2020s

As far as storytelling in the MCU goes, the creative tonal balance and cartoonish playfulness of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 makes for a terrific send-off to the franchise’s most colourfully eccentric series, as James Gunn faces his oddball characters up against painfully tragic pasts.

Brandon Cronenberg’s overarching metaphor in Infinity Pool may not be particularly subtle, but it is overwhelmingly visceral in its technicolour, cyberpunk nightmares, centring a cabal of reckless vacationers who psychologically dehumanise themselves through the masochistic torture of locals – and their own clones.

Beneath the comic absurdity of Beau is Afraid’s existential nightmare, Ari Aster delineates a surreal path leading to the source of our self-destructive shame, turning one man’s trip to his mother’s house into an epic, psychological odyssey of Freudian terror and incredible formal invention.

Humanity has never looked as simultaneously kind and cruel as it does through the eyes of the world’s lowliest beast in EO, as Jerzy Skolimowski’s elliptical direction effortlessly drifts us along one donkey’s nomadic odyssey, unveiling profoundly graceful meditations on our most fundamental nature.

Although young Cáit comes from an abusive home in The Quiet Girl, Colm Bairéad’s tender reflection on emotional healing proves to be a film of gentle repose, establishing a symbiotic harmony between broken children and adults alike that graciously alleviates their parallel traumas.