Five star - Latest Top Rated Film Reviews from the Guardian

Rocks review - empowering, uplifting teenage girl power
An east London schoolgirl abandoned by her mother struggles to survive in this gritty yet irrepressible ensemble movie - Mark Kermode
Lovers Rock review – Steve McQueen throws the best party ever
Filled with rows, romance and sexual adventure, this story of an uproarious celebration in 80s west London is an audacious, euphoric experience - Peter Bradshaw
Residue review – haunting drama on the dangers of gentrification
A visually striking and timely film from first-time writer-director Merawi Gerima sees a film-maker returning to an unrecognisable DC neighbourhood - Radheyan Simonpillai
Nomadland review – Frances McDormand delivers the performance of her career
McDormand plays a boomer forced out of her home and on to the road in Chloé Zhao’s inspired docu-fiction - Peter Bradshaw
Limbo review – heart-rending portrait of refugees stranded in Scotland
Ben Sharrock announces himself as a master of atmospheric film-making with this stirring drama about a Syrian migrant - Peter Bradshaw
La Haine review – effervescent classic radiates with rage and comedy
Mathieu Kassovitz’s celebrated story of inequality in a Paris banlieue is a timely rerelease in the Black Lives Matter era - Peter Bradshaw
The Duke review – art thief takes one for the common man
Roger Michell’s warm take on the true story of how Kempton Bunton acquired the National Gallery’s new Goya features a glorious performance by Jim Broadbent - Xan Brooks
White Riot review – rebellion and tough truths in music's war on racism
Rubika Shah’s documentary explores Rock Against Racism, which united punk, ska, reggae and new wave against the National Front in the 1970s - Peter Bradshaw
Ratched review – gothic, gory thrills with the Cuckoo's Nest villain
Sarah Paulson is brilliantly menacing as Nurse Ratched in Ryan Murphy’s latest Netflix series, which melds the 1975 film with his American Horror Story hallmarks - Lucy Mangan
Barking Dogs Never Bite review – Bong Joon-ho’s canine satire has teeth
Lazy, corrupt humans are doing the biting in the Parasite director’s re-released 2000 film - Peter Bradshaw
The Truffle Hunters review – strange and charming ode to rare dogs
An involving Luca Guadagnino-produced look at the world of truffle hunting doubles as a sweet study of the relationship between old men and their dogs - Peter Bradshaw
Good Joe Bell review – Mark Wahlberg affects in moving homophobia drama
The actor makes a convincing plea for awards recognition in a heartbreaking true story of a father whose gay son kills himself after being bullied - Benjamin Lee
76 Days review – haunting Covid-19 documentary leaves its mark
A chilling look at what frontline workers faced in Wuhan might not expand the canvas quite enough but remains a potent and horrifying document - Peter Bradshaw
The Devil All the Time review – deliciously ripe gothic melodrama
Antonio Campos delivers a star-studded, darkly comic psychological thriller set in the postwar American Bible belt - Mark Kermode
I Care a Lot review – Rosamund Pike vamps and vapes in delicious thriller
The Oscar nominee resurrects the icy menace of her Gone Girl performance in a darkly comic and bracingly nasty tale of a morally bankrupt legal guardian - Benjamin Lee
The Broken Hearts Gallery review – one to fall in love with
Geraldine Viswanathan’s goofball heroine delights in Natalie Krinsky’s cheesy yet irresistible New York romcom - Simran Hans
Ammonite review – Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan find love among the fossils
Francis Lee’s sensational biopic of palaeontology pioneer Mary Anning reimagines her erotic encounter with a woman trapped in a stifling marriage - Peter Bradshaw
David Byrne's American Utopia review – Spike Lee's thrilling treat for fans
A filmed version of the musician’s hit Broadway show plays like a vibrant greatest hits extravaganza that has the power to convert anyone - Peter Bradshaw
Memories of Murder review – thrilling rerelease of Bong Joon-ho's breakthrough
The Parasite director’s darkly comic 2003 thriller is not only a fine accomplishment in itself – it helped catch South Korea’s most notorious serial killer - Peter Bradshaw
