Stephen A. Russell

The Birthday Party is too languorously paced to keep the tension levels high and a ridiculous, biology-defying third-act twist doesn’t help. Still, there’s just enough chills here for anyone who prefers their trauma to come with a rural French flavour.

Popping off with primary colours and phallic imagery, I Want Your Sex isn’t quite as explosive as Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy and could have used a tighter edit, but it’s still a real good time.

Revered Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki adheres to the concept of ‘Ma’, or intentional emptiness. Likewise, Austrian filmmaker Markus Schleinzer’s equal-parts effervescent and unsettling third feature, Rose, sings with thoughtful silence and enriching stillness.

Kreutzer threads a fine needle through difficult material in a film that, even if it occasionally pulls its punches, will niggle on in your mind.

There’s not a great deal that’s new here, though the idea of the zombies rapidly evolving with the aid of fungi-like mucus and an ant colony’s hive communication is well deployed. But what makes Colony a fun night out is how well the mayhem is staged.

At a slight 71 minutes, it nevertheless manages to be an engaging misadventure with a wanderlust spirit, replete with a jolly voiceover narration from Jacek Zubiel, constantly reminding us life is one big joke.

As this tight-knit clan frays in the face of this vilification, they listen to one another less and less. And in that sense, it’s very much a story for our times.

Matthew Robinson’s sloppy screenplay feels like it may have been churned out by AI itself. It’s crammed with leaden exposition and clumsy with hammy dialogue in which everyone over-explains themselves, as if we’re watching it with one eye on our phones.

Rosebush Pruning is a fabulous feast for the eyes and ears – and those who like their cinema deliriously queer.

A blistering take-down of the social media-driven celebrity culture, The Moment combines the anxiety-inducing mayhem of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You and the omnishambles clusterfuck of The Thick of It. It works because the satire’s coming from inside the house.