French director Léonor Serraille’s debut film could easily have been unbearably twee. The fact that it isn’t, at all, is a tribute both to her unsentimental storytelling, and to the prickly strength of Laetitia Dosch’s central performance.

It’s quietly absorbing and fitfully shocking as we experience the sights, sounds and smells of the streets where a one-year-old child can wander around alone without anyone stopping to wonder why.

Director Nora Twomey’s film is about the ways we try to cradle each other from the harsher realities of life. This is a day-to-day survival story that stirs the heart and fires the imagination.

Kubrick himself rarely spoke about his work – which means this is a valuable insight into Kubrick's character and filmmaking process, as well as a frank look at what it means to give up your life to work at the side of a difficult creative genius.

Both a slow-burn suspense drama and an intriguing enigma, his film is beautifully executed throughout: the three lead performances are all spot on, while Mowg’s jazzy score and Hong Kyung-pyo’s immaculate camerawork fit the shifting moods to perfection.

There are powerful and enlightening scenes, and there’s a catchy energy to the battlefield action. But the immediacy and credibility of the women’s mission feels compromised by one-too-many corny moments, unconvincing dialogue and a sense of uncertainty on Husson’s part over whether she wants to take a poetic or realist approach to her tale.

Veering from blaxploitation spoof to undercover thriller and ending with a no-punches-pulled real-life coda, it’s riotous fun one minute, savagely biting the next.

One of the many powerful things about The Image Book is how it so aggressively rejects any sort of gloss or neat packaging. The telling is the story.

As Farhadi casts his roving, distracted eye over this unhappy community, sharing his story in a choppy, documentary style, it ends up feeling like a curiously detached exercise, more academic than wholly satisfying.

The Polish filmmaker has conjured a dazzling, painful, universal odyssey through the human heart and all its strange compulsions. It could be the most achingly romantic film you’ll see this year, or just a really painful reminder of the one that got away.

With a rich, textured plot in which things are never quite what they seem, Rohrwacher paints a magical portrait of the decay of rural life, intertwining the past and the present in a work that is as exhilarating as it is sublime.

It’s not that you can’t see what Von Trier is getting at, it’s just you wish he’d get there quicker and without all the desecrated bodies. For most of its hefty runtime, The House That Jack Built is just a slog.

Inventive and anarchic, but by no means Gilliam’s masterpiece, Quixote reminds us of the romantic ideal that the world needs dreamers who dare to defy convention.

Boasting excellent performances all round (with the writer-director once again demonstrating his expertise with children), Shoplifters is another charming, funny and very affecting example of Kore-eda’s special brand of tough-but-tender humanism.

Newcomer Fonte is terrific in the lead role, communicating Marcello’s meek protests with a twitchy physicality that grows slowly into a sketchy defiance.

Ron Howard has come through with a frisky space caper that zips along like a speeder on a bed of air. It’s far from perfect, but it’s much better than it has any right to be.

It’s not a bad movie, by any means, but it strains to turn a seriously introspective story into something cinematic.

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.

The plot takes a timely turn toward homegrown terrorism, and even as cinematographer Alexander Dynan amasses ominous clouds, the film’s break from head-bound matters is a tonic.

It all adds up to a pleasant diversion, but you might wish this cinematic bonbon offered something closer to a meal.

The ambition of Under the Silver Lake is worth cherishing. It will either evaporate into nothingness or cohere into something you’ll want to hug for being so wonderfully weird.

It’s a long movie and when its star isn’t on screen and cracking wise, the boundary-pushing shocks and endless self-references wear thin. Still, if you’re the Deadpool fanatic who recently had Reynolds’s name tattooed on his arse, you definitely won’t be grumbling.

There’s no escaping the fact that this is a nasty, vicious little film – the climax is startlingly unpleasant. But with its sharp dialogue, beautifully streamlined story and fistful of surprises, the Mel haters are going to have to find another brickbat for now.

It’s a strange mix: the posturing of the younger boys is funny, but behind their literal dick measuring is the threat of violence.

What’s interesting about Revenge is that it’s told from a female perspective – and by a female filmmaker.

There is some freaky fun here. Niccol’s food for thought leaves a lingering taste.

The Cure’ has to be the first to reanimate corpses as a means of examining Ireland’s post-Troubles tensions. It’s a bold idea – and a good one – even if it never fully pays off in a ploddingly predictable final act.

While this has its pleasures, it feels more like a doc you’d watch on terrestrial TV rather than seek out in the cinema.