Appropriately operatic, Chen's visually spectacular epic is sumptuous in every respect. Intelligent, enthralling, rhapsodic.

You’ll get several movies for the price of a single ticket in Ryan Coogler’s (Creed) period drama-thriller-romance-musical Sinners. And while some of these disparate elements are more successful than others, the combination is audacious enough to leave you simultaneously awed and overwhelmed by his outsized ambitions.

Few cinema artists have delved into their own lives and emotions with such ruthlessness and with such moving results.

This intelligent, honest documentary explores his complex personality without getting tacky or tabloidy, or ignoring McQueen’s dark side.

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.

Actor-turned-director Olivia Wilde (shockingly, this is her behind-the-camera feature debut) shows off something rarer than technique or comic timing. She’s got loads of compassion and has somehow managed to make a high-school movie without villains.

Tragically, desperately funny: this adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's novel is John Huston's best film for many years.

The cast lend the film an authority that Yates' curiously pedestrian approach fails to provide, and Mitchum's agonies over codes of underworld honour segue perfectly into his subsequent explorations of loyalty and obligation in The Yakuza.

With no formal film training, Satter has crafted a claustrophobic thriller packed with such nail-biting tension there should be an emergency manicurist waiting outside each cinema.

Perhaps marginally less beguiling than Great Expectations, but still a moving and enjoyable account of Dickens' masterpiece, which gets off to a memorable start with Oliver's pregnant mother battling through the storm to reach the safety of the workhouse.

Quietly epic and sad but never sentimental.

Much will depend on how far you’re willing to go with the wild swings the film takes in its second half, but if you’re down for a trip, Sirat is The Wages of Fear meets The Vanishing on shrooms; startlingly original, jarringly hilarious and deeply disturbing.

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.

Admirers of Playtime won't be too disappointed, but for the Tati heretic it's a long, slow haul between the occasional brilliant gag.

For all Kurosawa's splendidly colourful recreation of 16th century Japan, and though Nakadai's performance is impressive enough, it's all ultimately rather empty and tedious; it could easily have been cut by almost an hour, while the grating Morricone-like score only serves to underline the fact that the director fails to achieve the emotional force of his finest work.

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.

[Farhadi and cowriter Mani Haghighi] prove to be stronger on atmosphere than on structure, aided by crisp, unnerving camerawork.

Inevitably softened by hints of self-congratulation concerning the success of Woodward and Bernstein's uncovering of the Watergate affair, Pakula's film is nevertheless remarkably intelligent, working both as an effective thriller (even though we know the outcome of their investigations) and as a virtually abstract charting of the dark corridors of corruption and power.

The movie's success lies in Huston's very sure manipulation of mood and tone, somehow connecting black comedy, tongue-in-cheek acting, heavy irony, and even high camp into a coherent story.

The supporting cast is flawless, with a special mention owed to Brad Dourif as poor, doomed Billy Bibbit. But the script lacks the woozy, otherworldly subtlety of Kesey’s book, relying instead on pop psychology and finger-pointing: once again, it turns out women are to blame for pretty much everything.

The abiding memories of Don't Look Back are lack of privacy, dull cliques, stumble-drunkenness, very insecure British artists (Price, Donovan), and Dylan's bored, amused sparring with anyone trying to point him in the direction of Damascus.

The film’s subject is almost too horrible to contemplate, but it finds a way to space out the blows without softening them.

It remains as intelligent and provocative as ever, bearing years of conceptual dreaming.

Occasionally too busy and loose with its logical rigor, Toy Story 4 doesn’t quite connect all the dots. Still, the film earns a distinct spot in the chain, foregrounding Bob Pauley’s pristinely lit production design, one that showcases a kaleidoscopic carnival and a dusty antique shop swarming with hilariously nightmarish ventriloquist dummies.

The story is a complex and potentially ongoing one – Simmons has since moved to Bali, which has no extradition treaty with the US, while Reid has offered an apology of sorts – but its takeaways are much easier to parse: women like Dixon must be believed, empowered and supported. On the Record isn’t an easy watch but it’s an important one.

The White Ribbon comes dangerously--wonderfully?--close to playing like an evil-kid flick.

Graced with a throbbing orchestral score from Philip Glass and John Bailey’s luminous photography, this is appropriately monumental filmmaking.

Surprisingly dry and droll. Aldous Huxley's contribution to the script undoubtedly helped, but it is the cast which carries it.