Five star - Latest 5 Star Film Reviews from the Guardian

Belfast review – Kenneth Branagh’s euphoric eulogy to his home city
Nightmarishness meets nostalgia as Jamie Dornan and Judi Dench star in a scintillating Troubles-era coming-of-age tale - Peter Bradshaw
The 400 Blows review – François Truffaut’s coming-of-age masterwork
Jean-Pierre Léaud dazzles at the heart of an autobiographical opus that invites new waves of adulation with each viewing - Peter Bradshaw
The Tragedy of Macbeth review – Denzel Washington delivers a noirish nightmare
Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand hit top form in Joel Coen’s austere reimagining of Shakespeare’s Scottish bloodbath - Peter Bradshaw
West Side Story review – Spielberg’s triumphantly hyperreal remake
Stunning recreations of the original film’s New York retain the songs and the dancing in a re-telling that will leave you gasping - Peter Bradshaw
The Shop Around the Corner review – Lubitsch romcom still a Christmas delight
James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan’s love-hate romance, which spawned many later meet-cutes, is more eccentric than you might remember - Peter Bradshaw
Life Between Islands review: displaying the power and passion of Caribbean-British art
Resistance and defiance and celebrations, arrivals, departures and returns: from photographs of protests to a Union Black flag, this timely show is an unmissable testament to creativity - Adrian Searle
Petite Maman review – Céline Sciamma’s heartbreakingly hopeful fairytale for all ages
The acclaimed French director has created another gem with this magical story of a young girl coming to terms with her grandmother’s death - Mark Kermode, Observer film critic
The Power of the Dog review – Jane Campion’s superb gothic western is mysterious and menacing
Slow-burning psychodrama about two warring brothers on a ranch in 1920s Montana is one of the director’s best - Peter Bradshaw
Licorice Pizza review – Paul Thomas Anderson’s funniest and most relaxed film yet
Anderson’s latest is a romance about a teen boy wooing an older woman, starring two extraordinary newcomers and stuffed with fabulously hammy A-list cameos - Peter Bradshaw
Procession review – extraordinary documentary giving voice to sexual abuse survivors
Robert Greene’s documentary brings the stories of six men abused as children by Catholic priests to the screen with remarkable care and creativity - Simran Hans
Naked review – one of British cinema’s great monsters
David Thewlis’s lost soul, raging around London in Mike Leigh’s fiercely bleak masterwork, is even more disturbing 28 years on - Peter Bradshaw
Burning review – the searing black summer documentary that Australia deserves
Eva Orner’s bushfire exposé boils your blood and rattles your bones as it addresses the climate crisis head on and rips into the dark heart of modern Australia - Luke Buckmaster
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone review – 20 years on, it’s a nostalgic spectacular
The first film in the franchise is re-released into a very different world – but it’s as entertaining and exhilarating as ever - Peter Bradshaw
Seven Samurai review – an epic primal myth that pulsates through cinema
Akira Kurosawa’s tale of ascetic mercenaries brought together for a single job inspired endless imitations, but the original has lost none of its magic - Peter Bradshaw
Dune review – Denis Villeneuve’s awe-inspiring epic is a moment of triumph
Villeneuve’s take on the sci-fi classic starring Timothée Chalamet, Oscar Isaac and Zendaya has been given room to breathe, creating a colossal spectacle - Peter Bradshaw
Brief Encounter review – sparkling revival of Emma Rice’s forbidden romance
This polished production brings Rice’s innovative adaptation of the classic film to life, with an electric central partnership and personality to spare - Anya Ryan
The Outsiders review – Coppola’s Brat Pack melodrama carries you away
Patrick Swayze and Rob Lowe star in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 movie that comes crashing back on screen - Peter Bradshaw
Azor review – eerie conspiracy thriller about the complacency of the super-rich
Andreas Fontana’s debut feature is an unnervingly subtle drama about a Swiss private banker visiting clients in Argentina during the period of the military junta and ‘disappearances’ - Peter Bradshaw
The Ape Woman review – freakshow satire with bizarre alternative-ending payoff
Watching both versions of this 1964 drama of Elephant Man-style exploitation reveals an impressive degree of tenderness and complexity - Peter Bradshaw
