“Apt to dismiss any handmaiden who doesn’t cinch her corset quite tightly enough in the morning, Sissi demands equally punishing rigour in all aspects of life — fastidiously strategising her diet, exercise regime and even her sex life — while simultaneously railing against a courtly, patriarchal lifestyle in which she feels she can’t breathe.”

“The little town of Bedford Falls is so brilliantly realised, so hermetically sealed in its own perfect universe, populated so effectively with such a plausible gallery of humanity, that it enables me to believe that I too live there, for a little while.”

“A spiky, exhilarating coming-of-age portrait that distils everything people find (delete as appropriate) exciting/aggravating/amusing/alienating/relatable/chaotic about Lena Dunham’s millennial feminist worldview.”

“Disguised as a dreamy teen romance, [this film] conceals something more monstrous, braiding flashes of nightmarish violence into a rather lovely and elemental expression of the desire to lose yourself.”

“It’s a piercing examination of privilege, dense with political nuance and question — yet it never feels like a screed, since its portrayal of family life is so honest and inhabited, with Anthony Hopkins’ lovely, careworn performance a little hearth of warmth at its centre.”

“Lelio has constructed a taut thriller of philosophy, granting urgent stakes and an itchy ticking clock to its ideological conflicts.”

“It’s a film that feels conscious of being part of an Afrofuturist tradition, without being starry-eyed or sentimental about what has come before. It’s not about trying to get to the top of the economic ladder, but about dismantling the ladder entirely.”

“Humour can be used to humanise monsters (several regrettable political careers have depended on this), but it can also be used to dehumanise people who behave inhumanly, and that’s what Östlund does here so brilliantly.”

“A magnificent film — by turns hilarious, touching, bleak and wise. This is the finest work of writer-director Martin McDonagh’s career.”

“Ornately and ingeniously plotted as it is, Decision to Leave is a wary, wounded love story first and a procedural puzzle second, powered by what seems a sincerely soulful attraction between two people who know nothing — but somehow see everything — of each other.”

“Kathryn Ferguson’s fine, heart-rending documentary conclusively sets Sinead O’Connor’s troubled story straight, often in her own words — thus disentangling it from years of malicious media bias regarding her personal principles, conflicted religious beliefs and mental illness.”

“Stones is the physical manifestation of a gut feeling that something isn’t quite right. You can hear and feel the stomach gurglings, the perpetual bloated sensation, the air of overwhelming preoccupation with his internal rumblings, the fear of an explosion.”

“It doesn’t blend into Hong Sang-soo’s history quite the way his other perfectly delightful Hong diversions do: there’s a yearning, plaintive emotional tenor to it, a crisp aesthetic definition, that has kept it in my mind for the better part of 18 months.”

“In making a film about masking your bourgeois familial privilege to make something raw and ugly and true, Kline has, against all odds, done exactly that.”

“In Cronenberg’s very best work (for me: Dead Ringers, Crash, The Fly), it’s the collision of human frailty with the brutality of surgery/machinery/metamorphosis (delete as applicable) which produces classic Cronenbergian sensation, that constructive/deconstructive intimacy.”

“From Argentine directing duo Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn comes a comedy that begins by plucking some fairly low-hanging fruit (various forms of vanity), before stretching up towards loftier branches (the purpose of art itself).”

The Feast doesn’t trade in Shyamalan-style twists and surprises; rather, it’s an expression of regional rage that swells from the ground up, growing ever more riotously bloody and operatic with each exactingly prepared course.

“In an era where information is the new frontier on which conflicts are fought and won, the camera replaces the gun as weapon of choice.”

“Given the implications of filming bear-attacks the old-fashioned way, I’m more than happy to give a few CGI critters a pass in an otherwise engaging adventure romp.”

“From the get-go, Panar Panahi’s infectious debut goes all in on lovable relatability: Affectionate but put-upon, eccentric but easily recognisable, its misfit family journeying across northern Iran for reasons unknown have instant, easy comic chemistry and credibility.”