Fremont isn’t a thrilling film, and perhaps one that requires an eager mood, but you could scarcely imagine leaving the cinema without a sense of distinct peace. 

World cinema can bring us a film like this: a tiny love story, from a country you may never visit, dressed up like an anti-capitalist screed.

Force of Nature is an engrossing modern murder mystery regardless of whether you grew up in Victoria or not, and it does too many difficult things well to be dismissed

The Holdovers provides us with an inarguable Christmas Movie – despite its quintessentially-too-late Australian release date – that feels ready to be an instant classic.

Oppenheimer is a freakishly good match for Christopher Nolan, and it may well be his best work.

The sheer joy of that formula, of this character, with every possible disadvantage stacked against him, saving the entire world through a motorbike cliff jump – that’s the magic of these movies.

You Hurt My Feelings is all about the little lies we tell the people around us, not out of malicious intent, but in order to avoid a more destructive outcome.

You’d be hard-pressed to say that its intended audience of older, weekday-matinee filmgoers won’t be satisfied by watching a canonised movie star like Neeson doing his thing as a 1930’s detective. Just don’t expect to be wowed by its stunning execution or originality.

To Leslie is a very old-fashioned human drama; a straightforward character study with modest ambitions and a complete disinterest in modern trappings of spectacle, metacommentary, or narrative obfuscation.

All the Beauty is this wonderful study of the marginal, of someone with a heart uncorroded by time in the halls of power, who leverages the success of their life’s work to take on a pure, irredeemable evil.

At its most essential, the film is a story of a young Jewish boy who befriends a Black boy, and the confusing strata of privilege and injustices that come to define his place in late-20th-Century America.

The real achievement of this ripping action flick, bless its existence, is its characters and themes: there’s a full meal here, and all of it is delicious.

Perhaps the real Going To Paris was the friends that Mrs. Harris made along the way.

This understated, sensitive French euthanasia drama is concerned with the human implications of a socio-political issue.

The bizarre true story of a WWII operation that saw British intelligence plant false documents on a corpse and leave it for the Nazis to find, Operation Mincemeat is nonetheless a very familiar piece of modern British mid-scale filmmaking.

Shackled by crowd-pleasing and Disney-pleasing obligations, the greatest victory of the MCU’s latest is, blessedly, that it’s a Sam Raimi Film.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s second feature release of the last year is a beguiling three-in-one Lego set of lean, focused short-form storytelling.

The Northman is an unyielding hell song of blood, dirt and firelight. Robert Eggers hasn't changed a bit and it's a blessing to us all.

The live-action Batman films now span 56 years and 7 different actors – each is a product of its time, and each builds on growing familiarity with the character gained by the mass audience. What Matt Reeves, director of Thursday’s new The Batman, has been able to do with that history is take advantage of it, and iterate. The results are very exciting.

Licorice Pizza is a relatively plotless assortment of scenes, where around every corner lurks an inspired filmmaking flourish, often in what feels like a throwaway moment… whether it’s a perfect (and I mean perfect) soundtrack choice, or a genius series of cuts: all of a sudden you realise you’re seeing something magical.