Getting Away With Murder(s) review – powerful call for Holocaust justice
David Nicholas Wilkinson’s epic investigation into the Nazis who escaped a postwar reckoning shows the difficulty of prosecuting this technocratic atrocity - Peter Bradshaw
Nitram review – intensely disquieting and extraordinary Port Arthur massacre film
Justin Kurzel’s exploration of the lead-up to one of Australia’s worst mass shootings is a film of eerie, queasy foreboding - Luke Buckmaster
No Time to Die review – Daniel Craig dispatches James Bond with panache, rage – and cuddles
The long-awaited 25th outing for Ian Fleming’s superspy is a weird and self-aware epic with audacious surprises up its sleeve - Peter Bradshaw
The Green Knight review – a rich and wild fantasy
Dev Patel works his subtle magic in David Lowery’s enthralling take on the medieval tale of the questing Gawain - Mark Kermode Observer film critic
The Green Knight review – Dev Patel rides high on sublimely beautiful quest
Director David Lowery conjures up visual wonders and metaphysical mysteries from the anonymously authored 14th-century chivalric poem - Peter Bradshaw
The Maltese Falcon review – dreamlike tension and the greatest MacGuffin of all time
A dark, steely performance from Humphrey Bogart is at the cynical heart of John Huston’s adaptation of the classic detective novel - Peter Bradshaw
The Story of Looking review – Mark Cousins’ rhapsody of the gaze
An eye operation sets the veteran cinephile out on a delicate and fascinating exploration of what it means to look at movies – and the world - Peter Bradshaw
The Humans review – masterly family drama transfers from stage to screen
Stephen Karam’s Tony-winning play makes the leap to film with ease, an intimate – at times uncomfortably so – look at a family at Thanksgiving - Benjamin Lee
The Servant review – Losey and Pinter’s nightmarish version of Jeeves and Wooster
The subversive 1963 classic crackles with undertones of class, sexuality and communism, with Dirk Bogarde at his finest as the sociopathic manservant - Peter Bradshaw
Frozen review – stunning musical extravaganza creates its own magic
Beyond the visual thrills and powerful ballads, this adaptation brings an unexpected depth to the relationship between two tortured sisters - Arifa Akbar
Sinfonia of London/Wilson/ Chiejina review – a remarkable debut for Vertigo orchestra
The first live concert for the Sinfonia, which once recorded the Hitchcock soundtrack, was exceptional, featuring the exquisite voice of Francesca Chiejina - Tim Ashley
Sundown review – Tim Roth a wonderfully relaxed sociopath in Venice’s funniest film
Michael Franco’s latest collaboration with the actor sees Roth on a Mexican beach holiday, blissfully unaffected by grief - Xan Brooks
Dune review – blockbuster cinema at its dizzying, dazzling best
Denis Villeneuve’s slow-burn space opera fuses the arthouse and the multiplex to create an epic of otherworldly brilliance - Xan Brooks
Spencer review – Princess Diana’s disastrous marriage makes a magnificent farce
Kristen Stewart’s entirely compelling Di has no escape from the dress-up game of monarchy in Pablo Larraín’s unreverential movie - Xan Brooks
Now, Voyager review – Bette Davis’s sublime, sex-free act of sublimation
A wealthy young woman escapes her tyrannical mother to fall hopelessly in love in this magnificent Hollywood melodrama - Peter Bradshaw
The Sparks Brothers review – a match made in heaven
Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright is a perfect fit for the absurdist antics of art pop’s most elusive duo in this stranger-than-fiction documentary - Mark Kermode Observer film critic
Limbo review – a gorgeous tragicomic take on the refugee experience
Ben Sharrock expertly juxtaposes the limitless landscape of the Scottish islands with the curtailed options of oud-playing new arrival Omar - Wendy Ide
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
Girlfriends review – a lo-fi indie miracle about love and the city
Claudia Weill’s 1978 comic tale of a photographer trying to make it in New York is a gem whose emotional force comes from the female friendships at its heart - Peter Bradshaw
Old review – M Night Shyamalan’s fast-ageing beach horror is top notch hokum
With a cast worthy of Agatha Christie, this tale of a resort where time has been terrifyingly accelerated is brilliantly poised between serious and silly - Peter Bradshaw
Summer of Soul review – the best concert film ever made?
