Afire

Not one for linearity, Nolan approaches Oppenheimer's life as if it's a Rubik's Cube, a puzzle to piece together first one way and then another until everything clicks into place. It's a big, serious compelling movie engineered with precision.

Christian Petzold (Transit; Phoenix) returns with this multilayered, serio-comic portrait of a sulky writer struggling with his novel at a friend's summer cottage. An impending deadline guarantees he'll be miserable but not that he'll get any work done.

Husband and wife team Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch (who previously collaborated on Broken Circle Breakdown) have lovingly crafted a tender rural epic about two boys, childhood friends, who spend summers together in the Alps.

A film of a live 1955 TV doc about the creation of a TV play about a bunch of teen science whizz kids convening in a crater in Nevada, shot in Wes Anderson's patently ersatz comedic style... Asteroid City is a lot, but it rewards your attention.

The LBTQ+ female empowerment comedy you didn't know you needed, Emma Seligman's film is simultaneously a raunchy high school comedy of the kind Seth Rogen used to make, and a hilarious parody of the same.

Two childhood friends from South Korea are reunited, briefly, many years later. Celine Song's lovely Past Lives sets the stage for a subtle, intimate romantic drama probing deep emotional connection and the forces that pull us apart.

Ansi meets Holappa, and these two lonely souls feel they are meant for each other, but Fate may have other ideas... Aki Kaurismäki crafts a poignant and pertinent comedy which picked up the Jury Prize at Cannes.

When Samuel is found dead outside his alpine cabin it's clear he fell from the attic. But did he jump, or was he pushed? Justine Triet became only the third woman to win the the Palme d'Or at Cannes, for this thoroughly engrossing courtroom drama.

Ten or 15 years from now, perhaps no one will remember there was a Smartphone before the iPhone, so ubiquitous President Obama swore by it. And it was made in Canada. Matt Johnson tells the story with satiric wit and a certain schadenfreude.

Bradley Cooper's second film as director is a symphonic portrait of the composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein, with Cooper in the title role and Carey Mulligan as his wife, actress Felicia Montealegre. One of the films of the year.