2020s

Armed with a sharp wit and a penchant for intelligent subtext, Jordan Peele goes about examining the thread connecting humanity’s hunger for spectacle and its arrogant domination of nature in Nope, confronting us with a cosmic horror that lives in the sky above one ranch of Hollywood animal trainers.

In piecing together artefacts of Elvis Presley’s inspiration and influence littered throughout the past century, Luhrmann melds anachronistic music, wildly kinetic camerawork, and imaginative editing together into a vibrant collage of immense artistic passion, effectively adopting the rockstar’s own form of rebellious creative expression.

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…