Alex Godfrey

On the surface, this is a very tense and very funny comedy of manners. Underneath all that, though, is a sad, incisive, brilliantly drawn study of a failing marriage.

A slight but consistently entertaining, thoroughly funny slice of life, this is Ben Wheatley untethered, letting off steam with a workout. It is a welcome carnival of misanthropy.

In years to come, when this appears on TV late at night, it’ll be impossible to switch off. It’s just one of those films. A stone-cold, instant classic.

War is hell, and Warfare refuses to shy away from it. Free of the operatics of most supposed anti-war films, it’s all the more effective for its simplicity. It is respectfully gruelling.

The most batshit music biopic since Todd Haynes did the Karen Carpenter story with Barbie dolls, Michael Gracey pulls off the biggest cinematic surprise of the year. An absolute blast. 

It’s all a little too lightweight, and not above corniness and sentimentality, but it does earn its little emotional breakthroughs, modest as they are. And the sense of time and place is vivid.

Operating at the peak of his powers, Luca Guadagnino has the time of his life with this practically sadistic exploration of unrelenting obsession. It is horny, it is hungry, it is phenomenally exciting filmmaking.

There was potential here, but Frozen Empire is an overpopulated mish-mash, with too many heroes to wrangle. What’s left is a bit of a gooey mess. We’ve been slimed.

Zen and the art of toilet cleaning? You’d better believe it. This is as gentle as it gets — a humble little film, maybe, but an enriching one. It’s a soul-cleanse.

A striking, unforgettable exercise in absence, this is about what we don’t see — and what we choose not to see. The horror is unseen but underlying, and all the more arresting because of it.