes all of us down paths that even the shrewdly observant Lia would be unable to predict, but that she’d be the first to appreciate. ​It's a heartbreaker in all the best ways.

With its peppy cast, streamlined story and about a bazillion pixels’ worth of VFX cyclones to sweep you back in your seat, it’s a fun and refreshingly old-school night at the pictures.

Far from a slick, record-label-sanctioned promotional film, blur: To the End is a fly-on-the-wall look at a band coming to terms with themselves and their shared history and destiny.

Thelma is neither as funny nor as Marmite-y as Little Miss Sunshine, a kindred spirit in the quirky indie realm, but its light shines in myriad little character beats.

Mike Cheslik’s Hundreds Of Beavers is that rare thing in the current film landscape: a genuine cult classic.

Yu, an assistant director on Bong Joon-ho’s Okja, shows a similar taste in dark comedy as the Korean master – personal anxieties externalised in instances that can turn from horrific to funny in their absurdity.

Even with its two A-list stars as jet boosters, Fly Me To The Moon’s bloated runtime and messy plotting mean that it doesn’t quite make it beyond the Kármán line. Then again, the art of the formulaic romcom isn’t rocket science. Houston, we have a likeable, if somewhat forgettable romcom – and that’s okay.

It’s artfully shot, the aspect ratio tightening claustrophobically as it flashes back to the 1970s. But Perkins’s script also sprinkles in sudden shocks, deeply macabre moments and slashes of dark humour to generate a deep unease all of its own.

In his debut big-screen performance, the warm-hearted and witty Patel – like Aysha – steals the show.

Genre fans will admire the ceaseless mayhem of this rare Indian entry to the carnage canon. It’s not The Raid, or even this year’s Monkey Man, but it’s got some slick moves of its own.

With no Ghibli film in the offing (although My Neighbor Totoro is getting a UK cinema re-release in August), The Imaginary is an often delightful way to fill the anime gap.

Super skilled and eminently likeable, Nyong’o is a saving grace in the eye of the storm.

With MaXXXine, writer-director Ti West concludes his Mia Goth horror trilogy (following X and Pearl) with a thrilling slasher that’s both fond neon tribute to the genre’s ’80s gory heyday and a brisk, smart look at the role of women and power in Hollywood.

It charts an unexpected success story that leaves you hopeful others will embrace its lessons.

Like some of the ’50s and ’60s biker flicks it homages, The Bikeriders runs out of gas in a predictable final reel that never quite delivers the promised heartache. Still, it’s an intelligent and strikingly photographed film, a journalistic but romantic snapshot of a moment in time lost forever.

The issues are so profound, in fact, with such implications for the human existence, a single film could hardly scratch the surface. Yet Eternal You is a very good way to start digging.

It could all come across as terribly zany, or sentimental. But Baker’s writing and direction has a near-hallucinatory sparseness to it.

It is engagingly played by a cast including Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington and Luke Wilson, and handsomely mounted too, with Costner’s vision of the West’s untamed grandeur fully deserving the big-screen treatment.

Sasquatch Sunset’s mood sits somewhere between the queasy surreality of Jim Hosking’s The Greasy Strangler and the winsome daftness of Daniels’ Swiss Army Man. It’s easy to see this following in the (big)footsteps of those and acquiring its own cult following.

It’s hard to understand the emotions coursing through Marvin’s body, as it’s wrapped in gaffer tape or barbed wire in a series of improvised exercises in fashion-as-armour. She admits to fear, but never to doubt as she embarks on her single-minded mission to subvert Russia's remorselessly anti-LGBTQ+ agenda.

With enjoyable characters and smart dialogue, French-Canadian director Monia Chokri makes her dilemma a very entertaining ride.

Sing Sing’s most affecting quality is its commitment to reality over shock value. With Domingo masterfully anchoring the ensemble, it’s never bogged down by the specifics of the men’s crimes.

The result is an empathetic, emotionally candid treat – Pixar’s own brains trust back at full capacity.

It’s rare for something this necrotic to feel this fresh.

Watching this sturdy, sensitively acted Old West drama, it’s easy to wonder how many westerns Viggo Mortensen would have made if he’d been kicking about in the ’50s and ’60s.