Questlove’s magnificent documentary features rediscovered footage of Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone et al in their prime - Mark Kermode Observer film critic
Vortex review – Gaspar Noé’s latest goes gentle, for once, into the night
The provocateur has shocked Cannes with a change of pace: an extraordinary midnight movie that follows an elderly couple’s pained last steps in their Paris apartment - Xan Brooks
Memoria review – Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Tilda Swinton make a dream team
The Thai master’s English-language debut – about an expat attuned to strange frequencies in Colombia – more than matches his past mystic odysseys - Peter Bradshaw
Drive My Car review – mysterious Murakami tale of erotic and creative secrets
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi reaches a new grandeur with this engrossing adaptation about a theatre director grappling with Chekhov and his wife’s infidelity - Peter Bradshaw
All of This Unreal Time review – Cillian Murphy confesses all in pounding sound and blinding light
In a grimy and intense film installation, the actor unleashes a torrent of regret, superbly scripted by Max Porter - Kate Wyver
Another Round review – the performance of a lifetime from Mads Mikkelsen
Four high-school teachers seek a better life on the lash in Thomas Vinterberg’s profound yet playful midlife crisis tale - Mark Kermode
Nashville review – Robert Altman’s country classic still sings
With its constant soundtrack of country music and political commentary, Altman’s sprawling state-of-the-nation epic reverberates with the troubled zeitgeist of the 70s - Peter Bradshaw
Ultraviolence review – still no justice in follow-up doc on deaths in UK police custody
Ken Fero’s grim update to his fearless 2001 documentary Injustice, about police brutality against black men, is a shocking case of more of the same - Peter Bradshaw
The Reason I Jump review – a sensitive autistic eye on the world
This expressionistic documentary cleverly conveys the non-verbal life of its source book’s teenage author - Wendy Ide
Fargo review – Coen brothers’ snowbound noir is still a work of gleaming brilliance
The Coens’ rereleased thriller about a pregnant police chief investigating a bungled kidnapping is a noir without cynicism; a macabre black comedy with purity at its core - Peter Bradshaw
The Father review – Anthony Hopkins superb in unbearably heartbreaking film
Hopkins gives a moving, Oscar-winning turn as a man with dementia in a film full of intelligent performances, disorienting time slips and powerful theatrical effects - Peter Bradshaw
After Love review – a lacerating portrait of a life built on marital lies
Joanna Scanlan gives the best performance of her career as Mary, a Muslim convert who uncovers the secret life led her late husband Ahmed - Peter Bradshaw
Maeve review – rapturously stark realist prose poem of 80s Belfast
Pat Murphy’s movie follows a young woman returning to Northern Ireland and a reckoning with sneering soldiers, brutal police and sexist hostility - Peter Bradshaw
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
Sisters With Transistors review – an electrifying study of musical heroines
The unsung trailblazers behind electronic music are paid harmonic homage in Lisa Rovner’s enchanting documentary - Leslie Felperin
Promising Young Woman review – a deathly dark satire of gender politics
Carey Mulligan is at her ice-cold best as a scheming sociopath in this fearless unpicking of entitlement and victimhood - Peter Bradshaw
Sound of Metal review – Riz Ahmed excels as a drummer facing deafness
Riz Ahmed gives a career-best performance in an astonishing drama that’s rooted in reality and fully captioned for all - Mark Kermode, Observer film critic
Songs My Brothers Taught Me review – Chloé Zhao's deeply intelligent debut
The Nomadland director’s authorship is obvious in this 2015 story of Lakota siblings adjusting to the death of their father - Peter Bradshaw
Romeo and Juliet review – National Theatre's first film is an ingenious triumph
Josh O’Connor and Jessie Buckley are captivating as the star-crossed lovers in a wondrous, adventurous production - Arifa Akbar
