Ben Hecht's sparkling script occasionally loses its way between the satire and the screwball romance, but is even more caustic about newspapermen than The Front Page.

The Personal History of David Copperfield feels, to a large degree, like a writer’s stunt. If you’re in a mildly irreverent mood (like Iannucci himself), you won’t complain too loudly about that.

It’s Woodard’s film from start to finish. She’s been great for three decades, but this is her best work yet.

Deadwyler shows us the essential truth of being Black in 1950s America: that it was a tightwire, living-on-tenterhooks ordeal. Frighteningly – and this may be Till’s most vital message – it’s a reality that exists even today.

Sirk turns all this into an extraordinary film about vision: sight, destiny, blindness (literal and figurative), colour and light; the convoluted, rather absurd actions (a magnificent repression?) tellingly counterpointed by the clean compositions and the straight lines and space of modern architecture.

The film isn’t heavy on earth science, yet these orange-tinted tide pools and shuddering protomammals indicate a strain of serious research. The world is a miracle and a gift in the movie’s eyes; it would be no small thing if audiences left with the same sense of wonderment.

It’s another fascinating entry in the director’s ongoing exploration of the sadistic and masochistic facets of human behavior.

But what comes before [the ending] is so overflowing with ideas – about the erasure of Black culture, our relationship with past traumas, and the underseen side of the moviemaking business – and so brimming with visual flair, it puts most other blockbusters in the shade. Spend two hours watching it and a couple more unpacking it – with or without that know-it-all mate.

The final screen outing for stars Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, this is a sparky but rather shallow story of emotional frailty in the Nevada desert.

A subtle, touching valedictory tribute to both Wayne and the Western in general.

While Finding Dory is definitely the kind of visual pleasure we’ve come to expect from Pixar, its storyline doesn’t always reach the heights of inventiveness upon which the gigantic animation studio has built its reputation. The film lacks the psychological probing of Inside Out, the existential ponderings of Wall-E, the gentle, stoic sadness of Up.

A sexless, inhuman film, whose power derives from a ruthless subordination of its content to the demands of telling a good story. A glossy, action-packed ritual which is fun to watch but superficial to think about.

Human Flow is rooted in specific current national and political situations, yet it offers a portrait of forced human movement and suffering that feels almost timeless.

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

A dream, indeed. Sure to delight foodies and cinephiles alike.

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.

Blank's special brand of ethnographic film documentary finds a curiously appropriate subject in that weirdest of all capsule cultures: the on-location film crew.

Modern cynicism and efficient acting hold the potential mushiness at bay, and the pair's picaresque odyssey through the Kansas dustbowl, during which they vie for control over their increasingly bizarre partnership, is admirably served by Laszlo Kovacs' marvellous monochrome camerawork.

The film clandestinely captures marauders in action while embedding itself in the imperiled home of aging farmer Michael Campbell. He's not the movie's ad hoc martyr, but something more compelling: a simple man whose fight for personal justice has matured into patriotism.

A brief appearance by The Zombies places the time of the season quite neatly, though London doesn't so much swing as creak eerily.

The hackneyed thieves-with-a-heart-of-gold trope is reinvigorated by the sharpness of the writing and Song’s Basset Hound charms. While Broker occasionally gets close to cloying, especially in its neat ending and jaunty score, Koreeda keeps it the right side of cutesy. It’s best enjoyed as a modern-day fairy tale – only, one where the abandoned baby sparks nothing but enchantment.

An open wound, Moss is terrific, yet Queen of Earth feels a touch brittle and precious, like the swirly pink-hued script Perry employs for his end credits. It’s a movie about not getting over it, as oppressive as that sounds.

Women Talking imagines female emancipation as an honest, raging, caring experience.

A sweet, shambling, supremely enjoyable road movie about two compulsive gamblers of very different stripes.

Working from a script by playwright Darci Picoult, Dosunmu fashions a tale that’s realistic, melodramatic and culturally specific (we spend as much time ogling colorfully patterned dresses as we do admiring Gurira’s endlessly expressive face), yet unmistakably archetypal.

Dank with the effluvia of a proudly unhygienic, sex-obsessed German teen, this frenetic adaptation of Charlotte Roche’s notorious 2008 best-seller is a standing dare to anyone who thinks the movies have gotten too tame.

As Amy, Anna Paquin proves again what an expressive, soulful actress she is, and Daniels' madcap dad is a winning study in hippy ingenuity and indefatigability.

Nature smiles upon Alamar, just as it did on the simple, unfussy charms of "The Black Stallion" some 30 years ago.