The real strength of Cohen’s occasionally didactic drama, though, is in the way the film redirects your focus to the periphery and reminds you of the richness that resides there. It was an achievement Bruegel mastered early on. And it’s what makes Museum Hours its own work of art.

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.

The impressively lean script by Alex Garland (28 Days Later) is shorn of almost all superfluity beyond a few dud Schwarzeneggeresque kiss-offs, while Anthony Dod Mantle's sensational widescreen cinematography harkens back to the tension-inducing inventiveness of early John Carpenter.

What begins as a spirited but safely familiar pastiche of John Hughes and Wes Anderson is compelled to become its own thing, Gomez-Rejon’s film embracing the most tired tropes of stereotypical YA weepies so that it can kiss them goodbye.

If you’ve had a hard day and want to watch something to restore your sense of justice in this world, then Braven has all the boxes well and truly ticked.

As a sequel, it works for the same reasons that make The Empire Strikes Back so many people’s favourite Star Wars film: there’s a darkness, a bleakness, that makes the fist-pumping moments feel all-the-more earned.

If you're even slightly interested in folk music, there will be something here to simmer that curiosity into a full-on boil: the Arabic trip-hop stylings of monomonikered rapper-singer Raiz, raspy Pietra Montecorvino's Stevie Nicks–like dance tunes, a gorgeous sax solo from local jazz legend James Senese.

Inventive, incisive and full of affection for the originals, this is easily the most fun the series has been since Scream 2.

Brilliantly atmospheric San Francisco settings, memorably bizarre supporting performances, a superb use of subjective camera (much more effective than in Lady in the Lake) throughout the entire first third of the film.

The storytelling is brisk, though the wealth of events and characters means you have to let yourself go with the flow. But Gangs of Wasseypur is always compelling, and Bajpai’s charisma means there’s always a colorful presence at the heart of the drama long after the endless hail of bullets has grown tiresome.

[Arcel's] crafted a kind of Danish The Last of the Mohicans that’s full of passion and political conviction. It should stand the test of time almost as well as its rugged hero.

Writer-actors Tim Key and Tom Basden’s three-hander, set on a remote British isle, have delivered a rare blend of unkempt charm, emotional precision and soulful folk music with this feature-length expansion of their own 2007 short, The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island.

Focusing on the personalities rather than the historical context, directors Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville illustrate how both men’s lives were changed by the debates, and how neither could let it go even decades later. The result is perhaps better suited to TV than the big screen, but it’s a timely, thoughtful piece of work.

Like Crazy proves it's still possible to make a love story that's both genuinely sweet and bittersweet.

If you’re looking for a more granular account of the Oxy epidemic and its perpetrators, Emmy-nominated miniseries Dopesick and investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe’s bestseller ‘Empire of Pain’ both have your back. But All the Beauty and the Bloodshed plots a slightly different kind of narrative: one that’s full of defiance and emotion.

Ultimately, Jenkins teases out a fascinating theme of black identity shaped and altered by sales and evolving tastes.

It doesn’t seem new for them, yet as super polished, mannered, slightly surreal comedies go, the movie feels as rare as a unicorn.

Still Bill gives the onetime R&B superstar ample space to air his tough yet warmhearted worldview, and to demonstrate its daily application.

Immaculately composed yet skittish, edgy and surprising, this impressive debut by writer-director Michael Pearce emanates a chill that will have you hugging your sides.

Certainly, it is one of the finest movies to deal with the plight of those thousands of immigrants who travelled in steerage to Ellis Island at the turn of the century.

Like Aftersun on a gallon of SunnyD, this warm and freewheeling comedy-drama about a girl connecting with the dad she’s never met proves that working-class stories don’t have to be all misery and angst. Sometimes, that kitchen sink can be filled with bubbles.

Only 20 minutes in and you’re not going to think of another lead who could pull off this kind of reckoning — tangy, furious and about to become whip-smart.

When violence eventually rears its ugly head again, the effect is as anticlimactic as the movie’s title is misleading. Brief bliss is a red herring; there’s only a lifetime of pain left in such acts’ wakes.

Polanski has made a genre piece with a verve and vitality that’s in sadly short supply.

Totally uncompromising and grindingly repetitive, the film nevertheless accumulates a kind of hallucinatory groove, with unexpected shafts of bizarre humour and vigorous, experimental new wave direction.

What comes across loud and clear is that 13TH is a serious, timely, important work with highways and byways of thought that are worth traveling for anyone who cares to understand why, as DuVernay argues, slavery didn’t end with slavery.

More often than not, September 5 feels like a great 1970s thriller that could only have been made in the 21st century.

The film sits somewhere between the bogus virtue of Kramer's The Defiant Ones and the poetry of Laughton's Night of the Hunter, combining racial intolerance with the nightmares of childhood, born out of Kennedy's stand on civil rights and Martin Luther King's marching.