2020s

Alex Garland’s nightmarish journey through a troubled widow’s mind and her retreat to a town of identical strangers elusively edges towards a disturbing culmination of its lush stylistic flourishes and grotesquely absurd imagery, floating Men along the eerie rhythms that pass through spiritual and mythological iconography.

The constant struggle between one paroled prisoner’s moral compass and his desire to be seen as a moral person permeates A Hero with a provocative ethical ambiguity, and through Asghar Farhadi’s flair for searing realism and a wonderfully thorny screenplay, it sprouts a complex drama that sees a simple plan to regain honour veer off…

It is in the intersection of heartfelt drama and sharply edited, thrill-seeking aerial jet sequences that Top Gun: Maverick takes flight, resolving the lingering threads of guilt from the original film with a sensational, breathtaking vigour that Joseph Kosinski delights in driving towards its adrenalising conclusion.

Although Mimi Cave’s remarkable crafting of atmospheric tension through blood-red production design and relationship metaphors may exceed her ability to craft a wholly original story, that is all Fresh needs to pull us along in its tight, repulsive grip, where a young woman’s kidnapping at the hands of a charming, business-minded cannibal develops into a…

There is great value in the parent-child relationship depicted in Petite Maman, but Céline Sciamma also recognises it does not need to be restricted to those rigid roles either, playing out a fantastical wish fulfilment of a young girl meeting her mother at the same age and together revelling in childhood, sharing the joys and…

As a grieving family ponders the recorded recollections of their broken robotic son in After Yang, Koganada forms a poignant commemoration of those complex lives that exist just beyond our periphery, studied and savoured through the refractive lens of memory where old ideas find new life in the present.