2020s

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.

The implicit promise made in the title Everything Everywhere All at Once is about as equally ambitious as it is precarious, setting up a maximalist piece of cinema that flits across alternate universes, wildly fires off montages, and deals in absurd, genre-blending humour, pondering the relative value of individuality within the grand scope of existence.

In the brutal, textured world that Robert Eggers builds around the Norse folktale of Viking prince Amleth, The Northman comes alive, approaching the detailed design of every crude wooden village and animal-skin costume with a visceral authenticity to deliver an awe-inspiring, sensory venture into the heart of obsessive vengeance.