Max Richter's Sleep review – mellow look at his somnolent magnum opus
This meditative documentary about Richter’s eight-hour composition for a sleeping audience is anything but a snooze - Peter Bradshaw
The Painted Bird review – gruelling descent into the hell of wartime
The story of a young Jewish boy’s odyssey through occupied Poland during the second world war is filled with almost unimaginable horror - Peter Bradshaw
And Tomorrow the Entire World review – German antifa drama skewers left and right
Julia von Heinz’s film brings current conflicts to Venice, as a law student in an anti-fascist group finds everyone is compromised - Xan Brooks
I Used to Go Here review – beguiling back-to-college comedy
A stressed-out first-time author has unexpected lessons to learn when she is invited to speak at her alma mater - Peter Bradshaw
Savage review – moving New Zealand street-gang saga
This touching character study of a live-wire gang member has a bruising moral weight and pulsing vulnerability - Phil Hoad
Sun Children review – Iranian street kids strike gold
Majid Majidi’s cast of young toughs digging for treasure under a school deliver a heart-rending story with unexpected depth of emotion - Xan Brooks
One Night in Miami review – a pivotal moment for black America
Regina King’s movie puts Malcolm X, Cassius Clay, Jim Brown and Sam Cooke in a hotel room together in 1964. The result is immensely watchable - Jonathan Romney
Dear Comrades review – Konchalovsky wrong-foots us with humour and horror
The Russian film-maker’s gripping account of a workers’ strike and the massacre that followed has a jaunty tone that undercuts the grim subject matter - Xan Brooks
The World to Come review – a spellbinding romance of stolen hours
Mona Fastvold’s drama stars Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby as 19th-century farmers’ wives seeking escape from drudgery and husbands - Xan Brooks
Les Misérables review – a simmering tale of two cities
Ladj Ly’s César-winning drama explores life on a poor Paris estate - Mark Kermode
I'm Thinking of Ending Things review – one of the most daringly unexpected films of the year
Jessie Buckley gives a miraculous performance as the anxious young woman at the centre of Charlie Kaufman’s nightmarish chiller - Wendy Ide
The Furnace review – brutish western is tough as old leather and good as gold
Roderick MacKay’s drama about ‘cameleers’ in western Australia is as unadorned as cow hide – see it on a wide screen if you can - Xan Brooks
Final Account review – German war testimonies chill the blood
Soldiers, accountants, children … Luke Holland persuaded elderly Germans to account for what they did under Nazi rule, and the air of shrugging unrepentance is damning - Xan Brooks
Apples review – splendidly poignant and creepy pandemic drama
An outbreak of amnesia unfolds in an ahistoric, analogue Athens in Christos Nikou’s stylish tale – a fitting opener for Venice film festival’s Orizzonti sidebar - Xan Brooks
Matthias & Maxime review – Xavier Dolan's tale of unspoken love
The writer-director’s poignant drama of love and longing reveals his considerable powers as an actor - Wendy Ide
She Dies Tomorrow review – hilarious, spine-tingling contagion horror
Amy Seimetz’s high-anxiety drama couldn’t be more timely… - Simran Hans
Away review – silent, surreal and entrancing animation
This silent adventure film about a man who parachutes out of a plane and lands on an island is both wondrous and weird – see it before Tenet - Leslie Felperin
I'm Thinking of Ending Things review – another superb nightmare courtesy of Charlie Kaufman
Jessie Buckley is a troubled young woman on the brink of breaking up with her boyfriend in this surreal, disquieting and sometimes extraordinary drama - Peter Bradshaw
Bill & Ted Face the Music review – surf dudes still lift the spirits
The middle-aged dads have to save the universe and their marriages in a shambolic but big-hearted sequel - Wendy Ide
The Water Man review – David Oyelowo's charming directorial debut
The star’s first foray into film-making is a sweet, if flawed, attempt to recapture the spirit of 80s kids adventures buoyed by a charismatic turn from Lonnie Chavis - Benjamin Lee
True Mothers review: Naomi Kawase's heartfelt yet frustrating drama