It’s a bleak, brooding tale, steeped in folk mythology and infused with so much atmosphere you may feel the fog closing in around you in the cinema.

The film is at its most entertaining when it’s a showcase for Smith and Lawrence’s easy chemistry, whether improvising a Reba McEntire country song to appease some rednecks or bantering about Burnett’s bad eating habits during a convenience store hold-up. They’re eminently watchable. Then again, when the highlight of an action movie fourthquel comes with the two stars watching a younger man do his stuff, it might be time to call it a day.

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.

It clocks in at three hours but not a scene feels superfluous as its central quartet – dad, mum, two teenage daughters – squabble, fall out and finally implode in a subversive final act.

Santosh positions its protagonist as a fundamentally decent woman in an impossible situation, rather than a crusading cop on mission. If ‘Training Day with more grey areas’ sounds dull, it’s anything but.

Bertrand Bonello’s sci-fi epic-cum-period-romance-cum-stalker-thriller is absolutely teeming with ideas. That they don’t all come together in an entirely convincing way doesn’t spoil the overall effect of something thought-provoking, very handsomely made, and appealingly weird.

Motel Destino never deviates radically enough from that tried-and-tested Postman template to throw up too many surprises. The result is frisky but fleeting.

Sorrentino is clearly trying to move with the times – even if he’s still most comfortable in the decades he’s depicting here on screen.

Imagine Pedro Almodóvar directing Sicario and you’re close to the tenor of this exuberant cartel-thriller-stroke-musical – which, as if those elements weren’t heady enough, comes with a tender trans twist.

Rumours is a strange brew, but there’s a lot of fun to be had if you like its flavour.

It shouldn’t all be so funny, but it is, and it’s to Baker’s huge credit that he’s able to inspire laughs and huge enjoyment from this madcap story without leaving you feeling that the woman at the heart of this mess has been short-changed and exploited for our pleasure.

A cinematic Rorschach test, it’s more likely to reaffirm your views on the man than challenge them.

As a storyteller Cronenberg usually tells stories with more verve and storytelling power than this.

Its bitty flashback approach to Fife’s earlier life feels shallow, and the dynamics around the recording of his memories too often feel bogus, with Thurman’s character’s complaints feeling especially repetitive and one-note. But the sting of mortality is felt just strongly enough, and Schrader offers an unsentimental, clear-eyed view of the near-impossibility of finding a neat closure on life’s mistakes and failures.

Some who found his last two films an eccentric romp might end up feeling like some of the unfortunate folk in this – bruised, battered and stuck – but anyone who shares Lanthimos’s pleasure at swatting his humans like flies will surely extract wry pleasure from it.

As a supernatural chiller, In Flames finds itself undermined by its own everyday horrors.

As history, I’d take this account with a pinch of salt – it feels too enamoured by certain elements of its antihero’s story and blinkered to others – but as an exercise in capturing the man’s self-engineered legend, it’s energetic and engrossing.

Still, if his doc is as toothless as Cookie Monster 2.0, it’s still a nostalgic treat to spend time with the man who gave us Kermit, Big Bird and the Goblin King.

Caught by the Tides is more a montage of music and miscellaneous episodes than anything representing a traditional drama. It’s strongly propelled by music – from Chinese classical music to techno to rock – and it’s a heady visual mix of styles and formats: from grainy, phone-like footage in a documentary style, to much more pristine and considered imagery.

The tone is incredibly specific – darkly funny, exuberant, sad and enraged – and the small cast nails it.

Given the ingredients (the deeply personal vision; a cast including Driver, Aubrey Plaza and Laurence Fishburne; the big budget; the years of gestation), it’s fair to wonder why it ends up being, one, so little fun, and two, so deadening on an intellectual level.

If ever a film puts its arm round a kid and says: ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got you’, that’s Bird and Bailey. She’s a character you feel Arnold would lie on railtracks to protect – and that’s a powerful, moving instinct to share.

A near non-stop cycle of batsh*t stunts, slathered with enough grease, oil, fire and sand to leave you gasping for air.

It’s just a shame we couldn’t go further into his universe to lift this portrait further out of the landfill of mediocre concert documentaries. For now, you may need to stick to Instagram Live and TikTok for a deeper glimpse into who Montero is.