Minari review – a Korean family sows seeds of hope in Arkansas
Infused with a wonderful sentimentality, Lee Isaac Chung’s fictionalised account of his rural US childhood explores the growing pains of a family farm - Peter Bradshaw
Violation review – a torrent of suppressed rage
Madeleine Sims-Fewer stars and co-directs this rape-revenge movie that brilliantly and brutally reframes the trauma inflicted by male violence - Phil Hoad
My Name Is Gulpilil review – sublime, humane, elegant traversal of Indigenous actor's life in film
Molly Reynolds’ superb documentary rises to the challenge of doing justice to the extraordinary life and career of the great veteran Yolŋu actor - Luke Buckmaster
Petite Maman review – Céline Sciamma's spellbinding ghost story
A girl meets her mother as a child in the woods in a moving jewel of a film about memory, friendship and kin - Peter Bradshaw
Firestarter: The Story of Bangarra review – an engrossing celebration of artistic creation
Wayne Blair and Nel Minchin’s beguiling documentary deepens the already magical experience of watching the Indigenous dance company perform - Luke Buckmaster
Flee review – remarkable refugee story told with heart and audacity
A thrilling documentary made with a blend of animation and archive footage tells an immensely powerful tale of a gay Afghan survivor - Benjamin Lee
Summer of Soul review – thrilling documentary reveals a forgotten festival
Revelatory footage from the 1969 Harlem Cultural festival, crudely known for a while as the Black Woodstock, is brought to life in a spectacular new film - Jordan Hoffman
Irish National Opera: 20 Shots of Opera review – every one a discovery
Of the moment, full of character and rich in variety, these short filmed operas are exemplary lockdown music-making - Fiona Maddocks
The Masque of the Red Death review – horribly apt Poe adaptation
Roger Corman’s 1964 cult classic about a medieval pestilence closing in on a decadent count played by Vincent Price has uncomfortable resonance - Peter Bradshaw
Quo Vadis, Aida? review – shattering return to Srebrenica
Through the eyes of a translator moving between the different ethnic factions, director Jasmila Žbanić musters real tragic power and clear-eyed compassion revisiting the massacre 25 years on - Peter Bradshaw
Dear Comrades! review – stunning re-creation of a Soviet-era massacre
Andrei Konchalovsky’s account of the day Red Army soldiers and KGB snipers opened fire on strikers is a rage-filled triumph - Peter Bradshaw
Mother review – a heartbreaking inquiry into the cost of dementia
Kristof Bilsen’s stunning doc assesses the disease’s toll on patients and carers trapped in the international care-market - Peter Bradshaw
Pieces of a Woman review – Vanessa Kirby excels in outstanding study of grief
This unflinching tale of neonatal death is a highly personal project for director Kornél Mundruczó and writer Kata Wéber - Wendy Ide
Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets review – bittersweet bar-room endgame
Street-cast characters play fictionalised versions of themselves in this riotous documentary about a closing-down Las Vegas watering hole - Simran Hans
Collective review – shocking exposé of needless deaths in Romania
In Alexander Nanau’s searing documentary a heroic reporter investigates why the majority of victims of a nightclub fire died because of health-care fraud - Peter Bradshaw
Small Axe review – Steve McQueen triumphs with tales of Britain's Caribbean history
The Oscar winner’s five-part anthology begins with Mangrove, a long-overdue dramatisation of a landmark trial, featuring luminous portrayals and nuanced representation - Ellen E Jones
Mank review – David Fincher swooningly revisits myth of Citizen Kane
Gary Oldman plays cynical screenwriter Herman J Mankiewicz in a gorgeously shot film that both revels in Hollywood’s golden age and exposes its corruption - Peter Bradshaw
About Endlessness review – mesmerising odyssey to the heart of existence
Swedish auteur Roy Andersson’s latest is another masterpiece of the human condition, ranging from the evils of war to the redemptive power of love - Peter Bradshaw