The director of The Mourning Forest returns with another sensitive film, this time about a difficult adoption, yet plot holes prove distracting - Peter Bradshaw
Rifkin's Festival review – Woody Allen's latest is a cinephile's dream (but only literally)
A neurotic writer unravels in a European hotspot as the director treads familiar ground to salute Bergman, Buñuel … and himself - Jonathan Romney
Tesla review – portrait of an inventor out of step with his time
Ethan Hawke and Kyle MacLachlan star in Michael Almereyda’s humorous and ambitious film about the under-appreciated visionary - Ellen E Jones
Magical Adventures in the Forbidden City review – steampunk fantasy hints at allegory
Entrancing effects, but dubbed-sounding voices and wooden acting tip this movie into the bizarre - Leslie Felperin
The Man in the Hat review – whimsical French car chase
France looks beautiful from a Fiat 500 in this picturesque fantasy about a man on the (very slow) run - Ellen E Jones
The Devil All the Time review – Pattinson is plausibly icky in violent gothic noir
Robert Pattinson’s florid preacher is one of a gallery of geeks and grotesques in this grisly smalltown tale - Peter Bradshaw
The Eight Hundred review – ear-rattling, breathtaking battle for 'Chinese Alamo'
One regiment’s symbolic and often suicidal defence of a warehouse in bombed-out Shanghai is the subject of this tub-thumping war epic - Cath Clarke
I Am Greta review – slick yet shallow Thunberg documentary
The remarkable teenage climate activist gets a necessary, if underwhelming, film of her own that follows her global crusade for change - Peter Bradshaw
Concrete Cowboy review – Idris Elba saddles up for powerful father-son drama
Stranger Things’ Caleb McLaughlin also stars as a kid sent to live with his father, who is a mainstay of the African-American urban cowboy tradition - Peter Bradshaw
Bill & Ted Face the Music review – sweet adventure into middle age
Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are joined by lookalike daughters to party on through time and save the world, with the help of Mozart, Hendrix and Louis Armstrong - Peter Bradshaw
Cuties review – Netflix's controversial child exploitation film is bold, flawed - and misunderstood
Despite the increasingly toxic debate, Maïmouna Doucouré’s film and its accusers are on the same side: attacking pornification and the false promise of liberation by sexualised display - Peter Bradshaw
Summer of 85 review – François Ozon's sunny, sad gay teen romance
Two teenage boys fall for each other with tragic results in an intimate and well-acted, if a little overfamiliar, drama about infatuation and death - Benjamin Lee
Another Round review – Mads Mikkelsen anchors boozy tragicomedy
A reunion between director Thomas Vinterberg and his star of the 2012 drama The Hunt is a flippant and very, very drunken story of an unusual experiment - Peter Bradshaw
The Roads Not Taken review – Sally Potter's poetic vision of mental illness
Javier Bardem stars in Potter’s moving film inspired by her younger brother’s rare form of early onset dementia - Simran Hans
Penguin Bloom review – Naomi Watts saved by a magpie in charming drama
An Australian family moves on from tragedy with the help of a bird in a modest and warm-hearted true story - Benjamin Lee
The Roads Not Taken review – painful chapters in writer's life
In Sally Potter’s sad drama, Javier Bardem gives a fervent performance as an author plagued by the past after he suffers a stroke - Peter Bradshaw
Unpregnant review – road-trip abortion comedy is a fun if rocky ride
Two teens travel across country in a charming yet uneven HBO Max movie with a star turn from Haley Lu Richardson - Benjamin Lee
The Broken Hearts Gallery review – smart romcom with a breakout star
Geraldine Viswanathan stands out in this conventional but funny would-be romcom of the summer - Cath Clarke
Real review – deep-feeling look at the struggles of new love
Aki Omoshaybi makes an impressive feature-directing debut in a heartfelt story about a working-class couple in Portsmouth - Cath Clarke
Summerland review – smart coming-out and coming-of-age comedy
Three Gen Z friends head to a desert music festival and romantic hijinks ensue in this breezy roadtrip charmer - Leslie Felperin
