2020s

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.

There is little in Bottoms that breaks the formula of the classic high school teen comedy, though it is in this familiar realm that Emma Seligman is most comfortable sending up its Gen Z archetypes with their trademark self-deprecating irony and dark humour, taking us inside an extracurricular all-girls fight club started by two lesbians…

Beyond Napoleon’s uneven, unfocused narrative, Ridley Scott commands brilliant spectacle and irreverent humour in his portrait of the infamous French emperor, cynically revealing the childish fool in the intelligent tactician whose enormous ambitions cannot sustain his own ego.