Phil de Semlyen

It’s uncomfortable, it’s bombastic, but don’t listen to anyone who tells you it isn’t funny.

Minus Zero is the first R-rated Godzilla film, a monster movie that wants to take the legacy of World War II seriously and even nods to Italian neorealism. That final showdown, when it comes, is well worth the wait. If only it had been a bit shorter.

There’s a real genius to this kind of wordless storytelling. Aardman makes it look easy.

The British director, working from his own (very) original screenplay, draws an arrestingly raw performance from Erin Doherty and a tantalisingly ambiguous one from James McAvoy. The ending is mawkish and felt misjudged, but Faith still got under my skin in ways I hadn’t anticipated.

The new-look take on Capcom’s gory survival game is still more goofy and good-looking than actually frightening.

If you love a movie about the movies, this one is a gem.

It all makes for a slower burn, less tumultuous companion piece to the Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice and Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite. Together, they form a bleak triptych of modern fables that show society stratifying in increasingly insurmountable ways.

Immaculately filmed and emotionally precise, Italian filmmaker Andrea Pallaoro’s addiction and relationship drama is shaping up to be something special until it unleashes a plot development so silly, it got big laughs in my screening – and not the good kind. It’s like watching a waiter nimbly carry a salver of champagne flutes through a crowded apartment before tripping over the cat and falling out the window.

The film really takes off when the plan comes together, providing an outlet for all that pent-up tension that Kodeih exploits with a sweaty, Rififi-esque heist sequence and a final stretch that escalates the stakes in pacy, propulsive ways. The two leads are excellent.

It’s The Last Waltz with parkas, an unashamedly nostalgic time capsule to simpler days that finds the swaggering guitar heroes kinder, gentler and sounding as tight as ever.