Mulan review – Disney's dynamic girl warrior hits the small screen…
This terrific live-action remake cries out to be seen in cinemas - Wendy Ide
Miss Marx review - Romola Garai shines as Marx's daughter gets a punk makeover
Susanna Nicchiarelli’s audacious retelling of the life of Eleanor Marx is in competition in Venice - Jonathan Romney
Mandibules review – bizarre giant-fly comedy runs out of sugar
It’s a truly daft idea, but Quentin Dupieux’s film about a pair of robbers who try to train a giant insect doesn’t quite go the distance - Xan Brooks
Pieces of a Woman review – agonised portrait of a splintering marriage
Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó makes his English-language debut with this drama about a couple devastated by the death of their baby - Xan Brooks
Padrenostro review – a deep dive into a director’s subconscious
Claudio Noce’s very personal picture is a beautiful mess that views the harsh adult world from a child’s perspective - Xan Brooks
The Disciple review – Indian classical musician sings a lonely tune
Years of adherence to stringent rules leave a performer at odds with society in this melancholy film from India’s first Venice competitor for two decades - Xan Brooks
Once Were Brothers review – loving tribute to Robbie Robertson and the Band
Nostalgia abounds in a deft rock doc that takes the Scorsese template of warm tales told by heavyweight interviewees - Leslie Felperin
The New Mutants review – troubled kids add hit of horror to X-Men saga
The superhero franchise is refreshed with a thoughtful study of childhood trauma before noisy CGI battles come to the fore - Peter Bradshaw
Mulan review – Disney's female warrior charges into reality
The live-action remake has blue-chip acting talent and exciting battles, adroitly sidestepping any awkward sexual issues in favour of glossy family entertainment - Peter Bradshaw
Truth Makes Free review – Poland's rebel priest meets his interrogator
A cat-and-mouse police grilling is blunted by explosive flashbacks in this real-life story of radical cleric Jan Zieja - Mike McCahill
Love Guaranteed review – frothy Netflix dating app comedy
Rachael Leigh Cook and Damon Wayans Jr are a charming couple in a silly but mostly entertaining romantic comedy - Benjamin Lee
The Andorra Hustle review – pulsating exposé of international corruption
A heist-movie mood carries this rigorous doc about the role of an obscure bank in a US plan to undermine Catalan separatism - Alex Mistlin
Lacci review – handsome divorce drama revels in domestic disaster
European cousin to Marriage Story, Daniele Luchetti’s oddly soothing film follows the grisly meltdown of a middle-class couple - Xan Brooks
Koko-di Koko-da review – grisly Groundhog Day for grieving couple
Johannes Nyholm directs this strange psychological horror about a couple haunted by their dead daughter’s musical box - Peter Bradshaw
Socrates review – homelessness and homophobia in São Paulo
A gay teenager comes of age in a desperate situation in this audacious and elegant debut made on a shoestring - Peter Bradshaw
Get Duked! review – hyperactive Duke of Edinburgh awards black comedy
Four millennials on enforced DoE manoeuvres are pursued by an angry aristo in Ninian Doff’s sharp feature debut - Simran Hans
The Lost Prince review – father-daughter storybook tale is full of heart
Michel Hazanavicius’s latest offering transports mechanic Djibi and his child from a Paris tower block to a fantasyland - Mike McCahill
Hope Gap review – marriage hits the rocks at the seaside
Annette Bening and Bill Nighy are terrific as a middle-aged couple who have everything – except a happy relationship - Leslie Felperin
Anbessa review – heart-rending tale of a boy living on the edge
An irresistibly charismatic farm boy, displaced by a housing development on the outskirts of Ethiopia’s capital, is the star of this affecting documentary - Cath Clarke
Rising Phoenix review – stirring salute to the stars of the Paralympics
This affecting documentary celebrates the fortitude and determination of Paralympic athletes while offering glimpses of their moving backstories - Leslie Felperin
Nocturnal review – girl meets older man in seaside drama
