Only Pedro Almodóvar could wrap a cry of pain about Spain’s inability to come to terms with its recent dark history into a gorgeous-looking melodrama about two mothers drawn by fate into a complicated, painful and ultimately nourishing relationship.

It’s at once intimate and expansive – a film with a big heart and not a bad word to say about anyone.

Like Nomadland, another film that maps out rocky terrain with impressionistic grace, Hamnet is a deep-felt ode to loss and resilience. Zhao doesn’t just tell you about the healing power of art, she shows you. Prepare your tear ducts accordingly.

Subtly, the film draws you into the science. You’ll be nervously eyeballing ticking velocity numbers in the corner of the screen. But always, Apollo 11 is about people working together in a single-minded spirit of peaceful ambition.

There’s a once-in-a-lifetime feeling to the trio’s every interaction—not only as characters but as performers—that makes the film’s casually tragic climax that much more devastating.

Moonlight takes the pain of growing up and turns it into hardened scars and private caresses. This film is, without a doubt, the reason we go to the movies: to understand, to come closer, to ache, hopefully with another.

Like Barry Jenkins similarly set Medicine for Melancholy, The Last Black Man in San Francisco supplies positivity to the struggle.

Remains a primo example that cinema actually traffics in truthiness 24 frames per second.

Try to get Siegel’s masterful camera rise out of your head: gun-happy Harry looming over his jabbering perp, who screams like a stuck pig as the shot recedes high into a dense night fog. This is not a cop film. It’s a monster movie.

For all the clammy grip it exerts, this thrillingly original film is more interested in trapping you in its psychosexual maze and immersing you in the relatable pains of self-discovery.

French actor-filmmaker Jacques Tati’s 1967 masterpiece still holds up as a feast of subtle sight gags, playful noise and, above all, visual wonders.

The cumulative effect is so stunning and antithetical to anything Hollywood is doing at the moment – the equally audacious Barbie aside – that it feels like a completely different art form. And, frankly, hallelujah for that.

While it’s unspooling, The Souvenir feels like the only film in the world—the only one that matters.

By allowing viewers to step into the shoes of a wall-climbing Jackie Chan, a parkour-sprinting Daniel Craig or a bullet-spraying Ahnold, it does something that live action has never attempted before. The carnage flies—it’s possible to miss a lot of it. But if action movies are meant to be stunning, Hardcore Henry can proudly take its place among the giants. Even better, it lets you stand with them.

There’ll be moans from horrorheads that it’s not scary throughout, but in deepening his exploration of family life in the ‘burbs, Cregger sharpens his twisted scares to a dagger point. And the frights, when they come, really land.

A grippingly violent parable, a touching, tragic romance and – thanks to legendary cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and an unprecedented attention to historical detail – quite simply one of the most beautiful, immersive films ever made.

Wheatley, underplaying his stylishness, goes for a subtle national satire about geeks gone wild, and that’s the fun here: On as mild-mannered a vacation as two Brits might devise, a killer comes along—and, after a while, is politely welcomed in, the kettle simmering.

An unassuming masterpiece, nominally based on Hemingway's novel and set in Martinique during World War II, this is Hawks' toughest statement of the necessity of accepting responsibility for others or forfeiting one's self-respect - the sum total of morality for Hawks - and the perfectbridge from the free and open world of Only Angels Have Wings to the claustrophobic one of Rio Bravo.

The tunes, flooding every frame, remain perfect.

Polley has gone further into the thorny subject of forgiveness than any of her peers. Her movies ache with ethical quandary; Stories We Tell aches the most.

Wonderful stuff.

Set in the Broadway jungle rather than among the ‘sun-burnt eager beavers’ of Hollywood, Joseph L Mankiewicz’s film dissects the narcissism and hypocrisy of the spotlight as sharply as Wilder’s, but pays equal attention to the challenges of enacting womanhood.

It's a witty, exciting and deeply moving masterpiece.

On purely formal grounds (the ones on which the genre lives or dies), Kent is a natural. She favors crisp compositions and unfussy editing, transforming the banal house itself into a subtle, shadowy threat.

Enveloping you in its vintage folds, Peter Strickland's hypnotic horror film turns fashion into a death sentence.

The Coens nod at some familiar stylistic tropes – florid swearing, sexual euphemism, crusty, aged characters – but the film’s potency is rooted in quiet precision and detailed realisation.

It’s a sexy concept that will thrill Assayas neophytes, but the director’s longtime fans will find its pleasures virtually pornographic.

Brava, Mia! The exceedingly talented Ms. Hansen-Løve (the writer-director of Father of My Children) is sure to win many more fans with her latest feature, an incisive, exhilaratingly frank examination of l'amour lost.