Relic review – heartbreaking horror about Alzheimer's
A matriarch’s failing mind brings darkness to the family home in Natalie Erika James’s unforgettably chilling debut feature - Mark Kermode
Wolfwalkers review – an exquisite Irish animation masterpiece
This dazzling 17th-century folk tale is a total joy - Wendy Ide
The Ladykillers review – a comic crime caper that still kills
Sixty-five years later the classic from Ealing Studios is still subversive, hilarious and distinctly English - Peter Bradshaw
Uncle Vanya review – coronavirus gives Chekhov a shot in the arm
The pandemic supercharges the atmosphere in this film version of Ian Rickson’s recent stage production - Susannah Clapp
Soul review – Pixar's rapturous tale of a jazz nut on a surreal out-of-body journey
There’s not much logic involved in this weird and wonderful story of a pianist who is accidentally transported to a strange, otherworldly domain - Peter Bradshaw
Saint Maud review – a chilling nurse on a mission from God
Morfydd Clark and Jennifer Ehle are terrific as carer and patient in Rose Glass’s extraordinary psychological horror - Mark Kermode Observer film critic
Saint Maud review – nursing a nightmare of erotic intimacy
Morfydd Clark is superb as a troubled caregiver in this extraordinarily scary horror melodrama - Peter Bradshaw
Yield to the Night review – unforgettable death-row drama starring Diana Dors
Harrowing prison scenes transfigure this gripping 1956 story of a woman awaiting execution for murder, written just before the hanging of Ruth Ellis - Peter Bradshaw
Red, White and Blue review – Steve McQueen and John Boyega hit gold
Issues of bigotry, belonging, race and redemption and are unpicked in this majestic biopic of police officer Leroy Logan - Peter Bradshaw
Mangrove review – Steve McQueen takes axe to racial prejudice
The notorious 1970 prosecution that exposed police harassment of black Britons is brilliantly evoked as part of the director’s Small Axe project - Peter Bradshaw
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
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
Tenet review – supremely ambitious race against time makes for superb cinema
Go with it, and Christopher Nolan’s high-concept action romp will leave you ripping off your face mask for air, even as you wonder what it was all about - Peter Bradshaw
Babyteeth review – a fearless debut about young love
Terminally ill girl meets drug-addicted boy in Shannon Murphy’s waywardly glorious first feature - Wendy Ide
I Saw the World End review – how a bomb changed life on Earth in a flash
Marking 75 years since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, stage designers Devlin and Weston have made a film of immense power – but it won’t be seen as it was meant to - Jonathan Jones
Boys State review – amazing study of teenagers running for pretend office
The gloves and training wheels come off as a group of smart, poignantly naive and utterly insufferable Texas boys get together to simulate government - Peter Bradshaw
Story of a Love Affair review – Antonioni's riveting postwar noir
The Italian director’s rereleased debut 1950 feature is a stylish study of wealth, ennui, guilt and fear - with an exceptional central performance by Lucia Bosè - Peter Bradshaw
Strasbourg 1518 review – Jonathan Glazer's cathartic spasm of protest for our times
The Under the Skin director’s short film – inspired by a mass-hysteria outbreak of dancing in the 16th century – speaks to our own feelings about lockdown - Peter Bradshaw
Clemency review – Alfre Woodard quietly dazzles in this superb death row drama
Woodard plays a conflicted prison warden slowly unravelling in writer-director Chinonye Chukwu’s remarkable film - Mark Kermode
Clemency – brilliant, devastating death-row drama
Alfre Woodard gives a towering performance as a prison warden increasingly troubled by her role in America’s execution system - Peter Bradshaw
Saint Frances review – wry, tender, taboo-busting drama
Writer Kelly O’Sullivan stars in her bittersweet tale of a child-phobic waitress turned nanny, an exhilarating examination of female lives on screen - Mark Kermode