Lauren Coe and Cosmo Jarvis really sell this film about a sixthformer and a painter, but it’s way too contrived - Peter Bradshaw
Hurt by Paradise review – pretty, pretentious young-mum drama
Director Greta Bellamacina plays a single mother struggling for recognition as a poet in this charming, gawky and overplayed tale - Cath Clarke
The Tunnel review – a tidal wave of fire and cliche
Firefighters battle to save people trapped in an icy Norwegian road tunnel by a petrol tanker explosion - Peter Bradshaw
Monday review – hedonistic romance drama is a party worth avoiding
Sebastian Stan and Denise Gough have zero chemistry as a couple dealing with a series of uninteresting relationship crises in a disappointing drama - Peter Bradshaw
Space Dogs review – cosmic canine mission lacks gravity
Soviet archive film is juxtaposed with inane modern footage of Moscow strays, marring what might have been an insightful documentary about animal cruelty in the name of exploration - Alex Mistlin
The Lady in the Portrait review – painterly pageantry in a Chinese royal court
Fan Bingbing stars as an emperor’s wife having her portrait painted in this artful yet inert period drama - Mike McCahill
The Unfamiliar review – bearable supernatural family shenanigans
The stepchildren are genuinely terrific in this switch on the usual dynamic where the stepmother is the bad guy - Leslie Felperin
Hopper/Welles review – fascinating, exasperating home movie of a drunken evening
Intriguing but long-winded, this restored relic from 1970 reveals the two directors holding forth on everything from sex to Elvis - Xan Brooks
Amants review – painterly thriller is sullied by a silly script
Sex, surf and scuba diving make Nicole Garcia’s crime drama easy on the eye but there’s little substance behind the style - Xan Brooks
Lucid review – eerie drama tumbles into incoherence
A man’s inability to tell dreams from reality makes for a smart premise but alarms sound when the plot begins to unravel - Leslie Felperin
The Lost Husband review – farm romance is all cheese, no flavour
A grieving widow escapes to a rural idyll of horses and hunky farmhands in a rustic heartwarmer that leaves you cold - Cath Clarke
Two Heads Creek review – outback gore-fest bites off more than it can chew
Aussie attitudes to immigration are the target of bloody satire in a horror-comedy that eventually gets stuck without a paddle - Peter Bradshaw
A Kid Like Jake review – a film about gender that dodges any debate
A couple use their boy’s love of Disney dress-up to get him into a private pre-school in a film that fails to do its premise justice - Peter Bradshaw
One Night in Bangkok review – killer-in-a-cab thriller stuck in first gear
The story of a hitman who spends 12 hours touring the city with a long list of targets is a deathly plod - Mike McCahill
All Together Now review – misfiring Netflix drama tries to tackle too much
An adaptation of Silver Linings Playbook author Matthew Quick’s novel Sorta Like a Rockstar takes on homelessness with a heavy dose of sugar - Benjamin Lee
Love You Forever review – loopy, time-bending romcom
The story of a Chinese dancer who discovers a novel based on her own life and written by a mysterious admirer has a certain charm but outstays its welcome - Mike McCahill
Hendrix and the Spook review – a poor way to honour Jimi
This documentary about the acclaimed guitarist is a cheaply made mix of interviews and dumbshow dramatic recreations - Leslie Felperin
Hard Kill review – Bruce Willis logs out in ultra-basic tech thriller
Willis reprises his role as cheque-cashing frontman in this mind-numbing actioner, also starring Jesse Metcalfe - Mike McCahill
The Tomb: Devil’s Revenge review – Shatner cursed in Indiana Jones-like horror
William Shatner attempts to destroy an ancient jinxed relic in this bizarre horror-thriller - Phil Hoad
Coastal Elites review – is this the worst film of the year?
A range of stars, including Bette Midler and Issa Rae, act out clunky monologues in a tone-deaf attempt to speak to a divided America - Charles Bramesco
Bulletproof review – violent cops flout the rules. Is this meant to be fun?
This witlessly macho crime drama is tedious enough but asking us to sympathise with trigger-happy lawmen is beyond the pale - Cath Clarke