John Bleasdale

Avi Belkin’s Mike Wallace Is Here harvests a vast archive of interviews and b-roll footage to create a fascinating profile of a combative, conflicted figure, who nevertheless substantially changed the face of how news was reported.

Ultimately, though it hints at moments of wit, Cuck never feels serious enough to be a convincing character study and not garish enough to head into genre territory. Ultimately, this sordid tale feels both real and inconsequential.

It’s open to debate whether this claustrophobic little parable means something. It’s devilishly clever but there’s a suspicion that this is beautiful calligraphy without words. And yet with the added circumstance of self-isolation, quarantine and quiet four-walled despair, Vivarium will undoubtedly resonate.

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ timely documentary on the Nobel Prize-winning novelist is a persuasive argument for rereading Morrison if you’ve already read her works – and if you haven’t, an imperative to get to it.

An acutely observed and frequently heartbreaking documentary.

Saturday Fiction certainly demands patience, shrouded at first in a smog of exposition.

Babyteeth is a funny, vibrant and deeply moving piece of work. Its flaws are the flaws of youth, overcompensating for boredom with frenetic hyperactivity.

Made up of a series of related but not necessarily connected vignettes, each filmed with a static camera, they resemble New Yorker cartoons scripted by Samuel Beckett.

There’s so much to enjoy in Ema that it comes as a surprise that there’s so little there.

Is The Painted Bird exaggerated? Does it go too far? Does it break the limits of taste? “Yes” on all counts. Walking out is an understandable and valid reaction but watching, getting angry, suffering and approaching understanding is also important too.

It might be that there’s a meatier version of the film – a Carlos-style miniseries perhaps – but as it stands, shifting between a lighthearted caper and more consequential political tragedy, Wasp Network is an entertaining fumble.

The King feels disconnected and unurgent. Despite some wonderful moments, it perhaps lacks the requisite majesty.

The film itself is utterly uncontroversial, solid, occasionally stolid, and perfectly fine.

Superficiality soaks the entire film.

Hopefully, Soderbergh’s film will raise more awareness as well as a chuckle.

Phoenix has created a masterful performance for a film which itself feels like a masterpiece: a cracked masterpiece.

The truth is that The Truth is an above-average French comedy and Kore-eda has succeeded in a finely wrought act of ventriloquism and diva worship. But the Japanese director’s fans can be forgiven for thinking above average is not good enough for such an accomplished filmmaker.

At the heart of Marriage Story are two career-best performances from Driver and Johansson. There is sensitivity, wit and intelligence in abundance, and in one barnstorming scene the kind of raw emotional nudity that’s rarely captured on screen: it’s the painful core of the movie which the laughter might ease but can’t erase.

Scenes come and go with a weightlessness that has nothing to do with zero gravity.

This is a powerful and beautifully shot film of love and survival.

Efira is a dominant and compelling presence and Sibyl is frequently funny. Ultimately, it never quite squares the circle of the comedy and the pain, but Triet is a sophisticated filmmaker and this – her third feature – is further proof of great talent.

Covino’s brilliant comedy is original and smartly entertaining: a celebration of male friendship in all its ups and downs.

It’s just Huppert on autopilot and like that dry white wine, you can have too much of it.

A masterful dissection of social inequality and the psychology of money.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is bold, beautiful and brutal. It’s Tarantino’s best film since Kill Bill, perhaps even since Pulp Fiction.

Not since Jane Campion’s The Piano has a costume drama presented such a gorgeous view of love from a woman’s point of view.

Eggers has created a film of disturbing horror, absurdist comedy and probing psychodrama which defies the generic boundaries as it breaks through them. The Lighthouse is a saltwater gothic masterpiece.

Compared to the sophisticated and nuanced horrors of Black Mirror, Little Joe feels like a fairly straightforward riff on a very familiar idea.