2020s

With Nyad’s basis in the true story of one 64-year-old woman’s marathon swimming achievement, this underdog tale is a natural leap into narrative filmmaking for documentarians Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, proving that destiny is little more than a matter of persistence and patience for those pushing their bodies to exhausting physical limits.

For all Ferrari’s narrative unevenness, the god of car racing and conquest at the centre of Michael Mann’s modern mythologising makes for a compellingly thorny subject, leaving behind a trail of bodies in his blood-stained ascent to cultural immortality, while hiding his pride, shame, and sorrow behind tinted sunglasses.

The nature of celebrity is a fickle thing for the insecure, unremarkable Paul Matthews in Dream Scenario, as unpredictable as those strangers’ dreams across the world that star him as the main character, forming a darkly comic allegory for fame’s nightmarishly dangerous sting.

For what is essentially a prequel covering the origins of Roald Dahl’s famous candy man, the stakes are comically high in Wonka, tying Paul King’s eccentric wit, gentle slapstick, and charming sincerity into a tidy bow around a whimsical world where chocolate rules.

If The Boy and the Heron truly is Hayao Miyazaki’s last film, then it is poetic that such a grand adventure into surreal fantasy and back again should be the one to conclude his decades of animated world building, contemplating the power of fiction to mould trauma into fiery strength and maturity.